July Games

For anyone paying attention that noticed there was no June games post... that's because I didn't play any games in June... The first week of June was a made rush to get things ready for our European Vacation... and then the rest of the month was the European vacation... during which we did not play any games. At least during June! 

At the beginning of July we were still on out European trip. The first three days of July Amanda was at the conference in Paris (which was the "REAL" reason for the trip...).  On the fourth we loaded everything up and got on a train that took us to Carcassonne... 

 

Sunday, 5 July 2026

Playing Carcassonne... in Carcassonne... with the walls of Carcassonne in the background!? 

It was crazy hot while we were there. Sunday was only 35°C, but it wasn't too bad in the shade of the rooftop terrace of our AirB&B... which afforded a spectacular view of the walls of the medieval city of Carcassonne, for which the game is named. 

We had hauled our copy of Carcassonne with us on the European Adventure (well, just the base game...) 

In the tourist offices, they actually SELL copies of the game! And a lot of the expansions AND a tile you can apparently ONLY BUY IN CARCASSONNE!? (obviously we bought one...)

(note; I later found the tile on BoardGameGeek, and there was no mention of it being ONLY available in Carcassonne... Ah, well...)

Monday, 6 July 2026

The following evening, after another day of exploring the city, we played another game. This time Amanda won! 

Amanda had been a bit grouchy about losing the previous evening and had made a comment about wondering if she EVER won games and if I just won all the time... THIS is the reason I log games on BoardGameGeek! So I did look it up. I did look up the stats…

Over the last twelve years, we have played 52 games of Carcassonne.

I have 19 logged wins

Amanda has 16 logged wins

In one game we were tied for first!

In four of the games someone other than Amanda or I was logged as the winner (Finnegan or Morgan - which does not reflect on their ability or win rate, they’ve just played very few games!). 

In twelve games, I did not record the scores or who won. 

Initially when I started logging games on BoardGameGeek, I did so just to keep track of how many games we played... (hence twelve games where no scoring data recorded) but after hearing a lot of complaints of me "always winning games" - and did NOT feel like that was actually the case - I started to track the wins and scores). There are some games that I tend to win more. Usually ones requiring pattern recognition or geometry.. Amanda tends to win a lot of others - generally ones that require executive functioning skills and planning, worker placement, task management, short-term memory, etc...  

Tuesday, 7 July 2026

in the morning we walked all over downtown Carcassonne again and took in the festivities around the start of the fourth stage of the 2026 Tour de France... and then walked up into the fortified city again and by 5 pm we were EXHAUSTED... so we went back to the apartment and ended up playing Carcassonne SIX MORE TIMES!? 

Still in cheery dispositions...

Amanda started getting tired of losing...

At this point it was apparently five games to one...?

I'm fairly certain she won at least one other game... I'd have to go check BoardGameGeek again... the whole vacation was a bit of blur at this point!?

and one more made NINE games of Carcassonne played in Carcassonne (with the walls of Carcassonne in the background!?

(and just like that, Carcassone became our most played game of the year, so far... With ten plays, that is more than double the next more played game - Sagrada - at five! I mean, we still have five and a half months to go this year and plans to get playing Warhammer Quest again... so that could change!) 

In some of the pictures it almost looks like a mural or background that would drop in with zoom... but I assure you, we rented a place with a rooftop deck that overlooked a square with a church and the walls of Carcassonne behind it...  

After this it was onto a train the following morning to get back to Paris and then flying home to Canada the next! 

Check out the Art Blog to see some of the doodles I did while I was there: 

Sketches from Carcassonne

Friday, 17 July 2026

Friday morning I rolled out to the Warhammer Store to play a game of Blood Bowl with Vera! I'd hoped to get there before it got too hot (and hoped it would be quiet there - as it often is on weekdays... Alas, there was another group setting up a game of 40K when I arrived. It ended up being not TOO noisy and I got through the game without too much troubles! 

Vera brought the Halfling team she's been painting for RJ - who I was to play on Monday! It was a bit of a preview of what COULD happen, I guess, if RJ couldn't make a successful dice roll to save his life... It was... wow... the game ended with the Gnarly Gobbos winning 4-1 - the solitary goal the Halflings scored was a pretty epic ONE TURN TOUCHDOWN where EVERYTHING went right. If things had gone right for Vera all game, it could easily have been the complete reverse! 

Read all about the game here:

Blood Bowl - Another Pre-Season Exhibition Match - against Halflings!! 

Monday, 20 July 2026

Monday I played my first Blood Bowl League game. I was pretty anxious about this. I was playing against someone I never met before and... you never really know with these open leagues that anyone can just join... but it ended up being a super good time! The fellow I played against, Ryan (or RJ, as goes by in the league, because there are two other Ryans in the league of 16 people!?) was a super friendly and fun opponent! He looks kind of serious in the picture above, but it was 90% laughs and 10% "Wow... How do I unfuck THIS situation!?" 

It was definitely the fastest first half I've played yet! I don't think there was a single turn in that first half where either of our teams got to activate more than half of the team before some idiot self-downed themself or tripped over their own feet, fumbling the ball  and ending the turn!? 

It was absolutely EPIC in it's absurdity! Hilarious and ridiculous. These are the games I remember over the years; where just DUMB STUFF happens and we just can't stop laughing. This is the very best of Blood Bowl! I look forward to when we meet again on the fields of astrogranite (Where Leon Cankersore will have his REVENGE against those trees that wronged him so! I mean, there are splinters in there that will just NEVER come out!?) 

My MVP absoloutely SHOULD have been #16 S. Maulfart... who was thrown by a troll (and was NOT eaten), landed on his feet without shattering his knees, dodged through THREE tackle zones and rushed twice to score that ONE goal in the VERY LAST turn of the game... only using ONE re-roll (from his Dodge skill!) 

Instead the MVP went to Lil Bopper, the Goblin Pogoer, who, while not actually scoring any goals or beating anyone up, was probably responsible for the most forward movement of the ball during the game, having gained possession of it one multiple occasions and running it up the field before, ultimately, being brought down by those sneaky, nasty halflingses (or... as was often the case... his own HUBRIS!!)

For more pictures and some brief commentary...

Blood Bowl League: Match #1 - Gnarly Gobbos versus Los Sicarios (Halflings!)

Thursday, 30 July 2026

I have to admit... I'm not a huge fan of Uno... But I am a fan of Shepard Fairey... and after seeing his work at the Moco Museum and the Beyond the Streets Exhibition in Paris, so is Amanda! Soooo..... 

We ended up buying a copy of the Uno Artists Series featuring his art work... 

It arrived on Thursday... 

So we somehow managed to convince the kids to try it out!

Morgan dropped out after one round, when they found out that a proper game involves keeping score at the end of each round and playing until someone got to 500... We ended up playing over a DOZEN rounds before someone scored over 500... 

Will we EVER play is again...!? I don't know. 

I know a number of the people Finnegan plays D&D with love it. Finnegan despises the game... but put up with it to play with us... so maybe he'll play it with them sometime.. 

Amanda will probably suggest it. We have friends that would play it... I don't mind it so much when I'm looking at fun art on the cards...

Friday, 31 July 2026

I'd had my second league game scheduled for the last day of July - but then my opponent got unexpectedly called into work!! Hopefully we'll get to play some time in the next week! 

April Games

 I actually played GAMES in April! 

Well... not until the second half of April (after my projects and final exam were finished!)... and it wasn't a LOT of games... and there were no miniature games... or war-games... but there were still games!? So that's something! 

Saturday, 18 April 2026 

MORGAN actually suggested doing something Saturday evening - which was surprising in itself, as they usually want little to do with us! I can't remember the last time they played a game with us - let alone the last time THEY SUGGESTED playing a game!!

We played a pretty quick game of Carcassonne - with just the base game... Despite Amanda and I splitting a 50-point megalopolis, Morgan ended only a few points behind! I just snuck ahead of Amanda at the end of the game by ruthlessly cutting her out of the farming... 

After wards we played a few games of Retro Loonacy. I won the first game. Morgan suggested we play two more - best two out of three...? It's like they didn't even CONSIDER that Amanda could possibly have won a game... As it turned out Morgan won the second and I won the third. While Amanda very often DOMINATES at a lot of other board games... Loonacy is not one of them. 

Afterwards we all watched a couple episodes of Resident Alien! 

Friday, 24 April 2026

Initially we'd planned to have friends over on Friday to play Wingspan - which we have not played in ages.... Amanda had played it a couple times last year with some of her friends... but I have not played it since June of 2024!? (Despite that, I did finally pick up the latest Americas expansion for Amanda's birthday earlier this month! It is still one of our MOST PLAYED GAMES ever!) 

But there was a late-season snow storm on Friday (THE THIRD ONE in as many weeks!?) so that got cancelled... but since Amanda had slated that time in as "play board game time" I convinced her to give Sagrada a try... 

I picked up Sagrada a while back. It was on sale... I realized later it was probably on sale because there is a slightly newer version out now... but I think it MOSLTY plays the same...? Earlier in the week I'd watched a how to play video. 

While she was eating supper, I tried a couple of quick solo games - the solo play version is very quick and easy enough to play, but difficult to win! I totally didn't read how to determine the target score for the first game so wasn't even remotely close... 49/109

The second game I scored lower... but was closer to the target score... 44/73

After Amanda had finished supper and ran some of the pizza I made over to Morgan who was house-sitting for a friend a few blocks away and busy studying for their final exam for English the following morning... we sat down to try out a game. 

We got part was through the second round and realized Amanda had been doing placement all wrong... (Started in the wrong place... didn't place the next few panes adjacent to already placed panes...) So we called them "practice rounds" and started over again... 

So much fun was had utterly destroying me the first time, Amanda decided we needed to play a second game... which she also won... 

Amanda suggested we bring it on our little vacation together the following week... though I wasn't entirely sure WHEN she was hoping to play as the "vacation" was her going on a work conference and me tagging along for fun... and, looking at the itinerary, I'm pretty sure she was supposed to be doing stuff from 7am-8 to10pm, depending on the day. The spa that the conference was held at seemed an odd choice, considering the very full itinerary, I'm not sure when the participants were supposed to make use of the spa facilities... maybe they figured most of the participants would be men and they'd be  bringing their wives and the wives would want to make use of the spa facilities...? I wasn't entirely sure what **I** was supposed to do for the four days...!?

And again... that was it... 

Maybe next month I'll get out the toys and play with them! Seriously, it's gotten to the point where I'm thinking about solo games again! 

October Games

Wow... So the entirety of Q3 was a bit of a bust... and... Q4 did not get off to a great start either... I didn't play any games at all for the first two weeks of the month... then... 

Monday, 14 October 2024

On the holiday Monday of the Thanksgiving weekend (in Canada!) Orion stopped by to have a "practice game" for the upcoming Path to Glory campaign to try out our respective forces and figure out the full Age of Sigmar rules - which ARE somewhat different from the Spearhead rules, which we've been playing with for the last few months! 

Orion's Soulblight Gravelords just hammered on my Hedonites of Slaanesh! 

There is a brief game report here:

Age of Sigmar - Path to Glory Practice

Sunday, 20 October 2024

A week later, Keiran and I went over to Shannon and Kevin's place to play some games with them and Kevin's son. 

First we played some Carcassonne. 

it was a VERY close game... 

Then everyone else played NMBR9... (because it only plays four and I don't LOVE the game) so I flipped the cards for them. 

Keiran just LOVED the game and utterly DESTROYED everyone else... I think they had 121 points at the end... next highest score was 81...? 

Next we played a few rounds of Tinderblox. A quick little game where you flip a card and try and add blocks to the existing pile in the orientation shown on the card, using the very slippery, odd angled tweezers!?

As soon as you drop something, knock something over, or something you just placed falls over, you are out of the game. 

Keiran, surprisingly, was less good at this one!? I would have thought with all the sewing and other crafty things they do, and the accompanying precise motor skills, they would have rocked this one as well... alas, they were out on the first round for BOTH games.  

The first game the stack got CrAzY high!?

Shannon won one of the games.

I won the other (miniature painting, yo!) 

Finally we played Pirate Fluxx. I'd not played Pirate Fluxx before, but plenty of other Fluxx games, and they're all pretty much the same. It's been a while since I've played any. Sometimes it's a REALLY FAST GAME! Other times it just goes on and onnnnn.... for-EVAR... this was closer to the latter! 

Still it was good to get out and play same board games again!!!

Wednesday, 30 October 2024

After a two and a half month hiatus... I sat down with Amanda and Finnegan to work towards finishing up Warhammer Quest: Shadow over Hammerhal. 

Finnegan played the Cogsmith, Golnir Coalbeard, which he'd originally been playing, and Arvios Sunhelm - Lord-Castellant of the Hammers of Sigmar. Amanda played Vizrin Kyre - Black Ark Fleetmaster (as usual) and took on Alnaryn, the Aelven Loremaster. The four heroes blasted through "The Vile Dungeon" filled with some dank, nasty Putrid Blightkings and a Rotbringer Sorcerer! 

You can read the full report of the evening's adventures here:

Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal - Session Five - The Vile Dungeon

And... that was IT?! 

Once again... not a LOT of games going on... I didn't even get around to trying out Devilry Afoot - or playing a second game of Five Men in Normandy!? (I had thought of trying a quick solo game this evening... but I was just too tired...) 

This was all kind of starting to get me down until yesterday when we played Warhammer Quest. It was SO MUCH FUN! I just LOVE that format of play and both Amanda and Finnegan seem pretty committed to finish this off - and then continue on with MORE of the Warhammer Quest games! I'll need to get painting the rest of the stuff for Silver Tower and/or Cursed City - as we could very well be moving on to one of those in the next few weeks!!

Feeling a bit more positive about next month - with the renewed interest in Warhammer Quest and the new edition of Warhammer Underworlds just a few weeks off and the kick off of the Path to Glory league.. Also Brent has arranged to stop by tomorrow and try out Lost Patrol. 

Things are looking up! 

What did YOU get up to playing over the last month!? 

July Games

Monday, 1 July 2024 (Canada Day!)

We started the month by heading over to Shannon's to play some board games with her and Kevin. 

First we played Betrayal at the House on the Hill. I've seen this game played (on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop? Maybe?) and we've played Betrayal at Baldur's Gate (a D&D themed reskin of the game that Finnegan has), but I've never played the original. 

I played Jenny LeClerc... 

And... This is how the Haunt happened on my second turn... 

We did not get far. 

The Betrayer was determined to be Shannon's Character; Professor Longfellow

Shannon left to read her rules and we were left to read our rules and figure out how to defeat the professor and win... I STILL have no idea what we were actually supposed to do... Shannon won very quickly... 

Afterwards we played Carcasonne. 

I like Carcassonne. We were only playing with the base set and four people so it seemed like it went very fast and was quite low scoring. 

Afterwards we played Dixit. Dixit is okay if you're playing with the right people. These were the right people. I had a lot of fun playing it. Other times... less so... 

We played a game called NMBR9... then Kevin had to go out. 

So Amanda, Shannon and I played again. 

Strangely, we all did way WORSE on our second game... but I did less worse tha Amanda and Shannon and won that one! 

That wrapped up a VERY BUSY WEEK of playing games (and other stuff!) if you recall from June, we'd played multiple games of Warhammer Underworlds EVERY DAY, ALL WEEK in preparation for the Rivals Tournament on Sunday, 30 June 2024!? (Also Keiran graduated from high school on the Monday kicking off that week... and... other stuff happened?!)

Friday, 5 July 2024

I rode all the way out to the Warhammer Store Friday afternoon, hoping to get in a game or two of Warhammer Underworlds... and no one showed up... 

So I got roped into playing a game of the new Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead against Dray... I played with the store's Stormcast Spearhead force and beat down some Ghouls of the Flesh-Eaters Court pretty hard... 

You can read the game report here:

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead - First Game!

Sunday, 7 July 2024

Sunday Nic and Orion were back to play more Warhammer Underworlds! 

In the first game I played with Thundrik's Profiteers with Rimelocked Relics (the combo I'd planned to bring to the tournament, but didn't). Amanda played Lady Harrow's Mournflight. Orion Played the Crimson Court and Nic played the Skinnerkin, both with Nemesis decks. 

For our second game we all played with Rivals Decks. I played the Dread Pageannt. Amanda played the Thricefold Discord. Orion played the Headsman's Curse. Nic played Da Kunnin Krew. We all had one BIG figher (a fighter with 5+ wounds!) 

I haven't made a game report for this game... I took a bunch of pictures... but just didn't get to it. The following week was brutally hot AND I was totally distracted by all the PDFs of the new Age of Sigmar rules and battle profiles and warscrolls being released?! 

It was so hot, I didn't even ride out to the Warhammer Store on Friday... I can survive riding in the heat... it's the prospect of standing around trying to play games while SOAKED in sweat that did not appeal to me! 

Tuesday, 16 July 2024

The following Tuesday, we finally started our Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal campagin! John and Maygan joined Finnegan and Amanda as they delved into the catacombs under the Cinderfall District of Hammerhal Aqsha. 

There is a bit of a report and more pics here:

Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal - Session One!

I missed the Skirmish Night at the Warhammer Store, as well as the Spearhead League kick off, because the temperatures soared into the +30s (°C) for a good chunk of the week... AND the air quality was terrible - for a few days, Environment Canada was just reporting it as 10+... once it gets beyond 10, there's just no point in keeping track, because it's just BAD!!

I had been super looking forward to Carrying on with the Warhammer Campaign the following Tuesday... but John and Maygan had to bail... 

Wednesday, 24 July 2024

Wednesday, Orion had an evening free and really wanted to try out Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead - and I had just finished the last of the Hedonites of Slaanesh Spearhead force and was looking for a game too! 

Orion's Soulblight Gravelords just DESTROYED my Hedonites... You can read all about it in the Game Report:

Spearhead: Hedonites of Slaanesh versus Soulblight Gravelords

Sunday, 28 July 2024 

Back to playing Warhammer Quest!

We moved our game to Sundays, because it's kind of the only day that worked for Maygan and John... but unfortunately Finnegan now plays D&D on Sundays, so he's had to drop out of the campaign!? Nevertheless... we forged ahead!

A brief report of the action can be found here:

Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal - Session Two!

Not as much gaming this month... 

People have been busy.... 

It's been HOT (and smokey!).... 

August isn't looking like it's going to be much better!?

What did everyone else get up to this month!?