December 2023 Gaming

It’s a brand new year! And as I mentioned yesterday, I plan to continue blogging at the pace that I kept up last year.

Maybe even more, though I’m not sure if that would kill me or not.

After the blog review yesterday, you know it’s time for the monthly “how did Dave game last month?” post.

That’s two posts in two days.

Yay, me!

There was no way that December would equal November as far as gaming went.

First, there was no convention like there was the previous month.

Secondly, we were working remotely all month due to getting a new floor in our office, so lunchtime gaming was out (we could play live on BGA, but there are a bunch of things that I do at home, including the occasional solo game but also blog writing and things like that).

What I lacked in quantity, though, I made up for in quality!

Here’s the list of what I played in December.

And here it is in grid format.

A few things to note, after the break…brought to you by Brylcream.

A little dab will do you.

Oh, and this break (which if you come to the post directly, you won’t actually see…one of the weird things about blogging!)

I ended up playing 8 games 12 times in December, way down from November.

However, look at that selection!

I still managed three new to me games out of the eight, which means that this month’s post isn’t going to be that light (whether it posts this week or next, I’m not sure…probably next).

Secondly, I played one of my favourite games not once, not twice, but three whole times!

Combat Commander was played on VASSAL three times. The monthly ladder game, of course. Then there was my monthly game with Ted (the November game actually got pushed to December 1, but since we didn’t end up playing later in the month, it was still only once).

However, working at a university, we were off between Christmas and New Year’s, so I managed to get a third game in with Greg G! (I played him in a ladder game back in August 2022…needless to say, this scenario went much better, even if I did lose…and I’m not saying whether I did or not since I might write the game up).

The second noteworthy thing is that one of my new to me games was Scholars of the South Tigris, a game which we managed to play three times so I could actually review it!

Which means my “new to me” post might be kind of light, since I won’t actually be talking about that one. I’ll just link to the review.

I think that’s the first time that we’ve played a longer, more complicated game, that many times in a month just so I could do the review.

We also wanted to really understand the game too, as one of my friends played it all three times with me and two more played it twice.

Thanks, all of you! I really appreciate that (and maybe some of you are actually reading this to see that).

The third noteworthy thing, and I’ll be talking more about that in my new to me post, is that I managed to get Obsession played!

I mentioned in one of my Friday Night Shots posts that I meant to get that played by the end of the year.

My friend who owns it brought it to our Christmas Eve meet-up and we did.

Spoiler alert: I loved it.

This means I’ve now played 53 of the BGG Top 100!

I finished the year on New Year’s Eve playing a game of Ark Nova, my fifth play of it in 2023.

And second play with the Marine Worlds expansion.

Review for that coming soon (expansions don’t really require 3 plays for a review, so I feel comfortable doing one).

All in all, not much to talk about (that I won’t be talking about in the new to me post, anyway), but it was still a good month all things considered.

All eight games that I played are wonderful games, and funnily enough, I’ve actually reviewed four of the eight!

It is.

January should be a great month, though, with a big convention (OrcaCon) this weekend and then we’re also back to work in the office so lunchtime games will be a thing again.

If you’re at OrcaCon, look me up! I’d love to chat with you.

How did you end the year as far as games played?

Let me know in the comments.