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

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

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Welcome to pick Up and Delivered the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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as I head out for a walk and delivering up so due while I stroll
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around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning friends. It is a
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lovely day here in suburban Chicago. It's June second, and it's the first
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episode I'm recording in the new month. In fact, I'm going to turn
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around and publish it right away because I wanted to get it out right away.
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That means it's time for Top of the Stack. Do if somehow you're
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new to the podcast. Top of the Stack is my monthly update on my
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game plays and a discussion of the sort of habit of game playing. As
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you'll know from our short episodes, I don't generally do what if I'd been
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playing segment. I guess this is the episode that's meant to do that.
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I read a lot of stats on here because I love keeping track of stuff.
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Hopefully that's not too dull, but I would be interested to hear what
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are your thoughts on the Top of the Stack episode. I've generally gotten good
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feedback on it, but you know, I could change it up. I
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could do something a little different. I'm keen to know what you want to
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know, So head over to board game get GIL three two six nine and
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share your thoughts there about the top of the Stack. We usually have a
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top of the Stack forum as well, where other members of the podcast community
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share what games they've been playing, and we go from there. The last
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intro thing top of the Stack, the idea of it, or the phrase
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top of the Stack I swiped from the podcast with Nonsensical gamers who use it
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as a way to check in with one another about games they were planning to
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play. And I use this idea as a way to think about what am
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I playing in the next month and kind of be a little bit deliberate in
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my gameplay choices so that I can actively use the bulk of my collection,
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I guess, or try to more actively use the bulk of my collection.
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All right, so let's jump right into it. May twenty twenty three.
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Let's start with the raw stats. I played one hundred and three different games.
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Are one hundred and three games this month, fifty seven different games,
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so most of the games I played I played twice. This year, I've
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played four hundred forty four hundred forty five games so far and one hundred and
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eighty two different games. My shelf of opportunity making progress. At the beginning
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of the year, it was at fifty five. At the beginning of the
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month, it's down to fifty three, and now reduced it down to fifty
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one. So slowly, slowly, said the tortoise. My collection size,
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however, did go up by one, and that's where that one and that
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fifty one came from. We'll talk about that in a bit. My most
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played game this month in real life on the table was frost Haven with three
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plays. My most played game digitally is Through the Ages as usual with ten
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asynchronous three plays. I had a whole bunch of games I played for the
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first time this month. I've talked about some of these on the podcast,
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actually a lot of them. Some of them I haven't talked about very much
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yet because I played them digitally, and as we have discussed before, when
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I play a game asynchronously, like on board game Arena or something, it
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often takes me several plays to feel like I have the sense of it at
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the same level that I would with one play on the table. So some
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of these I haven't done an episode on. I may do an episode just
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about games I played on Boardgame Arena. Yeah, that's that all right.
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So first plays this month. I played Gate, I played I'm Pretty Savvy,
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I played Mega Land, I played QuickLink, I played Spots on Boorgame
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Arena, played Break the Code on Board Game Arena, played Shadows Amsterdam,
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Patrician, played Applejack Watergate on tour on Board Game Arena, played Dealing with
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Murderer Fatal Error on our table. I played Coverna, The Cave, Farmers
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Loom in the Lost World on Boorgame Arena, and i played Dutch Blitz and
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Earth on the table. So I'm up to fifty eight new to me games
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tried this year, which feels pretty good. That's a nice healthy batch of
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games if I'm trying to go for ten a month and well over that knot
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kite twy to twelve a month and two shy of twelve a month. But
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yeah, so playing lots of new games and talking to you about them,
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so that's great. Well, you recall that I'm doing a Designer ten per
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ten challenge this year, which means that I'm trying to play ten plays of
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ten different designers games, and I'm keeping track of it in two ways.
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I'm keeping track of on the table plays and asynchronous plays. So the asynchronous
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plays I'm making a huge progress. I've still only played four Martin Wallace games
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asynchronous league, but I'm up to seven Vladimir Succi. I've played more than
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ten with Ryner Kanitzia and Inca Brand and Tom Lehman and Vlada Shavado, well
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up to five with Phil Walker Harding, four with Elizabeth Hargrave. I just
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finished Very Rosenberg this month, and I'm up to five with Carl Chuddack.
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So if my ten for ten is going to include asynchronous plays, I'm nearly
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done with it. I may actually get to a full ten for ten of
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asynchronous plays of these designers, just without any real life plays. My real
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life plays, I'm up to twenty three, so it's a narrow window.
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But I've got five plays of Martin Wallace game, four plays of Vladimir's Succi
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games, two Reynter Canesia's zero on Inca Brand, three Phil Walker hartings to
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Tom Lehman's zero, Elizabeth Hargrave two, Vladis Travado, two Uve Rosenberg,
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and three Carl Chuduck. So that's twenty three plays in May, I had
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an H index of four in my four games that I played at least four
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times, where through the Ages res Arcana, Ark Nova, and Applejack.
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All of these were asynchronous board game arena plays. And my H index for
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the year is eight and this is through the ages my City, res Arcana,
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Gaya, project Age of Civilization, Frost Haven with Tynai, and Rajas
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of the Ganges. So it's been a productive and interesting month for game plays.
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I did not try any new expansions this month, so that was a
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bit of a bummer. But I did dust off five different games this month.
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These are remember a dusting off a game as one where you played a
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game that's I haven't played for a year or more. That was The Adventures
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the Temple of Shock, Forbidden Sky, Grave Well, Escape from the Ninth
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Dimension, Cafe Chaos, and Pulsar twenty eight forty nine. So lots of
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good plays this month. I'd say that, you know, Pulsar was a
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highlight for me. Gravoll was a delight to return to. I was reminded
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how yeah, Forbidden Sky is not my favorite of the Forbidden series, but
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I had a good time all right. Onto the fifty two game Challenge.
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As you recall, the fifty two game challenge is a list of you'll get
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you guessed it, fifty two different sort of interesting activities to do are interesting
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prompts to try to fulfill by playing different games, and the goal is to
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fulfill one a week for the year, or you know, if you fulfill
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more than one a week at the beginning, it gets easier to do by
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the end. Going into this month, I had twenty three different challenge things
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fulfilled and I have done another six this month. If you'd like to see
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the specific challenges altogether, you can go to board game geek dot com and
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search for Wombat nine two nine. If you look at my geek lists,
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I have a shelf of opportunity geek list. Actually, the easiest way to
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do all this would be go to rautabox games dot com and look at the
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show notes for this episode, where I have links to all these things.
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You can see a link to my top of the stack list which includes a
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link to my fifty two game challenge, and you can see the specifics of
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what I've been doing. But here are the six I accomplished this month.
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One play a game with a non rectangular board that was Pulsar twenty eight forty
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nine has this great circular board. It has this great circular board that feels
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like being in a in a galaxy of some part. It's awesome. Number
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eleven, Play a game that was published in twenty twenty three. I actually
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had a couple different choices here if I was willing to do the asynchronous plays,
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but in terms of plays on the table, I played Earth and Earth
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is a game that was kick started last year and delivered started delivering early this
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year. It is marked as a twenty twenty three publication, so glad to
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play it. Play a game that you can pause. Now. I chose
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Bureau the Bureau of Investigation here. You know most games you can pause,
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so I'm not really sure what it means, but I think it means a
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game where is designed to be something you can stop. And I would say
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the Bureau of Investigation is a set of five cases where you're designed to stop
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in between each one, so that part you can pause. But you also
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if you're doing a case and you decide, hey, I need a break,
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you can pause it with zero effort at all. You just put your
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notes in the box with the other stuff that goes with it, and boom,
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you're paused. So I'm calling that a game you can pause. I'm
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not sure what they mean. If they don't mean that, I mean there
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are a couple of games like I know that Seventh Continent apparently has a really
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entertaining or really good pause system, but other than that, I don't know
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what that means. The Time Stories did that as well, But man,
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I'm fine with this one. Play a game with a constellation on a cover
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or in the title. I chose Burke's Gambit here. While Burke's Scambit does
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not have a constellation drawn on the cover, i e. There are not
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lines between stars indicating a constellation, there are lots of stars on the cover
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of the game Burke Scambit, and so certainly you can pick out a constellation
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among those stars if you so desire, So I declare that as being a
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constellation. Now. There are some other games that have coment recently. Astra
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is one, subastral Is another, which are games literally about constellations, And
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that's neat and good, and I would be happy to count one of those
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if I were to play one, But I'm not seeking those out right now.
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Play a game set in the decade you were born in. You'll have
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trouble guessing this from my youthful demeanor, but I was born in the nineteen
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seventies, firmly a kid of the late Gen X period, so Watergate would
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definitely be a game that fits. Now, Watergate is a game I've only
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played online, not in person. Nonetheless, it fits the decade really well,
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so I decide to go with it. Finally play a game with maps.
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What better game with maps is there than cartographers? I would say none.
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There's none better games. So I'm really enjoying fulfilling these the fifty two
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game challenge, and I hope that if you're doing one, you are also
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doing well. All right. Next up is the painting challenge. In May,
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I had set a painting goal of finishing the starting class models for frost
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Haven and starting the miniatures from Cerebria now frost Haven. I did paint the
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original four miniatures that we were using in our campaign. Now. My son
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actually decided he did not really like the shadow Master or whatever they call it,
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and so he switched to one of the characters that we unlocked, and
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I painted that one as well. So I've painted five of the gloom Haven
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figures, and I started on the bloom Haven characters that involve the Hive of
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Bugs or whatever they are, Harrower I think is maybe what they're called.
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So I started playing with that one in our side campaign and so I've been
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painting those. I'm not done with them, though, and there's still the
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Drifter from the original six, and we've now unlocked one more. So I
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have like those two miniatures to finish and two more to paint before I've painted
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all of the unlocked gloom Haven miniatures, which is kind of my goal.
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I want. I want to keep up with the ones we unlock. Frost
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haveing excuse me. I want to keep up with the miniatures we unlock,
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so that if you decide you want to play the frost Haven, particular frost
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Haven class, it's already painted and you're ready to go. It also helps
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there's not there's a reduction in the need for creativity for those miniatures because they
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come with a illustrated card and I do not feel any compunction to paint them
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any differently than the card illustrates. So my goal is to get the art
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to look as close as I can with the paints that I have to the
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image on the player card. It works pretty nicely actually, So that is
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where I am with my painting. All of that said, I did not
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I don't I got any painting done this month. I maybe got one of
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those gloom Haven figures that wasn't done before done, but I certainly did not
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finish and I did not start on the Cerebria miniatures at all. Now,
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my son and I were so for June. The Gloomhaven miniatures are still at
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that top of that list. Definitely going to finish those. My son also
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indicated that he would be willing to play Hellboy with me this summer. Now,
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as you'll recall, I did paint a whole bunch of the Hellboy Lizard
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figures, but I have not painted most of the other miniatures in the game.
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There are quite a few, but they're fun to paint, and I
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would like to get them painted so we can play that. So I decided
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to backburner the Cerebria miniatures and go back to painting there the Hellboy miniatures for
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a bit. Yet. The nice thing about those is because they tend to
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come in groups, they're a little faster to paint because when they're painting a
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group, you know, like when I'm painting a bunch of Nazis. They
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all have the same color pants, so I can paint five of them at
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once, paint their pants and then your shirt, and the decision space is
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a little cleaner. So so yeah, So my June painting goal is going
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to be gloom Haven and then as many of the Hellboy miniatures as I can
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get done. All right, Next up, we've got games I played to
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remove from my shelf and games that got added to my shelf. So,
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as I mentioned, my collection size went up one one this month, which
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means I added one game to my shelf of opportunity. That game is called
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Political Asylum. It is frankly, it looks like a very reactionist, conservatory,
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conservative, quote unquote jokey game bordering on racist, if not directly racist.
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My friend found this at Goodwill for me and picked it up knowing that
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as a scholar of board games, I'd be interested in it, and I
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am indeed interested in it, but looks pretty gross, so it is in
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my collection. I even wrote in the thing like acquired for scholarly purposes because
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it looks pretty reactionary. It's from nineteen ninety three called Political Asylum. I
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would not recommend recommend it, but you could look it up if you're curious.
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So that raised my collection size by one to five fifty eight. It
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also meant that my unplayed games weren't from fifty three to fifty four. However,
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we did have a series of successes in terms of getting games played that
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had been on my shelf. So we played Gate and Shadows, Amsterdam,
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and QuickLink. I think two of those three, or maybe all three,
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I've talked about already on the podcast, So those are removed from the list.
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Oh right, just a little bit left to talk about the As you
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remember, every two years I do a new Top fifty, and at the
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beginning of this year, I noticed that there were twelve games and my Top
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fifty that I had not played since the last time i'd made the Top fifty.
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So I figured I should be playing the top fifty games in my estimation,
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and so I was going to try to get one of those done each
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month. That's not going so great. So far. I've played three of
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the twelve and we're now entering month six, so I should have played five
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by now, and I've only played three. So the games that I have
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played our last Will and Five Tribes and Clank, which are great but more
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to play. Finally, what am I planning to play for next month?
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First off, for the new game choice, I think I will choose Teken
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You the Obelisk of the Sun, which is that one of the tea games,
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although David Turksy is involved in a more helplu way than some of the
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others. This is a one of the games from Board and Dice in which
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you've got all sorts of stuff moving around and I suspect your moving up tracks.
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It looks pretty interesting. I got it for free haha from the podcast
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two Wood for a week and they were giving it away and I said I
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would like it and they sent it to me, so that was great.
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Looking forward to giving a try. My top fifty choice. The game I
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will trying to knock have this month is Shipyard. This is the Vladimir Succi
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ship building game where you are building ships and having fun. So Shipyards my
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choice. There Novelty choice, This is a game that is on my shelf
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for sort of novelty's sake. What's what's the game I'd like to resolve?
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From that perspective, let's go with Time Pirates. Time Pirates is an Alan
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Moon game that I got for free at Origins in twenty seventeen. And the
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it comes in your like the old board game size box like you would get
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games in the eighties in and the cover looks really not great, so I'm
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sure it's not a great game, but I mentioned to try it once and
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have it off of my shelf opportunity, and so yeah, I'll do that.
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And then finally my dusty choice. I already put this up here once
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and I'm like Charlie Brown, I'm gamely trying it again. This is Mithotopia.
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Mithotopia is one of the Martin Wallace deck builders. I think it's a
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pretty neat game, and I really enjoyed it the time I played it,
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so I'd like to get it out again and try it again. So yeah,
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this month was an interesting one in terms I felt like I got a
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fair number of games played. It was fun to try on the table.
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I will talk about that more in an upcoming podcast when I actually talk about
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the game in more detail. It was also really nice to get Paul Sar
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twenty eight forty nine out that did get me another Vladimir Succi game played on
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the table. I will say it was not in my top fifty, so
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I thought I was checking off a game from my top fifty list, and
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I was not. But I'm still really glad to have gotten it played again.
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I enjoyed it quite a bit, the people who played it with me
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seem to enjoy it, and if I make some effort to bring it again,
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I suspect I could get other people to play it with me. This
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is the inherent problem of having a big collection of games, is that I
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don't bring the same game over and over again because I want to play other
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things. But that means that anyone I'm playing with is always playing a new
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game, and they're never getting to play again a game they've already played.
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So yeah, I feel like I should bring Paul twenty eight forty nine back
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and put it out again and see who bites, because getting to play it
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more than once would be I think a useful way to get better at it.
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So we'll see if I manage that. That said, Shipyard is my
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goal this month. Not playing Pulsar again moving into the summer means that I
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need to recommit to a variety of different game practices. Looking forward to getting
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more frost Haven done as we have time for the whole family to sit down
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for that. In fact, we're going to play a round of it later
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today before some family members go off on a trip. In general, the
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summer gameplay experience can be very fulfilling, and it looks like it probably will
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be, so I'm excited to see where we go with that. So,
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dear listeners, how was your May? What games did you get played?
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Did you get played the games you wanted to get played? What games do
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you expect to get played in the future. Head over to board game Geek
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guild three two six nine to share all of those thoughts and let me know
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what games you think you're going to play, and I will enjoy doing the
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same. If you have questions or comments you want to reach out to me,
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you can email me Brendan at ratterbox games dot com. You can post
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a message on board game Geek. My user name is Wombat ninety nine.
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I'd love to hear from you there. That's the best way to get hold
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me. If you want to play a game with me asynchronously, you can
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do so on board game Arena or Yukata dot D. I am still on
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Batasu, but I'm visiting less and less, and once the current game that
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I'm in is ended, I won't probably visit regularly anymore because I'm trying not
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to start new games there in case they close the service down. Thanks for
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joining me on my walk today. I hope that your next walk because as
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pleasant as mine was. Golle bye. Brought to you by rattle Box Day