Happy Birthday, Board Game Stats!

It recently came to my attention that one of my go-to apps for my phone, not to mention my whole boardgaming experience, turned 10 this year!

Yes, the wonderful Board Game Stats app created and Eerko and Suzan, just celebrated its 10th anniversary a couple of weeks ago, and I just have to stop and give thanks to them as well as wishing them a happy anniversary.

I began using the app in 2016 or 2015, I believe, so for most of its existence!

I’m not sure exactly when I started. I’m just going by the fact that I have quite a few less games played in 2015, which means to me that this year is a year of mostly me backfilling my plays by importing from Boardgame Geek (which I didn’t record religiously at that time).

I’m not sure what made me start recording the games that I play, but I do remember starting it on BGG and then somebody posting in the forums there about this great app for recording your stats.

They give you so much information, and it’s very customizable.

If you just want to record your plays, you can!

But you can also record your opponents, the locations you played, even the scores.

You can even get a detailed history of every game you’ve played and how people have been doing with it.

Oh, the lowest winning score in that game was from James with 70 points?

That’s pretty cool.

“I don’t think I’ve ever played Raiders of the North Sea.”

“Yes you have. You played it with me back on December 20, 2019!”

I love doing that.

BG Stats is completely free, though there are some great additions to the app that will cost you a little bit.

It’s all well worth it, though.

If you like doing Challenges (like a “10 x 10” or 10 games played 10 times challenge), the app supports that!

That’s the only part I don’t use, so I didn’t buy that one.

But I paid for the Deep Stats because the stats are so detailed!

That’s where I get these great pics every month of the games I played.

It also lets you look by month, by year, or even all-time (I have played 579 unique games, though I know I played a few more before I started recording), and I know that thanks to the Deep Stats.

You can also do a custom Insights report with specific periods if you want something different than just “2023” or July, 2024.

Recently they’ve added a bunch of stuff, which also makes me feel justified in doing a new post.

Tagging makes the app even more of a collection manager and not just a play-recorder.

You can tag games however you want, as you can create new ones.

Maybe you want to see which of your games are 2-player games?

Or Deck-builders?

Or maybe you want to tag all the games that Bob really likes to play?

How about “games that I want to bring to parties for non-gamers?”

You can tag that, and then just call up the list before you head out.

Even better (I haven’t really used tags much, but I have some and I really should sit down and do more with them) is the addition of scoresheets!

Scoresheets are so important in many games that don’t have an on-board tracker.

Suzan and Eerko (I think Suzan did a lot of, if not all the work, on this part? But I could be wrong) programmed in specific scoresheets for a huge number of games.

I don’t even want to underestimate the number, so I’ll just say “tons.”

We just got done playing a game of Let’s Go to Japan yesterday (look for my July report next week) and there’s a scoresheet in BG Stats!

It breaks the score down for each travel day, then your stress/happiness scoring, your experience track scoring, trains, and everything.

Sure, a scoresheet comes in the box, but if you don’t have a pen, you’re hooped!

Even if there isn’t a specific scoresheet entered for a game, you can still access a generic scoresheet that you can then put in whatever information you want.

So you’re never lost if you don’t have a writing utensil.

There are just so many great things about BG Stats, I can’t even name them all (some of which I haven’t used, but I know other people do and love it).

One I also use, both as a backup and because I want to be able to see my stats on my iPad too, is the Cloud Sync.

Cloud sync is exactly what it says. It syncs between devices and keeps all of them up to date.

This is the only feature that requires an annual subscription, but it’s still dirt cheap and totally worth the money.

The best thing about the app, though, is that Eerko and Suzan continue to take suggestions and update the app to make it even better.

So happy 10th anniversary to both of you and to BG Stats.

Thank you so much for the work you have done, and here’s a toast to the 20th anniversary and beyond!