Board Game Arena

Fairly new to BGA (though not to board gaming); just curious what sorts of goals or objectives y'all pursue over the course of an arena season? Do you focus on one/a few games, spread yourself out to a whole bunch of games, etc? I've started up a bunch of asynchronous games to try to get up to the 100 ELO necessary to participate in the various arena ladders, but once I get there I'm trying to decide whether to just pick my favorite games or go hog wild with every game under the sun. I know there's obviously no 'right' answer but I'm just curious how you all find your fun in the arena.

qwerty31 wrote: ↑08 January 2025, 23:40 Fairly new to BGA (though not to board gaming); just curious what sorts of goals or objectives y'all pursue over the course of an arena season? Do you focus on one/a few games, spread yourself out to a whole bunch of games, etc? I've started up a bunch of asynchronous games to try to get up to the 100 ELO necessary to participate in the various arena ladders, but once I get there I'm trying to decide whether to just pick my favorite games or go hog wild with every game under the sun. I know there's obviously no 'right' answer but I'm just curious how you all find your fun in the arena.

To the extent that I participate in an arena, it is only for short games. Preferably ones I can play real-time in under 20 minutes. Working your way up to Elite can be a grind for some games, so I want each individual game to be short, and I prefer playing real-time. Even if I were any good at Ark Nova, I don't have time to play it real-time regularly for Arena, and I don't want to be running 20+ turn-based games at a time. I think the only game that I've regularly played turn-based in Arena is Insert/Donuts.

But mostly the gurus for a game keep me out of Arena by voting for a format I don't want to play, even if I like the game in general. So I'm rarely actively trying to ladder up in more than a few Arenas.

So I am not new to BGA. I somewhat recently starting playing arena games. I played one game almost exclusively.
My goal is to come in 100 th place for that game.

I’ve played Arena every season since season 1 back in 2020

I like playing shorter games

I usually try to get to the Elite league in 6-10 games each season, and then whichever ones are going well I tend to play a bit more to see if I can get a Top 5/10/20 trophy (of which I have about 35 over the years)

the reason I play multiple games is that I like to vary what I play, so I usually play 2-3 different games each month throughout the season

I always play 7 wonders but the other games can vary

I tend to mostly play a set of 5-6 games in arena as they are the games I enjoy playing. I also mostly play turn based games, so it's not uncommon for me to have 100+ games going on at once.

Personally I almost never participate at all. I have played before, but I find the forced format largely eliminates any interest for anything but 2 player pure abstract games. Its essentially a very large tournament and the only really meaningful objective is to place as well as you can. If you are new to BGA I would definitely not recommend it as the place to start.

I do participate and have since joining BGA 18 months ago but usually for a narrowish range of games that are quick to play live. My interest in Arena is waning. I choose not to spend a lot of time on chunkier/longer games (30-60 minutes each) in Arena where I might have to play 20-30 individual games to hit the top ranking. That doesn’t seem fun. But I don’t mind 20-30 of something like Can’t Stop or Captain Flip or Azul. Finally, I tend to forget that there ARE other formats! Arena for a fave of mine Can’t Stop always seems to be set for two player (same for Azul) causing me to forget that those games are also fun and differently challenging at three or four player.