Marti and I plan on doing a couple of different board game challenges this year for our board game resolutions 2018. Board Game resolutions are more fun than real ones, in my personal and humble opinion.

First challenge on the docket is a proper 10×10 games challenge. If you follow us on Twitter, you may have seen that we are utilizing the BG Stats App to track plays and keep track of challenges. We started using the app at the tail end of June, and partially because of that and our busy schedules in December, we weren’t able to complete the 10×10 in 2017. We played 89 of the 100 games of the challenge, and came quite close for only tracking our games for a little over five months. We think the 10×10 challenge is a decent way to get to the heart and depth of what games have to offer strategically and to explore game types and mechanisms. Also, it’s a good excuse to have fun with games we really enjoy.

As of this writing, we are mostly decided on a good chunk of the games to be part of our 2018 10×10 challenge. 

In no particular order:

• Carcassonne
• Clank!
• Forbidden Island
• Hero Realms
• Kingdominio/ Queendomino
• Sagrada
• Sushi Go Party!
• Viticulture
• World’s Fair 1893

Within this list there are some grey areas that we haven’t made a solid decision about as of yet. Would playing different versions of Carcassonne count, or just the base game plus our preferred expansions? When we get Clank! In! Space! later this year, would it count towards the challenge? Would playing different variations of Kingdomino and Queendomino count?

There are many games that may make it on to the 10×10 challenge list. The game mechanisms and types that we want to delve into are:

• Tile laying/placement
• Deck building
• Worker placement
• Card drafting
• Dice drafting/placement
• Cooperative
• Area control/influence
• Party/Large Group
• Abstract

Our second challenge is related to our shelf of shame, or our shelf of awaiting opportunities, whichever naming you prefer. At the moment we have over 50 unplayed games in our collection. We want to make that number more manageable and do a “play what you have” challenge.

As a part of our “Play What You Have” Challenge, we have decided that, as the first Open Seat article of each month, we would cover three to five games that we played off of the Shelf of Shame. These articles are going to summarize our thoughts on those games, and help you (and us) to see what sort of progress we are making. If we keep up with the challenge, we could clear between 36 and 60 games off of our unplayed list, making it that much more manageable going forward. There are some Kickstarters and gifts that we received at the end of 2017 that we have yet to play, along with some older titles that just haven’t gotten to the table.

Please share with us in the comments or via social media what your board game resolutions for 2018 are and/or any thoughts you have regarding ours. Hope your 2018 is off to a great start!

Game On!
Marti and Sarah