Board Game Friday: August 2024 Games Played Recap!

In July, I had a total of 84 board game plays spread across 27 different titles.  Unfortunately for me, August is "back to school" month so I had to figure that my board game plays would go down some.  Luckily, they didn't take too big of a hit!

In total, for August 2024, I completed 68 plays spread across 24 different games. It was not quite as robust a month as July, but it was still my second-most-played month of the year to date!

Here's the full visual of my August plays:

And a closer look at my Top 9 most played games for the month:

As you can see, my son was back to loving Ticket to Ride (well, that and it's one game my wife will play with us as well)!  The Ticket to Ride franchise made up two of my top five games for the month including taking the number one slot with Ticket to Ride Europe.  

August also saw me trying a few new games including Town 66, Downforce, Dollars to Donuts, River Valley Glassworks, Numbsters, and My Lil' Everdell.  

Town 66 is a fun little puzzle game that instantly hooked my son.  The conceit is that you have to make a 6x6 shared grid such that each row and each column doesn't repeat a color or shape.  The catch is that you want to be the last person to use up all their tiles while also making sure you don't get stuck in a position where you can't use up all your tiles.  I think the game might be better at higher player counts but my son and I still enjoyed our plays of it together.

Another highlight of the month was Downforce, a fun racing game with little plastic cars and a two-sided board with a race track on each side.  I actually got Downforce in a trade along with Dollars to Donuts (which is a simple tile-laying game).  My Lil' Everdell is another kid-friendly game though I would say that the title is a bit misleading, the game is still deep enough that there are a fair number of decisions to make to get the best possible score in the end.  I'm not a huge fan of the Everdell universe of games in my limited plays, but I do think there's potential there if I give the game a few more chances.

My lone solo game of the month was Numbsters, a Button Shy "wallet game" that plays super quickly.  It's a fun little puzzle game built around the math joke:  "Why was six afraid of seven?"  A:  "Because 7 ate 9."  (Get it, 7 8 9?!).  Yeah, you wouldn't think that joke had enough depth to span a full game but it did!  

Finally, River Valley Glassworks is another fun little puzzle game.  My son and I played this one at our local game store in their demo room.  I think I liked River Valley Glassworks a lot more than my son (he even said that he didn't want us to buy it).  The game is on Board Game Arena so I've played a few more games over there and while the online game is fine, I think the main draw of the physical game is the nice little stone components.  It's a fine game, but not one I'd rush out to purchase.

All told, August was a successful month of gaming!  Unfortunately, now that school is back in session I can already report that my son has much less interest in playing board games at night.  That makes perfect sense as I think he expends a lot of energy during the school day so coming home and using even more brainpower may not sound like all that much fun for him.  On the other hand, I am going to use September to try and get in a few more solo plays than I've been doing, so who knows, maybe I'll still have a decent total number of plays when September ends (as Green Day would say).