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

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

• 0:04
  Welcome to you pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio
• 0:07
  recorder as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I
• 0:10
  walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's
• 0:24
  December fourth. You're in suburban Chicago. The weather is a little on the
• 0:28
  gloomy side, a little on the chilly side, but otherwise pretty normal and
• 0:32
  expected for this moment. I'm pleased to be talking to you as I'm walking
• 0:37
  home, and I'm a little bit late. I apologize, and actually a
• 0:41
  little bit late in terms of I've published an episode in December without doing the
• 0:46
  Top of the Stack. I know that some of you are a bit insight
• 0:49
  incensed, but I didn't have time to record a Top of the Stack episode
• 0:54
  on the first, or the second, or the third. Frankly, it
• 0:57
  was just busy, So I really it's the episode I had recorded already and
• 1:03
  thought i'd do Top of the Stack today, the fourth, So here it
• 1:07
  is. For those of you new to the podcast. Top of the Stack
• 1:11
  is a sort of look back episode in which I reflect on the last month
• 1:15
  of gameplay. I talk a little bit about what I played, a little
• 1:19
  bit about my goals and whether I achieved them or not, and to make
• 1:23
  some plans for next month. So that's what I'm gonna do. So to
• 1:26
  start with, I always like to start with how much did I play?
• 1:29
  In November? I played ninety nine plays of seventy two games. Now it's
• 1:34
  funny because I looked today and it actually is one hundred and one. So
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  I don't know between when I recorded this when I played it. I don't
• 1:41
  know if there were maybe there were two online plays that I finished that I
• 1:45
  hadn't yet recorded when I did this, but it's actually one hundred and one
• 1:49
  plays of seventy two different games. So my total is nine hundred and twenty
• 1:55
  one plays of three hundred and thirteen different games so far this year. One
• 2:00
  of my goals is one thousand plays a year, and I think I will
• 2:02
  make that assuming I continue at the normal pace for December, which is reasonable
• 2:08
  to think I will. In fact, usually December is a pretty good month
• 2:12
  in terms of playing games because we often for celebrations at the holidays will play
• 2:17
  lots of games. So I'm hoping we'll continue that my shelf of opportunity.
• 2:23
  I went into the month with sixty five games on it and it came out
• 2:25
  with sixty one, so making a little progress there, although I will point
• 2:30
  to the fact that at the beginning of the year I had fifty five games
• 2:34
  on my shelf of opportunity, so I haven't really made any progress on that,
• 2:38
  and my collection size increased by two games this month. My most played
• 2:44
  game in person was Illiterati, which I don't think I've talked about yet in
• 2:47
  the podcast, but I may have a loose track, and my most played
• 2:52
  online game is Rezarkhana. I had a couple of really good games of resar
• 2:54
  Khana this month, including one which I got three cards that synergized very well
• 3:02
  and as a result I got I think I had a three round win.
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  Might have been four, but I think it was three. It was wild,
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  really fun. So at my top of the stack this month I did
• 3:13
  not do a very good job. I had four games. As a reminder,
• 3:16
  at the top of the stack is a goal I pick out four games
• 3:20
  that I'd like to play this month, and if I play three of them,
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  I consider the goal achieved well. I picked the four I picked out
• 3:27
  where Apollo, a game inspired with the NASA Moon Missions, which is Magistus
• 3:31
  Hadrian's Wall and Vagrant Song. I actually called Vagrant Song my stubborn choice because
• 3:36
  I've had it on there a couple months. I keep wanting to play it.
• 3:38
  We've been waiting because it is a campaign game. We're trying to finish
• 3:42
  our Arkham Horror campaign before we start Vagrant Song. We'll see if we can
• 3:46
  pull that off in December. But all that said, I did get to
• 3:50
  play the Apollo game, but I did not play any of the others,
• 3:53
  so one out of three. So definitely did not succeed this month. Oh
• 3:58
  well, that's okay. I did, however, play a bunch of new
• 4:01
  games this month. This might be my best month yet for new games played.
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  It's a lot, so I'm i zip through them quick. Some of
• 4:10
  these I've already talked about on the podcast. Some of them I have not,
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  so you'll hear about them during the Board m Espresso episodes in the next
• 4:18
  couple of weeks. Here are the games that I tried for the first time
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  this month. Kat in the Box, Welcome to the Moon Point, City,
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  Grew the Game, The Great Cake, Escape Glow, The Underlings of
• 4:32
  Underwing, Septima Illiterati, Wormholes, Keystone North, America, Chroma Mix,
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  The Taverns of Tiefenthal, Apiary, Apollo, Nasa, Moon Missions, a
• 4:45
  Walk in the Park, and categories, categories so like. So I'm up
• 4:49
  to one hundred and fourteen new to me games played this year. Roughly a
• 4:55
  third of the games I played this month were brand new to me, and
• 4:59
  are a third of the games I've played this year have been brand new to
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  me, so that's pretty fun. I did get to play try a couple
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  expansions I hadn't played before. We did the Time Stories, Revolutions, Cavendish
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  Expansion, so they keep putting those out like one a year, and we're
• 5:13
  playing them. We really like Time Stories, although we don't like the current
• 5:17
  model as much as the old the old model. So and then I played
• 5:23
  Innovation Ultimate over on Yukata dot De. It adds an eleventh age and some
• 5:28
  of the cards are rebalanced a little bit, as much as you can call
• 5:31
  anything in Innovation balanced. But I've been playing that a little bit. I
• 5:34
  did back the kickstarter for that, so at some point that will show up
• 5:39
  and I'll be happy to have that. It was also a very good month
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  for games out of the Dust. I had sixteen games that I brought back
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  as a reminder, out of the dust. A game is out of the
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  dust when you have not played it. A game gets dusty when you haven't
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  played it for a year or more. So, playing a game that's dusty
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  is bringing it out of the dust. I do tally these over on the
• 6:02
  out of the Dust Geek list as well on board Game Geek, and you
• 6:05
  can find a link to that in the show notes. So here's the games
• 6:10
  that I played. Now. Many of these I also talk about in a
• 6:15
  board game in Board Game Espresso episodes. So usually each of those episodes I
• 6:18
  talk about three new to me games and one game I've revisited. So if
• 6:24
  you want to hear more about these, either listen look at some of the
• 6:27
  recent Board Game Espresso episodes, or pay attention to the upcoming ones. Maybe
• 6:31
  I might comment a little bit on seventies, but you know, usually I
• 6:35
  save it so a Choir or Leon's Brass Birmingham Battlestar Galactica, which technically was
• 6:43
  not dusty. I looked it had been three hundred and sixty four days since
• 6:46
  my last play, so I was one day short of it being dusty,
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  so I put it on the list because it felt like it basically was but
• 6:53
  technically not. Through the Desert Fantasy Realms shot and Totten double feature Bring your
• 6:59
  Own Book Quiddler Santo Domingo, which turned out to be great. I think
• 7:03
  I talked about that in the podcast already. That's really good. Planet Unknown,
• 7:08
  which I played in person a year and three months ago, and now
• 7:10
  I've been playing on Board Game Arena. It's fun, you know, there's
• 7:14
  a limit to it, Like it's fun but not amazing. Ticket to Ride
• 7:17
  code names duet castles of Mad King Ludwig and Happy Salmon. So in the
• 7:24
  fifty two Game Challenge, I was hoping to make some progress by putting it
• 7:28
  on the list, and I have not, which means I've got an uphill
• 7:30
  battle to finish all fifty two. I only got one done last month,
• 7:33
  which is play a game with a reflected image on the cover. That's the
• 7:38
  NASA Moon Missions. So I have like nine or eight, eight or nine
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  left to go, maybe ten. I have ten left to go, and
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  I'm really gonna have to hustle to get all ten of those played this month.
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  Chances are I'm not going to manage it, but I'll try, and
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  we'll see how it goes. I did not get any painting done this month
• 7:58
  either. November was a very very busy month with life getting in the way,
• 8:01
  and often when I did have time, I didn't feel like painting,
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  so I haven't painted much. I got two of the Cerebra minis painted and
• 8:09
  then I've since then I haven't done more. I would like to return to
• 8:13
  those and finish them up. There are ten altogether, I think, so
• 8:18
  eight to go. We also did just open a new frost Haven character,
• 8:22
  so I'll be painting that mini this month for sure. That's kind of top
• 8:26
  priority actually, because if somebody wants to play it, I want it to
• 8:28
  be painted. It's also easier to approach that because it's just one of them,
• 8:33
  so it's like two to three hours, probably because that's about the level
• 8:35
  I paint at. Some people can spend ten hours on a mini. I
• 8:39
  can't really do that. My shelf of opportunity I mean continues to be at
• 8:43
  sixty one games. I'm pretty pleased to say that all three games I added
• 8:48
  to the shelf of opportunity this month I played, so we went three for
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  three in terms of keeping the list where it is, And like I said,
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  I did play four others. List went from sixty five down to sixty
• 9:01
  one, so that's pretty good. Here's how my collection size changed. So
• 9:05
  I started the month at five sixty one. Having sold those games at a
• 9:07
  fair game. I picked up three new games. That's Wormholes, which I
• 9:13
  got at I think half price books actually, and it was a decent price,
• 9:16
  and it's a game I've heard of lot good stuff about. I got
• 9:20
  Chroma Mix, which delivered from its kickstarter my friend George, great job,
• 9:24
  George, really good stuff, a fun little deck builder, and Septima from
• 9:28
  kickstarter as well. We played that once. It was really fun and I'm
• 9:31
  looking forward to playing again soon. My son did take Marvel United for his
• 9:37
  board game club at the high school, and I'm fine to get rid of
• 9:41
  that. It's a game I would play occasionally if somebody asked me to,
• 9:43
  but I'm certainly not going to go back to it. And then I found
• 9:48
  a copy of Settlers of Catan at Goodwill, and the copy that I had
• 9:52
  had previously I donated to my college Board Game Society. But it feels like
• 9:56
  a game I should own, and while I would go out and buy it
• 10:00
  again at full price, because I don't like it that much. I do
• 10:03
  like to play it occasionally, and it would be weird to have a collection
• 10:07
  as big as mine. And if somebody say, hey, I've always wanted
• 10:09
  to try Settlers of Catan or Catan, and I'd be like, well,
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  I can't help you there. I don't have it, which I know some
• 10:16
  people would do that fine, But when my opportunity is to replace it is
• 10:20
  three dollars, I say, okay, so I have Settlers of Catan again,
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  and it was an older copy, so it is Settlers of Catan,
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  not just Gatan. That is the run of games that I played in November.
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  The last thing I always like to share is what am I playing in
• 10:35
  December. So I always set up the four games that I'm gonna try to
• 10:39
  get played in December. This is gonna be kind of boring because I'm rolling
• 10:43
  over a lot of what I was gonna play. Hadrian's Wall is the first
• 10:46
  one. Now, this is a game I've been wanting to play for a
• 10:48
  while. Actually, one of my friends invited me to play it on board
• 10:52
  Game Arena, so I started playing it there. I don't really understand what's
• 10:54
  going on. I'm just clicking stuff, which is not great. But whatever.
• 11:00
  But I do have the game to play on the table, so I'm
• 11:03
  going to try to play that sometime soon when I have an evening free.
• 11:07
  I really would like to get Cerebrie back to the table before the end of
• 11:11
  the year because it is on my top fifty, but I'll have to finish
• 11:13
  painting those minis first, so it seems unlikely, but I left it on
• 11:16
  there to try. For solo I've removed Hadrian's Wall was the solo choice before.
• 11:22
  I've moved that up to the new game choice. And my solo choice
• 11:26
  I brought back Hunted wood Ridge, which is a game that I got a
• 11:30
  while ago and actually was on the top of the stack a couple months and
• 11:33
  I never got it played, but now's the time maybe. And finally,
• 11:37
  my stubborn choice is Vagrant Song. I still really want to get this played
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  before the end of the year, but like I said, it's going to
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  depend on if we can get two rounds of Arkhamhor done, which part of
• 11:48
  the challenge right now is my son. We started to play it on Friday
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  night, December first, my son. We played about two turns. My
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  son was like, I'm not feeling it, or actually we recognized he wasn't
• 11:58
  feeling it. We're like, rather play it with you when you're feeling it
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  than force you to play when you're not, so we put it away.
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  But that's disappointing because we really want to get it done. I mean,
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  one reason we want to get done is we can get all the kamphorror stuff
• 12:11
  out of the living room. But we also would like to get to play
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  Vagrant Song, and it's hard to run two campaigns at once, so we're
• 12:20
  kind of waiting. Also, the longer we wait on the Arkhamhore campaign,
• 12:22
  the more likely this we're going to forget what's happening. So I would really
• 12:24
  like to get that played. We just have two rounds left, so that's
• 12:28
  kind of where we are with that. I'm curious how was your November.
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  If you want to share, you can head over to board game geek Guilt
• 12:35
  three Q six nine and share your game plays over there. I did want
• 12:39
  to comment since last time, one of the pick Up and Deliver regulars,
• 12:45
  Tauford Graves or Chris Graves, has passed away. This is pretty sad.
• 12:50
  He was a regular poster on the top of the stack and he emailed me
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  often and he and I played games a lot online and it's pretty hard to
• 12:58
  see him go. But I know he was loved and we'll remember him in
• 13:01
  various ways, including the painting challenge geek list that was started by him and
• 13:05
  it's being carried on. So if you knew Chris at all, I hate
• 13:09
  to be the bearer of bad news, but he'll be missed. Head over
• 13:11
  to bargame geek Guild greet sixty nine and share your thoughts on the next month's
• 13:16
  plays. I hope that I'll get to talk to you and find out what
• 13:20
  you're playing to play in December. Thanks for joining me in my walk today.
• 13:22
  I hope your next block is a pleasant as mindless hell Bye. Brought
• 13:46
  to you by rattle Box Game