Board Game Friday: September 2024 Board Game Arena Plays

Last week, I took a look at my in-person board game plays for September 2024.  Today, we move to the virtual gaming table over at Board Game Arena (aka BGA).  While I may not have had a ton of in-person games played in September, I was quite busy in the online world of gaming!  In total, I played 66 games online (but only winning 26 of those, a 39.4% winning percentage).  While my win rate might not sound great, it was a bit of an improvement over August (33.8%) and, more importantly, many of my games were played against more than one person so I shouldn't expect a proper 50% win rate!

Here's what I got to the (virtual) table in September:

Lost Ruins of Arnak continues to dominate at the top of my most-played charts.  

New games for the month included Castle Combo, a simple card drafting/tile-laying game with a tacked-on castle theme (barely).  It's still a fun puzzle each time I play though I don't think it's a game that I'll ever try to purchase to play in person (it works great, however, as an asynchronous game online)!

Harmonies was another new-to-me game that I tried on BGA this month.  However, unlike Castle Combo, Harmonies was good enough that I went out and picked up a physical copy to play with my son and family.  Harmonies is a game where you draft landscape tokens and animals and then try to build the correct habitats to score as many points as possible.  The game is quick and with a bit of luck anyone can win.  

Sometimes, I actually own a game in person and then I discover later on that the same game is available on BGA.  That happened to me twice in the month of September, first with Downforce and then with DinoGenics.

Downforce is a great, family-weight racing game with a bidding element (though I haven't introduced that element to my son yet).  DinoGenics is a "build a dinosaur theme park" type game that is also quite a bit of fun, though much longer than Downforce.

Finally, I tried out Terra Mystica and Tapestry.

Terra Mystica is one of those classic games that I've never had the opportunity to play.  I was able to play a pair of games on BGA and I can honestly say that I still barely have any idea what I am doing in that game.  Tapestry, on the other hand, is a game that I traded for a physical copy of but had also never managed to actually play.  I've only given Tapestry a single try on BGA but it's another game that I can say with certainty will take a play or two before I feel like I have a decent idea of what I ought to be doing.  I can't give either game a full endorsement quite yet but I certainly see potential in both!

That's a wrap on my September plays on BGA.  Overall, a great month of virtual gaming which was highlighted by the fact that I got to try out a bunch of new-to-me games.  As always, if you'd like to play some games with me on BGA, let me know.  I'm willing to try almost anything!