April 2023 Gaming

After a robust March of gaming, April took a bit of a downturn.

The lack of a convention along with missing a Sunday game day and being off for a week so there were no lunch time games that week, all of that combined to get a lackluster month of gaming.

But they were still fun and there were still some highlights!

Thanks to Boardgame Stats once again for the app that collects all of this stuff.

In April, I played 13 games a total of 19 times, and only two new to me games!

That post is going to be a bit short.

Anyway, here are those games shown in a grid format.

What were some of the highlights?

Let’s take a look.

Even with the shortage of games, there were still some great plays.

As always, there’s my monthly Combat Commander ladder game, a tense battle that could have gone either way.

Even better, though was finally (just yesterday, so right under the wire!) getting Clank in Space to the table again after putting together the insert.

The insert really made it easy to bring out, though I have to get used to putting it back together again. It’s not as tight as it should be, so I’m sure I’m missing something.

I’ll have to take a look at it again.

Anyway, we played with the Cyberstation 11 map and expansion, which means I can finally review it!

This is the only expansion I haven’t reviewed yet, so keep an eye out for that one.

There were also additional plays of some new favourites, like Stationfall, Earth, and Wayfarers of the South Tigris. I loved that.

But one highlight was my first plays (four of them!) of Galaxy Trucker since 2014.

This is a chaotic game where you are putting your ship together out of spare parts, in real-time while the other players are doing the same.

Then you have to go on a run to another planet, encountering planets with goods on them, pirates, meteors, and a bunch of other stuff, all trying to blast your ship apart.

I’m not a big fan of real-time games, especially those with spatial relationships where you are trying to fit things together.

But after 9 years, it was nice to try this one again.

Finally, I have to mention being able to play one of my favourite games, Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition with two of the new expansions: Discovery and Foundations.

Discovery gives us Milestones and Awards, as well as the ability to upgrade phase cards.

Foundations gives us the Infrastructure mechanic, the expanded score board (YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!) and the ability to play up to 6 players.

Both of these expansions are fantastic after a couple of plays.

We didn’t do the Crisis version because we really don’t want to play this game cooperatively.

I’ll probably review them at some point, though.

Anyway, that’s my April of gaming. Stay tuned for my (relatively small) New to Me post coming up later this week.

What did you play in April?

Let me know in the comments.