You know this month was supposed to be pretty good for board games. Not amazing but decent. Instead I had a few games at the start of the month, a few games at the end and a giant drought in the middle. In fact the drought meant that I had no games recorded for 20 consecutive days, which is I think nearly a record for me. Between sickness, and the kids activities it left me very little extra time for gaming. Though weirdly, still enough to write something about this month.
Everything I played
The New
Only ten unique games but somehow still have three new games to discuss. Including one owned from before 2026 that can now be taken off my list of unplayed games in my collection (even though I didn’t play my own copy).
Kingdom Death: Monster: I have owned KD:M for…too long. I picked it up after the second Kickstarter (specifically for 1.5) and got the included gamblers chest and a few other expansions bought for this. I have a lot of opinions about KD:M, more so about it’s designer that I think merits it’s own topic at some point. I could never really find a group that would be into this. My gaming group already doesn’t meet up that often and even if we did I don’t think I have the kind of group that would be interested in a campaign game (…every time I write this I look longingly over to the King’s Dilemma sitting unplayed waiting for a decent group of 5 players to actually want to do it….). Until a local player lamented that he can never get his copy of the game played. So naturally I jumped on that and three of us decided to start a monthly game night to do the campaign with our first session actually happening! We did two years in the first session and had a grand old time not dying to the Lion. The game so far seems to be two games smashed into one, a boss battler (which I have only seen one boss but I can see how the system gets very interesting depending on how you handle the AI cards and the hit locations) and a city management game that is pretty extensive all things considered. I did enjoy it and I am hoping to enjoy more of our games of it. However, it seems to have become clear that there is no way I am going to get my own copy to the table so it might be time to sell that at a nice discount to get rid of it as I don’t believe it will make it to the table any time soon and it is a BIG box to just be keeping in your house all the time.
Verdict: The Good (but will need to see if it holds up with more plays)
Eternal Decks: In my usual pattern of trying to write about my gaming experiences as they happen I have already written about my experience with this game. Now that isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it. Actually I found it very interesting as a game and I would probably love to try it more at any player count really. The visual style is nice, though for me particularly it doesn’t add or remove anything from the gameplay, it is functional but not excessive. I may go back down to a difficulty that makes it feel achievable but not too easy. and build up from there. Overall I liked it but I feel like it needs more players to really show the cool things that it can do, particularly some of the other stages and win conditions.
Verdict: The Good (but needs more plays)
Blood On the Clocktower: This one was amazingly someone else reaching out that was interested. A coworker has the game and wanted to get their copy played and asked my work game group if people were interested in an evening game. We managed to get 7 players plus himself as the storyteller and decided to try it out. I think I want to probably make a whole post on my own history with Social Deduction and where BotC fits into it since i tried to do that in the post and it quadrupled the word count and that is just not what I want out of these monthly recaps. So I will keep it short and sweet.
I never really looked into Blood on the Clocktower though I knew of it’s existence. The super expensive “best experience in social deduction” game that was available. Hundreds of hours of works by people who love the genre to be the be all and end all of the genre. Tested and understood by people. I think it manages to hit this point and is a legitimate improvement over many systems but is still hampered by the requirement of a Storyteller. Sure they get more flexibility and can feel like they are playing, but ultimately they still end up playing their own game that doesn’t match up to the rest of the table. If there is one thing I want to point out that really improves the game overall is the accusations phase. Only two people are allowed to speak during once someone has been accused before a vote happens, the person who is doing the accusing and the person who is being accused. Everyone else stays silent and then votes. This is a really interesting twist on the usual formula and solves a problem that generally plagues the game. I did enjoy my two plays of it and if there end up being more work sessions that I can attend hosted by the same individual in the future I probably will.
Verdict: The Good (and not just because I won both of the sessions I played)
The Good
I am quickly realizing that even though this is a light month the things I have to talk about are all worth discussing so lets not slow down while we are ahead.
Gods Love Dinosaurs: Played this with the kiddos at their suggestion. I am always amazed how both a 9 year old and a 6 year old can grasp the rules of this game well enough to make it work. Their levels of strategy differ quite a bit, but they are both able to understand the timing advantages of getting the right animals at the right time and making sure that things don’t activate too early (and what happens if they activate too late). I of coarse whooped them in the score but I always enjoy this game even if I don’t think it is the deepest or craziest strategy potential game that exists.
Push It: You may not of heard of Push It. It is effectively a four player version of bocce ball where the central ball is a disk, and your balls are disks…I guess its bocce disk? It has vibes of a poor mans Crokinole as it does not require a board. In fact it is mostly marketed as a “pub” game where it seems to imply that you should take the imperfections of the table and the glasses and other objects on the tables as “obstacles” that become part of the board for bounding. We were somewhat inebriated by the time the game hit the table so we had several increasingly weird rounds which culminated with a new house rule that the middle puck must be placed on their side to start the game leading to some delightful bounces and an overall fun but silly experience.
Pandemic: The Cure: Ever since we have learned how to play this game properly (and how the epidemics work) we have been getting absolutely demolished even on the simplest difficulty in this game. On the bright side at least the game is enjoyable while it is wrecking you, and as always with pandemic style games once you start spiraling you spiral down hard. The dice can sometimes make it feel extra bad, especially when you roll five biohazards on your first roll and effectively lose both the turn and the have the game create about 10 more problems for you and lead you into a death spiral (this happened to me). Maybe a house rule is in order for that, though maybe sometimes you just go with the flow with these types of games. I have to say, I don’t think losing any of these games has made it “less fun” at all for me I think it stays in the same category as it was before. A game I don’t mind playing, but I wouldn’t seek it out if it were not for my kids.
The Rest:
Not much to mention here, mostly kids game with a single game of Santorini thrown in. Nothing bad but also nothing to write home, or in this case to the blogosphere, about.
Hopes for Next Month:
I am not saying that everything is going to be amazing for board games next month. But I mean April showers bring May board games….or something. There are plans for some scheduled board games, continuing the KD:M campaign and maybe trying to table Cysmic. Who knows…maybe I will even get some unscheduled board games.