With the end of June came the end to the 2nd quarter of the year and also the second quarter of the shelf of shame/opportunity contest I've been subjecting myself to. As a quick recap, my goal through this is to play/get rid of 25% of my unplayed games. I started the contest on April 1st with 42 unplayed games. For those who are adverse to math, that meant I needed to play 11 of them by the end of June.  I managed to play 7 of them by the end of April which was great progress...

Except I may or may not have added a whopping 24 games to my collection in May. Now some people in the contest strive to stick to their original goal which would have meant I needed to play 35 games by the end of June. Fortunately for myself, I am not some people lol. The contest is really what you want it to be and not anything serious. The real goal is to just encourage people to play the games they have and haven't gotten around to playing. Or at least that's what I told myself. Anyways in May I played a total of 11 more games for a grand total of 18 out of my "new" shelf of shame/opportunity of 66. For anyone keeping score..25% of 66 is 17 so I reached my goal! Oh wait there's another month left?

As far as June was concerned, I of course added games. Honestly whoever thought I wouldn't was lying to themselves. I added 12 games in total (excluding crowdfunding pledges backed as I can't yet play what I don't have). Or play what I do have...

Games added in June:

#The Castles of Tuscany - Picked this up from Barnes and Noble for cheap after watching some rules videos. Money well spent as far as I'm concerned.

#The King's Dilemma - I actually made a trade for this! More about that in @R0land1199's State of Your Collection post once he writes it. No pressure!

#Alhambra - Early in the month, I discovered Goodwill auctions. I don't know why I bid on this but here I am.

#Space Alert - Same as above. Actually got #A Game of Thrones: The Card Game along with it but have since traded that away. As far as Space Alert goes, So Very Wrong About Games loves it so I'm sure it's gotta be good.

#Q.E. - I knew I was going to buy this eventually having recently backed the expansion for it.

#Kombo Klash - Picked this up in the Asmodee sale I couldn't resist.

#Cupcake Empire - Ditto.

#The Magnificent - As above.

#Caylus - We had a quick weekend getaway in New Hampshire and as usual we found some game stores/cafes. I saw this in one of the stores and had to have it.

#ヒーフー!! (Hii Fuu!!) - Random Japanese trick taker I bought from someone on BGG.

#Three Kingdoms Redux - This has been on my wishlist since Hidden Gems mentioned BGG buying the remaining stock from the publisher. It showed up on their store in June so here I am.

#Keyflower - Was this necessary? Of course not, but again on my wishlist and I found it for relatively cheap.

Okay so clearly I just got 12 games and played 0 of them so far so my "shelf of shame/opportunity" was up to 78 games at some point. I ended up getting rid of 4 of them via trading/selling, so I'm "down" to 74. Therefore goal was now up to 19 games that needed to have been played by the end of June. Still 1 new game away from goat, let's look at what I managed to play:

#Glass Road - PLAYED 6/4/22 - Ended up resorting to playing a few games solo just to get them played. I don't think I'd want to play this again solo, so I'll need to rope Sarah into a game some day.

#Rajas of the Ganges - PLAYED 6/13/22 - We really liked our play of this. Next time we'll play with the "advanced" rules.

#Jaws - PLAYED 6/14/22 - Unsurprisingly, we were so so on this game. The first half was great. Second half, not so much. We plan to play it at least 2 more times but will ultimately part with it.

#Haggis - PLAYED 6/18/22 - Played with a friend and really really had a great time. I need to play this much much more.

#Tigris & Euphrates - PLAYED 6/23/22 - Thanks to @theDL and @docker37, I played this on BGA a couple times now. Really liking it despite having 0 idea on what to do as far as strategy. Not totally sure yet if it will stay in the collection going forward.

#Take It Easy! - PLAYED 6/23/22 - Another solo play and another one I want to play with more people. Pretty fun, ridiculously quick.

#Troyes - PLAYED 6/28/22 - Also digital on BGA with the aforementioned duo. This one I really struggled with. Not because I didn't understand how to play, but I didn't understand why I was doing anything. Definitely up for trade/sale.

That's it, folks! 7 more games played in June gives me a grand total of 25 games played throughout the 2nd quarter of the year. That's more than my 19 games needed to play 25% so I did it! Doesn't exactly feel like a win since I still have more unplayed games (51) than I originally started with (42). I guess that's why other people in the contest force themselves to play an extra game for every game they add throughout the quarter, but that feels like work lol. In mid July a few of us "losers" from the "don't buy board games" contest I was also in (and clearly lost by a lot haha) are starting that up again so maybe I'll stop buying games again here soon.