March 2026 Gaming

After a rather lackluster February gaming month, I knew March was going to be pretty huge.

Not only was it the great Terminal City Tabletop Convention, but it also captured one day of Bottoscon Winter.

It would have been even larger if we hadn’t missed a week of Sunday gaming (though probably only by 2-3 games, depending on what we played).

The month was highlighted by three whole plays in two weeks of the new Vital Lacerda game (more on that in the “New to Me Games” post plus the review that I will eventually get to) plus eleven total new to me games, which means that post may be a bit delayed as I try to write all 5000 words.

I ended the month with 49 plays of 32 games.

I know that’s a lot!

Last March, I had 44 plays of 33 games, so it’s comparable and I think the Sunday convention helped boost me over that.

Here are the games I played in March 2026.

And here they are in two grids (yes, so many games that I had to split it into two):

Many thanks to the wonderful folks who created the BG Stats app, which provided these statistics.

There are so many games there that I should probably just mention the highlights, right?

Let’s get to work.

First, I have to say that the main reason the number of plays is so much higher this year than last year is probably because of both my Final Girl plays (though I only had 4!) and the number of super-quick filler games that we played multiple times in a session (The Gang and No Thanks in particular).

But those were pretty standard. Final Girl and The Gang are becoming almost mainstays of my plays, though many of the latter plays were at conventions so that might taper off until June.

As usual, I’m not going to really mention the new to me games, since they get their own post. Considering that’s 11 of the 32 games, that means this post might be shorter than I thought!

The first highlight I can think of is our first play of Smash Up in almost two years.

It used to be one of our mainstays but when the new expansions stopped coming out (our last play was when I was getting enough plays to review Excellent Movies, Dudes), we moved on to other things.

When the last Kickstarter is fulfilled and I have my hands on the new expansions (and I guess last, since I don’t do print and play and they might be moving to that for future ones, but don’t quote me on that), we’ll get this played again.

Another awesome experience was finally getting Grand Austria Hotel to the table again, for the first time in two years (sensing a theme yet?).

I’ve played tons of this game on Yucata with a couple of Pixelated Cardboard Discord buddies, but it hasn’t seen the table in a while.

I actually went ahead and bought this game, but it’s waiting for a pre-order to come in so I don’t actually have it yet.

We played with the Waltz module of the Let’s Waltz expansion, and it was pretty good too.

After playing, I immediately picked up my phone and added it to my pre-order.

It was so nice to play it on the table again, but as I’ve said before (probably in my Terminal City Convention report, as well as to my friends who, if they are reading this, are probably getting sick of hearing me say it), the bad thing about playing it on the table versus online is that on the table, if you suck, you may not play it for quite a while. Online, you just hit rematch and you’re going again.

Still, it was very cool to actually manipulate the pieces rather than click.

Another game where it’s been a while since I’ve played it (except online) is Pax Pamir: 2nd Edition, which I also mentioned in the Bottoscon Winter report (so I won’t belabour it).

This game is so good, and even better than I remember it.

Playing it on the table did refresh some rules and strategies that I had forgotten, and I have managed to win at least one game online since then!

Many thanks to Tim and Joanne for including me in this game.

Another blast from the past was getting Long Shot: the Dice Game to the table at Terminal City.

That’s a game I haven’t played in over 2 years as well, and it’s actually pretty fun!

I’m not really much of a roll & write guy, but this one has some interesting mechanisms that I do enjoy.

And it only takes 30 minutes or so.

The dice mechanics are cool, where one player rolls the two dice and the horse whose number was rolled on the 8-sided die will move the number of spaces on the 6-sided die (but it only has 1-3 on it). Then each player can do something with that numbered horse on their sheet.

It’s pretty cool, though as usual I suck at it.

Container was another game I hadn’t played in 9 years, and as noted in my convention post, I don’t think I need to play it again for another 9 years.

It’s a pure economic game, which I don’t really enjoy and certainly do not excel at.

It was nice to play with the people I was playing with, but that was the only really enjoyable thing about it.

Terminal City seems to be where all the old games were played (except Pax), as that’s also where we played The Game, that cooperative game where you are trying to play cards to four different piles, in increasing or decreasing order, without saying what cards you have.

It has been almost 9 years for that one too.

It’s quick, it’s satisfying, it’s also frustrating, but it’s pretty fun with the right people.

Those are all the games with major time gaps between plays, but I wanted to mention a couple of games that we were able to teach to our new lunch time players and so I’m really happy about that.

We now have new options no matter who is able to join us (unlike Smash Up, for example, which would require a lot of teach time and I’m not sure how much some of them would enjoy it), and I just love seeing their enthusiasm they get when playing them.

So far all of them have been a hit.

For example, we taught Fort to Kate this month. I played it last month, so it’s not noteworthy in regards to how long it’s been.

But she seemed to really enjoy it and it was fun to play it at 4 players and see how it went.

It’s a smidge too long with four and our lunches only being an hour, though we can sometimes go over a bit when necessary.

Another game actually fits both categories: new to a bunch of my co-workers as well as playing it exactly one year apart (March 11, 2025 and March 11, 2026).

That was The City, and the look of joy on the new players’ faces when it finally clicked was really cool to see.

Finally, No Thanks got introduced to most of the new players for our lunch group and it was a smashing success.

We love how quick it is, all the laughs we had as one player continued to take the cards and run everybody out of chips, and just the overall gameplay.

Now it’s time to go write the new to me games post!

I’ll see you in a couple of years.

Anyway, what did you play in March? Anything old that you hadn’t played in a while?

Let me know in the comments.