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Games I Stink At · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
• 0:07
  as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk
• 0:10
  home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well good evening, listeners. It's a lovely,
• 0:24
  brisk December evening. The walk home is going to be full of twinkly
• 0:29
  lights because the holiday lights are all up on everybody's houses, and it's going
• 0:33
  to be a pleasant walk home, even if it is a little chilly.
• 0:36
  So I was thinking about what I should talk to you about today, and
• 0:39
  I remembered a text I got this morning that maybe said to me, Hey,
• 0:45
  this will make a good topic, And sure enough it did. The
• 0:48
  text said streak broken. So what This was the text from my friend Eric,
• 0:53
  with whom I play games regularly, and I play games in person about
• 0:57
  once once every three or four months. Maybe either we'll play at Toggle Gaming
• 1:03
  occasionally, or there'll be a time when I can get over to his house
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  to play games. I don't recall if he's ever been able to make it
• 1:08
  to my house to play games. I don't invite people over to my house
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  to play games that often, whereas he has people over every week and every
• 1:15
  now and again, I'll have a weekend free, usually where Jenny has gone
• 1:19
  out of town with my daughter to a swim meet, and that leaves me
• 1:25
  sort of kicking around on my own or with my son, and so I'll
• 1:29
  ask him and he'll be like, yeah, you can go play a game.
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  That's fine because he has something else to do or whatever. So then
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  I'll go play games with Eric. But like I said, it's a relatively
• 1:38
  rare occasion that I play with him in person. However, we do play
• 1:42
  online somewhat more frequently. Maybe once a month I will join him on a
• 1:46
  Sunday morning to play a game through tabletop simulator or board game arena or lately
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  we've been playing some games asynchronously. We start out playing one game at a
• 1:56
  time, playing Obsession, and now we're running three games simultaneously. We're playing
• 2:01
  Obsession, an Acrony, and gay a Project, and we're kind of cycling
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  those so playing them, you know, we finish one, we rack up
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  another. So getting lots of plays in with him. Eric is categorically better
• 2:14
  than I am at games. Generally, I still win some. I wouldn't
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  say I lose as consistently to him as I lose to Ray Greenley. Hi,
• 2:23
  Ray, but I do lose pretty regularly to Eric, and I was
• 2:28
  reflecting on this the other day that I had it felt like I was losing
• 2:31
  a lot lately, and he texted me and said, like, while you're
• 2:36
  having a rough streak, I was zero to seven on games against him,
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  which is a lot, and then this morning I won a game of an
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  Acrony pretty good too, I think seventy two to sixty five, which is
• 2:46
  a decent win, and so the streak was broken. But it got me
• 2:50
  thinking about a pattern I have, which is that I will enjoy a game
• 2:54
  and be bad at it, and I'll find a friend who doesn't mind playing
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  over and over again even though I don't present a challenge because they win most
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  of the time. The archetype of that in this podcast would be Ray Greenley
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  and my very long run playing through the Ages, where I believe we played
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  ninety four games of it before I beat him, and now he and I
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  don't play all that often, but when we were playing more, I was
• 3:20
  winning like one out of four, so once I sort of figured it out,
• 3:23
  then I was doing better. So I've been thinking about like games that
• 3:27
  I played regularly online or games that I play regularly where my win percentage is
• 3:31
  terrible, but I still have fun and play them a lot. So there's
• 3:35
  a couple where my win percentage is reasonable, but I feel like I'm not
• 3:40
  that good at the game. So what I want to talk about today is
• 3:43
  games I stink at is kind of the subject. It's the title of the
• 3:45
  episode, Games I stink At. And the idea is, these are games
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  that I, for whatever reason, have trouble getting to gel together in a
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  way that I can perform reasonably well at them. And I would say performing
• 3:59
  reasonably well playing with a group of relatively evenly matched competitors, I should win
• 4:04
  my share of the games, which is, you know, a four player
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  game, you're winning a twenty five percent win ratio? Is your share?
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  Now, a lot of the people I play heavy games with are better at
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  heavy games than I am. My friend Jason, my friend Dave, my
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  other friend Jason, my friend Eric, my friend Ray, my friend Chris.
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  They're all I think better than me at most games. Now, there
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  are some games where I do better in some games where I kind of hold
• 4:30
  my own. Oh you know what, there's a game I forgot to put
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  on here, Maybe I haven't. I haven't played it enough times to have
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  it beyond here. But an honorable mention, which you'll see when it comes
• 4:39
  up why it fits is a few acres of Snow. That's a game I'm
• 4:43
  terrible at, but I haven't played enough times to have it make this list,
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  And mostly I play it with Wes or another Jason, Jason Keggs Keggs
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  who listens to the podcast High Wes Hi Jason. They both give me drubbings
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  and a few acres of snow occasionally. But so I wanted to talk about
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  this weird pattern I have, so I would say, like, my through
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  the Ages win percentage is actually not that bad. Now It's twenty four percent
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  is my win my win percentage on through the Ages, which is pretty good
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  considering the against one opponent I went oh in ninety four. But I have
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  started playing it with other people and I tend to win half those games roughly,
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  So I'm you know, I'm do better on that one. Another game
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  where I should have a higher percentage that I do is Agricola. My win
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  percentage is twenty nine percent. Most of my the bulk of my plays of
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  Agricola are against one opponent, Kevin. Hi Kevin. I think he listens
• 5:35
  to the podcast sometimes, and according to my stats, Kevin won wins seventy
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  percent of the games of Agricola that we play, So Kevin is demonstratingly be
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  better at Agricola than I am. But I feel like I understand Agricola.
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  I'm not good at it, but I understand it through the ages. I'm
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  not good at it, but I understand it. There's also Castles of Burgundy,
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  which for a long time I didn't feel like I really understood, but
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  now I do feel like I understand it. That's thirty one percent win ratio,
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  which is actually that's fair because I almost never been playing Castle of Burgundy
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  two player. I'm also always playing three or four, in which case thirty
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  one perc win percent is about my fair sure, maybe even a little above.
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  And then there's Zulcan, which is the game I used to play a
• 6:15
  lot. I don't play that much anymore. When I was playing it,
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  I played eighteen games of it, and my win percentage was twenty two percent,
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  So again that's pretty close to that twenty five which is the except I'm
• 6:27
  often playing Zulkan two player, so twenty two percent is garbage. For that
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  one game that I seem to be getting worse at, or I should say
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  it turns out I wasn't really that good at to begin with, is MATINAI
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  So, Matina is a game that I really really like. It plays relatively
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  quick. It's usually like five or six rounds, maybe sometimes up to ten,
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  sometimes shorter. And for a long time I was playing Matina regularly with
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  Chris uh. And now I'm playing a lot with Jason keg Lebitch Kegs.
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  And my win percentage at Matina is thirty one percent most I would say most
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  of the wins I have a Matina, though, are at the table with
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  other people. When I'm playing online, I lose way more often than I
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  win. In fact, I went a really long time without winning a game
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  against Jason. I think I went oh to fourteen. I may have won
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  one. Now I think I did get one finally, but it was a
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  long time coming, and since then I've lost two more. So Matina is
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  one I seem to be getting worse at, or Jason is just very good
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  at it and I'm not either way. Uh. And then the three that
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  are the worst, my three worst games in terms of win percentage. I
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  have twenty nine plays of Guaya Project, eighteen plays of Great Western Trail,
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  and eighteen plays of Clans of Caledonia. Listen to these stats. Gaya Project
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  twenty nine percent, twenty nine plays, ten percent win ratio. That means
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  in roughly thirty plays, I've won three games. That is outragiously bad.
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  What's interesting about that, though, is that I feel like I do understand
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  all the mechanisms of the game. My problem is somehow I don't really conceive
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  of where the points come from, or I don't know how to connect the
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  mechanisms to points in a way that I can consistently win. Occasionally I'll win,
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  but it feels like I just sort of happen upon a win by getting
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  the right combination of things. I don't really know how to pull the levers
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  and push the levers in a way that makes me win. So Guy a
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  Project, these three, these last things I'm talking about. Now, I've
• 8:28
  played enough times that I feel like if I were going to get better on
• 8:31
  my own, I would, So it's time to do a little reading.
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  Find out how do people do well at these games? See if I can
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  start to get better with a little bit of research. Now it's interesting.
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  I posted a threat a while ago about this because I was curious at what
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  point other people do that. Some people like I never do that. I
• 8:48
  explore it on my own, and I feel like that's the sort of thing
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  that people who are really good at games say. If you're really good at
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  games and you figure them out on your own, great, But I really
• 8:58
  like a game. I want to do better at it. I want to
• 9:00
  be an interesting opponent, so that means I need to be competitive. But
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  right now, with at twenty nine plays of Gaya Project, if I were
• 9:07
  gonna get competitive on my own, I would have. So that means I
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  really need to do a little time thinking about what is it, where do
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  the points come from, how do I get there, and how do I
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  change my play such that I'm going to do better because right now I feel
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  like I'm not really I might I might as well be a bad AI for
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  my opponents to play against, and they keep playing me, and I appreciate
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  that, but at some point it's not fun to win when your opponent isn't
• 9:31
  doing anything worthwhile. So Gaya Project is one of the ones that I need
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  to spend a little time reading about and learning to get better, all right.
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  The second one, this is the game I have eighteen plays of online,
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  and I haven't played this for a while, so I'm out of touch.
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  And interestingly, this game, you could argue, is very Gaya Project
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  like. Also, most of the plays I have of this game are three
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  player, not two player, and the two people I play with are both
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  much better at games than I am. I mentioned Ray, Ray has a
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  friend, Rich Ray. Rich and I tend to play a lot of heavy
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  games together, and we'll play two or three or four rounds of a game,
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  then we'll play something else, and I very rarely win in that group.
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  I think if I went and looked at my stats for wins against Rich
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  and Ray, it's not double digits. I'm sure percentage wise that probably skews
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  it. Most of the games I've played of Clans of Caledonia are with Rich
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  and Ray. They're both better than I am, and so it's not surprising
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  that I don't do as well. But like Guy a Project and before it's
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  Tara Mystica, Clans of Caledonia has a set of levers to pull that equal
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  points, and my brain does not really want to understand how one leads to
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  the other in a consistent way so I can win. If I were going
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  to play Clans of Caledonia again, I would want to spend a little bit
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  of time reading about how to do better at it. What are some basic
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  strategies I should be following? See are there key things I'm missing from basic
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  play that good players do that I'm not doing because I'm pretty garbage at it?
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  Here's the great shame. This is the game. I've played eighteen times.
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  I've played it in groups of four, I've played it on the table
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  three times. I think I've played two player at least ten times, and
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  I'm now Eric and I are in a running game of it where we play
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  it over and over again. Great Western Trail I have never won in eighteen
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  plays, many of them two player. I've never won Great Western Trail.
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  Now. I did at one point before the last time I was invited to
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  play it in person, I did go watch a video about how to play
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  Great Western Trail well, and I did better in that game than I have
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  ever done before. I think I got third place out of four. But
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  since then, I have consistently done terribly in that game. And what's frustrating
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  about it is like I feel like I am doing well, or it feels
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  like I am doing what I should be doing. For instance, the last
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  game of Great Western Trail I played that I completed, I decided to go
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  for a train strategy Engineers. I was moving my train whenever I could.
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  I was putting down discs and stations. I got further and further up the
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  track. I took an objective card that said I had to get an eighteen
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  point sale. I got an eighteen point sale. I was like, man,
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  I am kicking it. I had all these disks up there, discs
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  up there in the selling area, like man, I am running the table.
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  No my loss. I've done ones where I'm building. I build like
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  this elaborate network of buildings that are taxing other players as they're going by.
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  I'm getting all this money. Feels like I'm doing Nope, lose and not
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  close games either, Like I'm losing dramatically. I've read the rules, I
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  understand how the scoring works, but somehow when it comes actually doing something so
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  that I end up with a high score, I'm not getting there at all.
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  So this is a strange part of being a gamer who likes heavy games.
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  Is that part of the fun of playing a heavy game is like doing
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  well. Maybe part of the reason I like Vladimir Suci games like Underwater Cities
• 12:56
  or Project about Regny is that I can win them occasionally. But I really
• 13:00
  like I do like Great Western Trail. I think it's really neat. Guy
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  Project, I like it. I think it's really neat. Both of those
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  games I know I would like them better if I could win occasionally. Part
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  of I think rather of the reason I don't like Great Western Trail as much
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  as I think I should is that I never I've literally never woron. So
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  I am curious if you've been in this position and people who are playing against
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  me and beating me, I'm not. I do not want you to pull
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  punches. I want you to still win, because when I win, I
• 13:30
  want to earned it. But I'm curious for people who've been playing a game,
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  do you get to the point where you feel like you've discovered as much
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  about it as you're going to discover without looking at strategy guides or without reading
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  anything, but you like the game, what do you do? Because I
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  guess I see it like if I were if I were an athlete. They
• 13:46
  used to play tennis, and I had been playing tennis for a while and
• 13:48
  I kind of plateaued in my skill level. I would not consider it at
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  all unreasonable to take some tennis lessons hire a coach to help me get better.
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  And I feel like reading strategy guides for games is as similar. Uh
• 14:00
  decision. So I'm curious. What have you done? What games have you
• 14:03
  found that you need to do that? Head over to board game, Get
• 14:07
  Youill thirty sixty nine and share your stories and hit me up for a game
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  of one of these, especially if you're bad. I know I'm kidding good,
• 14:15
  but the more plays, the faster I'll get better. So thanks for
• 14:18
  joining me. I'm a walk today. I hope your next walk is as
• 14:20
  pleasant as mindless Bye bye, Brought to you by rattle bo