March 2024 Gaming

February was a very slow month for gaming, but that was ok after a really fast January.

However, March actually beat January like a rented mule!

Ok, actually, there were fewer games played in January, but more plays (because I played a few games so many times in January).

March was an awesome month with the Terminal City Tabletop Convention garnering a number of plays, plus some lunchtime games at work and not missing a Sunday at all (except for the convention, which of course really added to the plays!).

Let’s take a look at what I actually played.

And here are the games in grid form!

Though I actually played 26 games, but only 25 fit on the grid.

The odd one out was Surfosaurus Max.

That’s right. Twenty-six games played in March!

That was amazing.

Not only that, but the quality of games played was really up there too.

Sure, some of the Terminal City games were a bit meh, but overall, I really loved most of the games I played in March.

Why don’t we take a look at some of those highlights?

Many thanks to BG Stats for the wonderful pictures and data!

Just a note that I’ve already talked about the new to me games so I won’t really talk about them here.

Other than those games, there were quite a few highlights for March that I want to mention.

I’ve already started my “must play at least once a year” quest for all of the Garphill games, getting a play in of Wayfarers of the South Tigris, Scholars of the South Tigris, and Viscounts of the West Kingdom.

Fitting since they are all in my Top 10 games played of all time.

Yes, yes…go ahead and get drunk because there are three mentions.

Wow, that entire glass is gone now…good job!

One really interesting one for me was a play of The Flow of History.

This is a game that I Kickstarted and actually played a couple of times, but then couldn’t get it to the table again and ultimately traded it away.

It came out on a Sunday and three of us were willing, and we had about an hour, so we said “sure!”

I did enjoy this one. It’s not something I need to keep but it is fun to play if we have people wanting to.

After playing a game of it on Yucata, and including it in my Top 50 games played of all time, I was really happy this past Sunday to get a game of Grand Austria Hotel in.

This is such an amazing game.

I did terribly this time (I thought I was doing better than my first play, but ultimately scored 30 points fewer than my first game…whoops!) but it was still a great game.

It may even jump up further! Though I’m not doing another Top 50 until at least 2026.

I got a third game of Empire’s End in at Terminal City, with a couple of guys who had said they’ve been wanting to play it.

Still just as fun as the previous two plays, and now I have enough for a review!

Maybe look for that next week.

This went over very well, which I was very happy about.

There’s no boardgaming feeling worse than recommending a game to some friends, getting them to play it, and finding out they didn’t like it.

It was also nice to get a third play of another Top 50 game for me, Underwater Cities, a third play that let me actually review it!

This is another game that really trips my trigger and while I haven’t been doing that well at it recently, I still think back to my first two plays, one where I beat Cal and the other where I lost to him by only a few points.

Yes, I grade many of my successes on how I did against Cal.

Want to make something of it?

Basically, it was nice to get 2024 plays of many of my Top 50. Those mentioned above, but also Cat in the Box, Schadenfreude, and Amalfi, the game where your ships are both your workers and your resources, and which I did very terribly this time even though I did ok in my first play!

Regular readers of this blog know that not only am I looking for “new to me” game experiences, but I like playing a wide variety of games in a given year.

I’m happy if I get 100+ different games played in a year, especially if many (but not most) are new to me!

March was a good month for both of those, with first 2024 plays of a number of games.

Not counting the new to me games for March, I think all but two games were played for the first time in 2024.

Which will make the year-end games post a lot easier to write.

What did you play in March?

Let me know in the comments.