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

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

• 0:05
  Welcome to you pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio
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  recorder as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I
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  walk home. I'm Brittan Riley. Hello listeners. It's a lovely day here
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  in suburban Chicago, and I'm happy to be talking to you as I walk
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  home from the train. It is already March fourth, and just because of
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  the way the weekend worked out, today's the first chance I've had to record
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  a podcast since the month began. I'm actually going to record this and then
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  bump it up two spots in line ahead of two episodes I've already recorded that
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  I just haven't had a chance to post yet because it's the top of the
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  month, which means it's time for a Top of the Stack. For those
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  of you new to the podcast. Top of the Stack is my monthly recurring
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  episode that I try to do as the first episode of each month, in
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  which I talk about the games I played in the last last month and what
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  I thought of them. I'll talk a little statistics, a little bit of
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  fun, and we'll have a good time. At the end, I will
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  choose some new games that I'm going to play in the next month, and
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  I'll ask you to do the same. As a reminder, I stole the
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  name of this segment, Top of the Stack and the general idea from the
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  now defunct podcast of Nonsensical Gamers, hosted by a number of different podcasters.
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  Really Tiffany or tiff was one of them, Dan House said was one.
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  Dan had recently had a new game come out called Aqua. All right,
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  let's get into it, so that the podcast for March. This is the
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  Top of the Stack episode from March twenty twenty four, which means I'm talking
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  about my game plays in February. So in February twenty twenty four, I
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  played sixty seven games. I had sixty seven plays of forty two different games.
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  For the Thus far this year, I've played one hundred and thirty three
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  plays of sixty six different games. Now, as I often share, these
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  are plays both in person and online. I probably play more games online than
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  I do in person, but I feel like those are games. I think
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  of them as games, and I count them as games. So just to
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  kind of be heads up, my overall goal is to reduce my shelf of
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  opportunity, which is the games that I own. But haven't played, and
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  I made progress this month. I went from sixty nine games on my shelf
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  of opportunity down to sixty six. I played three games to get off the
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  shelf, or more than three, maybe we'll see. But I didn't add
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  more than I played, so that's good. I also am working on reducing
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  my collection size, which again I made progress on. I went from five
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  hundred and eighty one games in my collection to five hundred and seventy eight,
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  so that's dropping as well. My most played game in person on the table
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  this month was frost Haven with two plays, and my most played game online
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  was Daybreak with six all right, so in February I picked out four games
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  that I had at the top of my stack. The goal of that process,
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  you'll remember, is to play three of those three of the Playing three
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  of those in the month is considered a success. Two or fewer is not
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  a success. Unfortunately, I only played two. My four games were Evacuation,
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  Alien, Fate of the Nostromo, Hunted wood Ridge, and Brian Boru.
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  I played Evacuation and Brian Boru. I did not play Alien or Hunted
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  Hunted. I've just come leaving on there until I get a chance to play
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  it. I really need to. I want to. I just haven't taken
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  the time, but soon soon I will. I played a few games for
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  the first time this month. These are games that are new to me.
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  That doesn't necessarily mean they're brand new games, but new to me. I
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  played seven new games this month. Project l Freelancers, Magic Rabbit, Patchwork,
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  which is otherwise known as Flipout flip Out as the name you would search
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  for it on board game Geeks. Since there's a newer game called Patchwork by
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  Ouvi Rosenberg, this is a different game of an older type called Patchwork.
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  Cairn done of the Peacemakers and Evacuation. All of those were in person.
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  Except for Cairn. I played a couple times on board Game Arena, and
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  I felt like I understood enough to call it played. Sometimes I'll try a
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  game on board game Arena I don't really feel like I got it, in
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  which case then I don't count it as played, or I don't count it
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  as played for the purposes of I've played a new game. I still usually
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  log the play, but if I don't feel like I really understood what I
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  was doing, I won't call it a game. I've played, if that
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  makes sense. I did try out one expansion this month. I did try
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  out one expansion that this month. It was a new exit game. I
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  consider each new exit game and expansion rather than every single exit game a new
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  game, because they are all variations on a model. So the new exit
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  game we played was the Professor's Last Clue. It was a pretty fun one.
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  I had three out of the dust games. As you know, a
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  dusty game A game gets dusty when it goes a year or more without having
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  been played. So three is a pretty small number given the number of games
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  I own. Some of the games I play so rarely it really I really
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  should be dusting off more than three games in a month, but I just
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  had. It was a lighter month for gameplays, so the games I dusted
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  off were Allow Me to Man's Plane, Kingdom Rush, and Weather Machine.
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  All three were enjoyable. Although Allow Me Into Man's Plane, I think I
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  don't know how often I'll need to play that. The idea of it is
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  pretty fun, but the rules are a little clunky and the game is sort
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  of hard to make work, at least in my experience. It did not
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  go over very well with my board game of society. They thought it was
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  fine, they just wasn't their favorite. Next up, I have my ten
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  for ten. Those of you who do these sorts of things probably know a
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  ten for ten is a challenge in which you choose ten games and you try
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  to take play them all ten times within a year. I do variations on
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  this idea. This year. Instead of ten games ten times each, I
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  chose ten category of game. I'm trying to log ten plays in each.
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  This is maybe cheating a little bit. Some people will think it's not within
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  the spirit of the ten for ten. I say, well, okay,
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  sorry, I didn't meet your high requirements. I'm having fun with it.
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  So the ten categories I chose, I'll share the categories and the updates in
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  those ten. I want to do ten plays of legacy or campaign games.
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  Going into the month. We already had five plays and I played Kingdom Rush
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  once, so that puts set six. I didn't count either frost Haven play
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  for a legacy campaign this month. I don't know why. I guess I
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  could, so by that logic, it would be eight nature slash Animal games.
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  I played Cascadia once, which puts me at one play for the category.
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  Oh I guess one of the frost Haven plays is in this next category
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  games that took three hours or more. Coming in, I had two plays
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  from before. Actually had four plays this month, Expeditions, weather Machine Evacuation
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  and frost Haven Expedition. I don't think should be a three hour game,
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  but we were playing. We played five players, and three of the players
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  were new to the game, and two of the players had played only once
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  a long time ago, and so those things mixed together made the game take
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  quite a while. But we had a lot of fun, and then it
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  fit the three hour category. We had the category of cute animals. This
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  is something I'm trying to do, play games that have cute animals in them.
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  We played Magic Rabbit and Don of the Peacemakers, which means we're up
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  to three plays in that category. Coming in, we had played one escape
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  room style game, then we played the Exit game, so now we're at
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  two. I've played zero novelty games so far this year. This is something
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  I picked because I have a bunch of novelty games in my collection. I
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  define novelty game as a game that I own not because I think it's going
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  to be good, but because I think it looks it's fun to have in
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  some way. For instance, I have this game Raise the Titanic. It
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  was a board game based on the Clive Custler novel and follow on movie from
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  the eighties. It looks pretty bad but fun to play, so I have
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  it. So I got it as a gift, but I've kept it.
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  So that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. I haven't played any of
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  those yet. Expanded games are games where there's an expansion in play. I
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  did not play any of those this month. We had one coming in so
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  we're still doing okay there. And then the last three sets of ten for
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  ten, I have broken up into alphabet and then numbers. And the idea
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  of the numbers is playing a game with one digit number at the beginning,
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  playing a game with a two digit number, playing game with a three digit
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  number. I'm playing a game with a four digit number. So those are
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  my categories in that category. I found in A through J, I played
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  Incan Gold, Brian, Boru, and Evacuation, so I've completed six of
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  those ten. In K through T, I played Nucleum and Project L,
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  putting A five plays. And in alphabet U through Z and four numbers.
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  I played Wits and Wagers, which is one play, now that you think
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  about it. I also played seven Wonders, so that should count for one
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  of the numbers, unless I already counted that in January. I'll have to
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  check. I had an eight index of six this month daybreak or thus far
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  this year, I'm at an h index of six daybreak that time you killed
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  Me, frost Haven, Gaya, Project Obsession, and Matainai. I made
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  no progress on my painting goal this month. I just haven't gotten back to
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  the paint, which is a bummer. I really like doing it. I
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  just haven't found time. My collection size I mentioned is down three games.
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  The change in that was I found a copy of Matt Gertz's Imperial and I
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  picked that up, and then I also picked up Station False That added two
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  games. But then I got rid of four. I got rid of Throw,
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  Throw Burrito, Cthulhu, Gloom, Horrified in Ink, and Gold.
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  All four of those games I moved to the Columbia College Board Game Society shelves,
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  and so while they're still technically mine, I'm keeping them at school as
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  part of the Board Game Society, so I don't count them as part of
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  my collection. Now that's the news from gameplays this month. It was a
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  good time overall, lots of interesting plays. I think my favorite play of
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  the month was Evacuation. I will talk about that more when I get to
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  the Board Game Espresso episode about it. But I really liked playing Brian Boru.
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  I actually played it twice, and it's fun to get to try it
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  a couple times and really see it working. Wait did I play it twice?
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  No, I was going to. I played it once and I was
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  going to play it a second time and we ran out of time, so
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  I did not play it twice. Oh well, the big question is what
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  am I going to play next month? As I've said, the idea of
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  this is each month to pick out the games that you're going to play in
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  the next month. So next month I have a couple different options to play
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  we have. I think I'm going to try to play the Stephen Feld game
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  four Intrejanum, which is a game I played a couple times online a long
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  time ago, so it is technically not a brand new game to me,
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  but I never got to play it in person, and I did really like
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  it. It's sort of in the neighborhood of Carpe DM for me. It's
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  a little more complex, but really interesting and worth checking out. Also,
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  I have a copy, so why not? I thought I would give a
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  try to Bastion again. Bastion is a tower defense game that I picked up
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  on the cheap. It was on a discount sale. I'm not sure it's
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  going to survive a play, but I would like to play it once before
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  I try to get rid of it. I've left Hunted Wolde Ridge on there
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  as the solo game of choice. I do want to play that, I
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  just keep putting it off. So now by leaving it on there another month,
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  I have another chance to succeed or fail. And finally, I picked
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  up Medieval Academy used at half priced books a while back, and I'm looking
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  forward to trying that. Medieval Academy, of course, is a slightly older,
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  I think deck building game that's got a pretty good reputation, so excited
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  to try that. Well, that sort of encompasses my gameplay for the month.
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  I'm curious what you've been playing. If you want to let me know,
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  you can head over to board game Geek Guild three two sixty nine and
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  share your thoughts there. We often have. The most reliable thread we have
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  in that forum is the top of the stack thread where some regular listeners come
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  on out and share their experiences. If you want to let me know something
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  directly, you can send me a geekmail message I want bat nine two nine.
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  You could email me Brendon at rattlebox games dot com, or I guess
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  you could. You know, shout into the heavens, and I hope I
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  hear you that third one is less reliable than the other two, so pick
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  that as you will. Well, that's about it for me today. Thanks
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  for joining me on my walk. I hope your next walk this is as
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  pleasant as mind was. Well bye. Brought to you by rattle Box h