What Games Are People Playing?

Mark Jackson took some time to summarize what are called "5 and 10" or "five and dime" reports culled from spielfrieks early this year. This was a bit late in coming, but better late than never. The results were taken from 64 different gamers, with 5 points awarded if the gameshowed up on their five list (played 5-9 times) and 10 points if the game showed upon their dime list (played 10+ times). Here is a list of the top 10:

Game	Points	%	01 Rank	00 Rank	99 Rank
Puerto Rico	395	74%	new	n/a	n/a
Carcassonne	355	60%	1st	24th	new
Settlers of Catan	215	43%	5th	1st	3rd
Crokinole	210	37%	5th	136th	62nd
Liar's Dice / Bluff / Perudo	200	37%	2nd	7th	8th
Transamerica	190	42%	new	n/a	n/a
Lost Cities	150	32%	3rd	2nd	1st
Can't Stop	125	28%	11th	7th	11th
Take 6	125	26%	33rd	15th	40th
Bohnanza	110	22%	9th	20th	16th

The games on the list clearly fall into a few distinct categories: light filler games that people tend to play frequently (Liar's Dice, Can't Stop, Transamerica, Lost Cities, Take 6) and deeper strategic games that are hugely popular (Puerto Rico, Settlers). The game in a category by itself, dexterity games, is Crokinole. You can put Carcassonne in either the light filler category or deeper game depending on your preference :-).

I've played all of these games except for Lost Cities and Take 6. Actually I've played Lost Cities online against an AI, but never in real life.

Judging from the session reports I've been reading so far this year, it looks like Puerto Rico will again be at the top of the list for 2003. A few predictions for new games that we might see in the top 10 for 2003:

• Age of Steam - the only thing that could keep this off the list is its length, which can lower the number of plays.
• Pirate's Cove / Piratenbucht - the Days of Wonder release of the English version of this great game might push it into the top 10.
• Amun Re - a long shot.

Likely it will be tough to displace some of the tried-and-true fillers (like Can't Stop and Liar's Dice) and classics.