Last week I completed my 10×10 Challenge for the year, with six months to spare. Over at boardgamegeek.com, people have been doing these challenges for years, but this was the first time I’ve tried it.

I chose to do the Normal Challenge where you pick 10 games that you’ll play 10 times each during 2016. You can swap out games if necessary to accomplish your goal, which I did several times. In the Hardcore Challenge, you’re bound to your original list and can’t change games.

After my wife bought me Dead of Winter for Christmas, I solo-played it a bunch of times at the beginning of the year, then took on the 10×10 Normal Challenge. According to the original post:

As a counterpoint to the Cult of the New, this challenge encourages people to play each game several times to explore and experience them in depth. There is no rush to find the optimum strategy on your first play, or read all of the cards beforehand. Instead, each play reveals something more and something different, you get to try various strategies, and everyone’s strategies evolve with their understanding and learning of the game. If you are tired of constantly learning new rules when running after the latest hotness, never really learning various strategies to any game, and needing to relearn the rules of old games because it’s been too long since they were played, this is the challenge for you.

At my weekly gaming groups there is always something new (or new-to-me) to play. I love trying out all of the different games and figuring out which ones would go over well with my wife and family. However, not many games get played multiple times except for fillers like No Thanks! or For Sale.

So, my list was completed thanks to all of the gaming I did with my wife and family. I’ll never tire of our game nights, especially the good-natured trash-talk that my wife and I dole out to each other. Nothing like gloating over our imaginary championship belt for whatever game we’ve most recently won.

After completing my goal I learned that I’d played 106 different games so far this year. I’m happy to say that I’ve played heavy fare like Mage Knight along with fillers like Zany Penguins. Besides the bonding time with my family, the best part about my board gaming experience this year has been making new friends at the tabletop. This alone has made the challenge worthwhile.

And I’ve got six more months to go.