Top 5 most played games in 2016 + Top 3

Inspired by a Board Game Geek thread here are my 5 most played games in 2016 -

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 -17
Carcassonne -14
Splendor -12
Sushi Go! -10
Joint 5th=
No Thanks! -7
Timeline -7

No surprise to see short 'fillers' in 3rd, 4th and joint 5th.  Carcassone and Splendor are high because I play them with family and friends (hardly at all at the club!).  Pandemic Legacy - maybe season 2 will show up next year?

Favourite games from this year (new to me) I've played -

Mansions of Madness - Only played it twice but really enjoyed it both times.  
Diamant - Played it twice then rushed out and bought my own copy - really nice push your luck game.
7 Wonders Duel - love 7 wonders, can't wait to play this some more.

I should really log my plays more - no idea really but I would guess

1 - Imperial Assault
2 - 7 Wonders Duel
3 - Deception
4 - Flick em Up
5 - Animal upon animal

My top 3 games

Kanban
Trickerion
Imperial Assault

I gave up on logging my plays but I'm pretty confident that these are my most played games (now someone will remind me of something else that should be on this list):

1. Star Realms
2. Android: Netrunner
3. Imperial Assault
4. Codenames
5. Cosmic Encounter

As for my top 3... Well if we're including the 'new to me' thing then I guess it would be:

1. Android: Netrunner
2. Scythe
3. Captain Sonar

If we exclude Netrunner, then next on the list would be Star Wars: Rebellion, I think!

I've never tracked my plays but I might start in the new year.
I would assume

Xwing by a good margin
Imperial Assault
Web of Spies
Probably Spyfall
After that I've no idea

I'm sure I played a few new games that I thought were really great but I'm drawing a complete blank now

According to my log, which I *think* is accurate...

1, Pandemic: Legacy
2, Codenames
3, Black Fleet
4, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
5, Android: Mainframe

Worth noting I don't log plays of digital boardgames else Carcassonne at least would be at the top of the list!

As for top three games that were new to me...

In no particular order:

Diamant/Incan Gold - played both versions and really enjoyed it, the "Push Your Luck" thing is done really well with it
Star Wars: Rebellion - Don't think this really needs explaining Excellent game but takes a bit long to play
Web of Spies - Boardgame crossed with a deckbuilder, lightweight and great fun. Plus, you know, bastardry

My top four played games must be X-wing, Netrunner, Pandemic Legacy and Imperial Assault. I guess the last slot would be Sushi Go, Codenames or Batman Love Letter or something.

I can't think of anything new that's really outstanding this year. I've hardly bought any games and have mostly played a few of my games a lot or other people's new acquisitions.

Stuff that's new to me this year is the LOTR lcg, which I expect to make it into my top five most played next year. Ashes is another great lcg I found this year, but I just don't have time for it as well as everything else.

Smaller games I've enjoyed are Ravens of Thri Sahashri, Niagara, Homesteaders, Isle of Trains and a special mention has to go to Knit Wit for probably my most fun single game of the year. I feel like I'm forgetting something really obvious though

I don't track number of plays but this would be the approximate order:

1. Lords of Waterdeep (My wife loves this, it gets LOTS of table time)
2. Pandemic Legacy  (We finished the campaign last week... it did not end well for us)
3. X-Wing
4. Carcassonne
5. Forbidden Desert/Star Wars: Armada

I wasn't sure about the 5th spot. Unfortunately Armada hasn't gotten much playtime for a while. I struggle these days to find the time to play as you're looking at least 2 hours of play time for a 400 point game. The space requirements are a problem also. I've not even bothered buying any expansions since wave 2, it's now on wave 5.

I do log plays on BGG so I can definitively say that my top 5 (not counting 'Unpublished Prototype') were

1. Ghost Stories
   
2. Battle Line
   
3. Hanabi
   
4. FUSE
   
5. The Resistance:Avalon
   

Although, as I tend not to play games over and over again in a short period, there's not much difference between no. 5 and no. 20 in the list. Ghost Stories is an exception because whenever we play it Paula insists that we keep on playing another game until we finally get the win.

My best new-to-me games... hmm
Definitely Guilds of London is in there as number 1. After that maybe Glass Road and Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space.

There's plenty of other good ones too, though, so I could easily have picked Baseball Highlights 2049, Valley of the Kings, Beyond Baker Street, Pandemic Iberia, Imhotep and probably several others.

Forgot about guilds of London! And Isle
Of Skye...

Thinking about it, I've played at least 7 games of LOTR this year so that should put it at number 5 already.

I think there are loads of great games from this year I've just not played yet. Still never played Kanban, Isle of Skye, Guilds of London, La Granja, Imhotep, Star Wars: Rebellion or Terraforming Mars. Clearly not playing enough games. Has anyone even got Terraforming Mars?

Also, Ste, just sell Armada and buy more X-Wing!

I agree Lizzy there's loads of games I still haven't played yet.

I log all my game plays on BoardGameGeek, I have a terrible memory and wouldn't recall what I've played otherwise! Plus you can look at the data for example

In 2016 I played 92 games only once.
I played 50 games more than once.
I played 36 games in March and I've only played 13 in December (so far!)

By the way online plays don't count - you might as well tell me how many times you've played World of Warcraft in a year, what's the point?

Lizzy wrote:I think there are loads of great games from this year I've just not played yet. Still never played Kanban, Isle of Skye, Guilds of London, La Granja, Imhotep, Star Wars: Rebellion or Terraforming Mars. Clearly not playing enough games. Has anyone even got Terraforming Mars?

I'd like to play Terraforming Mars, too. And Orleans and Troyes and Concordia and El Grande and A Feast for Odin and Great Western Trail.

Maybe we need another thread about Games That We Would Really Like to Play at Some Point but Haven't Got Round to Because There Are So Many Games and So Little Time.

I'm not very good at coming up with snappy thread titles.

Ditto the rest of them! I have managed to play Orleans, but it was great so i'd happily play it again

What do people find is the best way to track plays? Do most people use BGG or is there a good iOS app or something like that?

Kes wrote:What do people find is the best way to track plays? Do most people use BGG or is there a good iOS app or something like that?

I use an app called BGStats which then syncs with BGG

I vaguely track games that I've played, but not plays. Luckily, some of the electronic versions have tracking. My most played will mostly be digital anyway, so:

Star Realms (822 plays on the app - with a fair amount of that being this year)(+probably double figures on card)
Race for the Galaxy (94 plays on Boardgamearena)(played on card ~3 times ever. Have Xeno invasion unplayed)
Stone Age (20 plays on Boardgamearena)(Played once on cardboard and didn't like it)
Takenoko (11 plays on Boardgamearena)(never played coardboard)
Puerto Rico (9 plays on Boardgamearena)(+1 cardboard ever - which was this year)

Roll for the Galaxy, Hive and Dominion will join Star Realms in sneaking into double figures for face to face.

Top 3 new games this year? Very hard to say as so many I'd like to play more of. (I won't consider anything on app here, as face to face is generally better) :
Brew Crafters - please play this with me!
Exodus Proxima Centauri 2nd ed. + expansion. Please play this with me too!
I'm saving the 3rd space in case something comes up.

Hive deserves a mention. It's a nice little game. I hate it though, because it gets in my head. I've just bought 'pocket' for a city break in Jan.

Scythe deserves a mention for it's use of player board alone. A very good game, even though I don't feel like coming back to it a lot.

I have and very much enjoy 51st state. I like the theme, but the tokens are stupid. Imperial Settlers fixes most of the token doom, is much more intuitive and smoother, but I hate the theme. I'm mentioning them both.

Xia will deserve a mention if the expansion fixes it.

Pandemic Legacy is pretty good for a co-op.

I can't believe more fillers didn't make these lists (updated for new year and xmas games). games I don't own are in bold.

my top 10:

King of Tokyo 20
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong 18
7 Wonders Duel 17
Biblios 17
Codenames 16
Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game 14
Zombie Dice 14
Codenames: Pictures 12
Love Letter 12
Sea of Clouds 12


Things that got at least 5 plays:

Castellion 11
Lost Cities 11
Don't Mess with Cthulhu 9
A Fake Artist Goes to New York 8
Trambahn 8
Carcassonne: The Castle 7
Fury of Dracula (third edition) 7
Labyrinth 7
PitchCar 7
The Ravens of Thri Sahashri 7
Skull 7
Sushi Go! 7
Carcassonne 6
Fleet 6
The Resistance: Avalon * 6
Rococo 6
Beyond Baker Street 5
The Bloody Inn 5
Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia 5
Forbidden Desert 5
FUSE 5
Kodama: The Tree Spirits 5
Port Royal 5
Race for the Galaxy 5
T.I.M.E Stories 5
Web of Spies 5


*Did not include santalon

Lizzy wrote:Also, Ste, just sell Armada and buy more X-Wing!

No!! Knowing my luck, I'll sell it and then suddenly become interested again. Besides, I think I need to win the lottery before I can get the rest of the X-Wing ships! There's just too many!

DaveB wrote:

Kes wrote:What do people find is the best way to track plays? Do most people use BGG or is there a good iOS app or something like that?

I use an app called BGStats which then syncs with BGG

Dave showed me this app last week and it looks really great! I'm making it a resolution to use it to track my plays in 2017. You can record a huge amount of extra info if you feel like including the location, players, scores, who was new to the game, who went first, etc. I'm trying to resist my natural urge to record the maximum amount of data possible. But apologies if logging a play of a game now takes longer than the game itself ;-)

Is it a paid app? I found one called something like that, only a couple quid but wanted to make sure it was the right game

Kes wrote:Is it a paid app? I found one called something like that, only a couple quid but wanted to make sure it was the right game

Yep, that's right - full name of the app on the store is Board Game Stats: Play tracking for tabletop games. Icon is a white pawn in front of a bar graph on a green background.

Got it

If any of you are thinking "But which games did come out in 2016? My memory sucks", then interrupt yourself to add "I don't want to know all of them, obviously, that is too many games and I don't care about most of them -- no, not even the My Little Pony: The Card Game expansion that was released in June", then the games that were shortlisted for Shut Up and Sit Down's readers award — about 65 significant releases — might be a useful reference:

https://discussions.shutupandsitdown.com/t/pearples-choice-best-game-published-and-or-released-in-2016/3051

...I guess that's not what we're talking about in this thread. Oh well, I'm talking about it now.

I... have not played many games in that list.

Played more than once:
Secret Hitler
Codenames: Pictures
Mechs vs. Minions
Escape From Aliens In Outer Space
Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne

Played just once:
Diamante
Guilds of London
Scythe

I think I would give prizes to Secret Hitler and Guilds of London.

And something else related. Just over a year ago I asked what people's favorite games were, and Paul asked what 12 games members would take to a desert island.

http://www.sheffieldboardgamers.com/t809-top-whatever-boardgames

How much have your lists changed? Has something from 2016 knocked an older game off the pedestal?