September 2026 Gaming

My September gaming wasn’t quite as huge as August, but it was still pretty good.

For a while there, I thought my “new to me” games would amount to one, but then Abi showed up for a couple of Sundays and I was then set.

Which also made me think, especially listening to podcasts like Boardgame Hot Takes, that maybe I should play more live “new to me” games on Boardgame Arena so that I could get exposure to them and be able to count them (since I don’t count asynchronous plays).

That’s how many podcasts and reviewers do their reviews, playing online (though usually with their friends and not randoms like I might be doing).

Anyway, my “new to me” cred was established with six games (which I will talk about next week) and I did manage a respectable number of games played in September even with a couple of weeks at work where we didn’t play much of anything.

Stupid vacations/surgeries/meetings/etc

I played more games in September than I played in August, though I didn’t have quite the same number of plays as I did that month.

That’s because hitting the end of the feature film era, I only played Final Girl four times. I will get to the vignettes I have waiting soon, though.

In other words, not a bad month!

I played 22 games in September for a total of 30 plays (as compared to 33 plays of 20 games last month).

Here’s the list of games played.

And here’s that list in grid form.

Many thanks to the wonderful BG Stats app, including the fact that they’ve upped the maximum number of games in a grid, so convention months will no longer require two pics!

There were a few games where it was my first play in a while, so I will highlight those here.

Though for the new to me ones, take a look at my post next week (the Cult would not be happy if I talked about them ahead of time).

I played a couple of games in September that resulted in enough plays to review them.

Into the Machine and Tag Team, for example, though Tag Team was a slower burn, getting enough plays over a year later to actually do it.

But I finally got it done!

As I mentioned, though, a few games hadn’t been played in a while so it was a joy to actually get to play them again.

For example, The Adventurers: The Pyramid of Horus hadn’t made it to the table in over four years (March 2022) and it’s a fun push your luck game!

In fact, I realized that this is my third play of it (over the span of 11 years), so maybe a quick review will be coming just to highlight this to those who aren’t aware of it.

This is a game where you are exploring this pyramid with mummies running around, and it’s also collapsing.

You can grab loot and items, but the more you carry, the slower you will be.

Also, the roof is caving in and every round, a new stone block will fall, potentially injuring you or blocking your way.

I got a bit greedy, getting a whole crapload of points worth of stuff, but I got sealed into the tomb with no way out.

I was one turn away from getting past that one open space, but that’s where the roof caved in.

That’s the fun of this game. You never know what will happen.

Another game, which I haven’t played for over three years, is Galaxy Trucker.

I normally don’t like real-time games and in this one, you’re building your ship in real time, competing with other players for choice ship parts.

For some reason, though, this one just clicks with me.

We were introducing this one to a co-worker and decided to just do a Level II mission.

Sadly, none of the chaos that usually happens actually turned up. All meteors either missed or were deflected/shot down, no pirates came, etc.

It was pretty blah.

We assured him that it usually isn’t like that so we’ll probably try again at some point.

Want a blast from the past?

How about 5 years between plays (almost to the day!).

That’s how long it’s been since I’ve played Suburbia.

As I mentioned last week, I haven’t brought out my Collector’s Edition yet since I got it, so only a friend of mine has the actual game, and it’s the original.

He usually doesn’t bring it out, but this time he wanted to play it so we did!

I’d forgotten how much I like this one, though I’m totally not good at it.

I ran into major income problems in this one and things just steamrolled from there.

I didn’t take a picture, but I actually played the solo mode of a game! Which I usually don’t do, but this was just a card game so space was not an issue.

The Fliptoons solo mode isn’t actually that bad.

You’re basically racing against time because you have to get 30 Fame on a flip before the deck runs out.

In addition to you buying cards from the market, the two end cards disappear at the end of each round (after you refill the market), so the clock is ticking.

I failed, sadly.

It’s actually quite a fun solo mode and I may keep doing it on the days where we don’t have a game at lunch in the office.

Jump Drive has once again become the “got a few minutes before lunch on Sunday, or at the end of the day before we leave? Let’s play it” games, with three plays in September, including two on the same day with a new guy who had trouble getting it the first game but in the second game actually ended up winning.

Yay, Rob!

There is, of course, my monthly Combat Commander ladder game, this time in the Pacific (which means having to remember all the new Pacific rules that we don’t use for 10 months out of the year).

I actually managed to win, making it three wins in a row (meaning a crushing defeat is heading my way in October).

The new to me games post will be coming early next week, but even the ones that weren’t new to me were really good this month.

What did you play in September?

What are your thoughts on these games?

Should I review The Adventurers?

Let me know in the comments.