December 2024 Gaming

There was no way December was going to top November, what with Bottoscon and all.

But I did want to get a good variety of games in, and I think I did a pretty good job with that!

December was a weird month, though. Between vacations and work activities (including our holiday lunch that ended up being at the same restaurant where we do our Sunday gaming), there wasn’t a lot of work gaming.

Only 6 plays!

But overall, it was pretty good, even missing a Sunday (thanks, Taylor Swift!).

Here’s what I played in December.

And here it is in grid format.

A nice mix!

Fifteen unique games (and nineteen plays of those games) was pretty good.

It helped that a bunch of them were really fast card or tile-laying games (or even an area control game!).

Many thanks to the wonderful Boardgame Stats for their help collating this data!

What were some of the highlights?

As usual, I’ll leave the new to me games for a separate post (maybe Thursday? Maybe Friday, we’ll see).

However, of games that I’ve played before, probably the highlight of December was Scholars of the South Tigris, one of my Top 10 games and one I hadn’t played for a few months.

It also was played with a welcome guest to our normal game group!

She even won, not that I’m bitter or anything.

(The picture is an old one, as somebody neglected to take one of Sunday’s game!)

I’m not sure I would necessarily count this as a highlight, but definitely one of note, is my first play of Gaia Project in six years! This time with the expansion which adds some things, balances some other things, and makes some things stronger than they were in the base game.

I actually did ok in this one, beating my 2018 score by 25 points (95 versus 70).

It is definitely not even close to my favourite game and I’m probably good to not play it again for a long while.

Age of Innovation is probably my favourite (to use the word loosely) of the “Terra Mystica” line of games.

But this wasn’t bad!

I’m glad I played it again.

See you in 2030, Gaia Project.

There were four other unique games played in December, meaning that I hadn’t played them in 2024 yet.

It was nice to get them to the table!

First, there was another play of Cat Lady, that wonderful little (and quick!) card drafting game about adopting and feeding cats.

This play was with the Kittens small expansion!

I think we’ve played with it, but I’m not sure.

This adds some nice scoring elements and options to use your extra food if you need to.

Then there was The City, the precursor to Jump Drive (which I do actually prefer, and also got played this month!).

I do enjoy the game, and it’s at work so it makes for a very quick game at lunch, but this game was suggested mainly because I hadn’t played it in 2024 yet and I wanted to pad those unique game stats.

I am such a blog mercenary.

Wait, mercenaries make money on what they do.

Never mind.

With Vicki on vacation, Bryan and I broke out Shards of Infinity, a really wonderful deck builder, especially with the expansions.

This game is always a lot of fun. Bryan hadn’t played it before but he seemed to enjoy it too.

Finally, also with Vicki gone, I introduced Bryan to Riftforce, a really great lane battler that I really should review at some point.

I enjoy this one a lot and couldn’t believe I hadn’t played it in 2024.

The expansion is also good.

Maybe a good idea for a January 2025 review (or two?).

Thanks to Bryan for helping pad my stats!

As always, there’s my monthly Combat Commander game, but with me being off work between Christmas and New Year’s, I managed to also get two more games played on Friday and Monday!

Thanks, Noel, for playing with me. We played two Resistance scenarios, with me as the Partisans both times.

We split the wins, but they were both great fun.

It was nice to get some fighting in during the last days of the year.

What did you play in December?

Let me know in the comments.