A guide to setting board game goals
It's never too late to set your board game intentions for the year.
Around the start of every new year, I like to sit down with myself and set some goals for the upcoming year. Some people like to do it professionally. Others like to do it in their relationships, with their fitness, or with their personal health. Me? I like to do it with my board games.
If you’re looking to set some board game goals for yourself in 2025, this guide is for you. It’s not too late to start — I don’t think it matters that it’s late January, and I don’t think it would matter if it was late July. Goals are goals whenever they’re set.
Choose a goal category
There are so many types of goals out there to consider. Your first step is to, ahem, ‘set your intention,’ which is to say, you’re looking to figure out why you want to set a goal. Are you looking to play more games, perhaps? Are you interested in playing a wider variety of games, or perhaps playing the games you already own? Maybe you’re instead looking to curb a buying habit, and that’s the thing around which you’d like to set a goal. Great!
There are so many opportunities here, and you don’t have to just set one. I set a bunch. Too many, probably. (Notably, this is not a guide to achieving your goals. I think there’s joy and value in the striving.)
Once you’ve found the types of goals you’re looking to set, you’re well on your way to setting your first goal.
Set your first goal
Once you’ve set an establishing idea, dive deeper. If you’re looking to play older games in your collection, don’t just stop at that goal. Refine it. It’s so hard to achieve a goal if it’s too broad. With that example, how many games are you going to play? When will you know that you’ve played enough older games in your collection? Is it good enough to play a few, or even one? Give yourself a benchmark so you know what you can call a success.
Some good goal examples
Of course, if you’re having trouble coming up with a goal, there’s no shame in thinking through what other people are doing. I was introduced to the idea of setting goals for your board game play back when I really started diving into the hobby. Sites like Board Game Geek gave me a frame of reference for setting goals, and while you can very much set whatever goals you’d like, it never hurt me to draw inspiration.
The classic board game goal is the 10x10 — 10 games 10 times each. In this new-game-hype landscape we all exist in (for many factors, not least of which is social media), it can be far too easy to play a game a few times or even once and move on. I’ve done that plenty myself. Setting a 10x10 goal can be a good way to really engage with the games you own. You don’t have to set out the games in advance — unless you want to! — and you might even find value in playing through games in the first half of the year before evaluating your progress.
You might consider setting a goal to play through some subset of the games you own but haven’t played. I’m not a huge fan of the phrase ‘shelf of shame’ in my own life, but I think it’s OK to recognize that not every game is for every time of your life. Maybe it means you just try to play a few heavy games through the year, getting those Vital Lacerda games opened up. Maybe it’s more about playing through your backlog of Japanese trick-taking games. (Who, me?) Find opportunities to play and teach games — your collection will thank you. And if you play a game from your backlog that just wasn’t that good? It’s OK to get rid of it. (A reminder to myself, too.)
Perhaps you’re actually interested more in expanding the breadth of games you play — maybe you’re already playing a small set of games many times. Perhaps you can set a goal to play 50 different games through the year, or even to play 50 new-to-you games. You can find opportunities to engage in the hobby in the ways you’d like. There is no single approach worth exploring.
You might also want to look at your H-index, which is a measure of the games you’ve played the most. Your H-index score is simply the number of games (X) you’ve played at least X times — so, if you’ve played 10 different games 10 times, your H-index would be 10. If you’ve played 9 games 12 times, it’s 9. You get it? Alright. This is a challenge I always have going, because I think it’s genuinely really interesting to see the games I’m playing the most frequently.
Here a few more one-liner ideas. Some of these were directly inspired by templates in the BG Stats app, which I can’t recommend more highly for tracking your game plays.
The alphabet challenge, wherein you try to play a game from every letter of the alphabet
Games from a specific year — maybe you want to revisit 20 years hence and live in 2005 for a little bit
Games from a specific designer — is this the year of Reiner Knizia?
Games of a specific genre or mechanic — can you play 100 unique trick-taking games this year?
Get good at teaching games
If there’s one thing that you’ll find most important in your board game goals, it’s being able to teach folks the games you want to play. It’s not easy to be a good board game teacher, and there have been countless pontifications about the subject online. I’ve written about it, too. If you can be good at teaching games, you’ll find it’s significantly easier to get games to the table.
Finally: Have fun!
That’s the most important thing here. Setting goals and working toward them is not simply an exercise in bragging. Nobody will truly love that you’re boasting about your H-index. (Now, some will genuinely find it interesting to discuss — but that’s a different story.) You’re not setting goals to impress — or at least you shouldn’t be. You should be setting goals to further your enjoyment of board games. Now, maybe it doesn’t work that way for you. That’s OK! You don’t have to track your plays. You don’t have to set distinct goals. Your mileage may vary. If setting goals brings you anything but positive feelings, it’s OK to back out.
Personally, I find it really engaging, and it brings me a lot of opportunities to reflect on my playing. I love looking back and seeing who I played a game with for the first time a decade ago. It brings back memories associated with the occasion, with those friends.
Thanks for joining me for this slightly different spin on Don’t Eat the Meeples this week. I hope 2025 is finding you well, and I hope you’re getting those games off the shelf. Don’t just wait for a good opportunity to arise — create those opportunities.
Next week: Great games from 2024.