Stats Review 2019

This is the 2019 review of games played at the club, corresponding articles for 2008 - 2018 are linked from the "Previously" box to the left, usually under January of the following year, but sometimes under December of the year in question. As last year I include a comparison with the previous year. Full details are on the Stats Pages on the website. There is also a geeklist of all the games played here. I also tweeted the top 10 @halesowenBG.

This year, being the end of the decade I've also surveyed the games played over that time period and there's another article here.

In 2019, as in 2018 we didn't have any Saturday sessions, so all figures are for Wednesdays only.

Games Played

We played a total of 283 games this year (up from 270) spread over 129 titles (compared with 139 in 2018). 60 games were played for the first time this year while 99 games which  were played in 2018, failed to be played this year. The total player time for the year was 1219 player hours, up 4% on 2018.

The 5 most played games (in terms of player time) were as follows:

1. Terraforming Mars(10 plays, 83 player hours)
Number 1 for the third year in succession. We now have Turmoil and got in one game with that expansion this year. All the "big" expansions are supposed to have been released now and It might be time to start experimenting with different combinations.

2. Charterstone (10 plays, 54.67 player hours)
I don't know a great deal about this other than that it is a legacy worker placement game and that the 2 Marks, Steve K and Richard have been running through it. Last year this spot was occupied by Pandemic Legacy Season 2 and in 2017 by Risk Legacy, but I don't know of another legacy that will step in in 2020.

3. Brass: Birmingham (7 plays, 53.67 player hours)
This is in the same spot as last year and has been played regularly throughout, also with a single play of Brass:Lancashire. There's a few who like this game so I expect to see it get continuing play in the coming year.

4. Nemesis (5 plays, 49.50 player hours)
This basically seems to be Alien as board game with everyone trying to escape the Nostromo (or whatever the ship in the game is actually called). That theme is interesting to me, but I have to be confess that the fact that it is not fully cooperative puts me off somewhat as so called semi-cooperatives (as they are wrongly described in my view) don't usually appeal.

5. Teotihuacan: City of Gods (5 plays, 42.67 player hours)
Another first appearance here. It looks impressive with a pyramid of tiles rising up in the middle of the board, but the worker placement aspect puts me off.

In terms of games played, the most played was Love Letter with 12 plays in various versions (mostly Batman).

What happened to last year’s top 5?

As noted numbers 1 & 3 have remained in those positions, the other 3 games have fallen out of the top 5. We finished Pandemic Legacy S2 in 2018 and that has not been played this year. number 4 last year was World Without End which has dropped a couple of places to number 6. Number 5 last year was Pulsar 2849 which has dropped to number 9.

Games that have stood the test of time
Industrial Waste was played again this year remaining the only game to have recorded play every year since 2003, although only being played once this year.

Below is a table of the top 10 games listed by the number of years that they have been played at the club from April 2003. 3 of the games on this list have not been played this year, these being Acquire, Ra & Katzenjammer Blues. over the year.

Industrial Waste	17
Power Grid	16
San Juan	16
Amun-Re	15
Guillotine	15
Acquire	14
Saint Petersburg	13
Caylus Magna Carta	12
Ra	12
Katzenjammer Blues	12

Players
A total of 31 different people have played at the club’s sessions in 2019, the player with most plays was Mark W with 99 followed by Steve W with 98.