So what have we learned?

We started out in November of 2013 with a list of 120 games. over the course of the year we picked up 21 new games, got rid of 20 old games, and quietly removed four games from the list without playing or reviewing them (they were clearly marked for death). This leaves us with a final tally of 137 games reviewed, 117 of which made the cut (for now).

Our favorite games

We rated 19 games a perfect score of 5:

• Age of Conan
• Arkham Horror
• Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game
• Call of Cthulhu: the Card Game
• Firefly: the Game
• Fortune and Glory
• Legendary Encounters: an Alien Deck Building Game
• Lord of the Rings: the Card Game
• Mansions of Madness
• Pirates of the Spanish Main (aka Pirates of the Cursed Seas)
• Race for the Galaxy
• Runebound
• Shadowfist
• Smash-Up
• Star Trek Customizable Card Game
• Star Wars Miniatures
• Star Wars: X-Wing
• Talisman
• A Touch of Evil

Eight are adventure board games and six are collectible card games (or the CCG's descendants, living card games and deck building games). While in theory Race for the Galaxy is a stand-alone card game, its game play is similar to many collectible card games despite the lack of a deck-building element.

Three are tactical miniatures games, although you could argue that Pirates of the Spanish Main has many elements of collectible card games as well. There was only one strategy game, Age of Conan, but it has an element of the adventure game to it. Our favorites seem to fall largely into either the adventure board game or collectible card game categories. Some of the games that scored a four take us outside of that comfort zone a bit, with Castellan, Ingenious, Serpent Stones, and Tokaido being good examples.

Eleven of the top games are based on pre-existing properties such as Conan, Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars. Three of those are based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, as popularized by the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.

Eight were published by Fantasy Flight Games (nine if you count the current version of Talisman, although our copy is the second edition published by Games Workshop), and only three (Pirates, Star Trek CCG, and Star Wars Miniatures) are currently out of print.

The only games in the top 19 that we're not playing regularly are Pirates of the Spanish Main and Shadowfist, both of which really need an active player base that we don't have right now. We enjoyed both of these games best when we were part of a group of regular players.

They seemed like a good idea at the time

28 games on the list scored a two, and another 6 scored a one. Out of those, 19 have been removed from the collection, and it's probably only a matter of time before most of the rest go.

It is my belief that many of the low-scoring games suffer from comparison as much as anything else, and were probably perfectly entertaining when we didn't know any better. Many, like Wings of War or Star Fleet Battle Force, have simply been replaced by similar, better games.

So what's next?

Since finishing up the list with Zombies!!! in late November 2014, we've added seven new games to our collection, which we will review soon. We'll continue to review new games we pick up, as we get a chance to play them.

Additionally, we're going to play through all the games that scored a three, as well as possibly some of the twos that we haven't let go of yet. This time through we're going to rate them with a simple pass/fail, with an eye towards getting our collection down to just the games we really enjoy playing.