On January 2d of this year I committed myself (and, incidentally, those who are unfortunate enough to play board games with me) to a “10×10 hardcore challenge”. This was an idea I saw on BoardGameGeek, and as our gaming had waned somewhat, I thought it would be a good way to motivate us to make it more of a priority again. This proved true, and I successfully completed the challenge last Saturday on November 19th.
As a side note, gaming is like many other enjoyable things in that the more you do it, the more you want to do it. Once you are in the habit of doing a thing, it becomes much easier to continue doing it. There are likely useful life lessons to be drawn from this, but I will refrain from doing so here.
The games we played were:
- Dominion: Intrigue (review)
- 7 Wonders (review)
- Kingdom Builder
- Space Alert
- Ticket to Ride: Märklin
- Quantum
- Wiz-War
- XCOM: The Board Game
- Eclipse
- Mage Knight Board Game
One of the interesting things arising from the challenge is that prior to this, we would rarely play a game more than a few times in a row. Nothing about the challenge technically compelled us to play the same game all in a row, but in several cases (notably Wiz-War, Eclipse, XCOM, and Quantum) we did just that (over the course of weeks/months). This had the effect of revealing strategies in gameplay or even virtues of the game which would not otherwise have been apparent. In particular, I was not originally a fan of Quantum, but I recognized it had enough merit to make it worth trying out. It wasn’t until the sixth or seventh play that I discovered some additional strategic depth beyond that which was immediately apparent (to me, at least). I don’t think this means I’ll be inclined to give every game almost a dozen plays before passing judgement, but I certainly will be more open to diving into repeated plays of a game rather than sampling one of everything from the game closet buffet.
As the challenge progressed, we discussed whether each game was good enough to remain in the collection. A couple of games we had never (or hardly) played before the challenge – XCOM and Mage Knight. Quantum also only had a couple of plays before the challenge. Some I feared might fall apart after repeated play – such as Kingdom Builder.
Ultimately, only one board game definitely got booted from the collection following the challenge, and although I was firm enough in my resolve that I didn’t need any confirmation from my gaming colleagues, I think the decision was unanimous. But rather than simply spoil the surprise right here, I decided to take the effort to write a review of each of these games individually. Look for them in the coming posts!
As for whether I’ll do another challenge – I doubt it. Or at least, I won’t do another hardcore challenge where I pick all the games of the year ahead of time. I still think there’s some value to picking a game and saying “we’re going to commit to playing this X number of times unless we end up completely hating it”. Some games take some time to shine, and you may be surprised at the depth (or occasionally lack of depth) you discover if you play a game repeatedly within a short period of time.