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

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

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  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where occasionally they pick up my audie
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  recorder and head out for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
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  stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley back again. Well, good morning listeners.
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  It is a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. And I fell out of
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  the podcast habit didn't I. There are a couple of reasons for that.
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  They're mostly due to a crazy schedule and summer. So this summer for some
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  reason, They're just my schedule was all over the place. I just did
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  not find a time when I could easily do my podcasting. And on top
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  of that, I took a trip and we had some other family stuff going
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  on that was very busy. July ended up being very busy, and honestly,
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  I thought I had done a few episodes in July. When I look
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  back this morning as I'm heading out for my want to record on August ninth,
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  the Top of the Stack for August, I see that I never recorded
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  at a Top of the Stack for July. WHOA. So I am really
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  in some trouble here here with you, my friends, and so I think
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  what I'm gonna do is record the Top of the Stack for July, just
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  working from my phone instead of my hand out like I usually do, and
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  you're just gonna enjoy a little bit more scattered schedule than I usually have,
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  and then I will do a couple episodes. No, I'll probably do Top
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  of the Stack for August, as my next episode would to do back to
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  the back July and August to get you caught up where I am on my
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  gaming and we can go from there. I really miss y'all. I hope
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  that your summer is going well. My summer is going pretty well. As
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  I said, I took a trip with my wife. We went to Ontario
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  and drove around a lot. We discovered that looking at birds and trying to
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  identify birds and kind of during doing birding type stuff, it's actually pretty fun.
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  So we're kind of leaning into that. I installed the Merlin app on
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  my phone and a social media app called Berta, and yeah, I'm having
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  a good time with it. But all right. So June twenty twenty three
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  final monthly stats. To start with, I had seventy one plays of forty
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  three games for a total of five hundred twenty one plays out of one hundred
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  and ninety nine different games, so I am for the year. I mean,
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  so I'm just almost to two hundred new games. My shelf of opportunity
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  went up from fifty one to fifty three. It's not surprising June it's my
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  birthday month, and not surprising. Also, the collection size went up from
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  five fifty eight to five sixty one. So both of those things, I
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  guess, while within the reasonable realm of possibility. My most played game in
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  the month of June was Arkham, Horror the Card Game, and Hellboy,
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  both of which I played five times in person. My asynchronous plays were four
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  four times, and that was with Through the Ages. Seeah, my son
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  and I've been playing Hellboy a bit, and he also so this was kind
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  of fun. So my son really likes frost Haven, so it was my
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  wife and so it was my daughter and I of course, But what my
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  wife likes about frost Haven is the shared experience and the story that emerges out
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  of playing that. The actual gameplay she likes fine, but it isn't her
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  super favorite. My son really likes the sort of crunchy puzzle of the play
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  of frost Haven, and before that, glim Haven. My daughter is very
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  busy, so it is much more that we have time for us to play
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  a game with the three of us, my wife, my son, and
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  my wife and my son and I then with the four of us. So
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  we don't want to leave my daughter behind and have her miss Frostaven. She
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  really wants to play that, but we also want to have something to play.
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  So we looked around a little bit and for like, what is the
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  crunchy game that could do that. It's Arkham Horror. So my wife and
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  I, who as you know, have been playing Arkham Horror for a long
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  time, we showed. We suggested to my son that he might like it,
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  and we decided to play to start Scarlet Keys campaign and it was great.
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  It's going great. So there you go onto the top of the stack
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  report. As you know, in June, I had a goal of three
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  or four different games. I had to Kenyu, Obelisk of the Sun,
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  Shipyard, Time Pirates, and Mithotopia to Kenyu being the one I hadn't played
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  yet. I did not get that played. My top fifty choice was Shipyard.
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  This is a game I in my top fifty I've been meaning to come
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  back to, but I never got around to it. Boom got around to
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  it. It was great, had a lot of fun, got my butt
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  kicked, which is awesome. By two new players, but both of whom
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  are very sharp individuals, really figuring out how to maximize the add on benefits
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  that you can buy that give you bonuses when you get stuff. So they
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  were just racking up stuff, which worked out really nicely for them. The
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  novelty game Time Pirates, that's been on my shelf for a while. I
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  keep I want to try it, but I haven't gotten it out yet.
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  And then Mythotopia is the dusty choice I wanted to play. Still did not
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  get that to the table alas maybe for July or in the month of July,
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  I'll try something different, all right, I did try something different.
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  It's hard to do this in the past, tense. I only tried three
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  new games in June. Isn't that wild? Normally I'm trying, like,
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  yeah, six to ten. Only three. June was a fun month,
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  but like I said, very busy, and then we went on vacation.
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  So the three games I tried were Liz Boas, the Seventh Continent and Fiction.
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  I can't recall if I've done an episode on that on those. Any
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  of those yet, I'll have to look. If I haven't, you'll hear
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  about them soon. If I have go back and listen. All right,
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  So that's first plays. I did try out some new expansions. I tried
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  out the Expedition Leaders expansion. Well, so it's interesting I call it a
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  first expansion play because what I'm tracking here is I've purchased this thing, have
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  I played it, I have used I have played the game A Lost Nuns
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  of Our Neck with the expansion Leaders in it before, but this is the
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  first time I've played it with my copy. So but I did, in
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  fact play it with my copy. I also played the Enchanted Forest episode of
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  Exit the game. Fun as always. Still really enjoy those games and happy
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  to have gotten to play that again. And then, finally, like I
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  said, we tried the Scarlet Keys expansion for the Arkham Horror card game.
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  I had a pretty good out of the dust month. As I mentioned,
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  we played hell Boy a few times, and I before my son and I
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  busted that out, we hadn't played it in three years, six months,
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  and eight days. Shipyard also, it had been four years, two months,
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  and eleven days since last time I played that. We played Costa Rica,
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  which is a Dunstan and Gilbert game from Mayfair. It's a pretty simple,
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  little push your luck game with some set collection elements that works really well.
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  I like it a lot. Two years, two months and fifteen days
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  since I played that, we busted out Forgotten Waters, which is still pretty
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  fun. Again, It's a kind of game that's fun occasionally. I'm glad
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  that I don't play it all the time. There are some new downloadable content
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  which my son noted we may get maybe do that next time because we now
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  have played all the different campaigns available in the box. But we had a
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  good time with that. It had been two years, two months, and
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  nine days since we played that. I guess we were on a cooperative game
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  kick because we also played Elder Sign three years, one month in eight days
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  since we'd played that. That game, you know, it is a really
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  fun co op. It is really hard, and often the dice either I'm
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  totally cruel to you or totally fun, and it's not often not one or
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  the other. I think we did very well in this game, kicked butt.
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  We played ghost Stories. We did not win ghost Stories that one.
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  It remains hard and I've never really I don't think I've ever won anything about
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  normal, and generally in order to win Normal, I have to play ghost
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  Stories a bunch of times. Usually, if you look back at my play
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  record, what will happen is I'll get ghost Stories out, usually playing solo,
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  and I'll start by playing on Easy. I'll play on Easy a few
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  times till I win, and I'll stitch up to Normal and play on a
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  few times s I win. By then I've got to kind of ghost Stories
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  fix and then I put it away for a while. This case, I
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  put it away for two years, six months and twenty five days. My
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  son and I had a good time with that. I don't know if it'll
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  come back out for a while, we'll see. And then we also played
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  Betrayal at House on the Hill, which is not a game I've played in
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  a long time, but as a fun, fun time. Two years,
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  seven months and twenty two days for that one, So what a delight.
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  That means. I'm up to thirty seven games this year that I've dusted off
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  that we've played before put away, and I've been more than a years since
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  we played. I continue along with my ten by ten challenge. Shipyard moved
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  Vladimir Succi up to five lost Cities, moved ryaner Knitzia up to three Exit,
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  put inca brand on the map. It's going to be on the board.
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  It's gonna be hard to say how I'm going to complete this whole thing
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  by the end of the year. And I played The City, which is
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  a Tom Lehman game, which put me up to three plays of his games,
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  of course asynchronously, I've finished most of these. I played another round
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  of Errati Cities, which was Vladimir Succi up to seven I pay. I
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  played Caverna, The Cave, Farmers, a Feast for Odin, Patchwork,
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  and apple Jack, putting me up to thirteen games of very Osenberg online.
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  I'm done tracking him then, and two Mattinas and one Innovation put Karl Chuttack
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  up to eight done tracking. I'll be done tracking him probably by the end
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  of July. At the end of June, my h index was eight.
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  The games I'd played eight times, both either asynchronous or in person, had
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  been through the Ages Rezarcana, My City Guy, Project, frost Haven,
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  The Age of Civilization, Quicks Mattini, and also Rajahs of the Ganges,
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  Dice Charmers, making good progress on my fifty two game challenge. I did
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  three different I completed three different challenges this month. Here they are number seven,
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  Play your favorite prompt from twenty twenty two. My favorite prompt from that
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  list was a game that offers information not needed for gameplay. I decide liz
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  Ball is one of those. There's a lot of information about the history of
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  Lisbon, but you don't need that to play it. I played a game
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  featuring a man made disaster that would be underwater cities. The cities are underwater
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  because we've overwhelmed the planet with population and problems with the environment. And play
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  a game featuring a parallel reality. I think Elder Sign would be the one
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  there. That is a fun game, but of course you open up these
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  portals to other worlds, what you might call parallel realities. That works out
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  just great. By the end of the month, I'm up to thirty two
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  out of the fifty two elements in the challenge. My painting challenge in June,
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  I wanted to finish the models that we had available in frost Haven.
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  I succeeded that. I wanted to paint my son I added in after June
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  started, I had a new challenge. My son has been playing D and
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  D. He went on hero Forge and ordered an STL based on the character
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  he's playing, and he printed it out on our three D printer and so
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  I painted it for him. I thought it turned out pretty well. And
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  then I did not come back to the Hellboy Minnis. So I have not
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  returned to that project, but intend to. My shelf of opportunity is still
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  at fifty three games. I cried three new games this month, as I
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  said, Seventh Continent, Bloom and Coimbra. I don't know that I said
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  that. Actually Seventh Continent and Coimbra were both games I got because of birthday
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  stuff, Like I got birthday money and I spent it on those. And
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  I think I also pre ordered everydeal far Shore with birthday money, So that's
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  my game plays there. So that brings me to the end of my June
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  top of the stack. It does beg the question of what does the top
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  of the stack look like? In July, I picked up four games to
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  play. My new game is a game that my in laws got me but
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  haven't brought yet. It's called The Gardens. They let us know about it
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  when we talked to them on the phone in late June, so I'm like,
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  oh, yeah, we'll definitely play that in July. So I put
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  that on the list I picked out. You know, I've tried to pick
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  one of the games I'm trying to play for my Top fifty is Altaplano.
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  So I pulled that one out. I said, yes, Altiplano please.
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  Still, I picked Time Pirates. I did not get that played, so
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  that's why it's it's there because I picked it in June. I picked it
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  in May and did not get it played, so I'm keeping it on there
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  see if I can get it played in June. And then finally coin Bra,
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  which is, like I said, one of the games I bought with
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  my birthday money. It's a classic one I really enjoy but I haven't played
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  in a while, so I haven't heard from many of you. The pick
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  Up and Delivered guild has been relatively quiet, which makes sense since I haven't
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  been putting out podcasts. I hope that you have had a good gaming month
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  and have been enjoying yourself, and i'd love to see what you have been
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  playing in June. Thanks for joining me I my walk today. I hope
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  to your next talk is as closed as mine Los Bye Bye. Brought to
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  you by rattle Box