Round of Applause to MattW

[Shad]

The 2013 Annual Awards will go up this weekend. Haven't forgotten about that, just been too busy.

I'm almost done tabulating results now, and this year we've got one that will absolutely stun you. I actually went back and triple-checked the data to make sure it wasn't an error in my statistics queries.

You might want to sit down for this...

From 2012-06-06 to 2013-06-05, MattW played every single PG game in existence at least once.

That is so stupefying that it deserved it's own thread.

Code:

PLAYS GAME
14    Panzer Grenadier
11    Panzer Lehr
10    Indian Unity
9    Fall of France
9    Kursk - South Flank
8    Airborne
8    Road to Berlin
8    Iron Wolves
7    Eastern Front
7    C&CV1: War in the East
6    War on the Equator
6    West Wall
5    Go for Broke
5    Airborne - IE
5    Kokoda Trail
5    Arctic Front
5    Hopeless, But Not Serious
4    Afrika Korps
4    Airborne - Remastered
4    Saipan 1944
3    Jungle Fighting
3    Battle of the Bulge
3    White Eagles
3    Carpathian Brigade
3    Polish Steel
3    Workers and Peasants
2    Elsenborn Ridge
2    Desert Rats
2    Winter Soldiers
2    Fronte Russo
2    Sinister Forces
2    Edelweiss
2    Waltzing Matilda
2    Army Group South Ukraine
2    Roer River Battles
2    Iron Curtain
2    Nihon Silk
2    Red Warriors
2    First Axis
2    Edelweiss: Expanded
1    Tank Battles
1    Guadalcanal
1    Beyond Normandy
1    Cassino '44
1    Blue Division
1    Black SS
1    Heroes of the Soviet Union
1    Grossdeutschland 1946
1    Siegfried Line
1    Power of the East
1    March on Leningrad
1    Little Saturn
1    Arctic Front Deluxe
1    Lions of Finland
1    Patton's Nightmare
1    Secret Weapons
1    North of Elsenborn
1    North Wind
1    Aachen 1944
1    South Africa's War
1    Panzer Lion
1    Siege of Leningrad
1    C&CV2: The King's Officers
1    DAK '44
1    Romanian Soil
1    Hammer & Sickle
1    Edelweiss IV
1    Alaska's War
1    Divisione Corazzata
1    War of the Worlds

Bravo, my friend, bra-vo!

[armyduck95]

Very cool - jealous

[Michael Murphy]

Impressive.

[Matt W]

Thanks all. It was a blast.

I mentioned during the year that we had purchased a puppy who for several months needed a human minder. Not a bad dog just one who needed to be house trained extensively. Since my daughter provided the oversight all day, she requested my help at night from 7 to until 11 or so. The puppy slept most of that time, but when she got up it was usually time to go out so someone needed to be there to get the right mindset for the dog. I said that I would and started picking out scenarios that could be played reasonably in one sitting of 3-4 hours or less.

As time wore on the dog needed less oversight and I noticed that I had played scenarios from a very wide list of products and supplements. Also, somewhere along this trip I finally came into possession of Lions which was perfectly unattainable up to that point. That gave me possession of all of the printed PG products. It was a simple matter to take some time and see which ones needed to be played to flesh out the whole list. My scenario playing slowed down from 20-25 per month to a more reasonable (according to my wife) 8 or so a month, but I was able to pick and choose from a targeted group of products and actually managed to finish at the beginning of June, just before the cutoff for the PG-HQ "year".

What was especially fun was going back through several of the products where I had already played all the scenarios and enjoying some of them again. It is easy to think that PG has limited replay value but I can attest to the fun of playing again. In addition, I am finding that replaying a scenario that I have played solo, with an opponent provides a whole new window on it. Shad has mentioned it before but the scenarios and the game as a whole takes on a very different caste in face to face. The neat thing about the system is that it actually works well in both solitaire and face to face play. That is not something that can be said for all game systems. By the way, hidden units provide a wonderful experience in face to face play and alter most scenarios tremendously. I feel that I do a good job of pretending I don't know where the hidden units are when I play solo but playing these with an opponent points out that there are a whole batch of approaches to this idea that I simply haven't considered.

I will say that I was incredibly lucky to get this done now. With multiple new products coming out every year the list gets longer and longer. I just hope that I can keep increasing my percentage of scenarios played from year to year. Just think of it, if you have 20% of the existing scenarios played and 200 new scenarios come out in a year, you will need to play 40 just to keep from falling back!

I have two current goals for this year. On the solitaire side I'm looking at completing some products (South Flank for starters, love the laser cut counters). On the face to face side, Hugmenot and I are looking at completing the Brave But Futile campaign in Panzer Lehr (see Let's Play PG! for a running commentary).

[vince hughes]

I have two current goals for this year.

Any chance you could make it three goals and give me a game or two fella. Believe me, Huggy was saying he was a bit worn out

[Matt W]

Vince,

Absolutely, waiting for the fall when my wife heads back to work and the "to do" list of house chores slows somewhat.

[campsawyer]

Vince,

Absolutely, waiting for the fall when my wife heads back to work and the "to do" list of house chores slows somewhat.

Chores slows down, what the heck is that.

[JayTownsend]

Nice job Matt. I have played at least one scenario from every PG game/supplement that I own but I don't own everything, at least not the repeat games or leadership games and one or two downloads.

[waynebaumber]

Well done Matt and I totally agree that some scenario's really cry out to be replayed if only to get the full flavour of the situation.

[armyduck95]

There is always benefit to replay in most scenarios and there is no replacement for a face to face opponent. Whatever can be done ti increase the fog of war is always better.