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Bobby Warren
United States
Glendale
Arizona
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I played 30 games a total of 79 times and nine expansions a total of 42 times. Nine of the games were new to me as was one of the expansions (which I also counted as a new game).
Jack the Ripper games were quite popular this month. What does that say about my mood? Nothing, I hope!
Here they are in alphabetical order based on the editions I own.
10 Days in the USA
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 1/07
Three cars spaced evenly apart in the middle of my trip and I still couldn't pull out the win. How much do I suck?
7 Wonders
Times Played: 18
Last Month Played: 3/11
It was only played a few times in April, and I started winning on occasion. I guess I can be taught? Who knew?
Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
Times Played: 2
Last Month Played: 2/11
We played a three-player game to get the promo card, and the following week I played a two-player game with Nico while waiting for others to arrive.
I'm looking forward to the upcoming expansion, though I wonder if adding more cards to the deck will do little more than ensure we won't see particular cards for multiple playings?
Biblios
Times Played: 2
Last Month Played: New to me
It starts with a card draft and ends with an auction and works with two players. Auction games usually do not work with two players, so it is a pleasant surprise. This one does because the players have limited resources and do not know where the other one stands in the race to win the points for each of the five categories in the game.
The negative about the game is one player can get better card drafts and because each player only sees half the cards which the other takes into their hand during the draft they have no idea where each other stand in contest of control for each category. I'm looking forward to playing it some more to see if it stands up to continued playing.
Code 777
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
I traded for this classic deduction game and got to try it out. I liked it, but really want to get the color sheets made and laminated.
Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
We played a two-player cooperative game and got out butts kicked.
It's a fairly typical Flying Frog game. Some random events, some dice rolling, a little strategy, and not much else. It's fun, but not spectacular.
Cribbage
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 1/11
Only the second time played this year. I will still bet that it breaks 20 plays by the end of the year.
Dominion
Times Played: 8
Last Month Played: 2/11
Expansions Played: Alchemy and Prosperity.
A slim single-point victory over Christa using a randomized Dominion/Prosperity set-up. Boxing up the various sets in their own smaller boxes has made transporting this easier and has also made it more likely to get played.
Later in the month, Mike, Hilary and I played several games using the base game and Prosperity and then Mike and I played two with Alchemy and the base game.
I am enjoying Prosperity more and more, while I see Alchemy more and more as a niche expansion which is okay to be played on occasion.
Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 10/10
We played the Daylight Assault scenario and had our rears handed to us. Nothing about playing it again has increased my opinion of the game. It's still highly random with little real storytelling happening. I'll play, but I can't ever imagine asking to play.
Eine Frage der Ähre
Times Played: 2
Last Month Played: New to me
It's a decent tile-laying game.
In the first game, I don't think I managed any kind of balance between scoring early points and barn points and I came in dead last out of four players.
In the second game, we played with three and I focused a little more on scoring points and getting the early farm on the board. I also managed to collect two cattle and two pig tiles. I ended up scoring just under 200 points about 10 to 15 points more than Michael, who played in the first game and he was about the same distance in front of the player who had not played it before.
Like you might expect with a tile-placing game, I felt the scoring was more in my control than with four. I still liked it with four, but I liked it much more with three.
Hanging Gardens
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 2/11
A night-ending game with four players.
Innovation
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
Mike had played this and didn't like it. Believing the fanboy hype, he thought he would pick it up and try it with two and I was the Guinea Pig for that experiment.
Hoping to cause Armageddon, the designer came up with Advanced Fluxx. Except Fluxx can end at any time and everyone has a chance to win. In this turkey, you can get stuck with cards that never allow you to advance beyond a certain point while the others race to win the "game".
Unfortunately, I can't rank this a 1 because there is the skeleton of a game in this flawed design with crappy graphic presentation. (Checker board backgrounds on cards, really?)
Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 2/11
The zombie horde (not the promo card from Nightfall) won the day, err, night. We had everything we needed to start the truck and all four characters in the square with the truck, but we were unable to kill the zombies to allow us the actions to gas up the truck.
Letters from Whitechapel
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
Track down the killer before he is done with his murder spree.
It has some similarities to other games, such as hidden and plotted movement for the bad guy, as well as special movement tokens, but the system is streamlined and focuses on the investigators trying to narrow down where Jack's lair is and cutting him off from it.
I played Jack against Christa, Mike, and Allan and survived until just after the last victim was claimed. I made a poor movement choice and realized it after they started moving so all I could hope for is them not realizing where I was, and they were too smart for that and arrested Jack.
The game took about 2 hours, including explanation. I think we could get it played in 90 minutes most of the time.
London
Times Played: 2
Last Month Played: 3/11
I taught Michael and Nico how to play.
Michael was rolling in the money for most of the game and pulled out the victory. If I would have had one more turn, I would have been able to pay off my loan and drop my poverty to zero (from the two I ended the game with) which would have likely put me in first.
Nico was managing poverty pretty well through much of the game, but ended with 17, so a net of 15 which dropped him from second place to way in last place.
I played another game with Michael and Kevin.
This time I tried to focus more on VPs and less on reducing Poverty and I failed. Kevin also forgot that money was tight in the end, so I'll make sure to remind people that this is the case whenever we play the game until I know for sure that everyone knows.
Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
There are a lot of similarities between this and Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game and I am not 100% sold on this because I really don't want to have to create my decks before playing the game. In the time it takes to do that, we could be playing another game...
Mr. Jack Pocket
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 3/11
Mike bought it and I did what I could to teach the game and ended up losing in the third round.
Mystery Rummy 1: Jack the Ripper
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 11/07
Wow, it doesn't seem like it was 3.5 years ago that I last played this. No wonder I forgot some of the subtleties of this entry in the Mystery Rummy series. Christa and I played a tight game. I was close to winning going into the last hand, and when I put down the first victim, she responded by going out almost immediately, sticking me with negative points and leaping ahead for the win.
Navegador
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
This is a really fun exploration game using the rondel which Mac Gerdts is famous for. The rules are kind of hard to decipher because of the language used, but in the end it was worth it.
Nightfall
Times Played: 5
Last Month Played: 3/11
I also received the Zombie Horde promo and started playing with that. I'm still mostly playing two-player games and I think it works better with three and four.
Pandemic
Times Played: 3
Last Month Played: 2/07
Expansions Played: On the Brink.
The diseases won all three games. Two of them were with four players and five epidemics, and the other was with three players and five epidemics.
Pastiche
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 11/09
My first time playing since it was in prototype form and I was done in my a rule suggested during the play testing.
The rule? The bonus points for painting multiples of an artist.
It was suggested by Michael, who won the game. Bastich.  
Powerboats
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 11/10
I was really hoping to play with the expansion tiles, but Nico hadn't played before, so I thought it might not be a good idea. Maybe next time we'll get to use them?
Ra: The Dice Game
Times Played: 3
Last Month Played: 3/10
Mike and I played a couple of quick two-player games and then played again a few weeks later. It's really Ra with dice. 
Race for the Galaxy
Times Played: 6
Last Month Played: 2/11
Expansions Played: The Gathering Storm and Rebel vs. Imperium.
I've dropped my rating for Rebel vs. Imperium down to a five. There are just too many cards when it is used with The Gathering Storm. For the last game of the month Michael pulled the cards from RvI from the deck. We went through the deck two plus times in that game. Order has been restored to the galaxy.
Resident Evil Deck Building Game
Times Played: 2
Last Month Played: 2/11
Expansions Played: Alliance.
A quick two-player game with Nico using his set because I sold mine and a three player game at the end of the month using the Mansion and Character cards from Alliance.
I had forgotten how cheap the card stock was since I had sleeved mine right when I bought it. Nico’s cards were curling and they were hard to keep in stacks during the game. He said he was going to buy sleeves for it.
Why did I sell my copy? Because I wasn’t taking it along to play and the person who bought it would be bringing it when he arrived to play and he was the one most-likely to ask to play. The other times I would likely play it would be with Mike, who owns a copy. I still like the game and hope all who have it will get the expansion when it makes it out.
Resident Evil Deck Building Game: Alliance
Times Played: 2
Last Month Played: New to me
Mike and I played with just the cards from this self-contained game. I like a lot of the new cards and the characters are unbalanced as they are in the base game. Some of them are awesome and some appear weak. Overall, it looks like a great addition to the original game. As stated above, I also played using parts of this with the original game.
Snow Tails
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 2/07
A short race against Michael and one of his daughters, who beat us. If it were a full-sized track I would have won.
Yes, in fact I do need to make excuses when I've been beat by an elementary-school child (even if she had some help from her dad and I). My ego is that fragile.
Thunderstone
Times Played: 7
Last Month Played: 3/11
Expansions Played: Wrath of the Elements, Doomgate Legion, and Dragonspire in all games.
Mike and I played another of my created Village/Dungeon set-ups. This one focused on the weaker heroes so I tried designing it with the weakest of each hero class: Chulian, Diin, Regian, and Tempest. With two of us we only bought the two heroes with the greater attacks at first level, the Diin and Tempest. Maybe it will work better with more players? Maybe I need to change the monsters around to make the cleric and thief more useful?
I've also played several set-ups which I created and they are generally better than trying to come up with something completely random.
With that being said, I also played a few games with Mike using mostly random set-ups. Usually we tweak the village cards as we pull them out to make sure we have some kind of synergy. We both ended up really linking the Evoker hero class because it gave you something to spend extra XP on.
Tracking this game is really beginning to inflate my games played. It'd be cool if there was some way to link expansion plays to a game so they only showed up as expansion plays and not game plays.
Wyatt Earp
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 7/10
It was a close two-player game. Christa gambled at the end and tried slapping a Hideout on Belle Starr as she went out, and it failed. The reward on Belle was enough to make the difference between a win and a loss.
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