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

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Top of the Stack, July 2024 · 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 head out for a walk and deliver an episode two while I stroll
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around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, if you are listening, you can
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hear there are a lot of birds around right now. The sparrow broods were
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particularly productive this year. It's interesting. I was just reading about sparrows and
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one of the main things that determines the likelihood of success of viability for sparrow
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chicks is large bugs if the parents are able to feed them large bugs.
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While with the cicadas, all of the sparrows that bred this year were able
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to feed their chicks tons of bugs, which means that way more than usual
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sparrows survived to fledge and are now flying around wanting food. I worry that
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this is going to be this is going to mean a rough year for the
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sparrows in terms of finding food, because now that the cicadas are gone,
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the increased food supply does not still exist for the cicadas or for the sparrows.
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Honestly, what I'm a little surprised about those that we haven't seen more
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birds of prey around, although I suppose this effect has happened everywhere, So
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wherever the birds of prey are, their sparrows are already more populous than usual.
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So now the cycle of life. Eh. I'm reflecting on this on
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the morning of July first. It's July first, the summer is a third
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over. It's kind of a terrifying prospect, given how much work I need
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to do this summer. But with the arrival of a new month comes another
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Top of the Stack. That's why it's signed for a Top of the Stack
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July twenty twenty four. If you're new to the podcast, Top of the
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Stack is a segment or an episode in which I review what I played last
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month and I talk about what's coming up next month. AS set a goal
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for myself of four different games that I might play three of which if I
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play three of the four, I consider it a successful month. So let's
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jump into it. I'll start with some stats. In June of twenty twenty
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four, I played eighty five plays of fifty two different games. My year
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total so far as four hundred and fifty eight plays of one hundred and seventy
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eight games. Unless you think all I do is sit around and play games
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not true. I use Board Game Arena to pump up those numbers. So
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I do count my asynchronous plays, and that's part of where my inflaid stats
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come from. I think if I just counted on the table plays, it
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would be roughly a third of this maybe. My shelf of opportunity at the
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beginning of the month was sixty five games. It went up to sixty seven.
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We'll talk about that my collection size. The goal was to reduce it.
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I started at five seventy six. At the beginning of June, I
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was at five eighty nine. I'm now at five ninety two, so didn't
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succeed there either. We're not making progress there at this point. I'm just
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trying to keep it under six hundred. My most played game was Tipperary three
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plays in real life. My most played game online was packs Renaissance with ten
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plays asynchronous. My top of the stack report this month at four games on
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the top of my seck Mythic Mischief, the Office Downsizing Game, Scooby Doo,
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and the Haunted Mansion, and Forum trash on them. I am pleased
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to say I got three of those games played. The only one I did
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not get played was the office downsizing game. That one will come around again
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in a couple of months. I'll try it again. But yeah, I
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didn't. Honestly, I didn't make much effort to get that played. I
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don't. I think I need to do a little bit more trying to get
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these games played, just having in my head I really want to try to
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get a forum trash on I'm played. I was able to get it played
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and it worked out great. Mythic Mischief was kind of a gimme. I
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thought we'd probably play that with my nieces when they visited, and we did.
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And then Scooby Doo and the Haunted Mansion. I did have to kind
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of push for a little bit, but it was an easy sell. So
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I'm now at thirteen out of eighteen possible plays. If I were to accomplish
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all four, remember I get three is the sort of goal, so in
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six months, eighteen would have been perfect. But I put four on the
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list each month, so if I'm hyper vigilant, I could get to the
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point where I got thirty six out of thirty six at the end of the
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year. If I play all four games several times in the next cycles in
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the next few months, that's unlikely, but I could do it. I
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did try out a number of games this month. At the beginning of the
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year, I had thirty four new games tried this year, and I tried
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out several this month, Mythic Mischief, Chicken, Picture Perfect Scooby doo In,
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The Haunted Mansion, Voidfall, Inventions, The Evolution of Ideas, Packs,
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Premiere second Edition, and Tipperary. I did try some new expansions this
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well this month as well or one anyway, I was at five new to
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me expansions this year, and I continued my pace of one a month.
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I tried out the expansion for Chicken, so that puts me at six new
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expansions tried this year. I did dust off a number of games. Coming
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into this month, I had dusted off sixteen games. This is a month
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of dusting. I guess I did very well. I played a handful of
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Stars, which had been five years, three months and sixteen days Dusty.
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I played Sheriff of Nottingham three years, nine months, twenty seven days Dusty.
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I played Hugh, which is one of those tiny Paco games games one
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year, five month, twenty two days Dusty. I played hell Boy,
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the board game one year one day Dusty. I played Root one year,
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three months, three days Dusty. I played Targee one year, fifteen days
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Dusty. I played Valley of the Kings one year, seven months and twenty
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days Dusty Forum trash on them. I had played online, so you know,
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I didn't put that in my new plays. That was a return,
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but I'd never played a physical copy, and when I played it online it
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was three years, seven months and twenty eight days ago. Nexus Ops seven
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years, six months, twelve days Dusty blood Ridge five years, six months,
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nineteen days Dusty and Magic Gathering one year, four months, nine days
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Dusty. For a total of twenty six games dusted off this year. So
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I got ten this month. That's pretty good. I'm feeling good about that.
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I want to keep on that pace. I like going back to games
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I've played before, particularly if they're on my shelf. Letting them get dusty
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that long on my shelf. It's good to go back to them because maybe
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they don't they aren't a good fit anymore. Next to Soops is a good
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example of that. I did have two notable plays this month. I said,
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Hadrian's Wall. I finally got it played on the table, and I
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finally get it. I kind of had fiddled with it before. I tried
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to online a couple times, but it was never really clicking for me how
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it worked having played it on the table. Now I get it, baby,
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And then Santo Domingo, this is a game that went dusty for a
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while. I dusted it off a couple months ago, and then I've played
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it again since. This is a really nice little uh I don't know what
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you call hand management game with some interesting quirks and a cool little strategy to
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play. Plays in about fifteen minutes, but it's really satisfying. There's a
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little bit of trying to read your opponent, and I really like it.
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So I think I'll probably keep this near to hand and give it a try
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a few more times soon. That's Santo Domingo, all right, making good
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progress telling you about my monthly plays. I didn't really talk much about those
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games dusted off. I have been talking about them in my podcasts. Handful
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of Storr, as I mentioned already, Route was an interesting one. It's
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still not my favorite game. I like it. I think it's pretty interesting.
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I'll play it when people want to, but it's probably not going to
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be a game. I suggest my son really enjoyed it, though, which
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is interesting because he seems to like I have no idea how to filter which
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games he likes or not. I think he was originally attracted to Root by
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the fact that head cats, and since our play of it in person,
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he went and bought the online version for Steam and has played so loaded a
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bunch to try out different things. I don't think he bought any of the
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side factions yet, but he really is going to town on it and enjoying
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it. Value of the Kings was really fun to return to forum. Trash
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on them was great. I don't think I talked about that in the podcast
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much, but I really do like the nuance of the different pieces, the
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getting the bonuses, the trying to score things, and I think it's a
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game that I'll try to get back to the table or maybe this would maybe
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now that I understand it would be a good one to fire up on Yukata
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dot dee. If there's anybody out there that really wants to give it a
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try, swing over to Yukata dot dee send me a message my user name
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there. I bet it'll be hard to guess. Yeah, it's Wombat nine
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two nine. You knew it, I knew it, We all knew it.
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Okay, So that's a little bit of commentary on the dusty games.
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My ten for ten progress. This was a good month for that. We
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really clipped ahead on a lot of things. As a reminder, my ten
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for ten this year is in case you're entirely rusty about ten for tens,
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a ten for ten is a list of ten games. Normally, it's a
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list of ten games that you're trying to play ten times each. That's the
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basic idea. The way that we do The way that I'm doing the ten
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for ten this year is I've picked ten categories of games and I'm trying to
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get ten plays in that category for each and so each category I'm going through
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and logging. So we've completed the Legacy Legacy Slash Campaign category mostly with frost
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Haven. Frost Haven and Segrata Artisans were most of those plays. The Nature
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slash Animal category, now this is real nature or Animals focused games focused on
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real nature or real animals, and we got ark Nova Wingspan. We played
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Arknova twice. I played Arkanova twice in Wingspan once this month, putting me
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up to nine coming into the month, we were at six plays in that
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category. The three hour game category is one that we've got. Actually some
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frostrating plays in this category as well, once you finish the legacy slash campaign
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category. But I played Septima, which took us just over three hours and
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had that pushed us up to ten, So I'm now at ten plays and
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that category is finished. The cute animal category, now, this is the
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opposite of the natural animal the ideas. These are cute animals that have been
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like anthropomorphized, put into situations that animals don't normally don't normally play in.
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I'll confess one of the things I had on here is I wanted to try
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a couple more plays of Raccoon Tycoon. Then I ended up selling that game
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before I played it again. So the cute animals there are not there.
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But you know, we have Everdell that we play that we have played a
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lot in the past. We haven't played it this month, but it's a
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game that we enjoy. But I did just mention we played Root. I
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count Root as a cute animal game, which puts us up to four plays
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this year so far, which isn't great. But if we got an Everdell
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kick, we could very easily knock out those. The remaining six wouldn't be
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that hard. I'd also like to return to Everdell Farshore because that one first
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time we played it, it was fun, but my wife did not I
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did not properly stress in the scoring in teaching the game how the scoring would
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work, particularly for the bonus goals, and so she didn't acquire as many
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of those as she should, and the scores were not as even as the
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gameplay would have suggested. So hopefully in trying that again, I can teach
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it a little differently and it'll go over better. But we do have regular
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Everdell, and there's a number of other games that could fit this category,
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but that one's only at four so far. We're looking to play escape room
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style games. The Scooby Doo in the Haunted Mansion game was one of the
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coded chronicles games from the OP. I liked it a lot. The system's
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pretty good. It's in the neighborhood of something like Unlock. I don't I
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can't recall if you have to use an app to solve anything. Oh,
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each player has their own booklet. That's what it was. Each player has
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their own numbered booklet, not unlike Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective or something like that,
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where it's when it's your turn, you're going to read a particular entry
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and that adds to the information. It opens up packets, and you do
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have some unlock style stuff, but it's often storytelling and choices, not dissimilar
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from adventure games the Phil Walker Harding and Brett Gilbert game. And plus you
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get to say things in like the Scooby Doo character voices and that's always fun.
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So that was Scooby Doo and the Haunted Mansion from the op Definitely worth
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trying if you get a chance. And that put us up to six escape
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room style games played this year so far. I do not play any games
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that I put in the novelty category this month, so we're still at three
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games in that category. The next category is games that are expanded, by
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which I mean there is an expansion added in while we're playing it. One
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of my players of ark Nova would have fit in that, but I wanted
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to finish out the Animal nature category because there are more games that are expanded
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than I play Animal Nature once. Any future ark Noovo will certainly include the
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Marine World's expansion and thus fit in this category. Nonetheless, I did get
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one expansion played when we played Chicken. We also used the expansion for our
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second game, so I got to count this count that play as an expanded
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game. It wasn't a huge expansion, but that wasn't the category name.
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We're up to eight plays. I have no doubt that one will be easy
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to finish. Then the last three categories, categories eight, nine, and
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ten are all related to the alphabet. So what I said is I wanted
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to play one game starting with each letter of the alphabet, and that gets
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me twenty six letters, and then the last four. I said, what
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if I play games with numbers on one digit, two digits, three digits,
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and four digits, And my idea was to have the numbers be at
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the beginning of the game, like seven Wonders. That's the seven Wonders is
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the only one that's ticked one of these boxes. I have a lot of
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games with numbers in the titles, but almost none have the number at the
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beginning of the game. So this is the question I'm gonna have to ask
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myself, is do I stick to the numbers at the beginning of the game,
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rule and seek out games outside of my collection, or do I relax
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that and say the game just has to have that many numbers together, in
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which case it should be much easier to get the game played games played.
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That'll be a decision to make. I'll give myself a couple more months,
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see if I can start finding those games. If it's proving exceedingly difficult,
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I can always change myself my idea later. One option would be I could
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try to find a friend who's got an eight on eighteen xx game and play
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one of those, because those always start eighteen twelve whatever. That would be
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one way to do it. I did have a missed opportunity at Goodwill.
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I found a copy of seventeen seventy six, the game about the American Revolution.
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But it's like a Warren Chit game. It's an Avalon Hill bookcase game.
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He wanted eight dollars for it, and it would definitely go in my
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collection as a quote unquote novelty game. But it's not in a category like
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I don't collect the Avalon Hill book games, I don't bookshelf games. I'm
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not super into that, so it would have been just getting it for the
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novelty, and eight dollars was more than I wanted to spend for that kind
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of novelty. I may regret that later, but there it is. I
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did actually get some painting done this month. My June goal is the same
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painting goal I've had the whole time so far or all year, which is
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paint the unpainted Frost Haven minis, paints the Cerebriu minis, and finish the
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hell Boy minis. I did paint two of the Frost Haveing minies, which
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has worked out nicely because those are the ones we're still using. I need
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to I want to get the rest of them painted now so that when people
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retire and pull out a new one, it's already painted. That just involves
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actually making time to do that. I may I may switch though and play
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the do the Cerebriu minis, because I really would like to play that game,
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and next time I play it, I want to play with painted minis,
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so that needs needs doing. Onto my Shelf of Opportunity report, we
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had a pretty good Shelf of Opportunity run this month. Like I said,
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we moved it from sixty five to sixty seven games, so I reached the
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number of games that we hadn't played. A part of that is because I
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picked up one two. I picked up two eight ten games, although two
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of them I did not put on the shelf of opportunity because there are games
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I've played before. Now, I know that's kind of breaking my shelf opportunity
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rules, but these are games that are I picked up because they're staples of
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the collection. I had donated them to my college Board Game Club, and
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I found new copies of goodwill to pick up for myself. So for me,
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there's an argument to be said, like it's kind of like just taking
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my copy like I loaned my copies. Like if I had loaned my copies
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to my college Board Game Club and I took them back, I would not
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consider them needing to be on the shelf of Opportunity because I had loaned them
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out. So that's kind of how I'm treating these. That's throw throw burrito
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and beyond balderdash, which is why the collection size but went back up.
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I also did cut one game out of my shelf of opportunity. This is
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Ladies Choice. This is a game I picked up a friend had a bunch
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of copies they hadn't sold, and I bought one because it looked amusing,
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but then I read reviews on it and it seems like it's got regressive humor
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in it that I considered, like, oh, maybe give the game a
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chance, and then I just decided why bother. Enough of the stuff I
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read about it just said like, it's not really worth my time, so
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it's just leaving the collection unplayed. And it's rare that I do that,
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but I just don't. It doesn't seem worth it. Several of the other
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games I acquired were from a friend giving them money. I think I mentioned
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that earlier. I finally, I acquired four expansions this month. Three of
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them are Honeybuzz expansions that came out from a kickstarter a long time ago,
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and one of them is the Scoundrels of skullpoart expansion for Lords of Water Deep.
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I had some Amazon points laying around going unused, and somebody with points
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unused is in want of a board game, as I like to say,
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so I picked up the Skull the Skull the Scoundrels of skullpoart expansion and used
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that is an opportunity to ditch the seemingly cool but actually not very useful.
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Insert from Lord's Waterdeep and swap it out. So I now have the Scoundrels
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of Skullport. I'm gonna have to play the game with that in it sometime
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soon. Finally, four next month, getting started. I've picked out four
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games that I'm going to try to play next month. The first of these
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is Terrors of London. This is a two player card battle in which you
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represent sort of Victorian era public domain creepy crawley monsters that are rampaging London and
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you're trying to I don't know, get the most power or something looks fun.
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We have space freaks. I'm calling this a shelf Clearer choice because I
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suspect this will be a one done. I wanted it a contest. I
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think it looks amusing. I'd like to try it, but I wouldn't be
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surprised to discover that it's not a game I want to keep, and I'm
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ready to get rid of it if need be. I'm going to try a
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solo game, Warp's Edge, which looks pretty cool and I would enjoy getting
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a hold of, and Or I would enjoy playing. And I'm gonna try
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again with Switch and Signal, a cooperative game that I got a few months
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ago and I have been trying to get played. I think I did have
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it in myself of Opportunity list once before and did not succeed. But today
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is a new day, so we'll give that a try. Well. That
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brings me to the end of my top of the stack list. I'd like
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to know what did you play in June? What are you planning to play
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in July? You can tell share both of those ideas over on board game
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Geek and Guild three two six nine, and I hope you do so.
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Thanks for joining me in my walk today. I hope your next walk isn't
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as minds Bye bye. Brought to you by Rattlebox Game