November 2025 Gaming

I knew November would be much better than October for my gaming, because there’s a really nice 4-day convention in November.

I didn’t expect that it would be this much better, though!

In November, I managed to play 36 games a total of 57 times.

That’s way more than October! (17 games 27 times)

Yes, that is what conventions will do.

In addition to all of that, there were 12 new to me games (which I’ll talk about later, but it may not come right away because that’s a long post to write!) along with some old favourites that I haven’t played in a little while.

Let’s look at the games I played.

And here they are in grid format, with two pictures because there are so many!

Many thanks to the wonderful BG Stats for the app that produces these statistics.

There are, of course, a few reasons why I have so many plays, not including the convention.

Let’s take a look at all of that.

There are seven plays of Final Girl as I work through the feature films I have, as well as one game with an old villain and location which I played wanting to do a story about it, but I’m not sure how interesting that will be considering the result so you may not see it.

Final Girl is always a hit, and seven plays is just huge!

There were also five plays of Doomlings at lunch at work, mainly because I received booster pack expansions from the publisher and I needed to get them played for review purposes.

My coworkers like the game, thankfully, but I’m also thankful that they’re always willing to play games with me that I need (or want) to review.

This prompted a couple of reviews.

Four plays of Bomb Busters came out because I loved this deduction game so much that I bought it and have tried it out with my coworkers.

So far we haven’t actually won the final Training mission, so we haven’t opened the first box yet.

But it is coming, I guarantee it.

That takes care of 16 of my plays.

Another common game for our work lunches (as well as twice at Bottoscon this month!) is Cover Your Assets, the card game where you are trying to steal your opponents’ assets to make them your own.

This is always an uproarious time and I do really like it.

It fits in our lunch time frame really easily, which also helps.

I did manage to also get a couple of plays of Combat Commander in. Usually it’s only my monthly game, but on November 1 I did a training game with my good friend Zilla Blitz!

Maybe we’ll get a full game in one of these days, now that he’s becoming more familiar with it.

The other game we played multiple times that I really enjoy is Ecos: The First Continent.

This one is always fun and playing it twice this month reminded me that I hadn’t reviewed it yet.

So I took care of that omission as well.

Finally, let’s get to the single plays of games that I haven’t played for a while.

It was still 2025, but I haven’t played Inventors of the South Tigris since early this year, and now that I have the expansion, I’ve been wanting to get it to the table again.

The expansion adds asymmetric player powers and is really cool!

But I have only played it once so no review yet.

Our play in November was really long because we were all relearning the game.

Unfortunately it took up a whole Sunday (and then some! Since I actually had to leave later than usual)

But I do plan on getting it to the table again soon.

Hopefully before the end of the year so I can review it (expansions I usually play twice unless they are intricate expansions).

It was also nice to get our convention regular Prodigals Club played, that game where you are trying to tank your ranking in society, money and politics.

Playing it at Bottoscon reminded me that I hadn’t reviewed it yet, so I ended up doing that as well.

I’m very glad this game has had a bit of resurgence in my play, because I was missing it for a long while.

It was very sporadic until I played it in June this last year, and now it’s been played twice.

There was also Dune – Imperium, a game that I haven’t played on the table in a number of years but finally got to the table this month.

I really do enjoy this game and hopefully I can get it to the table enough to incorporate the expansions.

Another play of SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is always a good thing, and I finally played it and increased my score instead of reducing it!

This was also my third play so it was nice to finally be able to review it.

Conventions always bring out card games, so Diamonds and 6 Nimmt got played.

Can’t go wrong with those!

There is also another convention staple (though I’m not sure it’s quite reached that rank), Pursuit of Happiness.

This game is fun but for whatever reason, it really seems to drag for us.

Plus, I have the Big Box with almost all of the expansions, and I want to bring them out.

But putting the box into my bag would mean I’m not bringing anything else.

Which I don’t want to do.

I want to play my games!

But one day I will bring it out.

For now, we play a friend’s copy.

Rock Hard 1977 is becoming a convention staple, and I’m here for it!

I love this game, even though I’m not very good at it.

(The designer, Jackie Fox from the Runaways, keeps giving me tips on Blue Sky but for some reason I haven’t been able to implement them and actually do well. Totally my fault, not hers)

Finally, it was really nice to get my first win ever in Galactic Cruise, that huge hit from this year that I love playing because it feels like a Lacerda yet…isn’t?

I’ve now actually played it on the table three times, so have modified my “First Impressions” post to state that my review is pretty much the same.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this one jumps into my Top 50 at the beginning of next year.

One game that won’t be in my Top 50, though I should talk about it since I haven’t played it in 4 years, is Hansa Teutonica.

This is a game where you are building postal routes across Medieval Germany and has a fair bit of take that, though it’s mostly tactical in that you’re just making things more expensive for the person you’re blocking and you get an extra benefit out of it.

The map is…beige. Very beige.

And this is a game I have just bounced off of really hard, even as it is on many people’s Top 50 list (like Chris Yi of the Dice Tower).

It’s a game I’m not very good at, but not in the way with some games where I love the puzzle and just can’t really figure it out, but I really like trying.

This one just falls flat for me.

Tartan gave me a couple of pointers later so maybe I’ll want to try this again soon, but it will never be one that I really desire to play.

Four years?

Yeah, that’s about right.

There were many more games played this month (as you can see from my screenshot), but these were the definite highlights.

As I mentioned, the “new to me” games will be talked about in a separate post, so don’t think they’re being shortchanged here.

What did you play in November? Not counting “new to you” unless you want to?

Let me know in the comments.