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February 2024 Wrap-Up

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I was sick with the flu for a portion of the month, but it was still pretty jam packed. Christine and I saw two live shows, we visited the Delaware Museum of Nature and Science with the kids, and I still found time to play a bunch of games. Blah Blog Log January 2024 Wrap Up - Board games, a mobile game, and a delicious sandwich. Criminal Podcast  - A favorite podcast of mine and I got to see their live show. Hidden Cup V  - One of the best Age of Empire II tournaments. Bored  Board Games Due to being sick throughout the middle of the month, I wasn't able to keep up the incredible pace that I set in January. However, I did still play quite a bit more than I typically played up until recently. I logged 45   plays across 26 games, 19 of those being new for the year. That brought me to 24.1% of the way to part one of my goal (600 plays) and 36% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games). Only two of the games were new to me, so the game I'm going to highlight this month

Hidden Cup V

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  About three and a half years ago, I wrote about the Twitch/YouTube streamer T90Official who covers all things Age of Empires II. Since finding his channel and then many others, I have been watching Age of Empires II content almost daily. There are so many great personalities who have built wonderful online communities in their chats on whatever platform they have been on over the years. While there are tens of thousands of players, the competitive scene is fairly small when it comes to the S-Tier tournaments. This means you know most, if not all, of the players competing. You've seen their gameplay, you know their preferences when it comes to civilization and map picks, and you could probably identify most of them if you watched a game without their name being on the screen. Well, that's what you'd think, but T90 has been running a tournament that has proven even the experts of the game may not know the players as well as they think they do. And that is the whole premis

Criminal Podcast

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Last night Christine and I attended a live event for one of my favorite podcasts, Criminal . From their website, "Criminal is an award-winning podcast about true crime. Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle." Unlike a lot of true crime media, the stories aren't typically gruesome or horrific. The host, Phoebe Judge, does a great job of taking out certain details of the more violent stories which allows her to tell the story, as it happened, in a more nuanced way. Since starting the show in 2014, there have been more than 250 episodes that have been a joy to listen to.  For their 10 year anniversary, Phoebe, co-creator Lauren Spohrer, and the rest of the Criminal team are currently on tour doing a set of live shows across the country. Knowing my love of the show, Christine asked if I wanted tickets to go when they went on sale months ago. So on a cold night in Glenside, PA, a town just north of Philadelphia, a few hundr

January 2024 Wrap-Up

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  The new year has started off really well, despite it being incredibly cold. A couple of delays and work closings were a great way to ease into the month. Because I was busy focusing on my resolutions and playing a new to me mobile game, there are fewer segments this month but still some great stuff to cover. Blah Blog Log December 2023 Wrap-Up  - A busy gaming month and some great food. 2024 New Year's Resolutions - New Year. New Goals. Age of Origins - This mobile game is addicting and a time sink. Bored  Board Games  Board Game Arena continues to fuel the majority of my plays and will continue to do so if I want to meet my goal of 600 plays before the end of the year. However, January got off to an absolute bang because I logged 100 plays of 35 unique games. That puts me 16.67% of the way to part one of my goal and 23.33% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games). Sea Salt & Paper and Res Arcana fueled the way for a second straight month because they're ama

Age of Origins

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My latest obsession is the mobile game Age of Origins also known as Age of Z. Age of Origins is a zombie war strategy game for mobile where you slay zombies, forge alliances, and rebuild civilization. Players build their city from the ground up to produce resources, recruit soldiers, and upgrade their technology. There are player vs player battles, events against zombie hordes, a tower defense mode, and so many other facets to the game. While Age of Origins is free to play, pumping money into the game certainly could help you expedite your ability to reach the top of the rankings.  The other resource you could use to climb the ladder is time. If you think TikTok is a time sink, it has nothing on this game. For those of you familiar with Farmville and other games of the like that require you to log in multiple times a day because everything is on a timer, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Of course you could just play for a few minutes a day, but you won't find succ

December 2023 Wrap-Up

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The year is over and this is a snap shot of the busiest month of the year across the board. Blah Blog Log December was a very busy gaming month and the posts reflected that. Here's what you may have missed. November 2023 Wrap-Up  - The second wrap-up post of the series. Top 10 New to Me Games of 2023  - These were my favorite new to me games in 2023. Deep Dive December 2023: Scythe - A summary of a solo board game challenge Bored  Board Games Despite only having three in person meetups, I did more gaming in December than any other month thanks to  Board Game Arena . These are a couple of games I'd like to highlight: Sea Salt & Paper  - I played this after writing my  Top 10 New to Me Games of 2023  post and this would have slotted in close to the top 5 had I played it before. I've played about a dozen games on BGA of this really smart hand management and set collection game. The hook of the game is how the scoring happens and how players can decide to end the round to

2024 New Year's Resolutions

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The theme for for 2024 is focusing on the things that I really enjoy doing. My hope is that it will help me find more contentment in my life. Instead of focusing on one year-long goal that I don't really want to do, like I did last year, I've picked three things that get me excited. I've recently started to accept that life is too short to be chasing so many dreams and, that at nearly 40 years of age, I know what I like. Coupling that with my goal of wanting a simple life, I want to spend more time on my interests. So in 2024, I will: 1) Cook More Italian Food On the final episode of the year of the Sporkful podcast, host Dan Pashman vows to eat more of a type of food and also grades himself on how well he did on the previous year's goal. In keeping with the spirit of doing things that I love, cooking (Italian food especially) is definitely one of my favorites. This year I want to cook more Italian food, with a focus on non-pasta dishes. Don't get me wrong, I will