Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Top of the Stack, Jan 2024

Transcript

Top of the Stack, Jan 2024 · Pick Up and Deliver

0:05
Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
0:08
as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk
0:11
home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, folks, I've slipped a little bit
0:24
in that. Generally I try to have the seasons capped by the calendar year.
0:29
But we are still in season six for another I think eleven episodes and
0:34
it is January third right now. Oh dang oh. Well, my goal,
0:42
as you know, if you listened to say season three and I think
0:46
season four, I did this as well. My goal is to have the
0:49
season run from My goal is to have the season run from late January to
0:57
mid December and then take a couple months off or a month and a half
1:00
off. Last year, I did not get all the episodes I needed to
1:04
get done done, and so then instead of so then I had some makeup
1:08
episodes in January to get to lock that down. And it looks like I'm
1:12
gonna have to do the same thing again this time. On the plus side,
1:17
because I am teaching my January term class where I take the train every
1:19
day, I should have time in the next two weeks three weeks to record
1:25
eleven episodes and lockdown that season so that when we hit like or January twentieth
1:33
or so, I can start season seven with episode six hundred, So that'll
1:37
be fun. But that means it's January third, it's the beginning of the
1:42
month, which means that it's time for Top of the Stack of January.
1:47
Now, I am going to do Top of the Stack of January, but
1:51
I am not going to set up everything from the top of the Stack of
1:55
January. I am saving that for I don't know what you call the stack
1:59
of ye, I'm going to save that for the beginning of season seven,
2:05
in which I will talk about goals for the year and that sort of thing.
2:08
All I'm going to share for this time are the four games that I'm
2:13
putting on the top of the Stack for January itself. But I would like
2:17
to share what happened in December because it was a rollicking good time. So
2:21
top of the Stack here we go. For those of you new to the
2:24
podcast, the Top of the Stack is a feature that I swiped from the
2:30
podcast of Nonsensical Gamers, in which I talked about what I'm going to play
2:36
in the upcoming time and try to have a sort of metaphorical stack of games
2:39
that I'm trying to get played. It's just a way to kind of vocalize
2:44
goals. I don't do all that greater job of holding myself accountable to listeners
2:49
because I often don't get it right. But whatever, I don't get them
2:52
done, but whatever, it's fun to talk about. To start with,
2:55
I would like to talk about how my previous month went. So in December
3:02
of twenty twenty three, I played ninety four plays of sixty one different games,
3:08
which brings my year total for twenty twenty three to one hundred or one
3:14
thy twelve plays of three hundred and thirty nine different games. So I guess
3:19
three hundred and sixty five would be one different game each day for a year.
3:23
Three point thirty nine gets pretty close to that. Maybe that should be
3:25
my goal next year, to play three hundred and sixty five different games next
3:29
year. That seems like a fun goal. Challenging but not unreachable given that
3:34
I played three hundred and thirty nine different games already. There's some variants there
3:38
that could have pushed it up in terms of months. Like I said,
3:40
ninety four plays of sixty one different games and to start off, I had
3:46
four games on my top of the stack. I had Hadrian's Wall, Cerebria,
3:52
Hunted wood Ridge, and Vagrant Song. Well, December ended up being
3:54
a very busy month and I got almost nothing played from my top of the
3:59
stack list. So I did play Hadrians while once online. I almost don't
4:04
want to count it because while I did play it, I didn't really understand
4:09
what was going on all that well. I could not have played it on
4:12
paper, but when you play online it tells you where you can click,
4:15
so I'm not sure I should count it as a play or not. But
4:19
I did go through a game of it. I did not, however,
4:24
get a chance to play Cerebria, Hunted wold Ridge, or Vagrant Song,
4:28
so we'll see how many of those games make it into next months set.
4:32
I did, however, get to play try lots of new games this month.
4:36
Coming into December, I had played one hundred and thirteen games that were
4:43
new to me this year tried out for the first time one hundred and thirteen
4:46
games. In December, I played fourteen more new games, so my total
4:54
for the year of new games tried it is one hundred and twenty seven new
4:59
games, which I feel pretty great about that. Let's see, one hundred
5:05
and four would be two new games a week, and I did better than
5:11
that. That's pretty great. I'm really excited about that number, and it
5:15
means I got to experience lots of new stuff. And as you know from
5:19
listening, trying a new game is almost my favorite thing about gaming. So
5:25
the new games I tried this month are Hedrian's Wall, Amon Ray, the
5:28
twentieth Anniversary Edition, Puerto Rico eighteen ninety seven, Pitt That's a Question,
5:33
Tapple, Wyatt, IRP, thunder Road, Vendetta, Brian Boru, High
5:38
King of Ireland, Trophies, Smug Owls, Pretense, Shut the Box,
5:45
Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons Scrawlers, Heroes of Under Mountain, and Cosmock to
5:48
Puss. Lots of bangers in there. Really good games this month. Happy
5:51
to have played them. So I did try two new expansions this month,
5:58
one of them the Isle of Cats, Kittens, Beasts, and boat Pack.
6:01
We tried both Kittens and Beasts. Those were fun, and we played
6:06
the new We played the Monochrome Inc Chapter of Adventure Games. Now, this
6:14
is the thing. It's interesting because Adventure Games is a series of games designed
6:18
by Brett Gilbert and Phil Walker Harding, where there's a story and there's a
6:23
bunch of puzzles to solve and stuff to explore, et cetera, et cetera.
6:27
One way to categorize those is to have each one be a different game.
6:30
To think of adventure games as a game, to think of to think
6:34
of adventure games Volcanic Island again as a game, adventure games, Monochrome Inc.
6:39
As a game, and so on. What I do instead is the
6:43
first time I play a game in a series like that, I counted as
6:46
a new game played, and thereafter I count them as expansions. Mostly that's
6:50
because, like I feel like it's not a new game. If I'm playing
6:54
a new chapter or a new version a new round of a game I've played
6:58
before, it's it feels more like an expansion than a new game. So
7:02
that's how I categorize it. I do the same thing with unlocked and exit
7:05
games. When I play those, I put them in the category of expansions,
7:11
which actually reminds me. We also played the exit Lord of the Rings
7:15
expansion in December as well, which I forgot to include on here. I
7:18
did get several games out of the Dust, which is always fun. As
7:23
a reminder, out of the dust is a classification. It's a metaphorical classification
7:28
of a game you haven't played in a year. When you let a game
7:30
sit on the shelf for a year or more, it gets dusty. And
7:33
so to get a game out of the dust is to play it when it's
7:36
been more than a year. This year or this month, I play six
7:41
games from in the Dust to Out of the Dust, and those are the
7:45
Isle of Cats. It had been a year and eight months and eighteen days
7:47
since I played that Tera Mystica. It had been two years, seven months
7:51
in fourteen days since I played that Lords of Water Deep. It had been
7:56
one year, one month and five days down Force, it had been three
8:00
years, five months and twenty days. And finally, Oh Deception, Murder
8:03
in Hong Kong five years, six months, twenty two days, and finally
8:09
Santa's Workshop one year and six days. It seems unlikely that Santa's Workshop will
8:15
make the Dusty list next year because it sort of feels like the kind of
8:18
game we're going to play once a year at Christmas time, sometime between like
8:22
December twentieth and December thirty first, and so since we played it on December
8:28
thirty first this year, the odds are very low that next year it'll be
8:33
more than a year till we play it. Well, it's time to report
8:35
on the ten by ten Challenge. As you recall, this year, my
8:39
ten by ten Challenge goal was I picked ten designers and the goal was to
8:43
play each of their play games by them ten times. As a secondary note,
8:48
some of these designers had games available to play online, and so I
8:52
kept a separate list of how many times I played their games online versus on
8:56
the table. Now, if you count online plays and table plays, I
9:01
got pretty close, on pretty close to meeting the ten by ten I think
9:05
I came up three games short. If you add table plays to online plays,
9:11
I came up like three games short. So in online plays I played
9:16
five Martin Wallace games, more than ten, Vladimir Suci games more than ten
9:20
yner can you see on more than ten inca Brand nine, Phil Walker Harding,
9:24
more than ten, Tom Lehman six, Elizabeth Hargrave, and more than
9:30
ten of Vladishevado, Uver Rosenberg and Carl Chuttick. So just in online plays,
9:35
I nearly made that ten for ten. Of course, that's much easier
9:39
to do than to do real face to face plays, so doesn't really count.
9:45
And I don't think I'm going to do a thing next year where online
9:48
plays will count for anything. It's just not the same. So in real
9:52
plays or table plays, I did not do nearly as well. I definitely
9:58
did not yet. I got very close to fifty, but not quite so
10:01
I got forty eight real plays on the table with games from these designers around
10:07
to around November. I thought fifty would be a good target to go for
10:09
it, but I just did not get my act together to finish it out.
10:13
So here are the counts for on the table plays from these designers.
10:18
Martin Wallace I played seven games on the table, Vladim Masucci seven games,
10:24
Ryder Canisia eight games. INCA Brand only four and those were all exit games.
10:28
The reality is I just don't have any INCA brand games to play.
10:31
I used to have my Village. I sold it. I did not get
10:35
Village. I was kind of thinking I would get Village this year, but
10:37
I did not get it. And so there you go. Phil Walker Harding
10:39
five plays, Tom Lehman four plays, I think one play of City and
10:45
three plays of res Arkhana or else, two plays of city, two plays
10:48
of rez Orkhana or something like that. To Elizabeth Hargrave five Vlada Chivato like
10:54
three or four of those are code names. One of them is that's a
10:58
question. Uve Rosenberg two plays and Karl Chuddick four plays. It's overall pretty
11:05
satisfying ten for ten this year, but I did not complete the list.
11:09
It really does beg the question, though, and I would love your help
11:13
in the next couple of weeks, friends of the Pod, figuring out what
11:16
I am going to do for my ten for ten this year. This year
11:18
I did designers. Last year, we did games picked by my family.
11:24
I believe I have done a variety of different approaches. I was thinking about
11:28
game types this year, so like deck builders, worker placement games, adventure
11:33
games. I don't know that might be interesting. I'm not sure how easy
11:37
that would be to track, but you know, just like anything, or
11:43
maybe I'll just go back to a standard ten for ten. What I might
11:46
want to do is pick out ten games that I think my wife might be
11:48
willing to play with me and do a ten for ten with her. But
11:52
I don't know if she'll want to play games that often we'll see I don't
11:56
know if you can hear this. Somebody's cutting some wood near where I'm walking,
12:00
so there's lots of noises going on there. Hopefully it's not ruining my
12:03
recording. Well. I have to go through and double check. But I
12:09
think I ended up at forty three out of fifty two on the game Challenge.
12:13
Not great. I feel like I could have done better, but I
12:16
stopped paying attention to it. Like I said, December was a really busy
12:20
month. I was not able to organize my gameplays with the vigor that I
12:22
would have liked. It looks like I got a couple of them, so
12:26
it might be better than forty two, but it's not. Definitely didn't get
12:30
to fifty two. On my painting goal, I did not get any painting
12:33
done in December. It might be fun to get some done in here in
12:35
January. I would like to, but it's just only so many hours in
12:39
the day. And finally, on my shelf of opportunity log at the beginning
12:46
of the beginning of the year, I had fifty five games on my shelf.
12:50
My goal was to get it down to thirty at the end of the
12:54
year, I had sixty six games on my shelf, so not only did
12:58
I not get it down to thirty, it increased by eleven. That said,
13:01
it's the list started with fifty five games on the list. As I
13:05
added games to my collection this year, I added numbers to the list and
13:11
the last game I added came in on December thirty first, and that was
13:15
Medieval Academy at number one hundred and twenty six. So that means I acquired
13:20
and put on the Shelf of Opportunity list roughly forty five games. Forty six
13:26
games, which is a lot but not outrageous, seems like fewer than last
13:31
year, and given that I got a lot of games from Goodyear this Goodwill,
13:33
this year, I feel like I did much better in terms of controlling
13:37
my game acquisition habits. That said, I was not doing that great at
13:41
getting rid of games, and so I still ended up with more games at
13:46
the end of the year than I started with. In fact, at the
13:50
end of the year, my collection had five hundred and sixty games in it,
13:52
and at the end of this year I was up to five seventy six,
13:54
which means that even though I acquired forty games, I own. I
14:00
got rid of thirty or twenty four, so it's not bad. I mean,
14:05
that's at least making an effort. Probably could make an effort more.
14:07
But now with five seventy five or five seventy six games, I guess it's
14:11
going to feel like well, six hundred feels like a natural cap. Maybe
14:13
I can acquire twenty five more without getting rid of any No, that's nuts.
14:16
You should see the place where my games are. It's overwhelmed, so
14:22
not good. But anyway, so that is kind of where I'm at here
14:26
at the end of January. I have started the process of getting ready for
14:33
next year. I don't know exactly what I'm going to be playing yet.
14:37
I will announce that in late January, although I promise I will set it
14:39
soon. If you want to go to board game Geek and click my top
14:43
of the stack, you'll see my January top of the stack for twenty twenty
14:46
four will be set. But I'm not going to announce it on here until
14:50
the beginning of season seven. When I do the beginning of the year roundup.
14:54
For sure, one of the games is going to be Vagrant Song.
14:58
We'll see what else tickles in my hand seat well that brings me to home
15:01
into the end of the podcast. So thanks for joining me on my walk
15:05
today, Happy New Year, and I hope that your your next walk.
15:07
This is pleasant as mind was. Goodbye. Brought to you by rattle Box