Another year, another stack of board games played. The total was 221 plays of 99 different games (oh, now do I ever feel like I should have squeezed one more game in!) both of which were significant increases from 2022. And stats come once again from the fabulous Board Game Stats app. Five out of the nine games here were also on last year’s list.

1. Welcome To The Moon

This one was new to me in 2023 and it got straight to the top of the table as me and my friend played through the eight missions, then played them again on the campaign mode, and it generally became the game we could always find time for another go at it. Whilst I could find things to complain about (the rulebook isn’t great; the campaign disappointed me a bit) it’s clearly been a hit all the same!

2. Cartographers

Down from number one last year, but with almost the same number of plays.

3. 5. & 8. Ganz Schön Clever Games

Apart from the addition of the fourth in the series Clever 4 Ever this is also much the same as last year. I think I might be getting a bit bored with these now! But not so much that I wouldn’t always be up for a game of any of them.

4. Cahoots

Another exactly the same as last year.

6. Everdell

Another new entry at last! I picked this up at AireCon in March and it’s an adorable game of building a little town for woodland animals. There are a ton of expansions for it but I’m happy to stick with the base game for now. I really like how in the beginning of the game it feels like you are never going to be able to do anything, but by the end you are juggling what to do because you realise you can’t do everything. The pacing is really nice.

7. In The Footsteps of Darwin

The game that my friend picked up at AireCon, I hadn’t realised we’d matched the two games play for play until now. Another nature themed game, like Wingspan, it’s very laid back and you end up pausing the game to look up facts about the animals you are collecting info on. Nothing spectacular in terms of gameplay but it’s a nice easygoing game.

9. Wingspan

Dropping to the bottom of the top 9 this year, but with the same 4 plays it had last year. Easy going nature themed games are definitely the vibe that my old board game group had going.

Looking Forward

I moved house in the middle of 2023, and hence I also needed to find myself a new group of board gamers to play with. It’s notable that every single board game in this list is a game I played with the old group and not the new group. My new group tend to play longer games and therefore there are less of them, though I’d guess I’ll probably get more variety of games played in 2024 as they tend to play different games each week whilst my old group tended to pull the same stuff out week after week. I’m expecting 2024s stats to look very different from 2023s.