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Look Back at 2007 & 2008 · Pick Up and Deliver

• Untitled - June 25, 2025 00:00:00 Speaker: Welcome to pick Up and Delivery, the podcast, where I pick up my audio recorder as I step out the door and deliver an episode to you while I walk around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning listeners. It's a gloomy day here in suburban Chicago. We've got the sort of light gray, solid, overcast sky that looks like someone forgot to hit click fill, or when they clicked fill on the sky, they filled with a light gray and or with a dark sort of mid-level gray instead of blue. It has rained sometime in this morning, so it's that kind of post rain. Humid. You've got a little of the petrichor smell. So, uh, you know, it's a lovely day. It's not bright and sunny, but it's been a really warm here lately, so I don't mind it not being that sunny. Well, I'm happy to be chatting with you about some games. I was looking back and thinking about what? What might I do? I've sort of set into a rhythm with the podcast. I'm sort of doing a board game espresso episode, then some sort of episode with a new special topic, and then an episode that is one of a number of different features that I'm running on, sort of a variety of different schedules. I don't have specific times, but I'm like, it's been a while since I did that, and so then I'll do one of those. I try not to repeat those too often, but that's kind of the the path that I'm on. If you are somebody who likes or dislikes some piece of this, I'd love to hear from you about ideas for shows or, uh, just generally what you're thinking of the podcast looks like we're still getting decent download numbers, but I'm not getting a ton of interaction over on the forums, so I'd love to hear from you a little bit more. Sometimes podcasting feels a little bit like, uh, shouting into the void. So it's nice to know that people are listening. Uh, all right. So today it's I looked and it's been a while, At least 20 episodes, maybe 30. Um, I have done one this year, so this is only my second this year. Uh, it's time for a look back. Look back episodes are where I take a look at some year from the past, and talk about which games from that year I think are great. Now, I have done look backs for 2017 all the way through 2009. And you'll recall, I did the 2009 in like February. I think when I did that one, I was like, whoa, I'm running out of games to talk about that. The the number of games that are available and interesting and that I've played from the years as I go further back are getting fewer and farther between. So it's harder and harder to, uh, have a good conversation about those years. So I decided that starting with this next one right now, I would be posting, um, look backs at two years at a time instead of one. So I tried that for the first time this time, and I did a look back at 2007 2008. My method for this madness is to go to board Game Geek, do an advanced search. Put in year published 2007. Earliest 2008 latest. And then when the list comes up, I click sort by rank. So the top ranked game on board Game Geek from 2007 or 2008 is the highest game on the list. And then I scroll through the list looking for games I'm familiar with or games I've played, or both. And I click next and I do it again and click next, and I go until I reach. Normally in the look backs I go till 10,000, but I'm doing 20,000 now because frankly, there's just not that many games from within the Or. I mean, most of them are within the 10,000, but if I go all the way to 20, I maybe find another five or so that I am familiar with or have played. So general response to the top 20,000 games, a lot of war games. You can tell Board Game Geek was a lot smaller, had a much more niche audience, even though Board Game Geek is a very niche audience anyway. But it had a much more niche audience because so many of the games people were talking about were wargames. That is still true on Board Game Geek now, but it's so much less common than it was 18 years ago. All right. So, uh, as as always, I start with excluding games that are in my top 50. The reason I do this is that this would be a boring list. I said, what are the top five games from 2007 or 2008? Then I just give you a bunch of games that are in my top 50. That's kind of boring. So excluded from this list are brass, which was originally called Brass Lancashire, which was originally called brass. But when I rate the brass games I put them all in one lump. So my number two game of all time is brass. So that's boring. But so brass came out in 2007. Agricola came out in 2007. Ghost stories came out in 2008, and Last Night on Earth came out in 2007. Those are games number two, 25, 37, and 39 on my top 50 list. So good thing I didn't just I didn't just go with the games on the top 50 list. Now, I do have a couple games that have in the past been in my top 50 but are not currently there. And so those you will see in a minute here. But but I do want to take a moment here. I as I was going through the list, I encountered a number of games that are games I've heard about, that I've heard were good and would like to try but have not played. So I'm going to run through that list. It's fairly long because again, the further back in time we go, the more likely it is. I may have heard of a game but don't have access to it, so and it doesn't come up very often because it's older. So here are the games that if I had a chance to play them, if I came across somebody setting it up said, hey, you want to try this? I would be, I would be in Wabash Cannonball, which I actually have a copy of. In the more recent printing, it's called Chicago Express. I do have a copy of that. So at some point I will play that one. Uh, Android, which is a mystery solving game. Tinners trail. There's a new edition of Tinners Trail that's supposed to be pretty good. I don't have it, but I would certainly enjoy playing it. Read November, which is about dwarves on a sinking submarine. Communist dwarves on a sinking submarine. I believe The Name of the Rose is a Stefan Feld game themed around the Umberto Eco novel. Interesting. I do have mystery of the Abbey, though, which is basically that same idea, but without the property name. It's not the same game though. Uh, Colosseum, stone age container, Tammany Hall, call of Cthulhu. The card game Nefertiti I looked Nefertiti was made by the same team that ended up making Kemet. So interesting group there. Uh, wasabi. Archaeology. The card game. Archaeology. Formula D or formula de Zooloretto, Witch of Salem and Tannhauser. These are all games that I've heard about. I think it would be interesting to try, uh, but haven't had a chance. So, uh, if you have any of those games and you know me or have a chance to play games with me, I'd be interested in trying those. Uh, of course, that's mixed in with all the other things that one might say, ooh, there's a house rent here. It's one of the few birds. I'm very confident when I hear their call. I'm excited to identify that. So I've excluded the four games that are in my top 15 now. And I've told you a bunch of games that from that era that I would like to play that might have made this list if I had a chance. So now I'm going to go. Excluding those four that I talked about, I have played 30 games from 2007 and 2008. And so from that I'm going to pick five that are my top five. I have five that made honorable mention list, and then I have five that are superlatives, which just sort of other calling out other interesting games. So I'm about half of the games I've played from 2005, 2008. I'm going to call out in one way or another here. So let's start with the honorable mentions. These are games that I really like. I think they're great, but they're not quite in my top five. We've got 1960 The making of a president. This is a card driven game in the nature, in the same from some of the same designers as Twilight Struggle, but it is about electing Richard Nixon or John F Kennedy. Really interesting. Good history. Tight. Tense. Filled two player game. A Dominion, of course. The classic deck builder is a game I really enjoy, but I just haven't played it enough to put it up near that top. I've only ever played stuff from the base set, although once or twice I played with somebody who has a lot of it, and we and we played a variety. But I haven't played a lot of Dominion, but I'd like to. Pandemic is a favorite. It's a it's a tried and true game. I enjoy. Pandemic legacy is in my top 50, but the regular pandemic I just find enjoyable. Biblios is a really interesting action game, which I liked, and other people I've played with didn't really, so it did not stay in our collection. But I do enjoy that one. It's worth a nod. And then parade is a game I literally just played a week ago. Uh, very interesting sort of light card game with some good player anticipation tactics stuff that I think is worth looking at. So those are five honorable mentions from, uh, 2007, seven 2008. Oh, apologies. I'm not telling you the years of each of these games. You can go look it up yourself. All right. My top five are I think all five of these have in the past been in my top 50. So it's not surprising that they would make the list. Maybe that's boring too. Let me know in the comment. Let me know. Over on Board Game Geek in Guild 3269 or send me a mail message or something. Let me know. Do you think I should exclude all games that have ever been in my top 50, or only games that are currently in my top 50? Because that's the way it currently is, the way I did it this time. But I think, I think all five of these have in the past been in my top 50. So working in reverse order from 5 to 1. Lost cities, the board game. I'm I think one of the rare people who likes lost cities. The board game better than lost cities. The card game. For one thing, the board game plays more people. I think the tracks are interesting and the little rewards you get as you go up the tracks are interesting. I think the tension of crossing the bridges is much more interesting than the tension of running out of cards, So I really like Lost Cities, the board game. It is pretty spiky. Um, it is very much an antagonistic game, even if it doesn't seem like it seem like it, but I really like it. So. Lost cities, the board game, my number four race for the Galaxy, the Tom Lehman classic, uh, Tableau Builder, where you are taking cards and figuring out how to use them. And you can use them, you can, uh, participate in the action that's been called or you can call it, you know, every person who activates an action, sometimes you really hope and somebody will activate the consume action, but you don't want to because you need to get stuff to consume or whatever. Like there's, uh, it's really interesting. I like roll for the Galaxy better, the dice game, but race for the Galaxy is great. My number three Galaxy Trucker I really like Galaxy Trucker. I think I like the idea of it more than the play of it, in part because I don't. I've never played it properly. I've mentioned this to you before. My children generally enjoy trying to make a nice ship, or they did when they were younger and I played Galaxy Trucker with them. Uh, and so we would often just kind of play leisurely until someone finished their ship. So my experience of it is probably not the hyper panicked experience that it's supposed to be. That said, I generally do enjoy real time games a lot. I am usually quick on my feet to think about stuff and so it fits my my interests really well. So Galaxy Trucker from my number three game from this period, my number two game is Le Havre. Le Havre is the Rosenberg game. I believe it's his follow up to Agricola, and it is different than it is still a worker placement game. But unlike Agricola where you're accumulating stuff for your farm, here you are building buildings for your shipping industry, and there are some really interesting processes, like there's a lot more getting goods and processing them into other goods. It's more engine building than Agricola is. And for that I think it's a really interesting game as opposed to like Caverna, which just feels like more Agricola or even A feast for Odin feels more Agricola like. Le Havre feels like a different thing. If anything, in the more recent games, something like, um, Nusfjord feels more like Le Havre or even Reykholt feels more like Le Havre to me. Although Reykholt is apparently more like At the Gates of Loyang, which I haven't played. But yeah, so Le Havre, you're building, you're building a fishing empire and you're adding buildings to it, activating those buildings to get goods. And there's an element of the goods sort of pile up and you decide, when am I going to grab that? That part feels like Agricola, but I really like Le Havre. I've only played it the once. It's actually a game I maybe should play more often. Maybe I'll see. I know it is on, uh, yukata. So maybe I'll start up a game of that if you want to try Le Havre or want to play Le Havre with me, pop me a message on BoardGameGeek. Wombat 929. Or in boardgame arena or in yukata? Actually, yukata would be where to do it. Just invite me to a game. Yeah, we can play Le Havre. That's my number two game from 2000 to 2008, 2007. And my number one. This shouldn't be a surprise if you've been following my top 50 is A Touch of Evil, the supernatural game. I have two games from, uh, Flying Frog Productions that I really like. I like both A Touch of Evil and Last Night on Earth. They're silly dice chucking extravaganzas. A Touch of evil I have gone whole hog on. I have all of the different expansions for it. I do not have the 10th anniversary edition because I didn't want to rebuy the game, which is what you're doing there, but I have all the other stuff. I have a whole bunch of cards I have. I really like that game, but last time I played it, it was a little slow. The 2007, uh, or the other game last night on Earth, I find, um, also really exciting, and my tastes kind of shifted that way on the last top 50, so a touch of evil got bumped off. But honestly, these two could share a slot for me. They're very similar games and I like them in very similar ways. So A Touch of Evil is my number one game from this period that isn't excluded. So. Oh, and I guess if you aren't familiar with it at all. A Touch of Evil is a game where you play investigators trying to figure out what is causing the menace to a colonial society. So think about like late 1600s, early 1700s, basically Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, if or Tim Burton's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. If you're the investigators on the players play investigators, we almost always play the cooperative mode. I find that more fun. I don't really understand or enjoy the competition to be the one who kills the monster. I guess some people like that, but we we think it's more fun to play together. So that is a touch of evil. The supernatural game. All right. I've talked about my top five. I've talked about honorable mentions. Let's do some superlatives. So for those of you new to this format, a superlative is. I mean, the word superlative just means best. And so what I do usually when I'm doing these look backs is I will pick a few games that did not make my top five or even my honorable mentions, but instead there's some other thing I want to talk about about them. So I will award them some sort of superlative award to call them out. So that's what I'm doing next. My first superlative is the game with the best memories. This is who was it? It's spelled w h o w a I t. This is a Reiner Knizia children's game that the gimmick is. It comes with this little treasure chest that has like a gem in it, I think, or a ring or something. And more importantly, the treasure chest is a digital gizmo. And the way the game works is that there is a secret someone swiped the King's something or other, the King's gem, and you are trying to figure out who did it. And you're doing that by going around and talking to the animals around the castle. So you're moving around asking the animals questions, saying, hey, did you see this? Do you know if it was this person, blah blah blah. And the way that you get those answers is that the treasure box gives you the answers. So you push a couple buttons on it and it tells you the answers. And then you're sort of figuring out clues to figure out where the gem is or who took the gem or whatever. It's a cute little game. The main reason I have it in here is that we played it with my kids, and we had so much fun that the this is the game I played many times with my kids. They were just at the right age for it, and we played it a bunch of times in the, let's say, the, uh, early 20 tens when my kids were young, elementary school age, or maybe even just barely elementary school age. It was a perfect for that group. It was a fun theme. Uh, and so it hangs. I don't have it anymore. I got rid of it because they're too old. but it does seem like the kind of game that I would be happy to play with a youngster again. So that is who was it next up? The best sign of things to come is League of Six. This is another one that could work would be the Nefertiti game, but I haven't played that yet. And frankly, League of Six was the first published design, arguably the first published design I've played from Vlada or Vladimir Sushi. League of six is a bidding game with an interesting sort of, uh, flow through mechanism where if you fail the bid, you can move your piece to another place. It's said in the history of, uh, the Czech Republic, where these seven towns or these six towns sort of banded together to provide municipal and military support to one another. And you play merchants and military people going from town to town, selling them your services. And so you're bidding on selling them services. And there's a really interesting sort of back and forth in the game. It's pretty light and doesn't have all the combo tastic stuff that his later games would. It also still relies on the auction, which is also true of 20th century and is not my favorite mechanism, but it is pretty interesting. This is one of my favorite auction games, so that's League of Six. If you get a chance to play it, definitely do. I'm happy to play it again sometime. I just played it the one time during my year of Suu Kyi, but it's probably time to do another year of Suu Kyi, so that is League of Six also because I bought it, used one of the few games I have sleeved, it came, the person who owned it before me had sleeved it, and I don't sleeve my games, but I don't own sleeve them if they come with sleeves. So I have that. That game is sleeved weirdly. Next up, the weirdest game in this bunch. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean in a pretty good way, actually, is space Alert. Space alert is a game from C.g.e. And it is a real time game played with an audio recording. And what makes it interesting is that you what you have to do is move your pieces around in time with, or you have to make plans. It's a programming game. You're making plans based on audio alerts that you get and imagining how you're going to move your pieces around. And then after everyone has made your plans, then the game leads you through the events again, and everybody moves their pieces around and executes the things that they planned. What makes the game interesting is that there are these cards that come out that randomize the events, and then the players, because it's real time. You don't have time to discuss with each other very thoroughly what you're doing or where you're going. So the players bump into each other. You take things the other person thought that they were going to be able to get the next turn. You basically mess each other up. It's a really interesting game and one I would like to play again. I had a really fun play of it the first time, but I haven't been back to it and I think I should. So that's another one I want to get. Get on, get back to the table. I don't own it though, but still an interesting game. That's space alert from Vlad and CGP games. Next up, these are two games actually that fall into this category. And apologies Rob, these are both games you really enjoy that uh, don't work for me. These are games I ought to like, but don't. When I hear the description of these games and I think about what they are intellectually, they tell me, it tells me this is a game I should enjoy. But every time I've played them, or almost every time I've played them, they haven't worked for me. Uh, and these are Battlestar Galactica, the Board Game and Cosmic Encounter. Now, to be fair, Cosmic Encounter is much older than 2008, but the current edition of it is marked as a 2008 game in BoardGameGeek. So there it is. I can't imagine I'm going to be doing this game when I get back to 1979, or whenever the first Cosmic Encounter came out. I can understand why people like these games. I see what I see, what's interesting about them, I even want to enjoy them. But every time I play them, I find myself having, you know, if I have to give a thumbs up or thumbs down, it's always at least a little thumbs down, rather than being mostly thumbs up, which is what I hope and want them to be. These games both might be in my. Nah, I'm good list. I'd have to go back and look. But for those of you who haven't seen that episode, I'll put a link in the show notes. But the. Nah, I'm good list are games that I have tried enough times now to know I'm not. I'm actively not going to enjoy them. So even though I generally consider myself an omni gamer, I'll sit that one out. Cosmic encounter, I'm sure, is in that list. Uh, board, uh, Battlestar Galactica. I keep telling myself next time I'll like it, but those are games I ought to like, but I don't. All all the love to those of you who do like it. Uh, and then a surprise hit for me. This is a game that again, congrats to Rob on this one that I first played, because Rob found a copy at goodwill and or at a used store or a thrift store, and we played it and I was like, oh, this is this is pretty good. We've played it a couple times since, and it, I think it is really good. It actually got a reprint recently where they basically didn't do anything to the inside of the box, but they gave it a new cover. This is patrician or the new version is called, I think, Patrician Towers of Power, which is a funny name. Uh, Michael Schacht or Schacht. Schacht is the designer who I believe is best known for Coloretto. Uh, and in this game, you represent, I don't know, some sort of nobility in an Italian town, maybe Venice. Uh, and what you're doing is you are maybe Rome. What you're doing is you are building these towers in the town and its area control. So you're you're putting your pieces into these towers with the goal of having the most pieces in each tower and having control of the city based on which towers you own. And then, of course, the game scores these different areas a couple times. Uh, the clever gimmick is that you have these cards that you play to decide where you're going to build, and each area you're building in has a card in it. And so the place where you build also determines which card you take. Which, now that I think about it, is also the mechanism used by the game. Nah, the card game in which you have these five different colors, and when you play a card of a color, you activate your cards of that color, and then you take a card from the market in the space marked with that color. Even if the card in the market is not related to the color. Same thing with patrician. Each zone has a card waiting waiting there that is related to one of the zones, or activating a different thing, but it's not related to the area it's at. It's just if you go there, you get that card. So there's a balance of sometimes you'll go a place you don't want to or need to in order to get a card that you do want. So that is, um, patrician. The surprise game for me from 2007 that I played and I was like, oh, this is this is great. Okay, so I finished Super Superlatives. Then I did also, I do also like to take a moment to tell you what other games I've played and if I have any last comments on those. So I'm just going to buzz through that list quick. Uh, Dixit is an old standby. It still works really well. I use it in my board game class, although now people are like, oh, is this AI art? Because it looks the art in Dixit looks like the kind of art I makes, which is makes me sad for the artists and Dixon, uh, Notre Dame, Stephanie Shirley, Stefan Feld game that maybe could have gone into the games I should like, I ought to like, but didn't. The punishing aspect of Notre Dame really didn't work for me. It I didn't find it fun, uh, having trying to anticipate that punishment. And if I fail to anticipate it, it really clobbers you. The same was true of In The Year of the Dragon, which is 2007 Stefan Feld game. Uh, having played both of those now, I know they're not for me. Uh Time's Up. Total recall is maybe best in brand for me up until monikers. I even like Time's Up better than monikers because I like titles of things as the category, whereas monikers can kind of be anything. Um, but these are both, of course, commercialized versions of the classic game celebrity, which is a parlor, a parlor game. So these aren't really games anyone invented. They just came up with a sort of refined version of it. Nonetheless. Time's Up. Total Recall is a winner for me. Piece of cake is a I split you choose game related to a more recent game. New York Slice is the same game from Jeffrey Oller. It's just sort of redone. As I've said before, my favorite I split you choose game is mammoth, but I'd be interested in trying Piece of Cake at some point. Bezzerwizzer is an interesting trivia game. It involves these like, uh, category tiles, and once you've got one, then you can do stuff or something. I don't really remember, but I remember it being better than I thought it would. Uh, trivia games being often uneven. Cockroach salad is another game from the designer of Cockroach Poker. We played it once. I didn't really enjoy it. Kingsburg is an interesting dice rolling game where you're trying to acquire these buildings, and then you're sort of building an engine of benefits. I've played Kingsport Festival, which is a sort of Cthulhu themed version of the same game. They're both fine. I feel like this is very much a game where if you've played it a few times, you have a huge advantage over someone who hasn't. Uh, and they don't change a ton from game to game, so not a game I'm keen to go back to. Uh, Snow Tales is a fun little racing game where you're racing dog sleds. Game of Thrones, the card game. I played the second edition more than the first edition. Uh, but I marked it here because I have basically played it, uh, an interesting game. I really like the interplay. I like, uh, deck building or deck construction games where you build your deck beforehand and play, uh, I had a lot of fun every time I've played this, but I don't have it myself. Midgard is one of the a couple games, along with chaos in the Old World, that Eric Lange refashioned into Blood Rage. In fact, Midgard is very close to Blood rage. If you play it, you're like, oh, this is just blood rage, or it feels very close to Blood Rage. I liked it fine, but it didn't hit with my family, and I thought, if I'm ever going to get and keep a game like this, it'll be Blood Rage, which I do not have access to in Guadalcanal. I played with my neighbor a couple times. I really like it. It's an interesting version of the Axis and Allies game, and I think a little more interesting one that said, you know, Axis and Allies isn't my favorite. And finally, unspeakable words. This is a fun word making game where you get you have to roll for sanity based on how many corners are in the words that you are making. So if you use the letter T, there are two corners in the letter T the letter E has four corners, so and you have to roll and get above the number of corners in your word on a 20 sided die, or else you get an insanity token and the player who scores the most points in a certain number of rounds, and or the last player who's sane wins the game. It's fun. If you get a chance to play it, you should. Our game club has the deluxe copy and that is lovely. It comes with these little Cthulhu tokens. Well, that's it. On my survey of games from 2007 2008. I'd love to hear what you think of that time period. There's a lot of bangers in there. Which of those is your favourite? Which games would you have to exclude because they're in your top 50? Head over to BoardGameGeek Guild 3269 and share your thoughts there. We have a little bit of conversation every now and again, and I'd love to have you join us. If you want to reach out to me, you can send me an email, Brendan at rattlebox games.com or send me a mail message. Wombat 99 is my username there. Well, thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope that your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. Buh bye. Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.