I read today that the average board game gets played less than one half a time. Now, how’s that possible? Well, it’s maths, but that’s not the point of this post (the 0.5 comes from the sheer amount of unplayed games people have. Reasons behind that are for another time, but trust me, I’ll get to that)

So how many times do you need to play a game? Well, that’s up to you, as I am neither your mother or your keeper. However, I’d suggest that it is more than 0.5 and really should be more than 0. A board game is mostly a consumable item, designed to be consumed…erm, played. Very few board games are collector’s items. However, if you want to collect games and it is doing no harm to you or those you love, then well you do you.

Both me and my wife like to get at least three plays of any game under our belt before deciding if we like it. There has been the odd rare exception to this (Akrotki, for example, we hated that after one play) but in general, this has worked well for us. We have fallen into a process that is well defined and tailored to our situation of being a board gaming couple.

Here’s how it goes:

Game 1. All information open, with me teaching, and asking questions.

Game 2. Open information removed, but otherwise the same as the first play.

Game 3. Playing as normal, but still with opportunities for rules and strategy questions.

So by game four, we take our gloves off. Now, this isn’t required for simple games and can get extended for the heavy games. Pipeline took five plays before the gloves came off.

So we have a system that works for the two of us. Would this work for game group? Nope, got to do the whole preloading of the instructions and all the headaches that brings to the process.

Even games that have left our collection have a handful of plays under the belt. Omissions and exceptions excluded. Not a single game that remains in our board game collection has less than five plays. So we’re way beyond the 0.5 average times.

I asked at the top of this post “How many times do you need to play a game?” and honestly this is no correct answer. So many times the Wiccan rede rings true:

“An it harm none do what ye will!”