Things are keeping up pretty well in the 10 X 10 Challenge. Playing a lot of the games on the list, giving me the chance to fully dig into them and discover what really makes them tick, It’s interesting how some of my strategies evolve the more I play some of these games, while with others, I’ve yet to fully crack how to play them well.

Discovering new ways to play old games is at the heart of the challenge, and I’m really enjoying myself. Of course, having to explain the rules less helps as well but I’ve also noticed that the times I do need to explain the rules, it goes much faster as I know not only the rules, but those that are important.

I ended up skipping the May update as it was a little crazier than I imagined. At very least I was able to keep up with posting reviews, which is maybe a little more important than these updates, no? So, how did I do in the last two months? Let’s find out.

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March is over and so is the first quarter of the year, and this means that in order to keep up with the 10X10 in 2014 challenge, I need to have played at least 25 games so far. The good news? I’ve pretty much kept up.

The same games are getting played, which is good since it means that players in my groups know the games already and I don’t have to explain them as much as usual. The bad part is some games remain unplayed so far.

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Another month and the challenge keeps going well, with 7 games played, for a total of 17. It’s a little under what I would have liked since I figure I need to play on average a little over 8 games a month to be able to finish the challenge on time, and I would love to play 10 a month to insure that I do complete the challenge, but even with only 7, I’m still on pace.

This month also marks my first game dropped/changed. I’m thinking that there might be a second game that I might drop from my list, but for now, one game has been switched for another. Let’s check out what I played and what is being replaced.

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Last December, I decided to embark on a great challenge: could I, proud member of the Cult of the New, play the same 10 games 10 times each in the space of a year? I had, in the last few years, fallen with with a bad crowd. With so many new games coming out all the time, with so many of them looking good or at very least interesting, I had taken the unfortunate habit of playing games only once or twice, and this even if they were great games. No more, I said. I’ll pick the 10 games that I thought would offer me the most, and attempt to play all of them at least 10 times in order to fully appreciate them.

So, after making my list, I set off in January to play those games. It’s been a month already and I’m proud to say that I’ve started on the right foot. I’ve played a total of 10 games last month. Yup, one month in and already 10% done.

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A few weeks ago, I saw on twitter someone (Sarah Reed) mentioning something that she called the “Play 10 Games 10 Times” challenge. I saw it and, while it seemed like something that might be interesting, I dismissed it as something I wouldn’t be able to do. I am, as some say, a proud member of the Cult of the New. What’s that? Well, it’s a sub-group of boardgamers who really really enjoy trying new games. I love playing new games, reading about new games and getting new games. The problem with this is while it was fine a few years ago since there wasn’t a lot of new games coming out, right now there are so many game coming out all the time that it doesn’t leave me with much time to revisit games that I liked the first time I played, never mind those which I wasn’t all that sure about. So the idea stayed in the back of my mind (although I forgot who mentioned it until recently) and a few days ago I mentioned it on twitter as a personal challenge. I’ve played a few games recently that I really want to explore more (Hegemonic and Euphoria and yes, their review is coming) and I figured that there must be at least 10 games in my collection that I would/could/should play at least 10 times in the upcoming year. A few people who follow me decided to jump in as well and as a result, something I was just sort of considering has become a real challenge. Yup, I’m in. I’m going to try 10 different games 10 times in the next year. While this will be fun, it’ll be a challenge to play the same games while all the new and shiny come out. There are a few other people in on this, like Rhiannon Ochs, who’s tracking her progress on her blog and all the other happy folks doing so on the ‘Geek. Can we make it? Well, we’ll find out in a year! You can also follow the madness on Twitter by following the #10X10in2014 hashtag.

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