Board Game Stats has the ability to import your plays from BoardGameGeek. Here you can read how exactly things are processed.

If something about the imported plays isn’t to your liking, you can delete the imported plays using the option on the Import screens. This way you can try again with other settings. Please note that Locations, Players and Games added during import are not deleted with this option.

Before importing it might be good to check your existing Games, Locations and Players, so they match the details on BGG. Read below to see how these items are matched during import.

Plays are imported from a specific user, for a selected period, or from all time if selected. All plays will be imported that are linked to this user, from BoardGameGeek, RPGGeek and VideoGameGeek. You can import plays from any user you like. As much of the entered data of the play as possible will be imported. Plays already known to Board Game Stats (posted to BGG from the app or previously imported) are not imported.

There are two specific options:

  • Don’t import Plays with quantity < 1
    If you turn this on, plays with a quantity setting on BGG of less than 1 (displayed as 0 on BGG) are skipped during import. This is used by some users to enter play of expansions, along with a play of the base game.
  • Ignore for stats if no winner set
    If the play has now winners set the setting ‘Ignore for statistics’ will be turned on if this is set. This way stats aren’t influenced if you did enter players for a play, but didn’t set a winner.
    If the played game was already in Board Game Stats and was set to being Cooperative, the play is imported as usual and ‘the Game’ is considered to have won.

Other notes:

  • Both the “Don’t count win stats” and “Incomplete” check boxes on BGG are imported as the “Ignore for statistics” option in Board Game Stats.
  • If you did not enter players and scores on BGG, no players or scores will be added to the play on Board Game Stats – not even yourself. This way statistics will not be affected for the number of plays, win percentage or scores.
  • If you did enter players but no scores, the players are added to the play in Board Game Stats without scores. These will not effect statistics for scores, because they are empty. They DO effect statistics for number of plays and win percentages.
  • If you did not enter names for players, those players will be added as ‘Anonymous 1’, ‘Anonymous 2’, etc. Enough different Anonymous players will be created to be able to assign different players to each play with players without names, the Anonymous players are then reused for the next play that didn’t have names set.
  • Plays that do not have a date set on Board Game Geek (yes, this is possible), are ignored during import.

How details are matched:

  • When importing, Games are matched by BGG id (which you set by linking a game in Board Game Stats), and if none was matched, by exact name (case insensitive). If no match was found, a new Game is added to Board Game Stats, with the BGG id link in place. The details of this Game will be loaded automatically from BGG the first time you view it.
  • When importing, Players are matched by BGG username (which you can set for each player in Board Game Stats), and if none was matched, by exact name (case insensitive). If no match was found, a new Player is added to Board Game Stats, with the BGG username set.
  • When importing, Locations are matched by name (case insensitive), and if no match was found, a new Location is added with that name.

If you end up with duplicate Games or Locations on Board Game Stats, you can best browse to the list of Plays of that item, and edit the plays to set it to the one you want to keep. Then delete the Game or Location with zero resulting plays.

If you end up with duplicates Players, you can merge them. Browse to the Player you want to merge into another Player and open the Edit player screen, then select “Merge Player…”. After selecting a Player to merge this one into, all plays of this Player are moved to the selected Player, and the old Player is deleted. You’ll see confirmation dialogs before anything is actually done, explaining exactly who is merged into who.

Deleting duplicate plays from BGG

If for some reason you have a correct set of plays in BG Stats, but on BGG there are other plays (duplicates, or invalid ones) you want to delete, you can follow these steps to delete all plays from BGG that are not in BG Stats:

  • Do this on a day you haven’t imported anything else into the app, as you’ll be deleting plays you imported today.
  • Import all plays from BGG via Settings > BoardGameGeek > Import Plays from BGG…
  • Go to Settings > BoardGameGeek > Play posting settings and check you have “Delete plays in sync” enabled
  • Go to Settings > Export, import and backup > Imported Plays. You’ll see a list of all imported plays (today and earlier)
  • Tap the funnel icon at the top right to enable the filter, and tap the Anytime filter. Select Today in the popup and tap Filter. You’ll see all plays imported today.
  • On iOS tap the “Select” button, on Android the button with three lines and arrows at the top right. Then tap ‘All’ at the bottom to select all plays. Check to see if you have the correct list of plays selected (if you have imported other plays today, unselect these).
  • Tap the delete button and confirm. The plays will be deleted from BG Stats and from BGG.