You've been doing weekly board game nights for a month. Someone asks "who's actually winning?" and nobody's sure. The scores are scattered across your phone, group chat, and someone's notebook.
Here's what actually works for tracking board games over time.
Board game nights happen repeatedly with:
Simple win counts favor whoever shows up most. Win percentages mislead when someone plays twice and gets lucky.
Write results in a notebook.
Good for: Short term (under 5 sessions), very casual groups
Breaks down: Hard to calculate standings, can't easily share
Shared Google Sheet or Excel file.
Good for: If someone genuinely enjoys spreadsheets
Reality: Usually the worst option. Takes time to update, mobile editing sucks, needs constant maintenance. One person becomes "the spreadsheet person" and resents it by week 3.
Something designed for score tracking.
Good for: Long-term tracking (10+ sessions), automatic calculations, no maintenance
Breaks down: Everyone needs to use it, might cost money
Most groups start with paper or group chat. Works for 3-4 weeks, then gets messy. At that point you either:
Skip the friction and start with something that scales if you plan to do this long-term.
Log immediately after each game, not later.
Keep it fast - under 1 minute per game.
Give it to someone who cares about standings.
One leaderboard: Simpler, shows who's best overall. Works for most groups.
Separate: Better if you play the same game repeatedly.
Unless you're playing Catan every single week, combine everything.
Paper → short term, very casual
Spreadsheet → probably skip this unless you love spreadsheets
App → anything long-term
Shmelo is built specifically for this:
But use whatever you'll actually stick with. Imperfect tracking beats no tracking.
Want to try Elo rankings for your group? Shmelo handles all the calculations automatically - just track who wins and the leaderboard stays fair.
Create a leaderboard →