Monday, March 20, 2006

Nickel and Dime Revisited

Man, you guys have been ripped off! For the second time this week I have been entering a great geeklist only to slip with the fingers and have Firefox chuck the whole damn thing in the bit bucket. Speaking of "bit bucket", that rhymes with what I said on both occasions. Having lost the enthusiasm to fill in all those teensy weensy fields, and opting for a medium which I can back up more easily, I'll post the idea here instead.

So I'm still messing with mkgray's BGG XML API. I had already been doing that sort of thing, but parsing XML is heaps easier than screen-scraping HTML which can be changed at Aldie's whim (and he is within his rights to do so). The latest question I have answered is: "in 2005, for which designer did you record the most plays?" You get one guess as to who came out first. But the other places were interesting.

1. Reiner Knizia - 89 plays - who else, really? 15 different games, including Lost Cities, Lord of the Rings - the Confrontation, Fish Eat Fish, Ingenious. Nobody else had a chance. It's almost fashionable to bag Reiner, but he produces so many games, and many of them are GREAT. This year, Rheinlander will score well for him (I hope).

2. Richard Borg - 29 plays - designer of Liar's Dice, Wyatt Earp, Memoir '44. All three are great games. I have bought Liar's Dice and 3 expansions to Memoir '44 this year, so he will stay on the list.

3. Bruno Faidutti - 23 plays - designer of Castle, Key Largo, Mystery of the Abbey and Citadels. I think M. Faidutti is often overlooked for the Germans like Kramer and Teuber, but I think he is one of the best. Not only does he produce great games, he has a great web site, and appears to be a nice guy. I have read the rules for Key Largo and Diamant in the original French, and either I don't understand them or he's pretty funny too.

4. Mike Fitzgerald - 19 plays - 3 types of Mystery Rummy and Wyatt Earp. My wife likes his sort of games, and I am glad he's made such good ones for me to play with her.

5. Emiliano Sciarra - 17 plays - Bang! Sorry, I'm over this game.

6. Kris Burm - 17 plays - TAMSK, YINSH, DVONN. I did not expect to see Kris Burm all the way up here, but he's only going to become more popular.

7. Serge Laget - 16 plays - Castle, Shadows Over Camelot, Mystery of the Abbey.

8. Jacques Zeimet - 16 plays - Schicki Micki, Hamsterrolle.

9. Kevin G. Nunn - 15 plays - Nobody But Us Chickens

10. Michael Schacht - 15 plays - Coloretto, Hansa. After playing Web of Power this year, I am hoping to play many more.

OK, tired now. The next designers were Jim Winslow, Klaus Teuber, Dan Smith, Uwe Rosenberg, Wolfgang Kramer and Kory Heath.

If you'd like the stats run for you, just let me know your BGG user name and I can do it.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That's a great idea. I'm going to pop that query into my custom game tracking system. Smart money says Knizia at #1. :)