1995: The Year in Games

People are fascinated by lists. In my case, I was curious about what I played in the course of a year. So in 1994, I started keeping track of every game. The results were interesting enough to repeat the effort this year, and I invited TGR readers to join the fun. I'm told a number of readers took up the challenge, but the only one to share his results with me is White Wind maestro Alan Moon. In fact, Alan went me one better, tracking not only which games were played how often, but who they were played with and what everyone scored in each game.

Comparing our two lists reveals some interesting similarities and differences. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Die Siedler von Catan was the number one game for both of us in 1995. Alan played a lot of Taboo last year— and if Milton Bradley would just produce some more refills, I'd be playing it that much too. Liar's Dice was high on both lists, as was Celebrities— a homebrew party game I taught Alan last year. Other high scorers on Alan's list— Wildlife Adventure and Adel Verpflichtet— I would have liked to appear higher on mine as well. High Society and Attacke, on the other hand, while fine games, don't have the same longevity for me.

It's also clear that Alan manages to find far more time for games than I do; my priorities clearly need some adjustment. Unfortunately the downward trend continues this year. Five months into 1996, my total game count is only at 118— that's an average of under 24 games a month, down from 31 last year. I also seem to play very many games, but few repeatedly.

In the table that follows, the first value is the number of times I played the game, the second is Alan's count, and the third our combined total. Due to space limitations, games which Alan played but which I did not have been omitted. The highest of these were Bakschisch (10), Drunter & Druber (10), Das Super-Blatt (9), Loopin' Louie (9), and Sagaland (9).