May 2025 Gaming

I wasn’t expecting too much out of my May gaming period, mainly because of Mother’s Day and two Vancouver marathons meaning that we didn’t have our usual Sunday gaming place for three straight weeks.

Suddenly, though, the light appeared and we had an alternate location for two of those three Sundays!

Granted, one of those days there was no way I could really get out of downtown Vancouver so even an alternate venue didn’t work.

Combine this with me going to another game night on two Fridays, a month at the office where we played a fair number of games, and me doing a few quick online Boardgame Arena games with strangers to pad my stats, and I ended up with playing 20 games a total of 25 times!

There also ended up being seven new to me games, which I’ll talk about next week.

This beat April by a wide margin (16 games 20 times).

I thought my gaming might be lacking a little bit, so thought I would try some Boardgame Arena games, mainly those I’ve played before (so they wouldn’t show up as a “new to me” game) and games that don’t take very long, especially playing them online.

That ended up being four games (Point Salad, Gizmos, Castle Combo, and Go Nuts for Donuts), so factor that into the stats above.

What pleased me is the BGA games (along with one other one) hadn’t been played in quite a long time!

So let’s get to the meat of what happened in May.

Here’s what I played last month.

And here that is in grid format.

Many thanks to the wonderful BG Stats app for getting these beautiful pictures and allowing me to keep these stats for at least 10 years!

Along with the new to me games, there were some definite other highlights as well.

The first highlight is a game that I hadn’t played since 2019.

Yes, that’s six years.

Taverns of Tiefenthal is a game where you are running a medieval tavern, with a kind of dice drafting and deckbuilding mechanic which is a really cool combination.

In each of the eight rounds, you are playing cards from the top of your deck until you have placed a customer at all of your available tables. Some cards could be extra tables you have purchased, which means you have more room for guests.

You’re brewing beer, you’re making money off of your guests, you’re finding money in your treasure chest!

My last play of this was in 2019 and it was at 2 player.

I have to say that it was better with more players and a very enjoyable play!

That was really the only play of a game I haven’t played for quite a while, except Gizmos on Boardgame Arena, where it had been over a year.

Then there was the catastrophic teach of Shipyard, which I hadn’t played since last June.

But I had played it three times so thought I had the rules down.

Until I misremembered an employee rule about putting crew/equipment onto your ship without requiring a cabin/mount for them.

Everybody was good about it, but I felt really bad because it was a new game for two of the players (the other one is the one who corrected me at the end of the game when he sent his ship on its shakedown cruise).

Still, it’s a great game and I’m glad I got another play in of it this year.

While getting a play of Sagrada in is not that notable (I played it last in February), it is notable because we finally decided to get at least one module of the Great Facades: Life expansion used.

While we didn’t use the Masterworks dice or the new public objectives, we did use the apprentice cards and they really do add a lot to the game!

You can get at most two of them (unless you clear off a space on your window that gives you an apprentice, in which case you can use that space again) but they are like a personal tool.

I really liked this one and don’t know if I would play without it (though if you don’t, the window templates that came with the base game are worthless since you have to use a new one with Apprentices).

Next time we’ll have the courage to try the Masterwork dice, but we were concerned about taking extra time at lunch.

I was also very happy to get a third play of Civolution in, even if I did go back to my sucking ways after doing very well in my second game.

This game is rocketing up my charts the more I play it.

Sadly I neglected to take a picture of it, so here’s a picture of a previous game just to remind you.

(The photographer has been sacked for incompetency)

As always, there’s my monthly Combat Commander game, where this time I did manage to come out on top!

It was an interesting scenario but very hard for the Allies to win without a little luck (or a poor setup by the Germans).

On the personal/writing front, I haven’t been quite as good as I would like to be.

I’ve gone in spurts, going a whole week with only one post, but then I’ve had a couple of weeks (like this one) where I’ve done 3-4 posts.

This has resulted in the best blogging month of 2025 at 14 posts (counting this one).

I’m happy about that one.

I have more reviews in the hopper if I can keep up this writing pace, as I’ve played a few games enough times to actually review them.

I’ve also kept up the Friday Night Shots posts this month, which I’m very proud of.

I think after this last Friday, that will be four in a row!

How was your month of May gaming?

My New to Me post will be up next week if you want to just stick to previously-played games.

But you can mention anything you want!

No, no I won’t.

Either way, let me know in the comments.