The Boardgames Chronicle 2022 most often played games

Welcome to the first post in a series, which will on one side look retrospectively at 2022 from my board-gaming experiences, while from the other at what I am expecting – and anticipating – in 2023. First of all, once more, inspired by other fellow bloggers (CliosBoardgames, RockyMountainNavy and Dude! Take Your Turn!) I decided to have a look back at the 2022 and see what my most played titles were (plus some other, useful stats).

I am equipped with great app, Board Games Stats, which I am using for fourth consecutive year – it provides so much insightful data about my hobby – and recently in the even more improved form! This was unfortunately another very difficult year for all of us due to the war in Ukraine, but at least – unlike COVID times – live, face to face sessions were possible.

Let us have a look into details below!

General insights

Despite everything that was a good year for my group from the boardgames perspective – 96 different titles (significantly larger number than in 2021) played 298 times – a slight increase from 277 sessions in 2021. Some of them were longer, some of them much shorter, but still, having all things concerned, it was good to see that on average 2 out of 3 days were with some game! True, this is of course trick of the statistics – there were days with many games, there were with one larger title or with none at all.

Opponents & players count

Now, analyzing that statistic will be very interesting. In 2021 the impact of the second pandemic year was clearly visible as my main opponent was Vassal folks. Now, in 2022, it changed dramatically – you can see Kuba, my main wargaing opponent, my wife Magda and of course solo games (bot) as predominant.

Of course, being mainly a wargamer, you notice 2-player games with record – 53% – percentage. Second place – not surprisingly is taken by 4-players sessions – another 25%. Other combinations had much more marginal occurrences.

Most played titles

And now to the most important and interesting statistic! The BGStats divides all your played games into couple of categories:

• centuries – played 100 times or more – well, not in 2022 nor in 2021 was I so biased to one of my favorite games so much as to have over 100 sessions logged; but there were times – like in 2016 – when I played Commands Colors Ancient 165 times…
• quarters – played 25 times or more; this time there was no game here although CC Ancients was close; is it bad? Not necessarily…
• dimes – played 10 times or more – …as I never before had so many games in dimes and fives categories! That shows how versatile and varied this year was, with titles like Pacific War, C&C Medieval, Nova Luna, Root.

• fives – played 5 times or more – we finished Gloomahven campaign, I took part in Shores of Tripoli tournament, Cascadia and For Sale were very popular titles played with my kids while Guadalcanal Solitaire gave me a lot of fun when travelling! One could not wish for more!

It gives me a great joy to see that I am still keeping-up with my hobby – ironically, writing a blog and running a YouTube channel takes a lot of time for actually playing the games. I can only hope – and wish to myself and all of you – that 2022 will be again great as far as our beloved hobby is concerned!

PS. Next week I will present how The Boardgames Chronicle blog itself fared in 2022 and will suggest Dear Readers a look back at some of the best articles created.