2020 was a different year in a lot of ways, and boardgames were naturally impacted. In the spring, face-to-face gaming became a thing of the past—outside of family members I could convince to sit down and let go of their screens for an hour or so.
Still, my boardgame buddies and I managed to keep playing together, partly through digital versions of our beloved games (with tools like BoardGameArena.com or Tabletop Simulator), but also using videoconferencing, which turned out to be our preferred method. As long as we all own a copy of the game and no vital components are meant to be shared, calling out moves and recording them on our respective boards (à la chess by mail) proved not only to work well, but also to be very enjoyable! It means you can get to your "friend's place" in no time at all, and that you also can keep playing until the wee hours, because the minute you turn off your camera, you're home.
Which begs the question: do you count plays of digital boardgames?
I certainly counted plays with physical components over videoconferencing, because I was handling an actual game, no matter what. (Hell, it's the same reason I count solo plays.) However, I decided against counting digital plays, because they're essentially video games.
And with that preamble out of the way, let's take a look at some stats for the god-aweful year of 2020. As I expected, everything pretty much took a nosedive.
GAMES
I played 101 different titles (way down from 135 in 2019), for a total of 384 plays (down by a hundred from 483—and to think that last year I had written, "I'll make and effort and try to reach 500 plays for 2020!"). Interestingly enough, I spent 450 hours poring over mapboards in 2020, and 453 hours in 2019, which means that the games I played last year were bigger and longer than those from 2019. As I wrote above, if you don't have to drive home after a gaming evening, you don't shy away from heavy games that will go the distance.
In any case, that's almost 19 full days devoted to boardgaming bliss. I'm a happy camper.
Out of those 101 titles, 42 were new to me (down from 63 in 2019). That was to be expected: since we were learning a new way to play boardgames—remotely—it made sense to stick to game we already knew. But hey, I can't stay away from new stuff completey, you understand...
Here are the 10 games I played the most in 2020:
1. Wing Leader (40 plays)
WWII air combat. One of my gaming buddies and really fell in love with that one, and we just couldn't stop playing it: 40 plays, all over videoconferencing. And it's not a quick game, with average sessions lasting about two hours, and some of the more massive scenarios eating up over five hours.
2. The Quacks of Quedlingburg (30 plays)
An enchanting push-your-luck/bag builder, and a family classic.
3. Arkham Horror: The Card Game (18 plays)
A card-based cooperative game of absolute horror and creeping insanity, with artwork that will both amaze you and keep you up at night.
4. Combat Commander: Europe (14 plays)
WWII tactical warfare, and my favorite game ever.
A relatively simple wargame that retraces medieval history. The GF and I played all 12 published scenarios and are eagerly awaiting the first expansion. Bring on the Crusades!
6. Cooper Island (11 plays)
A tight and clever worker-placement game about developing your chunk of a shared island, and sailing as far as your resources will let you.
NASCAR on a cardboard track, and one of my go-to racing games. (But it's getting a run for its money from the new Apocalypse Road, which was one of my favorite games of 2020.)
Speak of the devil... This is Mad Max on a racetrack: drive around the board and shoot everything that moves.
9. Back to the Future: Back in Time (10 plays)
A heart that beats with clever mechanics and an obvious love of the original material. Perhaps my favorite cooperative game, but the jury's still out.
10. Ottoman Sunset (10 plays)
A solo WWI game where you try to keep the Ottoman Empire together. Instructive and frustrating in equal measures.
PEOPLE
During 2020, I explored the boardgaming world (mainly from my home) alongside 36 different players, down from 55 in 2019. It's the pandemic: I'm really not turning into a misanthrope. I think.
So here are the 10 people with whom I played the most last year:
1. Suzie D. (137 plays)
2. François P. (108 plays)
3. Jean-Luc S. (60 plays)
4. Ophélie K. L. (32 plays)
5. Gustavo A. (24 plays)
6. Héloïse K. L. (24 plays)
7. Niko S. (15 plays)
8. Fred B. (10 plays)
9. Philippe M. (8 plays)
10. Marilyne E. (6 plays)
The GF is keeping her crown, winning top spot for the fourth consecutive year! (Being trapped with me in the house pretty much sealed that deal back in March.)
I'm delighted to see my two youngest daughters back on the list, and also a handful of colleagues who had just over two months to leave their marks before the pandemic (and a new job) whisked me away.
LOCATIONS
While my boardgaming had brought me to 17 locations in 2019 (including Normandy, France!), I ended up playing games in only 12 different places throughout 2020—essentially 11 different spots in the first three months of the year, and then "home" or "FaceTime" (which I decided to count as an alternate home location) for the next nine months.
80% of my playing was done from the confines of my home, as opposed to 56% in 2019. My workplace boardgaming amounted to barely 5% because, well, it turned into a biohazard wasteland.
Perhaps 2021 will be different in that regard. Perhaps.
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS
My yearly H-index has been 10 for five years in a row. I'm cursed!
(In this context, my H-index is the number (h) of games which I've played a number (h) of times.) In other words, for the past five years, there are 10 games I played 10 times each. Last time I played 11 games 11 times each was in 2014.
I barely accomplished my 10x10 challenge in 2020 (play 10 games 10 times each), so I'll set myself another regular 10x10 challenge for 2021. In addition, I'm also creating a "reach 25 solo plays" challenge, and a "reach next (global) H-index" challenge. So far I've played 35 games 35 times each, which means that my next H-index is 36. We'll see how that goes.
My favorite game, Combat Commander, currently stands at 445 plays. I doubt I'll reach 500 in 2021, but maybe in 2022... My buddy François and I haven't progressed in our project to replay the entire second world war through Combat Commander in quite a few months, but we'll surely get back to it before too long.
I began 2020 with Azul: Summer Pavillion and I ended it with The Quacks of Quedlinburg. Two light games that don't do justice to all the heavy boardgaming that took place between those bookends.
So what am I looking forward to in the coming year?
There's the new edition of Kanban: Automotive Revolution, from designer Vital Lacerda, which promises to be even better than the already stellar first edition. Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps! arrived a few days before Christmas and remains unplayed as of yet, but it won't escape the violence of torn shrinkwrap and punched components for long. The new Stefan Feld game, Bonfire, is already punched and ready to go at the first opportunity.
Two new GMT titles I was eagerly awaiting—Caesar: Rome vs Gaul and Imperial Struggle—arrived in 2020 but proved too difficult to bring to the table under pandemic conditions; hopefully 2021 will be the year they finally get played. A third game from GMT, Dominant Species: Marine should reach my doorstep in a few weeks, and will hit the table in short order.
And 2021 is the year I'll finally get cozy with two particularly demanding solo games: the veteran Fields of Fire and the new recruit Stellar Horizons. If you hear me swear at an invisible opponent, alone in my basement, that'll be the reason why.
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