April 2026 Gaming

I knew this month would not be as good as last month.

No conventions!

But I was still able to get some solid gaming in, though maybe not as much as usual.

One Sunday I wasn’t able to make it and the lunchtime games dried up slightly as well.

Still, there were some interesting games played, including one I haven’t played in over 10 years!

That was the highlight of the month.

I ended the month playing 17 games a total of 22 times.

As you can guess, Final Girl led the way.

Of course it did.

Here are the games I played in April.

And here they are in grid format!

Many thanks to the awesome BG Stats for the app that provides these images and tracks all my plays.

This one’s probably going to be a short one, folks, but let’s get started anyway!

There were four new to me games, but I’ll talk about those in a separate post (which should be easier to write with only four games on it)

As I mentioned, the highlight of the month was a play of Strasbourg, that classic 2011 game by Stefan Feld.

Is it a classic, though?

I guess there could be a debate about that?

Anyway, this came up in December 2025 on the BGG Top games list at #1483, so I actually have talked about it recently!

(It’s now fallen to #1518, for your information).

I mentioned I’d love to play it again, and now I have!

Before that, it was October 2014, so I definitely needed a reteach.

I actually enjoyed it as it has a really weird auction mechanism.

James didn’t like it because losing out on bids you were counting on can make life quite difficult, and there are only so many bids in each round.

You get a set of bid cards (drawn from your deck) and you have to split your bids into different sets of values (could be multiple cards).

Then, each auction in the round, you decide if you’re going to use one of your set aside bids or not.

Some of the auctions will let you get a good of a certain type (or sell all of your goods) and possibly pay to take control of an area in the city.

All of this will get you points of some kind (hey, it’s Feld!) but collecting the most points can be difficult.

It’s a pretty beige game but it has some nice colours in it, and the mechanisms make sense, even if you don’t really like how they work.

It’s not something I’m dying to go back to, but I wouldn’t turn it down.

We did get another play of Taverns of Tiefenthal in, which hasn’t been played since last September.

It’s also my fourth play of it, so watch out for a review coming at some point.

I enjoy this one, but I am not usually very good at it.

Somehow I won this time, though!

It’s kind of a deckbuilder, but that you are drawing bar patrons from your deck until you have filled your tavern, but you will also be drawing worker cards that you’ve previously bought, or maybe even extra tables if you’ve purchased them.

Then you’re rolling and drafting dice to get you money and have you produce beer so that you can bring more cards into your deck.

And maybe upgrade your tavern, which will get you 10-point Nobles who are also patrons, but they only take up one table regardless of how many you draw.

We’ve played with a couple of modules from the expansion, which is also quite enjoyable.

Another one that’s not anywhere near my Top 50 list, but is definitely one I like to play if it comes out.

There was another play of Faraway, a second play with the new Under Starry Skies expansion (which I now own so maybe will get enough plays to review it at some point).

This filler is such a big hit because of the interesting scoring mechanic and tableau-building, where you build your tableau left to right but then score it right to left.

Meaning you have to plan ahead to get the right icons out.

The expansion adds meteor cards, which are always face-up and thus break the “score right to left” rule. But they also make it so cards that end with the same number act the same way: staying face-up and always active.

It’s quite brilliant, but also makes you have to change your tactics a bit.

I got another game of Dune: Imperium on the table, this time with the Rise of Ix expansion (first time I’ve played with one of the expansions on the table, I think). That should cement its place in my Top 50.

A great combination of worker placement and deckbuilding, I truly enjoy this game but I suck royally at it.

Maybe one day I will win it.

As usual, there’s my monthly Combat Commander ladder play, this time with me playing terribly (seems to be a theme, don’t it?).

But this one is always enjoyable, so losses don’t matter (as much, anyway).

There were the usual variety of lunch time trick-takers and filler games that are always a blast to play and also help build camaraderie with my co-workers.

We always have a blast with those. That’s where most of my plays of Cascadia and Rebel Princess (to name two games played this month) come from.

And, of course, Cover Your Assets, to which we introduced another co-worker too.

That one is always a hit.

What did you play in April? You can even include new to me games, though I’d love it if you comment on that post with those games.

Anything noteworthy and fun?

Let me know in the comments.