Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Top of the Stack, June 2025

Transcript

Top of the Stack, June 2025 · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I
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  step out for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I stroll around.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  Well, good afternoon listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  The sun is out.
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  The birds are chirping.
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  I'm taking a walk and run some errands.
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  I'm going to go to the hardware store.
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  I'm going to swing by the board game store to see what new stuff they have and I'm going
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  to head over to the library.
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  It's going to be a great afternoon.
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  You know it.
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  Booya!
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  Somebody just came the wrong way out of the parking lot at the nursing home.
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  It drives me crazy when they do that.
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  You're not supposed to go that way.
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  Here we go.
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  Well, it is June 2nd.
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  That means it's the beginning of the month, which means it's the end of another month,
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  which means it's time for top of the stack.
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  [airhorn noises]
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  "Top of the stack" is a monthly segment I do as ideally the first episode to come out
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  in each calendar month.
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  In which I talk about the last month's game plays, I give you some stats.
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  Talk about my goals for the next month and we enjoy our time together.
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  So that's what we're doing today.
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  Top of the stack, maybe.
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  Alright, so May 2025, final monthly play stats.
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  Starting off strong.
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  We had 65 plays of 45 different games.
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  My running total for the year is 352 plays of 165 games.
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  So I'm well on my way to a robust and delightful year.
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  As you know, I'm always trying to reduce my shelf of opportunity.
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  Well this month I totally screwed that up.
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  At the beginning of the month I had 62 games on my shelf of opportunity and at the end of
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  the month I had 77.
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  That's right, I increased it by 15, but that's because I got a whole bunch of new games
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  in a math trade.
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  So I have a whole bunch of new games to try and I did that without buying a bunch of new
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  games, which was nice.
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  So my collection size, my goal is to reduce it and I did make some progress there.
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  I started the year, I started the month with 620 games and I ended the month with 614.
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  So even though I brought 20 new games into my collection or so, I got rid of I think 29
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  and I guess not quite 29.
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  But I got rid of a bunch and I brought fewer of them in.
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  So my collection size is going down.
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  I'll talk about that a little bit more at the end.
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  My most played game this month was Free Radicals, which I played three times and my most played
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  online game was 7 Wonders.
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  Actually when I, the online one is in table and/or online.
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  So if I played a mix it can count toward that.
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  7 Wonders I played once on the table and twice online.
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  So three times.
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  My top of the stack is the set of games that I'm hoping to play that month.
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  This month I picked out three four games to play.
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  If I play three of them it counts as a success.
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  The four games I picked out were Sorcerer City, Badass Zombie Killers, Fallen Angel, and
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  Pulsar 2849.
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  Alas the only one of those that I got played is the one I had played before.
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  Pulsar 2849 none of the other ones got played.
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  I was trying to get Sorcerer City played pretty hard.
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  I learned the rules, got it already and then I didn't get it played.
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  Oops.
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  The other two honestly I didn't even get a chance to try.
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  I just never came up.
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  So we'll see a lot of those coming back another time.
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  But for now that was one out of three.
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  Not great.
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  Although now they look at that's my success level in both May and April as well.
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  February I got three out of three, March I got four out of three.
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  But it's been not great on the success level since then.
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  I did however get to try a whole lot of new games this month.
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  I'm just gonna blast through the list here.
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  Coming into the month I had tried 36 new games.
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  Going out I tried 50.
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  So here are the games I tried this month.
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  Free radicals, moon colony blood bath, ethnos, red rising, 51st state master set,
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  Whitehall mystery, time bomb evolution, Madame Madora's House of Curiosity's, one night
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  ultimate alien, nefarious Lord of the Rings, fate of the Fellowship, the great Zimbabwe,
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  Trick Draw and Savor Nackie Forest as a lot of games.
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  It was great.
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  I also tried out one expansion this month.
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  This was the innovation cities of Destiny expansion.
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  Cities of Destiny is one of many expansions of innovation that I got when I got the ultimate
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  innovation ultimate box set.
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  So I have all of the different sets of innovation.
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  I tried cities of destiny over on Yukata.
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  Played with Gabriel.
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  Hey Gabriel.
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  Thanks for joining me for exploring innovation.
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  I've been also dusting off some games.
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  I dusted off Pulsar 2849.
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  It had been one year, 11 months, and 15 days since I played that.
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  I dusted off Cockroach Poker, two years, eight months, 29 days for that one.
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  Crossfire, seven years, four months, 18 days for that one, seven years.
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  Whew.
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  A study in Emerald, two years, seven months, 19 days, Royals, five years, 11 months,
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  stick stack, two years, one month, 13 days, and King Domino, six years, two months, and five
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  days.
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  Lots of games dusted off, and most of those actually pretty enjoyable.
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  It was 33 games altogether.
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  As you know, I'm going through my top 50 lists and I'm trying to pick out, trying to get
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  one or two, ideally two games from my top 50 played on the table each month.
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  Online plays do not count for trying out my top 50 again.
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  They got to be on the table.
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  And I did get three played this month.
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  Pulsar 2849.
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  A study in Emerald, we actually played twice, and 7 wonders.
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  Pulsar 2849 was great, had a really fun time with that.
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  Study in Emerald decidedly mixed.
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  The first play went really quick, which was funny.
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  The second play not as quick, but wasn't as fun.
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  Just the balance of the characters came out, and one of the cards that came out let everybody
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  know, publicly, who was on which team, and it just ended up not being super fun.
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  So I think there's a level of experience there.
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  I feel like the three of us that ended up on one team in that second game should have
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  been fighting harder against each other to be in the lead.
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  But we didn't do that well enough, so we just let one player kind of run away with the
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  win, which was lame.
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  7 wonders was fun as always.
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  I'm up to 17 out of my 50 games played on the table, which is pretty good.
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  I really want to get to like 30, 35 of them this year because the more that I play, the
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  other ones are just really hard to get to the table.
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  So making good progress on that.
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  Next up is my 10 for 10.
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  As you know, a normal 10 for 10 is where you pick 10 games and try to play the meach 10 times
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  in a year.
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  What I would have done instead this year is I picked 10 categories, and I'm trying to play
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  10 games that fit those categories in the year, or 10 game plays.
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  So I can reuse a game if it fits a category more than once.
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  So I only advanced one category this month, which doesn't, that's not great.
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  That was the game's by color of the box.
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  So I have 10 colors of the box picked out.
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  We have Roy G Biv and then brown, black and white.
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  And I did play a game where the box cover was primarily white.
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  This was bomb busters.
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  There's a game we've played a lot actually, but this is the first time I thought to apply
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  it in this category.
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  So I'm up to seven of the colors having been played thus far.
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  We're at 44 out of 100 complete.
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  So making good progress there, but I really am going to have to buckle down if I want to
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  finish it by the end of the year.
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  My painting challenge is pathetic and sad I haven't done any painting.
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  I would like to, I keep meaning to just haven't gotten back to it.
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  So the top priority of painting is to paint up frost haven minis.
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  I think if I get rolling again, maybe I'll just paint all the frost haven minis and then
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  I can get started on some other things.
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  I really want to do that.
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  I just haven't made the time.
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  My shelf of opportunity has been very productive.
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  As I mentioned before, it's beginning of the month.
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  There were six two games.
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  Now there are 77 on played, but you heard all of the new, all of the games I played.
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  I also had several games that I dusted off that were on my shelf of opportunity that were
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  removed.
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  So like King Domino and Royals and those two for example are games that I had played before.
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  So they're not new games, but they were added to my shelf of opportunity because of the
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  acquiring a copy.
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  That is one of my rules.
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  If I buy a copy of a game, it goes on my shelf of opportunity until I play it.
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  So I have made progress on that even though we did add a whole bunch of games to that list.
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  My expansion list, I only added one game to the expansion list this month and that was
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  Fresco.
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  I got, Fresco is one of the games I got in the trade.
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  And for some reason, the module number seven, the scrolls, was in the box.
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  So I have one expansion module number seven for some reason.
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  But that's added to expansions I have to play.
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  My collection size, I wanted to give you share the update on my collection size and ended
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  up being so funny, just yoyo up and down experience.
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  My collection started at 623 games this month.
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  Then I got rid of 27 games in the math trade, which was pretty cool.
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  Actually had a whole bunch more games that I've offered.
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  So I've got this big stack of games I've been meeting to sell.
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  Actually, it might be something I could do this afternoon is post those up on Facebook
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  Marketplace, see what I can get for them.
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  And then I have 18 games that I got in the math trade.
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  I actually got more than that.
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  But several games I got, I got with the intent of donating them to the college board game
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  club, which adonates the wrong word because they're still mine.
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  I haven't actually yielded ownership of them, but I think of them as part of the board game
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  club.
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  I don't have them in my collection.
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  I have them listed in the board game club collection.
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  And so that's what we're doing there.
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  I had several there, but I did end up with 18 new games added to my collection from that
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  math trade.
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  And then I purchased free radicals with points from my Amazon card.
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  I got red rising.
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  I actually had that game that I got a while back and I just had never marked it added to
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  my collection.
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  So I marked it added to my collection.
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  And then the board game club, my college board game club was doing a giveaway, like a little
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  drawing for some games.
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  And so I put adorable panda ring and boss monster into that giveaway.
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  I actually put in several games, but some of the other games had already been marked as
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  removed from my collection, even though we still had them in the house.
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  That was bad collection management on my part.
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  So I didn't give away four or five games actually, but only three, only two of them were still
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  marked in the collection.
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  So those two.
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  But then I went on a trip for school to a conference.
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  As I often do then, I found a game shop to visit and I bought myself two small games, Savin
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  Aki Forest and Time Bomb Evolution.
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  So those are in my collection now.
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  They're both cute little games.
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  I've talked about them in an episode I've recorded already, which will come out two episodes
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  from now.
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  So one of the games I get, one of the games I got in trade was Crossfire, which is a low
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  level social deduction game.
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  We had a good time with it at the board game club, but I quickly figured out, I don't
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  need this game in my collection at home.
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  So it has been added to the board game club collection.
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  So I removed it from mine.
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  And then finally I got Madame Madora's House of Curiosity's, which is a one play puzzle
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  game.
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  So I gave Madame Madora's House of Curiosity's away after we finished it.
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  And that marked one more game away, which got me down to 614.
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  So overall, a productive effort in terms of the collection.
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  And hopefully I'll continue that trend of reducing the collection size because that's
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  one of the goals.
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  Alright finally, what am I going to play next month?
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  I picked out a couple two older games to play.
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  I have Martin Wallace's Arrow Plains, which is a 2012 economic game.
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  I think it looks pretty good.
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  I bet I could get people to toggle the play if I set it up.
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  So I'm hoping I can do that.
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  I picked out in the year of the Dragon, which is a stuff and fell game.
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  One of my friends at toggle enjoys it and has it.
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  So I'm hoping that another night I can play that with him, if not maybe at home sometime.
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  I have Xenoshift Dreadmire.
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  This is a cooperative game, which I think my son kind of looked intrigued at when I was
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  showing him the games I got in my trade.
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  So I'm hoping I'll be able to play with him.
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  And finally I picked out Ghost Stories, which I worse that can play by myself.
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  But I know my son enjoys it, so I'm hoping I can play with him as well.
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  I'd love to play a couple rounds of it so we can get it back in memory, maybe win one.
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  And then try out the White Moon expansion, which I've had for a long time, is on my Expand
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  Your Shelf list, but I haven't gotten a chance to play.
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  So the White Moon expansion part is not actually part of my top of the stack goals, but I'm throwing
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  my hat over the wall and saying, "I am hoping to do that."
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  So that is my plan.
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  Aeroplanes in the air of the dragon, Xenoshift Dreadmire and Ghost Stories.
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  Well there are listeners.
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  I'd love to hear what you've been playing.
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  Head over to BoardGameGeek, Guild 3269, and share your game plays over there.
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  Our friends and mine will join us in the podcast comment section and tell us what they've
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  been playing as well.
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  If you'd like to send me a message, you can do so.
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  Wombat 929 on BoardGameGeek is my username.
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  I'd love to hear from you there.
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  You can also send me an email, breadin@radoboxgames.com.
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  I will probably hear it at some point.
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  Well that's about it for me today.
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  I want to say thank you for joining me on my walk and I hope your next walk is a pleasant
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  good mind loss.
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  Bye bye.
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  I've got an opportunity.
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  No, I'll get hold on.
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  I'm going to the train.
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  But the acoustics in here are not good.
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  I don't walk this way when I'm recording.
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  So I don't know what I was thinking, but it sounds bad.
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  So I'm holding off.
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  This is a post credits blooper message I guess.
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  [MUSIC]