January 2016

  • John Parker

    Last year I posted a review of my 2015 Genghis Con experience and I plan to do the same this year. This year I am adding a preview to note some changes in my con plans and to be able to cut right to the chase in the review article (the post post).

    Why Genghis Con?

    I will spend an extended weekend at Genghis Con for the third year running. I live about an hour from where the con is held and it is not far from my office, so it is very convenient to attend. In past years I slept at home, but I will be staying two nights at the con hotel this year. Hopefully, this means I will get in more gaming! This is not the only major change to my con routine planned in 2016. This year my wife will also attend (which was the primary rationale behind getting the hotel room). She came for a few hours on the final day in 2014 to see what the con was like. Of course, this was probably the worst day since things were winding down and too many con-goers had not followed their con-123s. Despite the warning signs, she agreed to attend most of 3 days this year.

  • John Parker

    Background

    As mentioned in 2015 Review: Round 1, based on the number of times that I played any given game in 2015 (and compared to 2014 when possible) indicates that some of them were winners in 2015 and others were losers. Let’s take a look at a few games in each category:

    Winners

    A common way of measuring the actively played games is to use a metric called “nickels and dimes” (games played 5 and 10 times in one year respectively). To that we can add “quarters” also since I had a couple games that broke the 25 plays mark and a couple more that were close. This seems to be a good metric for my level of gaming; distinguishing between those games that get attention and those that don’t. In my previous post called A Nickel’s Worth of Game Play I discuss what is indicate about a game when I get 5 or more plays.

  • John Parker

    Background

    As I did in January of 2015, I will review the previous year’s gaming. Note: Also as before, I wouldn’t consider this a review of the games, but a review of my experiences with them.

    I started tracking my plays on BGG in January 2014, so I can report on the games that I played, the ones that didn’t get any attention, and I can compare 2015 to 2014. Just in case it isn’t nerdy enough to catalog my game collection, record game plays, and review them, I also have to consider a few “rules” in the analysis.