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Mike Hulsebus
United States
Ann Arbor
Michigan
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This article was originally written for my article on AnnArbor.com, where it will go live on Monday, March 7. All of my other reviews are viewable at http://dicearenice.com. For this BGG version I'll also include the full stats at the end.
There’s a certain degree of nerdiness required to be someone who writes a board game review column, but today we’re going to ratchet up the nerd level a few clicks. Over the past year, I’ve logged every single board and card game that I played. So yes, if you’ve read this column regularly, you probably know what games I think are good or bad, but when it comes down to it, these are the games that I spent the most time playing this year. I’ll also talk about games I wish I played more.
This list spans games played from February 28, 2010 to February 27, 2011. I took my logged number of plays and multiplied it by the average number of minutes the game takes as reported over on BoardGameGeek, with a few modifications where I thought the numbers were off (no game of Boggle takes 10 minutes to play: it has a 3 minute timer). So, without further ado, here are my top 10 games that I spent the most time playing. My full reviews of each game are available on http://dicearenice.com
And finally, there are games I’ve played this year that I hope to get to play more in the year to follow. Here are some games that I would love to see rise in the rankings.
Small World (11th place: 6 hours | 4 plays)
Despite what I expected to happen after my first play of Small World, I like this game more each time I play it. I still don’t think of this as a family game like some people do, nor do I think it’s a game I would pull out with non-gamers again due to its length, but Small World is a game that I think gets better as you start to discover the strategies of the game—which I don’t think really happens until play two or three: there is so much more to the game that just recognizing which race and power combinations are best.
Betrayal at House on the Hill (18th place: 3 hours | 3 plays)
I’ve only played 3 scenarios of the 50 provided in the scenario book. My box is full of monsters and tokens and I’m really curious to see what each of them do once they get put in the haunted mansion. Having so many different scenarios makes it so that the game feels different every time (without having to take the time for everyone to learn a new game).</p>
Alien Frontiers (21st place: 2.5 hours | 2 plays)
I’m still not sure how what I feel about this game (which is why there hasn’t been a review yet). This is a combination worker placement/dice-rolling game where players are able to place their workers (dice) based what each die reads. Alien Frontiers is currently all the rage among the board game crowd, with its first printing selling out quickly and the second printing (due in April) in high demand. After my first play of the game, I thought it had too much downtime, but it went much quicker on my second play and I may be starting to warm up to it.
Nuns on the Run (33rd place: 2 hours | 2 plays)
This is a really fun game, and it’s a shame that I haven’t gotten to play it more. Like I mentioned in the original review, it’s somewhat hard to bring to the table since asking rules clarifications during the game might give away someone’s hiding space, but once people I know learn the rules, I’ll be more likely to pull this out. I enjoy playing this as a two player game, so that’s always an option too.
Power Grid (46th place: 90 minutes | 1 play)
This is another game that I’m on the fence about. Unlike Alien Frontiers, I suspect that repeated plays may just show me that this isn’t the game for me, but in the meantime, I really like the idea of this game and all the systems that it has in motion. In time I may understand enough of the strategy to remember that I usually don’t auction games. This is an auction/resource management game where players are trying to build power plants and supply power to cities across a map. Currently, I’m rereading the rules and basically seeing if I can convince myself that it would be easy to teach.and my wife would like it. I look forward to actually playing again sometime in the future to figure out my thoughts on it.
Diplomacy (tied for 102nd: 0 minutes | 0 plays)
I haven’t played a game of Diplomacy in probably 8 years, but it left such an impression on me that I traded for a copy a few months ago. Diplomacy is a negotiation game that requires exactly seven players to play properly and takes over four hours to play. This is a game that players get so into that people explaining the game often have to remind players that everyone is entering the game as friends and you should make sure that everyone leaves the game as friends. In my particular game 8 years ago, I made it to the final years of the game and was poised to share victory, only to be perfectly stabbed in the back so that my “ally” could win by herself. It was awesome.
Mike Hulsebus often finds himself wishing other things he did had such easily quantifiable data so he could spout off things like how many diapers he changes in a month at will. He can be reached at mikehulsebus@gmail.com
Full stats showing all 100+ games played over 270 total hours:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AjI93nRoYaRSdEhYbkR...
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You're either joking or you only play online.
