It's that time of the month again and as May has been completed, it's time for me to review each of the games that I played and offer a brief breakdown of my thoughts on them. Again, I post most of my plays in more detail on the What Did You Play This Week geeklist, so check that out for more follow up if you want to see more.
This month was a weird one as I went down to Florida for a trip with my brothers and dad and there were quite a few games that I played that I wouldn't normally play. It was odd going to a place where my daily habit of playing one to two games was looked at like an odd thing, but not everyone has the same hobby and although I choose to spend my money on board games, that doesn't mean my family does though. Still, it was nice to be back home after the trip and playing my own games, rather than playing digital implementations of things.Without further ado, here's the games that I played in May and my thoughts on them!
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I played several games of Clank! with Sarah and it continues to remain one of our favorite games to pull out and play at night. We have found that we generally play at least one game per week together and it's quickly become our most played game in 2024, much to my surprise. I'm hoping to get the remaining expansions for it, but for now, it's remaining sans expansions for a later time. With three of the five expansions (Adventuring Party, Gold and Silk, Temple of the Ape Lords), we have quite a few different ways to play the game whenever we want to.
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This one absolutely blew me away when I first played it. There's so much in the initial box and after organizing and replacing all the cards using the replacement decks, I launched into my first curse in the hope that I could clear it away. What has followed since has been over eight hours and six sessions of attempting to even make my way to where the curse originates on the continent which shows me that there is so much more to this game than I had originally anticipated. There are clues and hidden secrets all throughout the game and it's absolutely incredible and has really captured my imagination. I think I'm halfway through the first curse (at least I believe so), but I've learned so much and I'm hopeful that I can win my first time, although that's not guaranteed at this point. I've also added in the expansion cards from The 7th Continent: What Goes Up, Must Come Down to the base game after realizing that many of them were able to be added without changing the way the game played and adding extra secrets and content.
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Three plays of Thunder Road, and despite losing two of those three plays, this is easily one of my top 10 games for this year. I had found a solo automa deck to play against that offers a bit of a challenge when I feel the need to cause some car chaos on my own, but the biggest amount of joy that I had was when I played with my dad and brothers. We had watched Mad Max: Fury Road the night before we played and each time one of us did something incredibly stupid, we just yelled "WITNESS ME!" at the top of our lungs while making the V8 symbol. It was a great time and I wish that I had been able to play more, but we had other things we were doing that week and only two plays happened.
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A single play of Magic Maze this month when I attempted a solo version that was proposed here on BGG on this blog (thanks jujulautre for the recommendation on a better and more streamlined solo version). It definitely presented a much more streamlined and easier way to play the solo mode and while it's technically not official, I do like it because it adds in a reason to use the "Do Something!" Pawn. Magic Maze remains my highest logged play game and while it's fast being eclipsed by Clank!, I still find that it's a fun way to wind down after a long day.
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Played a single game of Dead Man's Draw (yes, I know it's a reskin of Captain Carcass, but I like the pirate theme better) with the player powers variant active. It was a really interesting game as due to the powers being assigned randomly, there were absolutely some that were far more beneficial than others. It resulted in a really close game and I barely managed to eke out a win with this one. Sarah still loves it and I'm going to have to get a copy of my own soon.
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Five separate attempts at playing the game solo using a set of rules I found here on BGG that adds three AI players (Huey, Dewey, and Louie). The first two were successes with me clearing missions 3 and 4, but Mission 5 remains to be my biggest challenge yet due to the missions going to one player. I've yet to set up a good hand and need to make sure that I'm thinking about endgame at the beginning of the game before I start if I want to win this mission solo. Overall, I still am enjoying The Crew and I cannot wait to teach it to my mom.
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I only had one game of Quacks in May, despite it being one of the games that I have on my 10x10 Challenge list. I wish this would come out a bit more since it's such a fun game to play, but I only managed to get one game this month. I did find a slightly better way to store the components in the game rather than using the included plastic bags (it's plastic condiment cups, but they work well). I'm hoping to get some kind of organizer for this soon, and even have created a custom laser engraved box print that I'm hoping to make and transfer all of the items from the big box for better storage.
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This was my go-to game while I was on vacation and although I only managed to play it 3 times, one of those times was 10,000 feet in the air, so I would consider that a really fun accomplishment. I had been playing against the level 4 AI player since it had been some time since I played the game and I wanted to refresh myself on how this felt again before taking on the dreaded level 5 AI player. I played two base games and a game of the "Outbreak" neighborhood since I wanted to try it again as I've only played it once. I personally think that the Outbreak Neighborhood is actually one of the better expansions as there's a constant pressure of potentially losing a house and having to mitigate that concern by increasing your estates and getting ammo to beat back the hordes. I will have to pull this out more often since it's so much fun to play and so simple to complete.
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A single game of Cascadia at the request of Sarah since she wanted something a bit less "thinky" at the end of one night. We played the first initial scenario for Sarah to add that to the achievement tracker and I managed to score just over 100 points for my board, netting both Sarah and I one additional tick on the tracker each. I haven't played this as much as earlier in the year as I've completed my 10x10 Challenge plays for it, but I do like the puzzle aspect of the game and I'm glad I own a copy of the game.
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I played two games with Sarah, two nights in a row because the first game saw us both lose due to her propensity to get every secret that she could capture on her way in and out of the ship, resulting in the boss's rage meter increasing much faster. The second game, Sarah and I didn't make it out, but we were rescued and she managed to beat me for the first time ever in Clank! In! Space!, which resulted in a huge grin being plastered across her face the rest of the night. The other two games were solo and I attempted mission 3 twice for the solo campaign after dying on the first attempt. I managed an overall grade of "B" for the mission and I like how each game has me playing towards different cards and objectives, which really changes the game up for me. We also have the cards from the Cyber Station 11 expansion included, which makes for some really fun gameplay.
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I wanted to try this again since I had written a blog post about deck-builders and Dead Cells is absolutely a deck-builder. I played on Tabletopia, since I don't own a copy of Tabletop Simulator and it was just as good as I remember it. The game had been updated by the devs to reflect the finalized version of the game that was sent to the printers and I really liked how good it looked with the update. The devs over at Scorpion Masque also sent out an update to the backers of the Kickstarter stating that printing has been completed for the game and it's being assembled now, which makes me really excited for it to be shipped out to backers. I think it'll hit the proposed date of October for this year, but shipping is always a bit of a wildcard, so we'll see.
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A single play of Dinosaur World in May as I slowly get the required 10 plays of the game that I need for my challenge. It's definitely been the game that's taken the most effort to get to the table since it's so big and take so long to set up, but I love it despite that. I'm hoping to get a few more plays in during June as I'm sitting at 3/10 for my challenge and with over half of my games done, this doesn't sit well with me. I also did just write a massive review of the game, which I'll probably update with photos of the gameplay as I'm playing this coming month. Shoutout to Anthony for his help in getting a play in this month!
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Another game that sits on my 10x10 challenge list, but this one is a bit further along with 7/10 plays for the challenge. I played a three-player game of PARKS for the second time only and I'm really astounded at how different it feels when playing with more people than 2. I personally have found that the solo mode isn't really my cup of tea, despite being a very good mode, so I'm trying to play this with more than one person. I'm still intrigued to play at 4 players and I'm hoping that I can get it to the table with a group that size soon.
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This was one that I purchased while on vacation as I needed a good game to play while slightly inebriated. I flip-flopped between Telestrations and Wavelength, but ultimately decided on the former since I knew that it would be funny to try and decipher drawings made by my family, all while attempting to draw one of my own. It turned out to be a standout hit and we played multiple games with us passing the included pads to each other, getting more and more ridiculous each time we passed the pads. I'm glad I got a copy of this and it was absolutely somethign that I'm happy to have in my collection.
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Sarah finally was curious enough to try another attempt at Apiary and we played a game for our date night one week. I think that she understood the game a bit more and we were able to draw it out a bit longer due to neither of us upgrading several workers. I did my best to keep scores relatively close, but in the end, I was about 30 or so points ahead of Sarah's score. Still, she said that she liked it a bit better the second time around and is willing to play again, so I would consider that a win in my book.
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I found that they added this on BoardGameArena as a free game (while in Beta) and I immediately proceeded to play it several times, both solo and with another few users in multiplayer. I really enjoy Cartographers and being able to play it digitally against someone else is really fun for me, but it still is missing the component of playing on the table at home. I think I'll be adding Cartographers Heroes soon since it adds some new gameplay elements that should help this game from getting stale, but there are other games that I'll be getting first.
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I was offered a chance to play this game by a new board game buddy of mine and with being offered an opportunity to play a game in the BGG top 10, I couldn't turn it down. We played at a local board game cafe with another friend and it was definitely an amazing experience playing this game. Each turn, I felt like my decisions had long-lasting consequences and I did my best to drag the game out as long as possible to get a win, but ultimately, I lost by 1 point due to the final conflict ending in my friend's favor. It was a really cool chance to play it and I'm glad I got the opportunity to do so. While not my favorite game I've played this month, it was definitely one that I'm up to play again.
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I finished up my 10x10 plays of Horrified this month by attempting a solo, three monster game. Past attempts at playing three monsters had ended in failure, so I was concerned that I might be biting off a bit more than I could chew. It turned out that I was in the clear and managed to have an amazing game where I defeated each of the three monsters and only saw a single villager fall (I'm sorry Mary). It was a great way to end my challenge plays of this game and I'll definitely be looking forward to playing this again in the future as it's a great cooperative game.
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This month saw quite a few games on my 10x10 challenge get another play and Flamecraft was no exception. Whenever I play this game, it feels as if the game is over far too quickly, but I think that's the way it's designed. Sarah was ahead most of the game until I managed a comeback in the final few minutes of the game to pull out a win. I think that the next few times we'll play with different shops to start to see how that feels. I'm also going to attempt a few plays solo to finish up the few achievements I have left to unlock before I finish all my plays for my challenge. My final attempt at a solo play in May didn’t go as planned so I still have more to unlock.
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Sarah and I had borrowed this from a friend at my request as I wanted to play it with her as she had not yet gotten the chance to do so. I found out that it had a solo version too so of course I managed to get a few games solo in between playing several games with Sarah and my work friend, Brad. After replaying the game several more times, I think I realized that I enjoyed it so much because of the group I played with, which slightly diminished my want to obtain the game. However, I still enjoyed it enough and it's unique enough that I probably will add it to my collection at some time, whenever it comes back into stock.
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An attempt was made at playing the second mission of Calico on Tabletopia to see if I could beat it after having so much trouble with the first mission. I failed spectacularly and didn't get anywhere close to the points I needed, which just again proves that I'm having a harder time with this game than Cascadia. I find it really interesting that some people prefer this game over the other and I chalk it all up to personal preference since they're extremely similar in my mind.
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I managed to get two games of Dungeonology in to help with my 10x10 Challenge plays, bringing this up to a whopping 3/10 plays. I think I had been initially afraid of setup, since it can be a bit of a bear, but after playing this a few more times, I realized that it wasn't that bad. Additionally, I have been going through the Campaign that is included in the Rocca Civetta expansion as a pseudo-solo mode campaign and I've been enjoying myself. I've remembered to use the player powers a bit more and I think I've got a good grasp at how to counter the solo boss well. Sarah even expressed an interest in playing the game with me, so maybe it'll even hit the table later on this year with her too.
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Sarah and I had borrowed this box from a friend and we wanted to return it them if possible before the end of the month, so we hammered out the final adventure of the box. With it being the Alice in Wonderland adventure, I didn't think that I'd have too much difficulty with it, despite it being listed as one of the harder adventures we've played. Sarah and I didn't manage to clear it in time (which hurt our final score) due to a mechanic that required some dexterity and was slightly frustrating for me, but I won't spoil anything aside from stating that I enjoyed the adventure, but preferred the logic of the Sherlock Holmes adventures slightly more.
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Another game that we borrowed from a friend and I was a bit hesitant to play, especially since I wasn't that big of a fan of the original card game. However, I found that as I played the board game version of Lost Cities, I found that I enjoyed it much more and found that it was strategically deeper than the card game. Sarah and I finished the game and both agreed that we'd like to play a few more times before returning the game since it was a very enjoyable experience.
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I had seen this on sale on Facebook Marketplace a few times and being a big fan of Heat: Pedal to the Metal, I wanted to see if this would be a more affordable version that I would like to play. After several plays of the solo version on BoardGameArena, I found that it was a decent game and while serviceable, it wasn't the level of gameplay that I wanted and didn't think that Sarah would be really into it, leading me to play solo more often than not. It's a cool idea, but I'll probably stick to playing digitally for now.
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I had seen the digital implementation of this previously and after some comments from the developer, I really wanted to give it a try to see how it plays. I was extremely impressed with how well the tutorials explained the game and very much appreciated the artwork that was contained in the app. Unfortunately, I think I would probably get a better understanding of the game if I played against a person on the table. For now, I'll play several more games in the app as it's a beautifully designed and implemented app, but I think I'd rather be playing in person against human opponents to better learn the game.
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One of my first dexterity games ever got pulled out again this month and I played it with Sarah a few times before the end of the night. ICECOOL, while simplistic, is very fun to play and there were several times where both Sarah and I groaned in displeasure at awful movements that we had made, only to have the other player hit our penguins immediately. It's a really fun game to play and while the novelty wears off quickly, I expect that my daughter will love this when she gets a bit older.
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This was brought by my buddy Brad to our Friday lunch game that we have (almost) weekly and it was a nice little card game that was really fast to play. While the gameplay isn't anything to write home about, it does have a really fun take-that mechanic while playing the game and attempting to chop trees with dice rolls was a very interesting idea. While I'm not going to go out and buy a copy for myself, I would be up to playing again since it was a really fun and light game to play.
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This was actually one of the first games that Sarah and I bought as a couple and we purchased it on our first anniversary. Spot It! is definitely a fun little filler game that while it doesn't get pulled out too often, usually results in us laughing at each other since we're stressed that the other person found the symbol first.
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I do not like poker. We played it at the behest of my father and I realized again why I'm not good at Poker. I think too much in numbers and don't catch "tells" when playing the game, nor am I really about bluffing, so I absolutely am awful at Poker. Give me a game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf any day over Poker.
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When Brad offered to play a game on Memorial Day in the office, I immediately jumped on the opportunity, especially when he suggested this game. I really like worker placement games and this seemed right up my alley. We played with the Valhalla and Dark Mountains expansions included and while I could take or leave the latter expansion, the former expansion was really great as it helped to mitigate bad dice rolls in the base game. I really enjoyed myself, despite Brad tromping me in points and hope to be able to play this again soon.
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This was brought to our monthly Dad & Board Game Hangout and as someone who has never played the That's Pretty Clever! series at all, but a big fan of roll and write games, this was a really fun game to play. I was really impressed with the mechanics of the game and I really want to try some of the other games in the series to see how they differ from this one.
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This was a simple flip and write that I found on BoardGameArena and because it offered a solo mode, I wanted to try my hand at it. I really enjoyed how clever it was, tasking the players with building four separate train lines and connecting them via stations that were various shapes. I didn't get over the midway point with 145 points, but it was definitely a game that I'll be playing more in the hopes that I increase my score.
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I originally downloaded this because my friend Anthony wanted to get a copy of the game for himself and I wanted to see what the game was like with its digital implementation. I realized after downloading it that it was from the same devs that made Evolution and with that knowledge giving me a leg up on how to play, I was able to grasp the game mechanics fairly quickly. Again the game is beautiful on the app and well implemented, but unlike it's predecessor, I think I understood this one better and managed to absolutely destroy the AI player.
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Anthony lent this to Sarah and I to play and it's a really nice and simple game to end the night with. With only two actions to take and it being designed around two player only gameplay, I found myself enjoying the game thoroughly. While I don't think I'll add this to my collection because I could borrow it at any time, it still was a fun experience and I want to play a few more times before returning it.
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Another digital implementation I found on BoardGameArena and with an included solo mode that had a bunch of scenarios for me to complete. I managed to get the first two done without any issues, but five plays into the third mission and I've yet to get the required 50 points for the game. It's a frustrating itch that I can't seem to scratch and it keeps drawing me back for more, not only because it's easy to play and fast, but also because it's surprisingly deep and there's more to it that I still have to figure out. I'm really enjoying this game and I want to get that 50 point total to move on and see what else is in the mission set!
That's 99 separate plays over 36 games for the month of May, making this the most-played month of 2024 so far. I'm sitting at 358 total plays for 2024 and despite not hitting 365 plays by the end of May, I'll definitely be hitting it in June, putting me well on my way to meeting my goal of 730 plays by the end of the year. With an H-Index of 6, I'm finding that I'm playing quite a few more games and that is interesting to see it that high for a single month, but that's mostly because I started adding in digital plays to my regular play sessions now, rather than being only physical.
I'm also well on my way to completing my 10x10 Challenge for 2024, and I've even managed to keep all my original games on the list for the challenge, which puts me in contention for the "Hardcore" version of the challenge. While I have completed a 10x10 grouping, I want to remain faithful to my original goal and I'm going to get this done (hopefully) by July or August. I may look into a few other challenges that I could be a part of (I'm thinking the A-Z Challenge, but we shall see) to complete once I finish my original 10x10 challenge.
That's it for the month of May and I hope that you potentially found a new game that might have interested you in this list. There's quite a few new games for me this month which is very exciting to me, and unlike previous months, I've managed to play more than one of them a few times. I'm hoping for a few more repeats of older games next month and to get at least one more game in my challenge finished, but I'm always up for learning a new game.
Give me your thoughts:What are some games that are new to you this month that you enjoyed? What games have been hitting the table more often in May? Do you like seeing your H-Index for a month be higher or lower, and what do you think that says about your playing preferences?
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