Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Top of the Stack, August 2023

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Top of the Stack, August 2023 · Pick Up and Deliver

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Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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as I step out for a walk and deliver episode to you while I stroll
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around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners. It's a
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lovely way here in suburban Chicago. It's kind of hazy today. It's that
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kind of funny where there's not clouds in the sky per se, but the
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sky still looks very gray rather than blue, so I think there's just a
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slight haze. I don't know if this is still wildfire smoke or something else,
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but there we are. Well, however you cut it, it is.
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It is mid August. This is my third episode since we came back
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from the unplanned six weeks six weeks hiatus, and I'm glad to be back
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again. Today I will be doing the Top of the Stack for August twenty
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twenty three, which puts me in line to be ready for the next month.
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So are the month that we're currently in right. Normally, Top of
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the Stack is an episode I do right at the beginning of the month,
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of course, because I took a unplanned six seek hiatus instead of doing my
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Top of the Stack episode at the beginning of August. I'm doing it here
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in the first few the first a week and a half of August, but
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not right at the beginning. Also, if you're new to the podcast,
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i'll say the last three episodes of the ones you listen to. I don't
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do one of these every other episode. I do one a month usually,
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so if you don't like the top of the Stack episode, feel free to
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jump on it's the next thing. Also, I do like to remind listeners
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that the phrase top of the stack I swiped from the Post podcast of Nonsensical
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Gamers, whom a podcast I really enjoyed, and unfortunately they have not been
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on in quite a while. But that's okay. I missed them nonetheless,
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So today we will be talking about my game plays in July, and then
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we're jumping in. Then we're ready for August. So here we go.
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July twenty twenty three. My final monthly stats from July, I had eighty
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eight plays of fifty nine different games. As a reminder, many of those
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are asynchronous, but I do play quite a few games in person as well,
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certainly not to the extent that eighty eight plays suggests. Most of those
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are online, but still fifty nine different games played. This year, I've
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played six hundred and thirteen plays of two hundred and twenty six different games.
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My shelf of opportunity. This is the games that I own that I haven't
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played, that I'm excited to play, but I haven't gotten a chance yet.
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Some people will call this to the shelf of shame. I call it
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myself of opportunity. My goalie years to get it smaller than it was before,
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and inevitably it stays about where it is now. Sometimes it goes up
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a little bit, sometimes it goes down. This year, so far,
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I am still working my way down. I started the day I started the
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year at fifty five and right now. I started the month of July at
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fifty three and I went up to fifty six. July ended up being a
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month of acquiring games, and so the flack of opportunity to shelf of opportunity
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got more full. My collection size generally, I'm trying to reduce that as
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well. I started the year with five hundred and fifty three games and I'm
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up to five hundred and sixty two. I started the month at five to
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sixty one, so I acquired one game in July. That's not bad.
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I can already tell you August is looking not good from the perspective trying to
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get my collection size down. In the month of July, my most played
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game was Through the Ages that's asynchronous with seven plays, and second up is
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Arkham Horror, the card game, which is on the table with six plays.
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So certainly getting a lot of Arkham Horror in this summer, which has
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been really nice my top of the stack goals. I picked up four games
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I wanted to play. I wanted to play The Gardens, Altiplano, Time
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Pirates, and Coimbra. I did manage to play The Gardens and Altiplano.
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I did not managed to play Time Pirates, and I did manage to play
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Coimbra. So three of the four is pretty good. I think Time Pirates
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has been my novelty choice for like three months now. It's going on four
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in August. I'm just leaving it there till I get it played. It
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looks very silly, but I want to try it anyway. It's designed by
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Alan Moon. He knows what he's doing. It's just anyway, Time Pirates.
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It's a game I'm keen to try, so I did try quite a
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few new games in July. I don't know if you remember. In June
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the new game list was very short. I think it was three games or
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something. This month, it's back to my normal amount. Being the month,
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I had played sixty one new games this year, and by the end
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of the month I had played seventies. I played nine new games this month.
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And of course when I say new here, I don't mean brand new
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games, although some of these are. Instead, I mean new to me
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games that I've never played before. First unless is Bloom. I tried this
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at the end of my Canada vacation, which I told you about in June.
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That's actually the reason I stopped broadcasting. I went on the Canada vacation
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and I just never started up again. Bloom is from Game Right Games,
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and it's in the same genre as Quicks. It's not quite as good as
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Quicks, but it's interesting in the game, and you're rolling and writing and
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marking stuff down on paper, and you score at the end based on a
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combination of things you've circled. Mainly, there are two ways to score points.
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Either you fill up boxes. There the thing is divided into six boxes
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of flowers, and you're drawing circles around groups of flowers. So either you
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fill up a box and they score points for filling up how many boxes you
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got, and then you also get points for circling all the flowers of a
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certain color. Right, So it's a balancing act along with an optimization puzzle.
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It's good. It is the kind of game that's fun to play once
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a year, probably versus Quicks, which is fun anytime. I've only played
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Bloom a couple of times already and now, but I feel like it's one
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of those games every now and again it'll be fun. So that's Bloom.
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Next up we have The Gardens. The Gardens is a set collection game,
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very pretty based around the botanical gardens in Sydney, Australia, designed by Gilbert
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and Dunstan and pretty fun, very pretty fun game entry level but still good.
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Crossing Oceans This is the redo of trans Atlantic from mac Gertz. It
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reconfigures the so mac Gert's trans Atlantic is basically Concordia evolved into this shipping game
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and it wasn't all that well received, although I thought was pretty good.
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And then crossing Oceans is kind of like using a Rondel to do a very
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similar things still really neat glad I have both. I'm not sure which one
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I like about. I'll talk about that more in an Espresso episode. We
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Tried to Fire in the Library. This is a game I borrowed from my
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from the XYZ Game Labs library. We have a copy over there. Tony
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Miller is the designer. I believe. It's a fun game in which you
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are trying to stop the Library of Alexandria from being burned down your librarians.
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And it's a push your luck game where you're trying to save as many books
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as you can, but if you get too much fire, then all the
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books you're trying to save burn up. That's not bad. I'll talk about
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that more in a Espresso episode. I'm gonna stop saying that. All of
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the rest of these I'll talk about more in Espresso episodes. Orphan Black the
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Card Game is a really interesting sort of light deduction game. Along with some
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set collection. Namalia is a very interesting card layering game in the same neighborhood
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as Sprawlopolis, or, to a lesser degree, the Skulls of Sedlec.
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I haven't played Circle the Wagons, but apparently that game works this way too.
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You have you're layering them, you're trying to score, and it also
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uses the aisle of sky scoring where you have a bunch of different scoring conditions
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and you score different combinations of them each round. It's pretty good. I
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like that one a lot. Expeditions is the kind of sequel to Scythe takes
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place in the Side universe and shares a little bit of sort of action selection
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DNA with Side. It is a very different game and interesting, but in
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a different way. I thought it was fun. I don't know if I
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like it better than the Side, but I don't really know that it's fair
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to compare them. That Time You Killed Me is a sort of Chess inspired
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abstract that has some really interesting components in which you're playing on three different boards
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at once. Is a time travel theme that's pretty enjoyable. I played it
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once and I liked it, but I was not very good at it.
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I want to play it a few more times before I really know what I
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think. And finally we play Suspects. Claire Harper takes the stage. This
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is a mystery game themed around detective who is trying to solve a mystery.
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There are cards to draw and questions to answer at the end of the game.
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One of the things about this game that I like quite a bit is
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there are there's an answer sheet and you're saying what answers you think there are
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to the mystery. And the way it works is you commit your answer and
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then you keep playing and if you want to change your mind, then when
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you change your mind, you get the lower commitment time. Like, the
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earlier you commit your answer, the better the payout will be. If you
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change your answer later, then you get the lower payout. It's a very
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friendly system, but I think works really well. So that's Claire Harper takes
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the stage part of the Suspects line. We do like it, so that's
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good because there's several of them, I think five or six different Suspects games,
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so if we decide we like those, we can play them for a
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while. So those are the nine new games I tried in July. Next
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up my painting challenge. I did very little progress on my painting challenge.
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My goal to do some more Hellboy. Finished the Nazi minis for Hellboy and
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start on the Cerebria minnis. I did a layer of bassecoat on the Nazi
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minis and that was kind of the end. So I did very little progress
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in July and August is not looking great either, but we'll see next up
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my Shelf of Opportunity log, there were fifty six unplayed games as of the
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last update. If you want to check those out, you can go to
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the board. The page on board the Rattobox games page for this podcast has
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a link to my Shelf Opportunities you can see what are the games that are
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on there. I did get to try eight expansions this month to games I
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had played already. First off the Unlock Ticket to Ride lesson of the Game
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Adventures box. We played the Edge of the Earth. We started the Edge
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of the Earth campaign. I think we did not quite finish it in July,
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but we finished it before I went to gen Con, so that was
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really fun. We did the Disparience of Sherlock Holmes Exit game. We did
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Path of the Serpent in Mansion's Madness second Edition, and we oh, that
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was it. So this four new expansions tried this month, for a total
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of twelve so far this year. And then finally out of the Dust plays.
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As a reminder, out of the dust means a game gets dusty when
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it hasn't been played for a year or more. So, if I come
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back to a game that I played over a year ago, it's come out
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of the dust and it goes on to this lift. So far, I've
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dusted off thirty seven games this year before August, and I had five this
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month. First off, Tussy Mussy, which is an interesting flower trading game
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with just a little bit of bluffing and set collection. That was two years,
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nine months and thirteen days. My wife and I played that on our
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vacation in a little cafe, which was really fun. Next it was Coinbra.
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I played this twice four years ago, but I really like it,
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so I brought it. I bought it when I was on my trip.
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That was my game souvenir from the trip, and really excited to give that
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a go or to play it again. It is great. I agree with
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Rob said he really wished that the cards had not stuck so hard to language
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independence, and I think that's the one gap in the game, is that
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everything demands that you understand the iconography, and the player aids are not good.
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So before I play that again, I'm gonna have to make some better
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player aids. But I really like it, and I think it's worth continuing
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to play Glory to Rome. I was very excited to get out Glory to
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Rome. I brought it to Toggle, told a couple of people ahead of
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time I was planning to play it, and so we got a good group
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of people. It was a really fun game. It's glad to have it
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played, and I think we're going to be playing some more Karl Chuddick as
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weeks go on. So that's Glory to Rome. Mansions a Madness second Edition.
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I haven't played this in four years and eight months, so it's been
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a very long time. But we were talking about what kind of games the
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family would like, what kind of games my son would like, and Mansions
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of Madness came up. We suggested given it and we had a great time
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with it. We used the slightly easier variant were you get to do three
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actions instead of two. I know that probably makes it unreasonably easy, but
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when you're only doing two actions, you spend most of your time just like
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you have many turns where you just move and nothing happens, So that part
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is a little lame. I'm not really sure how to counteract that, because
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because without taking the three actions. If you only take two, the timer
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moves better and the monsters get wilder, and that part works really well,
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but it's just not as fun. So we had lots of fun. So
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that was Mansion the Madness second Edition. And then finally I did get to
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play al To Plano. It was two years and seventeen days since I played
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that last. We dusted it off and had a great time with it.
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The hope was to play it again sometime soon, and I'm sticking by that.
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I did engage in the fifty two Game Challenge as well. We got
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four more conditions met as a reminder of fifty two game Challenges, a list
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of game play prompts that play try to complete over the course of a year,
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and so far I've got. I had thirty two of them done coming
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into the month, and I completed four of them this month. We had
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play a game with a rabbit. My wife and I played Everdell, So
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there you go. There's definitely rabbits in that. The shopkeeper in particular is
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a rabbit. Play a game with a rhyming title. I already mentioned.
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We played Tussi Mussy on my vacation. That one rhymes play a game where
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you could do your dream job. Now this is tough because my dream job
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is being a professor. There aren't many games where you get to be a
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professor, and I certainly haven't played one in a while. However, I
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always thought it would be really fun to work in a library, so I
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decided library is one of my being a librarian. It's one of my dream
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jobs. And so we played Fire in the Library, and I counted that
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finally, play a game where the art is done by one of your favorite
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artists. I was reminded in playing Altiplano and seeing those super cute and delightful
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lamas that I always enjoy the art when Clemens Franz is attached. He has
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a very particular style in especially with regard to his euro games, that always
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make me excited and happy to play games. Clemens Franz might not be the
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kind of artist where I'm going to take his work and hanging up on my
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wall, but I really like his style and his art direction in board games
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is unparalleled. So Clemens Franz makes number fifty one. The last thing to
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add today is the collection size update. Knows what's funny? I ended up
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one game one game up from where I started. I started at fifty five
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and sixty one games in my collections being in July. Now listen to this
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roller coaster up and down. I added four games The Gardens, A Walk
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in a Park, Hunted would Ridge, and The Castles of Burgundy. So
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I added those four games. Boom boom, boom boom. Right then I
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immediately sold eleven games. I sold Stronghold, Cryptid Hoax, Eight Minute,
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Empire, Visitor in Blackwood, Grove, Castle, Panic World West, Silver
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and Gold Floor, Planet Raptor in Noria. I believe I did an episode
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talking about selling those games. So now I'm down seven games. Awesome,
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But then I got Woodcraft and Crossing Oceans. That's up too blanks. Late,
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I found that at a goodwill excellent buy up one public assistance. Rob
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found that at a good will for me it fits my academic interests, although
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it looks like a horrifying game, both in terms of shitty game play pardon
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my French, and also really awful theme. I don't like owning it,
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but I know buying it did not give any money to the people who made
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it, and having it will let me study it. So yeah, but
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awful Theme. Then about three more games Tenpenny Parks, Nomalia and Suspects.
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Tenpenny Parks and Suspects I got at the Lagra at the Downers Grove Village shopping
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day, and then Nomalia. I had some Amazon points that I spent on
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that game. And finally I got Great Western Trail second Edition as a gift
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from a friend Paul. Thank you Paul. That put me at five hundred
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and sixty two games in the collection, up one from where I was in
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June, so for my selling eleven games to put it down to my collection.
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Finally I picked up my next four games brand new. One is going
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to be Revive. I knew I was going to get this at gen Con,
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so I put it on my list my top fifty choice. I think
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I'm gonna try to play Tris Majistice again. This is a tricky one to
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get played, but I think it would be really fun. So I'm gonna
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play that novelty. Like I said, I'm leaving Time Pirates on there.
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And then finally Vagrant Song. It is the last game that I would like
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to try to get played. This one would be playing with the family,
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and I think we can think we can do it. We'll see. So
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that's Revive, Tris, Majistice, Time Pirates, and Vagrant Song. So
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what have you been plot? Did you play? In July? Head over
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to boarding game Get Killed three two six nine and share your thoughts. I'd
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also love to hear what are you playing to play in August? What have
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you been playing? I haven't heard from me a while. I've been gone
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for six weeks. Head over there and let me know. You can also
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send me an email Brendan at Rattlebox Games dot com, or you can message
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me on board Game Arena or blata Chure, board game Geek all three places.
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One about ninety nine is my user name. Yeah, excuse me,
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not blat has you. You caught the dot d. I'm not visiting blow
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to has You anymore because it's on the verge of going up a business or
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shutting down, so I'm not starting games or playing games there anymore. So
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if you were looking for me there, too bad, I'm not there.
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Well thanks for joining me and mark today. I'll do your next walk is
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supposed to The line was Blae Bye. Brought to you by rattle Box Day