Every year I like to do a re-cap of the games we played. Scotty and I enjoy strategy board games, and we have gotten together with our friends Chad and Carlie for regular game nights for over 15 years. We’ve been keeping a Game Night Ledger since 2018 documenting what games we played each night, who won, and what we had for dinner.
It’s very fancy and scientific.
The ledger comes in handy in dealing with arguments regarding who “always” wins and who “never” wins. We’ve solved many a dispute by checking the records.
The ledger also allows us to go back through the year and declare our top board games (FYI - we use the term “board games” but some are card games or dice games).
On game night, we usually start off with the more complicated strategy games and play until our brains are fried or a member of our party is ready to kill another member of our party (usually it’s Carlie wanting Scotty dead), and then we switch to the lower brain power games or cooperative games to promote friendliness.
I usually make a list of our top ten games for the year, but there are usually a lot of ties, so this time, I’m going to do runners up and our top five.
Let’s start with second runners up:
Cartographers, Splendor, Hacienda, Savannah Park, Take 5, Wingspan, 7 Wonders, TransAmerica, and Five Crowns tie for second runners up (second runners up didn’t earn a photo on the blog his year).
This is the first time that 7 Wonders and Wingspan have been this far down the list. I, personally, have kind of tired of 7 Wonders, but it reigned supreme for many years. It’s fitting that it has moved down the list as we have taken interest in other things. I still absolutely LOVE Wingspan and consider it my (probably) favorite game, but we have gotten lazy and rarely want to get out the actual board game since we can play it on our phones. I play it on my phone everyday. They just released the Oceania expansion in November, so that was a big day in the Brittish household.
Here are our first runners up:
Quiddler, Ticket to Ride: Europe, and Azul
And now our top five:
5. Risk
We play two different editions of Risk. One of them (Scotty’s copy) is single-mission, but Chad’s edition is four missions. Risk is an old classic, and we love it, but there are some holes in the rules, and they are always changing the rules in new editions, so playing Risk outside of our game circle requires a formal meeting to discuss rules.
4. Quixx
Quixx is one of our powered down games that we play when our brains are fried. We also love Bloom which is made by the company and is just darn cute!
3. Bohnanza
Bohnanza has been one of our favorite games for many years! This is another end of game night selection that we bring out when we need a brain break.
(I never win Bohnanza. Check the ledger).
About two weeks ago, we discovered a rule that we haven’t been following. This is always a shaming experience for us. Who are we, as gamers, to not live up to the rules? We are embarrassed and sad.
But that’s a reminder that you need to revisit the rules occasionally because, after years of playing a game, you develop habits and forget things.
2. Love Letter
Love Letter is an old favorite that makes our list every year. It’s nice and simple - another great game to end the night with. We prefer the original edition which is no longer on the market. They’ve made some updates that we don’t like as much, but we had to upgrade our game because our old one was so worn out that we could tell which cards were which based on their wear and tear. The new edition has instructions on what to remove if you want the “original” variation.
And our NUMBER ONE game from 2023 is… Ark Nova!
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