January 2025 Gaming

It’s a new year! And already we’re 1/12 of the way through it.

Who would have thought it would go that fast?

It’s also a new year of boardgaming, which means everything I played this month is actually unique to 2025! Unless I played it more than once, of course.

Even missing a Sunday game day, it managed to be a good month, too.

It wasn’t quite as good as December, but it was close.

Here’s what I played in January.

And here it is in grid format!

All in all, 14 games were played a total of 17 times (which included a marathon of three plays of the same game during one lunch period at work).

Thanks to BG Stats for the great app that lets me record all of this!

It was definitely a month of some great games, four new to me (detailed in a post next week) and one that I hadn’t played since 2023!

Regarding games that weren’t new to me, the highlight had to be my second play of Civolution, a game that I loved the first time I played it.

This time I went a completely different way…and ended up with similar points.

I still need to wrap my head around this game.

Thankfully my copy has finally shipped!

So I don’t need to wait for Abi to bring it to game day.

It shall be played again…soon.

But not that soon, with snow coming this weekend and a new game that I really want to get to the table next weekend (if people agree, of course).

My third play of Inventors of the South Tigris enabled me to get my review done!

This is a really good game. A bit too much going on for it to be high in my Top 50, but I could see it being at least in the conversation.

A third play of the pretty good trick-taking game Sandbag this last week will enable me to review it sometime in the near future.

It’s an interesting one because you don’t want to win tricks (unlike Rebel Princess, you don’t want any tricks!) and there are different ways to do that.

Now that we’ve done that, time to take another trick-taker to work! And subject my friends to it.

Damn, I’m feeling evil and spongy. Sorry about that.

Our first play of Arboretum in way over a year was also a highlight!

Except that I did terribly. It’s almost like I forgot how to play or something.

But no, I just sucked at it.

Somebody prevented me from scoring the pink cards. Somehow I missed that the 6 hadn’t been put out anywhere!

Maybe I’ll get my revenge one of these days.

*cough cough cough*

Sorry, I gotta stop doing that.

As usual, there’s my monthly Combat Commander game, which resulted in yet another loss.

I’m at .500 now. I can’t afford to lose in February!

We’ll see what happens there.

As usual, you will be the first to know…well, other than me and my opponent.

And Patrick.

And my wife.

Ahem…anyway.

Finally, and also noteworthy, is another play of The Gang.

This cooperative take on Texas Hold ‘Em is just so good!

If we manage to get another play in, I may review it, but so far it’s really held up.

This time we actually won!

It was close, down to the 5th round with two wins and two losses, but we managed to do it.

Of course, I enjoyed every game played this month. There were no stinkers at all.

And the joy of being with my friends made it worthwhile too.

February’s going to be interesting.

We’re missing one day (probably) due to snow, but I also have a 12-hour game day followed by a normal Sunday game day in the middle of the month.

So let’s see if we can do some damage.

Stop that.

What did you play in January?

Let me know in the comments.