Board Game Friday: January 2025 Plays

One month down in 2025, but if I'm being honest January felt like it took two or three months to end!  The weather here in northern Pennsylvania was much colder than normal, plus we had several days where the snow and/or ice made it difficult during my drive to and from work.  Long story short, I'm glad to flip the calendar to February where we can start to imagine the spring sunshine, even if it is still a ways off!  

Speaking of flipping the calendar, with January now in the books I can officially report that I managed 51 board game plays spread across 22 different titles.  Here's the full visual:

January was full of new-to-me games.  Those games included:

Pandemic: Hot Zone – North America:  A cooperative version of the classic Pandemic game, but simplified slightly (and quicker to play). Hot Zone is to Pandemic proper as Ticket to Ride: New York/Berlin/London/etc. are to classic Ticket to Ride. If you like Pandemic, then Hot Zone is worth it for the quicker play time, smaller box, and easier set-up. If you don't like Pandemic, nothing here will change your mind.

Spirit Island:  I finally got one of the all-time best cooperative games to the table and let me tell you, the game lives up to the hype. I played this three times in January (all two-player games) but I liked it so much I might be willing to give it a go single-player as well. Heck, I even went out and purchased the Folded Space organizer for the game!

Ticket to Ride Map Collection 4: Nederland:  My wife doesn't like to play many games but she will play Ticket to Ride. My son and I tend to get tired of playing the same thing over and over, so it's nice that there are so many different maps of Ticket to Ride to try! Nederlands is a fairly tight map with an interesting money component. My son is only six but he was able to grasp the money part of the game without any issue. I will say that set-up takes a bit longer for the game, but if that's not an issue for you, then this is easily one of my favorite maps (Nordic Countries is still my favorite, at least for three players).

Azul: Master Chocolatier:  I had played Azul on Board Game Arena a few times, but only last month did I finally play Azul on an actual tabletop. I'm not sure I have anything else original to add to the discussion of the game, though I can at least say that the Master Chocolatier version of the game is nice because there are two game modes included in the box.

Dungeons, Dice & Danger:  A roll-and-write type game where you traverse a dungeon based on making numbers using pairs of dice. This game requires a bit more thought than it might appear at first glance, but it's still light enough that families can play it together. I'm hoping to introduce this game to my son soon, I think he'll dig it.

ROVE: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer:  One of my board game challenges on my BGStats app is to play a game every single day. If I'm going to accomplish that, I need to have a decent stock of fun single-player games to pull out (and ideally, relatively quick-playing ones at that)! Rove fits the bill here as it is a Button Shy wallet game that's basically a fun, quick puzzle game. I've only played this twice so far but I can report that I'm definitely not an expert on the game yet!

Verdant:  Another BGStats challenge that I'm working on is the A-Z challenge, so getting to play a game starting with the letter V is worth it (V was one of three letters that I didn't get a game for last year, the others being Y and X). Verdant is an okay tableau builder game with a theme (houseplants in rooms) that doesn't do much for me. I'd play it again if someone requested it, but it isn't a game that I'm going to look to purchase for myself.

Mind the Gap:  A party game that we played at work during a community-building day. I kind of hated this one, the questions weren't balanced at all and the game took forever to complete.

River Wild:  Finally, another Button Shy solo game to round out the month of new-to-me games. I only played this one once but my initial review would be something along the lines of "it counted as a game for the day, but why play it otherwise?" I didn't think the puzzle element was super fun and I don't care much for the art style either. I'll probably give this one another go in February, but right now it's near the bottom of my ranking of Button Shy games I've tried.

All told, January might have been mostly lousy but it was a great month for staying inside and playing board games!  I guess even the cold, crappy weather has its uses.