Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Top of the Stack, April 2024 (Season 7 Premiere!)

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Top of the Stack, April 2024 (Season 7 Premiere!) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
• 0:08
  off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
• 0:11
  I'm Brendan Riley.
• 0:13
  Well, good afternoon listeners.
• 0:22
  It's a kind of drizzly night here in suburban Chicago.
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  And you know what that means?
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  More road noise than usual.
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  Whenever cars go by they're going to be extremely noisy.
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  So I may do a little bit more pausing and editing than usual.
• 0:38
  If I've been counting correctly and I think I have, this is the first episode of season
• 0:45
  7.
• 0:46
  Because yes, this is the first episode of season 7, episode number 601 of Pick Up and Deliver.
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  Now every year up till now, episode 1 has been roughly January 25th of the season.
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  And this year I got behind in the winter and then January was really busy and so I didn't
• 1:06
  even, I was still 20 some episodes away when January rolled around.
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  So I just, I ended the episode at the end of March.
• 1:12
  It's now the beginning of April and I'm starting the new season.
• 1:16
  We'll see.
• 1:17
  This one's just going to go as long as it does.
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  Just part of me that has a fantasy that I'm going to file enough episodes that I will finish
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  around December 15th or December 20th with the season.
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  But that would be a significant uptick in production over what I usually do.
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  So who knows what we'll do.
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  I'm just going to be in it for the fun now.
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  For those of you new to the podcast, welcome! Season 7 is here.
• 1:40
  And as is often the case, the first episode of a month, I do a very particular kind of
• 1:46
  episode.
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  I do the Top of the Stack.
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  It feels like it's been a couple of months since I mentioned it.
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  So Top of the Stack is a format I swiped from the beloved podcast of nonsensical gamers.
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  They used to do a segment each episode where they would talk about games they want to play
• 2:02
  that are sort of sitting on top of their metaphorical stack or it might have been an actual
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  stack, I don't know.
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  In my house it is, I'll get the games that are on the top of the stack out and bring them
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  upstairs.
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  So they're ready to play if I need them.
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  As an aside, the one of the hosts of the podcast of nonsensical gamers was Dan Halstad
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  who is the designer of Beez and more recently Aqua, which just came out and has been getting
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  a fair amount of coverage.
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  So good, good on you Dan.
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  Dan's also the person who introduced me to Barenpark, which is one of my favorites.
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  So begin the month, it's the Top of the Stack episode, which is where I review my play
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  experience from previous month and talk a little bit about what I'm planning to do next
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  month.
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  So if you're brand new to the podcast, maybe this isn't the very best episode to listen to
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  because it's a lot of sort of reading of lists and such, but I'll try to make it interesting
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  nonetheless.
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  So this month in May, or in March, I picked out four games and the goal is to play three
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  of them during that month.
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  There are games I haven't played before, although that's not always the case.
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  That was the case this month.
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  And the four games were Forum Trajanum, Bastion, Hunted: Wood Ridge, and Medieval Academy.
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  And I did not get Forum Trajanum or Hunted: Wood Ridge played, but I did manage to succeed
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  at playing Bastion and Medieval Academy.
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  So I got two of my four played, which is about the same as last month and the same as January.
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  So I am now at six out of nine potential plays in my Top of the Stacks.
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  If I just change my goal to two, I'm hitting 100%.
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  I'm not going to do that, but there it is.
• 3:37
  All right, time for some stats.
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  I had 85 game plays of 56 different games this month, which comes out to a total of 218
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  plays of 98 different games.
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  As usual, many of those plays are in digital form on board game arena.
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  I made significant progress on my shelf of opportunity, reducing it from 66 to 61 plays.
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  And my collection size went up one game from 578 to 579.
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  Now that's not in the right direction.
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  My goal is to make a smaller collection, not a bigger collection, but given that some games
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  I'm getting, some months I end up with like four or five games if I have a good, if I have
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  a strong visit to a goodwill, one game isn't so bad.
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  Also I bought the game with points, credit card points, so it was like free money.
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  That's gamer math right there, baby.
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  Okay, the most played game this month in real life was Aeon's End, which we played four times.
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  And my most played game online were Gaia Project and Daybreak, each of which I played four
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  times.
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  My plays of Through the Ages have slowed down a little bit.
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  I have one person I'm playing with regularly, but at one point I was playing regular games
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  of Through the Ages of three people that has died off a bit.
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  So that's okay.
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  I've played that game so many times.
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  I don't need to play at every moment.
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  On to first plays.
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  I had eleven, oh I had ten games that I played this month for the first time.
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  These were new to me games.
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  They're not all brand new publications.
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  In fact, I think none of them are brand new publications, but they were first time to
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  me.
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  They are Dream Home, Medieval Academy, Forest Shuffle, on Board Game Arena, Wyrmspan,
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  Charty Party, Herd Mentality, Titanic.
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  That's the 2020 release designed by Daryl Adams and Adrian Adamescu with Leonardo and
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  Kate Winslet on the cover, not the older Titanic game, SMARTish, Aeon's End, and Bastion.
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  So a good game.
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  I will be talking about, or a good month.
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  I will be talking about a lot of those new games in upcoming episodes, although I still
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  have some games from February to cover.
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  So it'll be a little while before I'm talking about those, but you'll have to hold your breath
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  until I do.
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  I played one expansion this month.
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  I'm keeping on the pace of, oh that's 20, by the way, that's 21 new games I've played thus
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  far this year.
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  Pretty good pace.
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  In terms of expansions, I played one expansion this month.
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  It was the Forgotten Waters DLC Pack 1, The Kraken's Eye.
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  If you haven't played Forgotten Waters, it's a delight.
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  I will post a link to my previous review of Forgotten Waters in the show notes.
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  It's a storytelling game, or it's a story reading game I guess.
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  It has a light adventure element and lots of choices to make.
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  It's kind of a choose your own adventure game with a bit of randomness.
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  It's very funny, pretty enjoyable.
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  I really like it.
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  We've been playing Freelancers lately, which is like the new version of it, but they did
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  release this one DLC Pack, which we downloaded and enjoyed.
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  It was good, but it's one adventure.
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  It took us almost five hours to play.
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  We played in two halves.
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  And I guess there were five of us playing.
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  It took about five hours, and it was $10.
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  So that's not a terrible deal.
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  You know when you compare it to an EXIT game, which is 15 bucks, and you play in an hour,
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  that's a pretty good deal.
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  But I'm not sure whether I thought it was worth it or not.
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  Yeah, we had a good time.
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  I'll say it was worth it.
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  Almost anything else we had to pay 10 bucks to do it would have been shorter and not
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  as much fun.
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  A good time with it.
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  That's the Forgotten Waters DLC Pack 1.
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  I played a couple more games.
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  I got a couple more games out of the dust. As a reminder.
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  a game is dusty if I've gone a year or more without playing it.
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  So I get a game out of the dust when I play it again.
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  That's like I have dusted it off.
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  And I had three games that I played out of the dust this month.
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  The first one was Sushi Go.
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  I hadn't played Sushi Go in a while.
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  In fact, it had been a one year, five months, and a day between this time and last time.
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  Sushi Go is always a winner.
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  It used to be a very regular staple in our household.
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  We've kind of grown it a little bit, but it is always excellent.
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  I don't have Sushi Go: Party.
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  I did play it online once.
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  I didn't count it as a play because I feel like I didn't really...
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  I don't know.
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  Sometimes I count online plays as plays.
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  Sometimes when I play a new game, I don't count it as a play because I didn't feel like
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  I grasped the game enough.
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  It's kind of weird, all in it.
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  But yeah, so Sushi Go.
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  We played that.
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  It had been a year.
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  I played Potion Explosion, which had been one year, one month, and six days since the last
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  time I played that.
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  That might have been since the last digital play.
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  Who knows how long it had been since the last audio play?
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  Who knows how long it had been since the last real life play?
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  I did on Potion Explosion, but that game is always fun.
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  I really enjoy it.
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  I haven't really played it with super strong competitors in person in this...
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  I mean, when I say super strong competitors, I mean people who have played the game enough
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  to kind of get how it works.
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  One of the people I played with got it pretty fast and kept pace with me, but it took them
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  a round or two, and that's the kind of game where once you get ahead, it's really hard
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  to catch up.
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  So, that was a good time.
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  That was one year, one month, and six days.
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  And then, Century: Golem Edition, we hadn't played in a while either.
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  I like Century.
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  I have all three of the games, and I enjoy them all, but the first one is just head and
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  shoulders above the others.
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  It is really, really good.
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  And that was one year, eight months, and 19 days since the last time I played that.
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  That makes seven games this far, this year, so far.
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  I've dusted off, averaging just over two a month.
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  If I keep up that pace, that's not bad, 24 a year.
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  I'd expect to be more than that, but you never know.
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  A lot of the games that I play, I keep in regular circulation.
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  So, getting older games back to the table is a little harder.
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  I've added a new category to my logging on boardgamegeek, because I am trying to get
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  games played more often.
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  I'll sometimes have plays that I think are interesting, and I want to mention, but they
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  don't fit any of the other categories I'm tracking, so I'm calling these notable plays.
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  And if I have a play of a game that just I wanted to mention on the podcast, I put it in
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  a notable place, so here they are.
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  I got to play Altiplano again.
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  This game continues to reward.
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  I might have to go back, I do really like Altiplano, but I think I'm shifting back to liking
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  Orléans more.
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  The box in Altiplano is better.
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  If you haven't played either of them, they're both bag builders, where you're buying chips,
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  and putting them in a bag, or tokens, and then you pull the tokens out and you get to
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  spend the tokens.
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  In Orléans, you just put the tokens right in the bag when you buy new tokens.
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  And as a result, because you're always putting the used tokens back in the bag, you might not
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  ever get tokens you buy.
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  You could buy a token, and then you use a couple tokens, put them in, you draw the ones
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  you used again, unless you're taking a concerted effort to really get rid of the ones you're using,
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  which is hard to do.
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  You might end up never drawing one of the tiles you've bought.
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  And that stinks.
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  By contrast, in Altiplano, you only refill the bag after you've emptied it, and you put
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  the tokens you're using in a little box, and then you double-mall in once you empty the
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  bag.
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  It actually takes a little bit longer, usually, to get a chip you purchased, because you
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  have to put in the box first.
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  So except in very rare circumstances, you almost never draw the tile you just bought
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  on the turn after you buy it.
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  But by contrast, you'll never, any chip you buy in the first half of the game, you definitely
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  will get to see, because you'll empty out the bag.
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  But I do really like Altiplano, and I really like it with The Traveler expansion, and
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  I haven't played with that in a while, so that may need to get back out to the table again.
• 11:05
  Sagrada: Artisans, my wife and I finished the campaign of that.
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  That was a lot of fun.
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  We have a whole bunch of bonus windows for it, so I imagine we'll keep playing it for a while.
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  If you get a chance to play Sagrada: Artisans, if you like Sagrada, it's well worth it, I
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  think.
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  Really fun.
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  I guess if I'm doing the same analysis of the per game cost that I put on forgotten waters
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  on Sagrada: Artisans, it's pretty close to the same, roughly the same.
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  Oh, there's a turtle dove.
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  Or a morning dove.
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  A morning dove, excuse me.
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  Sagrada: Artisans was a delight.
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  It's a legacy game, by the way.
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  You're coloring in a coloring book, and over the course of the game, you are learning about
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  or you're playing different stained glass windows and rolling dice and stuff.
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  It's pretty great.
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  I like the lot.
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  Weather Machine.
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  I got to play again.
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  It feels like I'm getting the hang of it now, but I just got clobbered early on.
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  Actually, my son played with us, and early on, he made a move that kind of cut my knees
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  out from under me, and instead of backing off, I kind of doubled down on it, and it was
• 12:00
  a terrible choice.
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  And I really, I ended up with like 20 points less than my son, who ended up with like 10 points
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  less than the winner.
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  So, clobbered.
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  On my 10 for 10 progress, you'll remember that this year, the 10 for 10 is categories of
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  games, and we are trucking along nicely.
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  We've completed two categories, the Legacy/Campaign category and the alphabet A through
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  J category are done.
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  Several of the other categories are over five, and we're at a total of 47 out of 100 plays
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  already in March, which is a great start.
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  Now, the reality of 10 for 10 is they always get much harder as it goes along because the
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  later ones are games you have to really go out of your way to play, so I'm going to try
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  to get some of those up.
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  We did get our first novelty game played, that was a Titanic.
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  I think I'm going to put one of those on my top of the stack this month.
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  No painting done this month, bummer.
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  I show up for opportunity, I've kind of talked about, and that just brings us to the question
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  of what games I'm going to play for next month.
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  You know, I'm going to die on this hill, I am keeping Hunted: Wode Ridge as the solo
• 13:03
  game.
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  I'm going to play that eventually, and when I do, yee haw, it's going to be great.
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  So, Hunted: Wode Ridge will stay as my priority game to play for solo games.
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  My heavier game that I want to play is Porta Nigra, I guess.
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  This is the stronghold game from Keisling in 2015.
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  It's a very well-regarded, euro game about, I don't know, building stuff in Rome.
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  I got it at a Goodwill for not nothing.
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  It was like eight bucks or ten bucks, but it's a game that's pretty well-regarded, so I'm
• 13:39
  looking forward to try that.
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  And then I think I'm going to pick a novelty game, try to play this month because, yeah,
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  because I want to.
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  So, what novelty game am I going to put on there?
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  Well, it is the month of the Titanic sinking, April.
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  So I'm going to say one of my other Titanic games.
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  I have two.
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  I have Titanic, the board game, and I have raised the Titanic, which is a game based on a
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  Clive Cussler novel or movie.
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  Both are look silly in their own ways, and I'm going to play one of them this month.
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  And then finally, I usually pick just one other game that I'm excited to play from the
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  collection.
• 14:13
  Let's try Alien Artifacts again.
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  This is a game I really wanted to get played, and I've put it on the list a couple times,
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  and I never seem to make it stick.
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  This month, I'm going to make it stick.
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  I'm going to try.
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  So my four games are Porta Nigra, Hunted World Ridge, Raise the Titanic, or Titanic the
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  board game, and Alien Artifacts.
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  So the big question then, what games have you been playing?
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  What games did you play brand new in April or in March of 2024?
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  What games are you playing to play in April?
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  Head over to boardgamegeek guild 3269, or search Pick Up and Deliver boardgamegeek,
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  and you'll find it.
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  And share your gaming from the month with the Pick Up and Deliver pals.
• 14:52
  It's season seven, I suppose we should have a nickname for you.
• 14:54
  What do you think is a nickname for a listener of Pick Up and Deliver should be?
• 14:57
  I want to hear it.
• 14:58
  You include that in your post.
• 14:59
  Well thanks for joining me on my walk today.
• 15:01
  I hope your next walk is a pleasantest mind loss.
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  Bye-bye.
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  [MUSIC]
• 15:24
  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
• 15:27
  [MUSIC]