Month metric update

A while ago, I posted the idea of a month metric for gauging quality/longevity and overall "goodness" of a game. Essentially, count the number of unique months in which a game is played. That is it's score. Read the old entry for some more discussion of it.

I figured I'd post an update of games with a high month metric. I've
only been keeping accurate numbers since 1999, so the theoretical
maximum score is in the sixties.

Electronic Catchphrase is the only with a score above 30 at 32, and I expect it
will continue to go up though more slowly than it did in recent years.
Five games get scores above 20: Crokinole (25), Can't Stop (23), 6
nimmt! (23), Call my Bluff (23) and Battle Line (21).

Another five games score 15 or above: Zirkus Flohcati (16), Speed
(16), Lost Cities (15), TransAmerica (15), and RoboRally (15). This
list rapidly betrays my taste for fairly short but not overly light
games. RoboRally is the only one on the list (with the occasional
exception of Crokinole) that goes over 45 minutes.

Sixteen games have a score of 10 or above and there starts to be a
number of "big" games here: Ra (14), For Sale (14), Apples to Apples
(13), Knockabout (13), Carcassonne (13), Hick Hack in Gacklewack (12),
Princes of Florence (12), Puerto Rico (12), Ricochet Robot (11),
SpinBall (11), Traumfabrik (11), Settlers of Catan (11), Medici (10),
Igel Argern (10), Lord of the Rings (10), and Schnaeppchen Jagd (10).
The auction games (Ra, Medici, Traumfabrik) and LOTR would all be
higher if they were more favored in the groups I frequent.

In the end, I'm pretty happy with the month metric. All 27 games on
the list are "great"s. Some recent games seem likely to make the list
within another year or two (Ticket to Ride, Oasis, Heroscape, San
Juan, Adam & Eva) but it's too early to be sure and the month metric
has that conservativism nicely built in. The only games that seem
like their "missing" from the list are Vinci (current score: 8) and
Euphrat & Tigris (current score: 8) and they'll get there, though it
will take more than two months.