Revisiting Reviews and Ratings

 Rethinking Numbers

Two of my highest rated games for the year.

Over the last year I've had the opportunity to play some absolutely incredible games. Not only was I able to pick up a copy of Everdell: The Complete Collection after Christmas this last year after being floored by the base game in November/December, but I was also able to borrow a friend's version of Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Collector's Edition to play at home. Then there's also the addition of The Quacks of Quedlinburg: MegaBoxto my collection, as well as the complete dark horse (for me at least) The 7th Continent that I was able to get a copy of earlier this year. Add in a smattering of Thunder Road: Vendetta, Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure, and Welcome to the Moon as well as an opportunity to play both Terraforming Mars and Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition and my game library and plays have been stacked.

With all that excellence that I have been able to play, I've really had my ratings for games shift significantly over the last few months. It's very interesting to me that something that I enjoyed more last year could change in rating based on playing another game within a year or so. While there might be something that I thoroughly enjoyed playing initially, the addition of another game might have eclipsed that game in my mind and resulted in a shifting of those ratings.

Now that I'm logging my plays, and posting regularly on this blog, I find myself taking more of a deeper look at what I've rated things. I want to push past the initial excitement of a game and look at it from an objective standpoint. Look at both the positives and negatives of the games not only from my perspective, but also from the perspective of an outsider or from the perspective of someone I'd play the game with regularly. I think I tend to rate high initially, but then as time goes on, I'll cool on a game and then adjust my rating higher or lower based on how I feel about it several months later.

I would like to say that I usually have a good impression of how a game plays on the first one or two plays of the game, but that often is how much I'm really able to play the game. There are quite a few games that I've logged where I've only been able to play one or two times and I have to base my initial assessment and rating off that play. I would even say that some of my initial thoughts about a game have been wrong (Clank! is one that comes to mind) and I'll have to readjust and re-rate the game based on new information. Unfortunately, with many of the games that I've played, that's not possible, so I have to rate based off a single game.

That is why I like to go back and re-rate games that I've played from time to time in order to adjust how I feel about them and give myself a more accurate reading of what each game felt like after the fact. Do I want to play Game X over Game Y or is it the opposite? Adjusting and re-adjusting the ratings that I have given games over the past year or so helps with figuring out what I want to play.

I've also had an opportunity to better understand the rating system here on BGG and feel like I have a much better opportunity to rate games with that rating scale in mind, with 10 wanting to play the game all the time, a 9 being that I'd suggest the game more often than not, an 8 being a game that I'd be open to if offered and I wouldn't turn down a game, a 7 being a game that I'd be interested in playing but I wouldn't pull it out all the time, and so on. I've also started playing with decimal points for the games to really give myself a 1-100 scale (or 0.1 - 10.0 scale for BGG) that I can better rank how I would feel playing one game over the other.

Time Changes Perspectives

2023 Geeklist top 5 games.

For example, if we take a look at my Top 33 At 33 Geeklist, I find that while there are a lot of games on the list, there are quite a few that I wouldn't include again or have seen changes in their overall rating. As I write this, I'm currently working on a "Top 34 at 34" Geeklist that I'll be publishing later this year (probably October to ensure that it's a year out from the previous one) and it really has me rethinking my ratings for games.

If we take a look at the top five games on the list for last year, we find the following games: Magic Maze, Dinosaur World, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Deliverance, and Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Collector's Edition. If I were to break down the initial ratings of the games, it would look something like this, along with my thoughts on the rating change:

Of those five games, Magic Maze will definitely have shifted down in rating on my end from a 10 to an 8.5, mainly because while I do really enjoy the game significantly, it does have a time component and communication limit that can be off putting for people. I personally love the frantic and hectic nature of the game and the addition of the expansion, Magic Maze: Maximum Security, adds more challenge to the game. However, this isn't my default game to bring out for new board game players since it requires a lot of multitasking and can be difficult to get quickly. Hence the reason why my rating changed from a 10 to an 8.5.

Dinosaur World is next on the list and this one is definitely more of an interesting case. I absolutely love the game and it's so much fun to play with others. However, it's a huge table hog and it takes (at minimum) an hour and a half to play. While I would love to sacrifice the time in order to do this, it's just not feasible and while the table presence is amazing, I just don't have a big enough table. It's rating has dropped from a 10 for me to an 8, mainly because of those reasons. While I'd love to get it to the table more, it's just not a reality at this point in time.

Thirdly, we have One Night Ultimate Werewolf. There's a lot of party games out there and some of them are great, possibly even better than this game, but it still stands head and shoulders over them all for how quickly it plays and for how much fun it always is. I've never had a game of ONUW that didn't end in all of us devolving into laughter after we find out who was the werewolf due to the obfuscation and chaos that comes with each night phase. It's such a fun party and social deduction game that it still stands as my favorite game to play at any party whenever I get the chance. I come from a loud family, so this fits our profile quite well. It still remains a 10/10 for me, despite playing other games, mainly because I love the chaos that it sows.

The fourth game on the list, Deliverance is a fantastic game and as a cooperative dungeon crawler, but like Dinosaur World, suffers from a problem of length. The skirmish mode (which is the mode outside the campaign) has taken me and my friend several hours per game to complete even at two players. While that's fun, it lends itself to not being pulled out as much. The Campaign is also a bit "samey" in feel, and while it's getting an update later this year via a Kickstarter campaign, it tends to feel similar after multiple sessions and while we've done about half the campaign, we are going to be waiting for the update to come out before we finish. I originally had the game at a 9, but after multiple plays, I have had to lower my score to an 8.8 for those reasons.

Finally, we have Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Collector's Edition which initially was rated a 10/10 for me, not only because the game felt amazing to play and had some significant depth and variability each time I played it, but the components of the Special Edition were absolutely fantastic. Even after 10+ plays of it this last year, I still find myself enamored with the game and love to see all the little trays be pulled out as the game is set up on the table. It's still a 10/10 experience for me and what helps even further is that Sarah loves this game too. She regularly will play it with me when on offer and I am hopefully going to get a copy for myself sometime soon.

Up, Down, All Around

A few of the games I've acquired over the last year or so.

With those examples of how my thoughts and feelings about games that have been altered over the last year, I have found that my ratings for games have shifted over time. I've found that over time, there are multiple games that have seen ratings shift and update, both up and down, as I've played more and more games of them.

It's been part of the journey that I've been making into the board game hobby that I have been on over the last few years and with a foray into this world of blogging about my experiences. I've had to be a bit more critical about games than I used to be, especially with my collection growing and shrinking far more than it has in the last decade. While the initial excitement and fervor about a game can tend to me having a higher rating, taking some time after I've played the game to reevaluate how I feel about it has been extremely helpful as well to really give me an update perspective on it.

A game that comes to mind in this is Azul. After playing the game about 10 or so times, I thought I had a solid rating of 7.5-7.6 with the game. It was a decent game, and it was beautiful as well, but there wasn't anything that had much staying power about it. It ran it's course in my mind and then I moved onto different games that I preferred to play over it. However, in the last few weeks, I've played several more games of Azul on BoardGameArena and that's made me relook at the game and my thoughts on it. I've realized that the game has significant depth to it that I didn't catch before, only playing with one person.

Playing with a smattering of other people helped me realize that my knowledge of the game was lacking because I was basing it off my experience with playing only one other person. However, when I added in the perspective of playing the game with a different group of people, I found that I enjoyed myself much more as there were new strategies that I needed to follow and it reinvigorated the game for me, bumping it up to an 8.2 in my opinion. The only thing that changed was playing the game with different people, which I had never done before.

It goes to show me that while a certain game may become stale when playing with the same person over and over again (for me at least), playing it with someone else will help to open up new possibilities and establish a new understanding of the game. Was my understanding of Azul flawed before playing with other people? Not particularly. However, being able to play with different people helped me to unlock new strategies and get a new understanding of how good the game was.

If I learned any lesson it was this: If you find yourself getting bored with a game, try to play that game with a different group of people. You might find that this unlocks a new understanding and appreciation for a game that you didn't have previously. Just like different people prefer different games, you might find that different games work with different groups. Don't be afraid to experiment and retry an old classic again as you might find that you have grown since you last played it.

Give me your thoughts:What is your perspective on rating games? Do you tend to set a score and then leave it, or do you update the score later to adjust it based on your understanding of the game? When do you normally score a game here on BGG? Is it on the initial play? After several plays? After you've had some time to ruminate on the game and it's experience? What games have you come back to after some time and found a new appreciation for them?

As always, thank you so much for checking out this blog. If you liked it, please hit the green thumb at the top of the page and feel free to leave a comment on the post. I appreciate all interactions and will respond to everything that I can. If you really liked the post and want more ramblings, feel free to subscribe and get new posts every Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

*Originally posted on BoardGameGeek on 5/7/2024*