October 2026 Gaming

As I mentioned on Friday in my New to Me Games post, October was a fairly dry month for actual gaming, though thankfully not for new to me games.

We actually missed a Sunday due to another silly street race and the work games were a little haphazard with people being unavailable at various times.

This was the driest month since July, and that month I was off of work for most of it!

That’s ok, because November is going to be huge with a 4-day convention that I’m attending.

That will more than make up for this month.

One reason for the dearth of games, though, is the fact that I only played Final Girl twice this month!

I’m still working on the Terror From the Grave vignette and between that and trying to keep current in my blogging, I haven’t sat down to get the game out much recently.

I played 15 games in October for a total of 22 plays, which isn’t too bad.

Just not like it has been.

Here’s the list of games played.

And here it is in grid format.

Many thanks to the wonderful BG Stats for not only letting me keep track of games like this, but for the pretty way or displaying them as well!

Because there weren’t that many games, I also can’t really say there was much in the way of “wow, I haven’t played that one in a while” days.

With one exception!

So let’s get to it.

I haven’t played Great Western Trail: New Zealand in a couple of years now, but it came out on a Sunday when there were just three of us there, and I had forgotten just how much I love this one.

It’s easily my favourite of the series.

Is that because it’s a bit more streamlined with ways that you can get points and so you don’t feel like you’re lagging behind everybody else?

Maybe.

But I also love how the various employees come out and are on a separate track from the bonuses that you can purchase.

Rather than the employees being a random price depending on when you decide to place them and what the cost of that row is, their cost is based on how many are already out there.

I also really enjoy the shipping aspect of the game, moving your ship around to establish alternate trading posts that you could deliver your sheep to, or purchase the harbormaster tiles the same way you do the stationmaster ones.

The pathfinder track (or whatever it’s called, the one with the bird) is also a neat addition to the game.

Not to mention being able to shear sheep for money if you go to the right building!

That also gives you a new employee as well.

I did win the game this time, which had no effect on how much I enjoyed this game.

I would have anyway.

I also got in my first play in 2026 of my #2 game of all time, Civolution.

I didn’t realize it had been 18 months since I had played it!

That had to change, and it came out by request because a friend of mine was enjoying its new online version on Boardgame Arena.

I’m in four of those right now, which can be hard to keep straight.

But I’m managing.

This game is just so great, the best of Stefan Feld’s games by a wide margin, at least for me.

It takes a lot of time to set up and it was a long play because people needed a refresher on it (hell, it had been 18 months for them too!), but once we got going, it just flowed really smoothly.

It wasn’t quite a year, but I hadn’t gotten Arboretum to the table since January 2026, so it was almost one.

It was loved so much that we played it twice at lunch.

This is another game that goes over really well and while the scoring can be a little obscure, most people seem to get it after one play.

As long as you don’t get so frustrated after one play that you swear off the game forever, like somebody I know.

It’s just such a vicious game in some ways, even as pretty as it looks.

Having to “qualify” to score a specific tree path by keeping enough of that tree’s cards in your hand to have the most, while others see your really long run of maple trees and try to prevent you from doing so, all of that is just mean.

But it’s fun!

After three years of not having played it, we were able to get a second play of Galaxy Trucker in for the second straight month.

Last month, we introduced it to a co-worker and promised chaotic destruction.

Then there wasn’t any.

This time around, while the chaos was still kind of minimized, I did lose an entire side of my ship because I only had one connection to it, and of course that’s where the meteor hit from behind.

Yep, see that engine on the 4th column in the back?

Taken right out, losing all those batteries and guns along with them (though thankfully I had already used at least 2 of the batteries).

I really don’t like real-time games, but for some reason Galaxy Trucker is just a blast to play.

We also got another play in of Taverns of Tiefenthal, which I enjoyed enough that I realized I should probably review it!

I’ve played it enough, anyway.

So that provided one review this month.

Then there was my monthly Combat Commander ladder game, a second game in the Pacific and I achieved what I normally achieve in the Pacific (except last month): nothing, zilch, nada, bupkus.

It was a lot of fun, but did terribly.

Finally, I already mentioned it last Friday, but it was so great to get together with some online friends and play a game together!

I played with Zilla Blitz and a couple of other guys from his Discord, and playing live with voice chat is a lot of fun.

Other than my monthly Combat Commander games, this is the first time where I’ve ever played an online game live with voice, actually talking to the people I was playing with.

I really should do more of that.

A short post this month, but I know November’s is going to be a bit long, unless it’s full of new to me games and games that I’ve played this year.

I know one of the plays will be with the expansion to one of my favourite games (you’ll have to wait to find that out), but who knows what will be on the horizon?

What did you play in October?

Let me know in the comments.