Daniel J Isom

After the absolute slog that was the month of January, I felt like February kind of flew by. Sure the month is shorter than most, but the ending came so quickly despite not being that busy. We did have a small snow storm that dropped enough to give me a day off. The kids and I got out and played a couple of times since it was perfect packing snow for snowballs. We decided to visit the National Aquarium again in Baltimore before our yearly membership runs out. Other than that it was a lot of our usual schedule and I was thankful for some simple weekend days. Blah Blog Log There were a couple of posts early in the month and there may be more coming now that I'm inactive on Meta owned apps. January 2025 Wrap-Up  - TikTok ban, a psychological triller miniseries, and a board game I've wanted for many years. 100 Games 100 Plays  - A new long term gaming goal. Bored  Board Games I set a new personal record of number of plays in a given month with 220. While I was still doom...

  Recently I logged my 100th play of the card game Sea Salt & Paper , making it the 12th  16th (edit: previous blog post listed additional games) tabletop game that has reached the century mark. That got me wondering how many people have played even a single game 100 times. Then I thought, what if I had 100 plays of 100 games? In board games there is a stat called the H-Index, which is a measure of how many games you have played as many times as there are games in that group. For example, an H-Index of 5 means you have played 5 games at least 5 times. So I've decided to take on a long term project to try and achieve an H-Index of 100.  To give you some understanding of just how lofty this goal is, I've been actively participating in the hobby for close to twenty years and my H-Index is just under 30. It's hard to say exactly what the number is because I've only been logging games for a couple of years. Thankfully most of my online plays were saved on BGA so I hav...

2025 has started off with a bang. Things were quiet early on and then really picked up around the middle of the month. TikTok was temporarily banned, which has caused me to delete all Meta owned apps like Facebook and Instagram from my phone. I plan to stay inactive on all Meta apps until the fate of TikTok is decided. Once something is more definitive I'll make a decision on what I want to do going forward, which will include a post about my opinion the subject. That same weekend we were in NY to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday and had a wonderful time seeing so many family members all together again. The inauguration of President Trump and his subsequent executive orders set off a wave of discussions, especially at work. It's a very interesting time being a Libertarian who works for a state government but works on and is paid by federal grants. Overall, the mandates and expected changes have been a mixed bag. I'm excited to see the government become more effi...

“Simplicity brings more happiness than complexity.” The theme for 2025 is slowing down. In last year's post I mentioned that as I am nearing 40 years of life, chasing multiple goals just isn't what I'm interested in doing. To combat that, I focused on things I enjoyed and had some success in each of the three goals I set. However, this year I'm only going to have a single resolution and unlike some previous years, this single resolution will not have multiple goals within it. So in 2025, I will . . .  Read Simplify Magazine . Simplify Magazine is from the mind of Joshua Baker, the man behind Becoming Minimalist . I've read a couple of his books and continue to watch many of his YouTube videos, all of which are about...becoming minimalist. From the website, Simplify Magazine "is a quarterly, digital publication that pulls together experts in various fields to address some of the most pressing needs of the modern family."  Essentially each issue is a colle...

  The holidays came and went and while there were some good times, December wasn't exactly the best month of the year. In an effort to not drag down the New Year energy, I'm going to focus on the good stuff in this last wrap up post for 2024. Blah Blog Log I snuck in a couple of year end gaming posts on the last day of the month to actually hit my resolution goal after months of not getting there. November 2024 Wrap-Up - New single month gaming record, my favorite breakfast, and a new snack. Top 10 New to Me Games of 2024 - These were my favorite new to me games in 2024. Deep Dive December: Under Falling Skies - A summary of a solo board game challenge Bored  Board Games Sickness ravaged my household so plays saw an overall dip. I ended up having to cancel all of the in person meetups of our local gaming group. I'm hoping we can pick right up in the new year. For this month's highlight, I'm going to share the game that has my second most logged games of all time:...

I enjoyed sharing my favorite new to me games last year , so I thought I'd make that another yearly post by bringing it back again this year. I had a higher number of total plays (892) and unique games (162) played this year, so I had a lot to pick from for this list. While I did play some new releases, most of the games on this list were not published in 2024. There are about a half a dozen games that could have slotted into this list somewhere depending on my mood, but what's here is what I'd ask to play anytime. #10 -  Let's Go to Japan This snuck into the last spot on the list because I like the theme of visiting various places in Japan. It's a simple drafting game where you normally only have a few choices each round to add to your trip. There's quite a bit of luck of the draw that can really hurt if you focus on certain goals and just can't get cards that meld well with those goals on each of the days. However, the game never feels like you're real...

  Last year I completed my goal to play of  Scythe solo 10 times, after playing the  Lost Ruins of Arnak  solo 12 times the year before for the  Deep Dive December Challenge . This year I chose the solo only game Under Falling Skies . Since there is a multi mission campaign mode included in the base game, it seemed like the perfect time to try that out. Even though the complexity of the game probably warranted more than 12 plays, that's what I stuck with. The campaign said it takes around 10 plays to get through depending on how well you do and what difficulty level you try. Having only played the base part of the game a couple times previously, I played one basic game before jumping into the campaign on an easier difficulty. The game is essentially the classic arcade game Space Invaders in board game form. Instead of just moving artillery back and forth trying to shoot down ships, the player has to use a set of dice in various room spots to no...