2014 – The year of playing
I’m not normally one for resolutions, but the plans for this year do fall nicely into the same kind of pattern as resolutions. We’ll see how well everything goes by the end of the year.
The big change this year is that my girlfriend and I plan to attend PAX East, Origins, and Gen Con as attendees or media members instead of volunteers. We haven’t had a convention that we didn’t volunteer for in years, so we talked and decided that this year, we’re going for us. If you’re going to any of these conventions, let me know and we can meet up, hang out, and play some games. If you have a game you’d like me to check out at a convention, that can also be arranged, just ask Chris Zinsli, better known as @CardboardEdison. He showed us Tessen last year at Origins and we gave him a lot of feedback that helped the game become what it is today.
One of the things I want to do this year is play more new games, both at conventions and at home. I have several games that I’d like to try before I go and order them, such as Legendary. I have many games on my Want to play list and I’m sure that more will come out this year. Spending time at conventions in the dealer hall and free play areas should help with this goal. I also hope to actually some game days at my house or friendly local game store with my friends so that they can bring over games and we can play together.
Another goal this year is to play more of the games that I own but haven’t gotten to the table. I try to keep up with logging my plays on BoardGameGeek and have for a few years. As of right now, I own 677 board games, excluding expansions. I show that I’ve played 390 total games, and that includes ones I don’t even own! If we include only games I own and have played, the number drops to 280. Even if I am missing play logs for 20 games, this means that I haven’t played over half of the games that I own! Please go through the list of games that I own and haven’t played and tell me what desperately needs to make it to my table!
Too many games!
I’m also looking to sell the games that I just don’t play anymore. I love the hobby, but I have to recognize that the space I have for games and the amount of space I need for the games that I have are not equal. Look for some kind of auction on BoardGameGeek later on in the year.
Finally I’d like to do some revamping of this site. Clean up some of the layout, add pages for each company that I volunteer for, work on a better calendar. Nothing too big, but enough that it’ll take time and effort.
Those are the gaming plans for this year. Play more games more often is going to be the mantra for 2014. Now to see how it all plays out!
Thanks for your help with Tessen! Your feedback was super-helpful. Looking forward to seeing you at this year’s cons!
My friend,
I read this a while back and I like this decision. You are an expert teacher of games and your collection is very impressive, but playing the games with friends is awesome.
My place of work hasn’t posted a holiday calendar for this year yet, so my year is kind of unknown. I plan of taking some days in August to go to the family reunion in Michigan and visit those I haven’t seen in some time. Otherwise, I should have some vacation time for trips.
Perhaps we can do a “The Beef visits and we play boardgames weekend” sometime (probably when it isn’t winter – not big on driving in snow). Or maybe a convention would be nice.
On a non-related note, it sounds like I might become a GM for a Pathfinder game soon.
Looking at your game list, I don’t see any “Play it now” games, but here are some notes
– Balderdash was played when I was a kid at Grandma and Grandpa’s, it is an excellent game that the family can enjoy, it is sort of a proto- Apples to Apples
– Bootleggers is a bit dice and luck heavy. I haven’t had a good experience with it, but that might just be me not getting the math. It might be better to play if you actually had some liquor on the side – play a game about smuggling alcohol with some alcohol on the side
– Eclipse is a game that has a whole bunch of intricacies, but it is fast to learn if somebody is teaching you. You explore, expand, exploit, and then try to get as many points as possible at game end (so not quite a 4x strategy game). If you push to hard, your empire might collapse under the weight of its own hubris (or more specifically, crumbling economy). There is war and attacking your neighbors could really pay off, but then again…
– The newer Descent plays a little different – the scenarios are recalibrated and the campaign seems a little more structured. Haven’t gotten too far in it myself, but it seemed cool to me…
Talk to you soon,
Brian