Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Shelf of Opportunity Review (part 1)

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Shelf of Opportunity Review (part 1) · Pick Up and Deliver

0:04
Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
0:07
as I step out the door and delivering episodes to you while I take a
0:10
walk. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a
0:22
lovely day here in suburban Chicago, and I am very happy to be talking
0:27
to you as I go out walking. The family trip is over, which
0:31
means my in laws returned home and took with them their dog back home,
0:36
so I am not walking a dog anymore. I'm just out walking by myself,
0:39
which is nice. I mean, it was actually nice to have the
0:41
company of the dog, but you know, a little more editing because I
0:44
had to cut out me going hey, we're not stopping there, or oh,
0:47
are you sure you want to go to the bathroom there or whatever.
0:49
You also notice the blessed silent and lack of cicadas. They're pretty much all
0:54
gone now we just have to deal with their festering corpses everywhere, and that's
0:57
not too bad. But yeah, delightful. So it's a lovely day.
1:02
Well, today I'm actually re recording a podcast that I tried to record last
1:06
week and the recorder didn't start, so I did a podcast without recording it.
1:10
That's the second time in like a month, so that's not a good
1:12
trend. I need to be extra careful that I've started the recorder. I'm
1:17
also playing to do. This podcast is a slightly longer one, and it's
1:19
going to be a two parter, and my plan is to make it a
1:23
two parter dynamically in the moment. So I'm just going to cut off part
1:27
one and start part two. In media rest, you will get the end
1:33
of the podcast, but I'm not going to preface it much except that I'll
1:38
finish talking about a game and say and that's the end of episode one.
1:42
So as a reminder of shelf of Opportunity is what some people might call a
1:45
shelf of shame. It's a list of games that I own that I haven't
1:49
played, and so I am trying to get them all played so I can
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experience them. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to go through
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my shelf of Opportunity and talk about the games that are on there, what
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I'm excited about, what I'm not excited about with them, maybe why they've
2:04
why they've been on the shelf as long as they have I'm going to be
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working backwards, so the beginning of the list is the newer games that are
2:08
on the shelf. The end of the list is going to be the games
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that have been on the shelf the longest, and I'll just be talking a
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little bit about them. I'd love to hear from you. Are there some
2:16
games you think, Brendan, you're dumb to keep them on your shelf,
2:20
it's not even worth trying them out, get rid of them, or some
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games, like Brendan, you should play these right away. Originally I had
2:27
a long time ago, I had done a thing where I said, if
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you had a game you thought I should try, sooner rather than later.
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You could go to my Shelf of Opportunity, which is linked from my board
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game Geek forum, my board game Geek account. I have a geek list
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called Shelf of Opportunity. You can also find it by going to the episode
2:46
list for this show, and in that space you can find a link to
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my Shelf of Opportunity and you can thumb vote for the games you think I
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should play. And in what I did in the past is try to play
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put on my shelf up to any list, the game that had the most
3:00
thumbs I've comin fallen away from that, but if people are interested, I'd
3:05
love to give a try. If you think that's a fun idea, go
3:07
ahead and thumb some games over on the shelf of opportunity and post a comment
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they're like, hey, looking forward to seeing you play some of these.
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That way, I'll know that people are thumbing them because it doesn't give you
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a notice when that happens, and it'll give me an opportunity to revisit that
3:19
approach. I'd love to have a little bit more interaction with you listeners,
3:23
and that's one way to do it pretty easily. So all right, well
3:25
I don't want to get into it, so it self of opportunity. The
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last several games on this list, oh man, I'm here in Cicadas.
3:31
Still no. The last several games on this list, or the first games
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I'm going to talk about, are games that I got from a friend who
3:38
was clearing out his shelves and he's like, these are games I don't want
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anymore. I'm going to get rid of them. Are there any that you
3:44
want? First? So I grabbed a few of them and have added them
3:46
to my collection. I marked them all that he has right a first refusal,
3:51
So if I decide to get rid of them later, the first thing
3:53
that could happen is I give them back to him. I think that's only
3:55
fair, and I'm not really keen on the idea of like profiting off my
3:59
friends. I take some games from him, then he gives me for free
4:01
because I'm a friend, and then I go sell them or something boo on
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that. So anyway, so let's jump into it, all right. First
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one is Level seven Escape. This is a game I've heard about a lot
4:11
of times. It seems like it's a game based on the movie Cube kind
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of, only there's enemies running around as well. You're trying to escape some
4:18
sort of prison at Sci Fi. It's semi cooperative apparently. I haven't really
4:23
read the rules yet, but it's always looked neat and it's always been a
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game I've been interested in. I've just never had a chance to try.
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So getting it for free and got it and now it's on my list.
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Then we have Ingenious Challenges. This is a puzzle game from Ryner Kanitzia.
4:34
I think it's Ryner Kanitzia based on the Ingenious board game. But this is
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a card a series of card games that I think puzzles. I haven't tried
4:44
it yet, and really I picked up because it was associated with the Ingenious
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Game, and I know that's supposed to be pretty good, so I give
4:49
it a try. Warp's Edge is a solo game, so this is something
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I always think I'm gonna do more of than I actually do. But this
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looks really neat and I'd love to give it a try, so happy to
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have it in my collection. Also reminds me I should probably get out the
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one that's like Space Invaders under Falling Skies as well and have a little bit
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of solo gaming fun. Next up, we have Starship Troopers. This is
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a game from the nineteen seventies. It is like an old bookshelf style game
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with the art from the nineteen seventies or nineteen sixties edition of the Hindline novel
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of the same name. It's an old like Chit Encounter or hex Encounter war
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game in the classic style. It looks pretty corny, probably not the kind
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of game I would enjoy a lot, but it'd be fun to try once
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or twice, and it's definitely a fun game to have in my collection.
5:39
In the novelty category. Terrors of London is the next one. That is
5:43
a card battling game where you are two different creatures. I think fighting to
5:48
infest London with your evil brand of animal craziness. I think that's kind of
5:55
the idea. It looks pretty neat, pretty excited to give it a try.
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I love the art on the cover. The game is pretty insubstantially inside
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though, so it's definitely in a box that's too big for the game.
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Nonetheless, keen to try it. That's Terrors of London. World's Fair eighteen
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ninety three is a game I played and I thought was good but not amazing.
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But I'd like to return to it again because I suspect i'll like it
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more having grown a bit as a gamer. But also I really like the
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way that jay Al's Cavern puts his games together. And World's Fair eighteen ninety
6:24
three is a theme that might have a little bit more lasting power in my
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game collection with my family than the original Sentient did, which my wife was
6:33
not keen on because of its super or because of its science fictional status.
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This one's much less goofy that way. I do remember thinking this is pretty
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clever and I'm keen to give it a try again. That's World's Fair eighteen
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ninety three. Just to clarify, I do put a game on my shelf
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of opportunity even if I've played it before if I acquire a copy. Like
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when I acquire a copy of a game, it then goes on my shelf
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of opportunity. I have to play it on the table in order to get
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it off my shelf of opportunity. In a weird quirk for me, it
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doesn't have to be my copy that I play. So like if I buy
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World's for eighteen ninety three and then I'm at a game club and someone else
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has a copy of it and they say, hey, let's play this,
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and I play it, then that game comes off my shelf of opportunity because
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I played it and I know it's weird. Number sixty three Outdoor Survival.
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This is a weird sort of educational game that I got for free. Somebody
7:27
was giving it away and I picked it up. It looks dumb and the
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ratings aren't great for it, but I find games with interesting themes to be
7:35
fun to try out. So let's give it a go. Outdoor Survival again
7:39
From the seventies. It's another bookshelf game, except we have Kavnat Cave versus
7:44
Cave the Big Box. So Kaverna is a really interesting game from Uve Rosenberg.
7:50
I've played a couple times digitally. I've never played it on the table.
7:54
It is between Agricola and Lajavre in production. I think, although it's
8:00
possible that it went Agricola Lajavre then Kavna. People will often point to Kavna
8:05
is likely the less, the more forgiving version of Agricola. That you still
8:09
have to feed your people, but it's a little easier to do that now.
8:11
I don't, like I said, I don't have Kaveranah, but it
8:15
is fun to have a version of it, And also don't have any of
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the uve Rosenberg two player games in the work replacement line, so getting the
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Kavanah Cave versus Cave seem like a good solution. And then the Big Box
8:26
I found a good price on it, and so it was fun to get
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that and give it a try. I haven't gotten a try yet, though,
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but I'd like to. Game number sixty is Go. This is a
8:37
classic abstract game, which of course you could buy anywhere. You could play
8:41
online pretty easily. I found a copy of it with pretty nice looking pieces
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at Goodwill. I'm like, hey, I should have a go set.
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I should probably know the basic rules of go given how much stuff I do
8:52
with games. So I got it. Maybe my son or my daughter and
8:54
I will try it sometimes when I don't really see my wife liking this kind
8:58
of game, but my son might, let's go. Next up is thunder
9:01
Alley. Thunder Alley is a game I would not look at twice if a
9:07
I hadn't earned from a lot of people that it's their favorite racing game,
9:09
which racing isn't a genre that I generally like all that much. But I
9:13
can enjoy a racing game, and b it was three bucks, so for
9:16
three bucks, yeah, I'll give it a try. Thunder Alley is a
9:20
stock car racing game which was often pointed to as the alternative It's either you
9:24
love Formula Day or you live thunder Alley. That was until Heat and the
9:30
remake of Downforce came along. I think Heat and Downforce are currently the two
9:35
most mentioned car racing games that I hear that I see people refer to when
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they are thinking about what games they play or what games they like from that
9:46
perspective. Next up is Switching Signal. This is a co op game that
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I remember being a really big deal during COVID. I remember watching a Twitch
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stream with Amby from Board Game Blitz talking about how much she liked it.
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I remember watching a or hearing on a podcast somebody talking about how much they
10:03
thought this game was pretty cool, and so it looked like a game that
10:07
I'd like to try. It's a train game. It's a cooperative train game.
10:11
In it, you are working as a group to move these trains around
10:15
the board. And that's the long and short of it. I'm really looking
10:18
forward to trying it. That's Switching Signal. Next step number fifty seven is
10:22
Station Fall. Station Fall is a hidden rolls ameritrash crazy game with all sorts
10:31
of wild stuff happening there. He is You're on a space station. Space
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station's falling out of orbit. Each player has a secret goal of stuff they're
10:37
trying to do, and there's all these characters running around the board, and
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as a player, you don't know who's who's controlling which character, who is
10:43
which character. Everybody can move all the characters, and there's lots of interference
10:48
accidental and purposeful. It is a wild goofy take that game and yeah,
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that's Station Fall looks pretty fun. On the cover there is a space station
10:58
sort of a exploding and a monkey in a spacesuit. Next up we have
11:05
Imperial. Imperial is a classic exploration and colonialization game, sort of in the
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line of something like Pax Premiere or Pas Renaissance, where you play economic powers
11:20
and there are or you play economic entities and there are national powers, but
11:26
the national powers are not actually your goal. You may be from a country,
11:30
but your goal is to make the most money, so to invest in
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countries, you try to help them succeed, help them make money by pulling
11:39
resources out of regions, which the theme there is pretty gross. But I
11:43
think the idea of the game is to satirize or really highlight the way that
11:48
economics shapes the world, and also, I don't know, allow you to
11:54
fantasize about being a cutthroat capitalist. I guess it looks pretty neat. It's
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very well we're well reviewed. Originally, the sequel, Imperial twenty thirty four
12:03
is very well liked, and the designer is Matt Gertz, somebody who I
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think is a pretty good designer, so since I was able to get it
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at a discount, I thought i'd give it a try. Next Sep.
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Number fifty five, Whitehall Mystery. This is sort of like an updated Scotland
12:18
Yard. It is based in the idea of the Jack the Ripper game Letters
12:22
from Whitechapel. In it, you play police and you're pursuing a hidden murderer.
12:28
It's a hidden movement game. I picked this up because I use it
12:31
in my board game class and the detective themed area, but I haven't actually
12:37
gotten to play it yet. I know how to play it, and I've
12:39
taught the rules several times, but I haven't actually played the game myself.
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Is that one of the weird things about teaching board games? That's Whitehall Mystery.
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Next up his role models, The Battle for vic Tornall role Models is
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a sort of an art project. First, it is a poker variant game.
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It's given to me by friend and resident regular listener Chris han Ge.
12:58
Hey Chris, and it is a sort of, like I said, a
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card battling game with unique art on every card and apparently poker mechanism. So
13:09
looking forward to trying to sometime. Haven't busted it out yet, but I
13:13
have looked through the art and Chris's card is pretty wicked awesome. So that's
13:18
Role Models. Number fifty four. Number fifty three is My Little Side.
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This is a really interesting project, not a game I normally would buy,
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but again, a lot of these are goodwill finds, and it's easy to
13:30
say that looks neat. I'll give it a try for three dollars or two
13:33
dollars, which is usually the price they're charging at goodwill. My Little Side
13:37
is a game aimed at kids, sort of replicating some of the mechanisms Upside.
13:41
It was originally a fan project in which they took turn scythe into a
13:46
My Little Pony themed game, and of course you can't do that without paying
13:50
a absorbent and a lot of money for them My Little Pony license. So
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stone Meyer Games worked with that designer to wired that game from him and they
14:01
made it. They called it My Little Side, and they gave it art
14:03
that looks like it's in the neighborhood of My Little Pony, but isn't actually
14:07
My Little Pony art. I actually think it's a better result than it would
14:09
have been had it been an actual My Little Pony theme it looks pretty neat.
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I'd love to try it at some point, So that's it my little
14:18
side. Except we have Core World's Galactic Orders. This is a game I've
14:22
heard a number of things about. I think that the Secret caball guys really
14:26
liked Core Worlds back in the day, and I believe Galactic Orders is the
14:28
kind of newest instantiation of it. It looks like a pretty neat game.
14:33
Again hard It's a hard sell at my house, being sci fi, but
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it is a game I'd like to try at some point, and again,
14:39
let's give it a go. Except we have Chicago Express, Narrow Gauge,
14:43
and Eerie Railroad Company. Now, this game I bought because I believe it
14:48
to be either a new incarnation of, or a meditation on, or a
14:54
reprint of Wabash Cannonball, which is a game I've heard a lot about and
14:58
think, if they it is supposed to be pretty great. Now reading the
15:01
description, I'm not entirely sure if that's true or not, but I thought,
15:03
hey, I'll give it a try. If I'm wrong, what's the
15:07
worst that can happen. I'm out three bucks. Actually that one was free.
15:11
Somebody was giving it away in my game club, which is part of
15:13
why I took it all right. Making progress once again, I'm going in
15:18
reverse order. This is when the games were added to my self of Opportunity
15:22
list. Next up is Discworld onk Moore Pork. Discworld is a game based
15:26
in the Terry Pratchett Discworld universe. It is set specifically in the city of
15:31
ankh Moore, Pork, and you play one of a number of shadowy business
15:35
people trying to manipulate the city to do what you wanted to do. Interestingly,
15:41
it is basically the same theme as The Lords of water Deep, only
15:45
instead of being in water Deep, you're in Ankmore Pork, and thus it's
15:48
a little sillier. This game design is by Martin Wallace. It's something I've
15:50
wanted to try for a long time. The last time I had an opportunity
15:54
to get this game for a not unreasonable price, I passed on it because
15:58
I had the game Nanty Narking coming in the mail and it felt silly to
16:02
get a second copy of the same game. And then I immediately regretted it,
16:07
or you know, within a couple of weeks or months, I regretted
16:10
not getting it. When I had the opportunity because it is out of print
16:14
and expensive in this form, and then I had an opportunity to get it
16:17
for free, and now I have it and it's on my shelf opportunity.
16:19
I haven't played it yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so at some
16:22
point. Next up, we have Joan of Arc Orleans Drawn Right. Joan
16:30
of Arc is a newest It's a drawing right version of Orleans, a game
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I really enjoy. Not a lot more to say about that. You know,
16:38
I like Orleans. I like everything that I've played of the system,
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and this is another opportunity to give it a try. Number forty eight The
16:48
Palaces of Carara. Now this is the game I picked up used. I
16:51
think I got it at the same time as I was getting another game.
16:53
So I was already meeting this person to buy one of their used games,
16:56
and they had this for a relatively low price, and I thought, hey,
17:00
I'll give it a try. The Palaces of Kara is supposed to be
17:02
pretty great. It is a Kramer and keysling game. I suspect it's going
17:07
to feel a bit like Porta Nigra when I get down to it, but
17:10
I haven't really investigated much about the game itself, so I don't know.
17:14
I could be totally wrong. That's forty eighth The Palace with Kara. I
17:17
know that they printed in a new printing of this game very recently, so
17:22
you might have this game and have a much nicer version of it than I
17:25
do. But I have the old version. I'm still excited to try it.
17:30
Number forty seven In the Year of the Dragon. This is another of
17:33
those games that I hear about every now and again. It's a classic.
17:36
I believe it's Stephenfeld, and it is in the older model of Stephenfeld,
17:41
like Notre Dame, where he has a series of trouble things that are coming,
17:45
and so you have to kind of optimize your gameplay with the idea that
17:51
something bad is coming and you need to be able to weather the storm.
17:55
Like I said, this is a classic. I suspect it's a classic for
17:57
a reason. It's supposed to be pretty good. Is the tenth anniversary edition
18:00
that I got, and I'm looking forward to trying it. That's in the
18:04
Year of the Dragon. Next of His Kittens in a Blender. It is
18:07
a dumb little card game with a shocking theme. I don't know if I
18:11
can bring myself to play this. Honestly, I like kittens too much,
18:15
but so I'll either play it or get rid of it sometime soon. That's
18:18
number forty six Kittens in a Blender. Number forty five Sherlock Holmes Consulting Sherlock
18:25
Holmes, Baker Stueter Regulars. Now. This game is a series of games
18:30
from I think Van Ryder games that are built around comic books, and the
18:34
idea is that each player plays one of the characters, in this case,
18:40
one of the Baker's Street regulars, and they have a comic book that shows
18:44
what they see of a particular thing, and then each player is going to
18:51
work together to solve a mystery based on what their individual player sees of a
18:56
given moment in the mystery. It's a really neat concept. We haven't played
19:00
it. It's a one time play. So this game I almost wonder whether
19:04
should put one time play games on my shelf of opportunity, because once I
19:08
played them, they're gone from my collection essentially, although not always. Sometimes
19:12
I hold them, but I think I should to remind myself that I own
19:15
it. So that that's the bigger student Regulars. Next up, we've got
19:19
Great Western Trails second Edition. This is perhaps the game I've played the most
19:22
times that's on my shelf of opportunity because I haven't played it in person since
19:26
I got my copy. It's also a game I've played many times and never
19:30
won. I think if I played it in person a few more times,
19:33
I would perhaps get a better sense of how to win, but I don't
19:36
know that that's true. When I played it in person, I didn't really
19:38
get a sense of how to win over the other people. Nonetheless, it's
19:44
a great game, supposed to be a very very good game, and I'd
19:47
love to try it again at some point. That's Great Western Trail second Edition.
19:51
Next up, we've got Public Assistance. Oh, I have heard,
19:55
and actually it was confirmed by regularis NI Chris Hickman, Hi Chris, that
19:59
the way to play the Great Western Trail is with the Rails to the North
20:02
expansion. So I do need to keep my eye out for that. The
20:03
next game is called Public Assistance. A friend of mine, Rob, my
20:07
design partner, Hey, Rob, got me this game. He founded out
20:11
Goodwill and said, hey, do you want this looks like something you'd be
20:15
interested in studying. I said, yes, please, And it's gross.
20:18
It is a game sort of made from a very conservative anti poverty or anti
20:25
poor people perspective that sort of suggests the notion of public assistance for anybody who's
20:30
struggling is antithetical and you know, trains people to be lazy or whatever you
20:34
think of all of the common arguments about that sort of thing, and public
20:40
assistance is basically set around that idea. At some point I probably should try
20:44
it so I can see what the point of the game is, but it's
20:47
pretty gross. Next time we have a Hunted wood Ridge. This is the
20:49
third Hunted game and the only one I haven't played. They do have the
20:52
other two and have played them. I said, they just did a reprint
20:56
of the Mining Colony four one five with a second an updated edition off to
21:00
see if maybe the updated rules can be back applied to the game that I
21:04
have, because it'd be fun to play with more streamline rules. But they
21:07
probably have new components and I suspect it won't work. Nonetheless, the new
21:12
Hunted this one, I think it is a co op you can play two
21:15
player. I guess you can do that with the other ones too. The
21:18
idea is that it is a sort of in the Hunted Universe, but it's
21:23
in the sort of Stranger Things ubra. So the idea is it's very similar
21:29
to something like Stranger Things, where there's a supernatural being running around causing trouble
21:36
and you and the Hunted Universe are trying to stop it. Number forty one
21:40
is Political Asylum. It looks very similar to the game I just mentioned a
21:44
couple of turns ago or a couple moments ago, Public Assistance. This is
21:47
another game sort of focused on a very particular political view of how American politics
21:53
works and has a pretty crass sense of humor. We'll see what I think
21:59
of that. Probably won't want to play it. The board game Geek rating
22:02
for that game is actually worse than the rating for Public Assistance, and if
22:06
that can be believed. Next up, we've got Forum Treason Boy from the
22:10
bottom to the top here. This is a game that I hear nothing but
22:12
good things about. I'm really excited to try at some point. It is
22:15
a Stephenfeld banger in which you are a Roman dignitary of some sort trying to
22:22
make your city the best city, and you're doing that by building various Roman
22:26
type things. We all knew this was coming. That is what a forum
22:30
treason would be like. It is. I have played it a couple of
22:33
times on Yukata and I think it's really neat that it's definitely one of those
22:38
games where it's hard to understand the systems until you put it on the table
22:41
and you play it in front of your face. That that will make it
22:45
much better. Bora, Bora, this is another Stephen failed game. I
22:48
just realized that's three Stephen fail games and that's the end of episode one.
22:52
Thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope your next bokos those
22:56
mind wants well bank. Brought to you by rattle Box