95 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
95 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: The 2022 Board Game Shelf Analysis
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date: 2022-07-29T16:09:00+02:00
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categories:
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- braindump
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tags:
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- boardgames
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---
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Here's that [long-promised write-up](/post/2022/07/organizing-the-boardgame-shelf-with-tom) of our 2022 board game cupboard clearance--yay, lists! Yay, statistics! Since I've never done this kind of post before, it might be best to start off with a list---obviously---of everything we own, _after_ cleaning up. From hereon, we could go forward with a yearly post discussing the delta's: the old games that left the closet and the new games that entered it. This has been a small side project for a few weeks: throwing out and rearranging everything, carefully constructing a list, adding color-coded scores, applying some statistics, scrolling through others' GeekLists, thinking about what to buy next, ...---all these things made me happy, so mission accomplished.
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![](../boardgames.jpg "'The List' in the making, and the cleaned up board game shelves, with the crossed-out games given the boot. I did my best to hide all Magic stuff.")
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Since I had to digitize the list anyway to gather some more interesting insights, here's a crude table with columns as follows: game name, BoardGameGeek average score (`1-10`), own score (`4`: Great!, `3`: Good, `2`: Average, `1`: Bad, see my [grading systems discussion](/post/2022/07/grading-systems)), BoardGameGeek weight (`1-5`), estimated plays (From `++`; played a lot, to `-`; barely played[^ply]).
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[^ply]: I know you can keep track of your plays with your BoardGameGeek account. I gave up a long time ago, so these are estimated guesses put into three rough categories.
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| Game | Score (BGG/Own) | Weight | Plays |
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|------|-----------------|--------|-------|
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| [Café International](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/214/cafe-international) | 6.2 (2) | 1.7 | ++ |
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| [Imperial Settlers](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/154203/imperial-settlers) | 7.4 (4) | 2.8 | + |
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| [Carson City](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39938/carson-city) | 7.2 (3) | 3.2 | - |
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| [Paris Cité de la Lumière](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/276498/paris-la-cite-de-la-lumiere) | 7.4 (3) | 2.04 | - |
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| [Time's Up!](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1353/times) | 7.3 (1) | 1.2 | - |
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| [Machi Koro](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-koro) | 6.6 (2) | 1.5 | + |
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| [Uxmal](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/286829/uxmal) | 5.6 (1) | 2.0 | - |
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| [Tiny Epic Zombies](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244536/tiny-epic-zombies) | 7.0 (3) | 2.5 | - |
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| [Mille Bornes](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/590/mille-bornes) | 5.8 (2) | 1.3 | ++ |
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| [Othello](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2389/othello) | 6.1 (2) | 2.1 | - |
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| [Watergate](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/274364/watergate) | 7.9 (3) | 2.3 | - |
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| [Wool Rules](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28037/wool-rules) | 6.0 (2) | 1.5 | - |
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| [Llamaland](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/330038/llamaland) | 7.4 (4) | 2.0 | - |
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| [Heckmeck Deluxe](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/245200/heckmeck-deluxe) | 7.1 (2) | 1.1 | - |
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| [Pay Day](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1797/pay-day) | 4.9 (1) | 1.2 | + |
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| [Kid-Cala](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23183/kid-cala) | 6.8 (3) | 1.5 | ++ |
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| [Ramses II](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2629/ramses-ii) | 5.8 (1) | 1.3 | - |
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| [Star Wars Risk](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/183880/risk-star-wars-edition) | 7.0 (2) | 1.9 | - |
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| [Agricola](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31260/agricola) | 7.9 (4) | 3.6 | ++ |
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| [Ora & Labora](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70149/ora-et-labora) | 7.7 (4) | 3.9 | - |
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| [Le Havre](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35677/le-havre) | 7.9 (4) | 3.7 | - |
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| [Patchwork](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163412/patchwork) | 7.6 (4) | 1.6 | ++ |
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| [Robin of Locksley](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/280132/robin-locksley) | 7.0 (2) | 1.9 | - |
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| [Nightfall](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/88408/nightfall) | 6.5 (3) | 2.6 | - |
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| [At the Gates of Loyang](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39683/gates-loyang) | 7.4 (4) | 3.1 | + |
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| [Fields of Arle](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/159675/fields-arle) | 8.1 (4) | 3.9 | - |
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| [Memoir '44](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10630/memoir-44) | 7.6 (4) | 2.3 | - |
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| [Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31627/ticket-ride-nordic-countries) | 7.6 (3) | 2.0 | ++ |
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| [Glasgow](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/301716/glasgow) | 7.2 (3) | 2.1 | - |
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| [Mr. Jack](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21763/mr-jack) | 7.0 (4) | 2.2 | ++ |
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| [Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4390/carcassonne-hunters-and-gatherers) | 7.1 (3) | 1.9 | + |
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| [Race for the Galaxy](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143/race-galaxy) | 7.8 (4) | 3.0 | ++ |
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| [Dominion](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36218/dominion) | 7.6 (4) | 2.4 | + |
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| [Friday](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43570/friday) | 7.1 (4) | 2.2 | - |
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| [Al Cabohne](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/980/al-cabohne) | 6.0 (3) | 1.8 | - |
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| [Bohnanza](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11/bohnanza) | 7.0 (4) | 1.7 | ++ |
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| [Hero Realms](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/198994/hero-realms) | 7.6 (4) | 1.9 | + |
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| [Hive Pocket](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/154597/hive-pocket) | 7.7 (4) | 2.3 | ++ |
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| [Guillotine](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/116/guillotine) | 6.5 (3) | 1.3 | + |
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| [Saboteur: The Duel](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/168215/saboteur-duel) | 6.0 (1) | 1.3 | - |
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| [Morels](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/122298/morels) | 7.0 (3) | 1.7 | + |
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| [The Bottle Imp](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/619/bottle-imp) | 6.7 (2) | 1.9 | - |
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| [13 Dead End Drive](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1899/13-dead-end-drive) | 6.0 (1) | 1.4 | - |
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| [Labyrinth: The Card Game](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/533/labyrinth-card-game) | 5.6 (2) | 1.2 | ++ |
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| [The Quest for El Dorado](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/217372/quest-el-dorado) | 7.6 (4) | 1.9 | - |
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---
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I had some "research questions" (this _academitis_ fever is getting worse, sorry) that might accompany the data so I came up with two scatter plots: one with BGG's average score and one with my own rating applied to each game. The symbols and colors encode the plays column: red/upside-down triangle is barely played (`-`), orange/block is played quite a bit (`+`) and the green/upwards-pointing triangle represents many plays (`++`):
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![](../bggstats.jpg "A scatter plot of scores (x-axis) and game weight (y-axis) with plays encoded in the symbol.")
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All right, so what does that teach us?
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1. BoardGameGeek's opinion nicely overlaps with mine. Correlations between the BGG score and my own score are as follows, grouped per play symbol `-`, `+`, and `++` respectively: **0.74, 0.94, 0.86**. Those are some surprisingly strong correlations! Some games though, such as Labyrinth, Guillotine, and Al-Cabohne, I rate (much) higher than the BGG community does. (I like planting beans. Sorry!)
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2. There seems to be a relation between weight and BGG score---at least for the games in my collection. Indeed: **0.63**, a moderate to strong correlation.
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3. What's up with all those red triangles floating on top of the rest? The heavier a game, the **less likely it sees the table**! I know many people judge the staying power of a board game by the amount of times it is actually played, but I disagree. My wife dislikes heavy hitters such as Fields of Arle while I _love_ them. Since we mostly play together, the simpler games also see a fair bit of playtime. That could also mean that...
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4. Since I also tend to rate heavier games higher (same correlation, **0.63**), I urgently need to meet up more with friends to play the heavier games in the `-` range! _"We should make this a recurring thing."_ For how long have we been saying that now?
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5. Judging from the second plot, there are too many games I don't like still in this list, and don't even see many play time. Again, this is a bit unfair since my wife likes to keep hold of nostalgic simple games from her childhood such as _Dead End Drive_ or _Ramses_, even though we don't play them often. This is my personal score, not hers, and we obviously collectively own everything.
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6. Averages: BGG score `6.94/10`, own score `2.89/4` (`7.23/10`), weight `2.09/5`. Perhaps that means I could be a tad more critical---or it just means we indeed made the right decisions keeping the games we love and getting rid of the ones we don't like.
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7. Average plays: `1.69/3`. Not something to be particularly proud of... I should look into playing more games in **solo** mode, some like _Arle_ are an excellent fit for it.
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Okay, I know it, the graph shows it, the photograph shows it... We'll have to talk about the elephant in the room: the overload of "Euro" _Uwe Rosenberg_ games that are heavy and never see play. There are still games in the closet that need to be replayed and then perhaps let go of: _Le Havre_ (too similar to _Agricola_ and _Arle_), _Nightfall_ (_Dominion_ with direct interaction and weird chaining that my play group doesn't like), _Carson City_ (yet another worker placement game that's better with 3, but I love the theme), some only mildly entertaining smaller card games we're not yet sure of, etc.
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I tried including a "optimal number of players" property in there, but it would be a bit too much. A quick count says the following about the collection:
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1. 26 out of 45 games (`58%`) play great with two players---14 of those (`31%`) even exclusively. We try to keep an eye on that.
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2. 15 games (`33%`) are card-based. I love card games. [Including Magic](/post/2021/08/emotional-magic), of course.
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3. Only `24%` of our games see regular play (`++`). `20%` now and then (`+`), and `56%` almost never (`-`). Ouch. This again isn't a very accurate statistic: we bought _The Quest for El Dorado_ last week and so far we think it's awesome but it's obviously only seen play three or so times. It's a fairly telling estimation though.
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The following games were cleared out for this 2022 edition: Amon-Ra, Rock, Paper, Wizard, Waku-Waku, Revolver, Stratego Legends, Cottage Garden, King of Tokyo, Cartagena, The Big Book of Madness, Spyfall 2, Exploding Kittens, Escape the Labyrinth, Munchkin Cthulhu.
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So what's next? I just ordered Jaipur and Dice Realms! I was on the edge between Dice Realms and Roll for the Galaxy, which I played and loved, but since I already own _Race_, it would probably see more "shelf time" than "table time". Do you have any recommendations based on the above list? I'd love to hear about your collection!
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Dang it, now I need to make a top 5 or top 10... I'll leave that for Christmas.
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