September Wrap-Up

The school year has begun so that means we're getting back into our regular routines. September did have some highlights, include a work trip that brought me to North Dakota for a two day conference and we saw a Taylor Swift cover band called Let's Sing Taylor as a family. Other than that it was a lot of gaming for me and not much else. This month is shaping up to be a busy one between both work and having plans nearly every day each weekend. This post will be shorter than most because we didn't have time to watch anything of note and I didn't come across any fun snacks to share.

Blah Blog Log

  • August 2024 Wrap-Up - Lots of games, an ice cream contest, and a psychological thriller/supernatural horror film that I'm still thinking about.

Bored Board Games

My third most played game in 2023, Kingdom Builder, saw 11 plays on BGA last month bringing it to 17 for the year. BGA still saw a majority of my plays, but more in person gaming days meant I played a lot more with people which was really nice. In September, I logged 56 plays across 24 games, 8 of those being new for the year.  That brought me to 87.66% of the way to part one of my goal (600 plays) and 90.66% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games).  This month's highlighted game is:

Paleo - I've had this game sitting on my shelves since Christmas 2023 because I just wasn't sure when I'd feel like learning and teaching it. If you know me, you know that cooperative games aren't really my jam, I'd much rather stomp people than work together. However, this game looked different than others and comes from a publisher that produces great games but hadn't dabbled in the coop arena before. After playing it this past weekend, I regret not busting it out sooner because it's not only got great art and production value, but it's an absolute joy to play. I plan on playing it at least this month for the Solotober Challenge. 

Paleo is a co-operative adventure game set in the stone age, a game in which players try to keep the human beings in their care alive while completing missions. Your long-term goal is painting a woolly mammoth on the wall so that humans thousands of years later will know that you once existed. If you can complete this before having five deaths in your camp, you win the game. What I love is the central deck that gets evenly distributed from round to round amongst the players but you never know exactly what cards you have to play, just an idea of what could be based on the images on the back of each card. Balancing what could be and what other players should try to do it key because it's rare that everyone will be able to do the main actions on their cards each hand. The game bleeds theme and does a great job making you work together while also never knowing exactly what's going to happen next. There are a bunch of scenario decks and the ability to mix and match beyond those found in the rulebook. Expansion scenarios and a full expansion means there's basically endless possibilities that I very much look forward to exploring. 

Enjoyable Eats

While in North Dakota the conference folks fed us very well each day. I just want to highlight my favorite thing I had to eat outside of the hotel where the conference was being held. Despite being pretty full after a day of meals and snacks, I found myself hungry at nearly 8pm here, but only 7pm there, so we found a pizza place doing wood-fired Neapolitan style pizzas. I would have never guessed I'd find great pizza where we were but FireFlour in Bismarck, ND know what they are doing. I had the Neroblu, which had blu cheese, Italian topea onions, blackened beef, mozzarella, semi-sun dried tomatoes, peppered bacon, and micro greens. The cook on it was amazing and I stuffed my face, eating the whole thing. I woke up the next morning and did a 5K on the treadmill to make up for it. Totally worth it.

Resolutions Update

I'm very close with the board game goal, but the other two are falling behind. There's still time to do well with each so we'll see.
  • Goal #1: Cook More Italian Food - Struggled to find inspiration for this and being gone for a week didn't help. There's still lots of time to try some new things.
  • Goal #2: Log 600 Plays of At Least 150 Games - As of September 30th, I've played 136 unique games 526 times total. This one is pretty much in the bag, especially with Solotober starting today.
  • Goal #3: Write at Least 3 Blog Posts Each Month - Only one post in September means I'm not even going to hit 50% for this goal by year end. Haven't really been focused on this much and will only write if I feel inspired to going forward.

Wrap It Up

Please comment below with any thoughts or comments on anything I've covered. Thanks for reading!

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