Year in Review: Games Played

On the gaming front, 2022 demonstrated that the sudden and dramatic increase in games played in 2021 was no fluke.  Well, if 2021 was a quirk of fate then that run continued into 2022.  Games played in 2021 reached 97 games.  While 2022 saw a reduction in number of games played from 2021, 2022 managed to tally 89 games played.  Still, that is a lot of games played.  Some weeks witnessed as many as four games on the schedule.

Of course, this level of activity would not be possible without remote gaming via Zoom or Google Meet.  Neither would these numbers be reached if I was not also hosting almost as many games as I attended as a participant. 

Looking back over the games played in 2022, how did the year unfold?  While some genres and rules led the pack, activity was spread out over a wide swath of both rules, wargaming periods, and figure scales.  How were the 89 games distributed over rules played?  See Table 1, Counts of Games Played in 2022 for details.

Table 1

The count shows 24 different rulesets hit the table in 2022.  This total is one more than seen in 2021.   These totals do not break out all of the different variants in use for Basic Impetvs (BI) and Fields of Honor (FoH).  If those variants are tossed into the mix, I reckon the count of rules played tops 30.  Basic Impetvs led the way with 23 games played with Fields of Honor coming in at #2 with 13 games.  Commands & Colors rounded out the Top 3.  Most of Commands & Colors games were played using my 6mm collection.  These Top 3 made up nearly 50% of all rules played.  Seeing Basic Impetvs coming out at the top of the list is not much of a surprise.  Throughout the year, Matt and I traded hosting a variety of games playing BI on a grid.  BI also saw much service in many of my other hosted games.  Fields of Honor saw lots of action too.  The main contributors were a number of battles fought with settings in the Franco-Austrian War and War of Austrian succession.      

Graphically, Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of games played by ruleset.  Clearly, Basic Impetvs was my favorite, by far.  Do I see this trend continuing into 2023?  I suspect so.  Only four days into the New Year and BI has seen action in two games.

Figure 1

What stands out in this listing is that almost all of the rules played are either self-published or homegrown rulesets.  Scanning the list, very few rules are commercial with widespread audiences.  I clearly run in the rules' tinkerer band.  Some may wonder how anyone can keep that many different rulesets in mind.  With a good QRS, it is not so hard.    

What about figure size or scale? Was there breadth in that respect too? Yes, breadth was in abundance.  See Figure 2.

Figure 2

While 15/18mm and 25/28mm may have dominated games played, 1/72 and 20mm saw much activity too thanks to Graham, Richard, and Peter's many games in plastics.  Not much change in figure scale distribution from 2021 counts.  2023 ought to see similar results.

What about breaking these game totals down by wargaming period?  Are there any tendencies here or simply a scattershot across a wide variety of periods?

Figure 3

Looking at Figure 3, 24 different wargaming saw action on the various hosts' gaming tables in 2023.  This is a surprising amount of variety when these results are tallied.  Seems like there is no specialization here especially when games are hosted by a number of GMs.  This demonstrates that each GM has his own interests and willing to share those interests with others.  A corollary to this observation is that players are willing to step out of their areas of interest and readily try new periods and rules.  Rarely have I encountered anyone in my small remote gaming world unwilling to try whatever is on offer.  This total number of unique periods played is the same as the number of rulesets played.  Coincidence?

Feudal Japan and Franco-Austrian Wars saw the most playings but my long-running AWI campaigning with Matt and our 2022 entry into fighting battles in the Reconquista are not far behind.  

Were the games concentrated within a few months or evenly distributed throughout the year? While Figure 4 shows spikes of activity in February, October, and November and relative lulls during the summer months.  Most months saw 7-8 games played.  Still just short of an average of two games per week but still these totals represent a lot of gaming.  I am exhausted looking back and pondering all of the games played. 

Figure 4

Looking back at my 2021 review, I did not expect 97 games played as sustainable.  While I did not reach 97 games played in 2022, 89 games played is not much of a drop-off in frequency.  89 games is still a lot of gaming!  I may have to cut back a little in 2023 since I am uncertain that 89 games played is sustainable especially with other work to get done.

The next time I return to the yearly review, I dig into the Painting Log and see what 2022 held.