Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Top of the Stack, Dec 2025

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Top of the Stack, Dec 2025 · Pick Up and Deliver

0:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast where I
0:06
Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I step off the
0:08
Speaker 1: train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
0:11
Speaker 1: I'm Brendan Riley. Well, greetings, listeners. It's a relatively warm
0:24
Speaker 1: day here in suburban Chicago. It's December tenth, which is
0:27
Speaker 1: way late for this episode, but I've run into a
0:31
Speaker 1: little bit of technological kerfuffle. The means by which I
0:36
Speaker 1: usually record this podcast is an old cell phone that
0:40
Speaker 1: has started acting really crazy. I will be recording and
0:45
Speaker 1: then when I stop the phone. When I go to stop,
0:47
Speaker 1: the phone restarts and loses the recording. For a little while,
0:52
Speaker 1: I was having trouble getting it to connect to the internet.
0:54
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure if this recording is going to work,
0:56
Speaker 1: but I haven't found a solution yet, so I'm still
0:59
Speaker 1: working with this. I did buy a microphone from my
1:01
Speaker 1: regular phone, but just by chance of where I am
1:05
Speaker 1: in my cycle of lifetimes of phones, the current phone
1:08
Speaker 1: I'm on is on its last legs and the USB
1:11
Speaker 1: port doesn't work really at all, so I need a
1:15
Speaker 1: microphone that is just Bluetooth, which means it would be
1:18
Speaker 1: a crummy microphone. So I haven't used that. I'm working
1:22
Speaker 1: on a solution, but I haven't found a good one yet,
1:25
Speaker 1: and so I haven't been recording. So my apologies for
1:28
Speaker 1: my absence. Hopefully you've been getting along okay without your
1:33
Speaker 1: couple times of weekly pickup and deliver stuff. Hopefully this
1:37
Speaker 1: episode will make it to air. If so, you'll hear
1:39
Speaker 1: it today on December tenth, I'll put it out right away.
1:43
Speaker 1: If not, I this recording won't survive, in which case
1:47
Speaker 1: I'm saying something that no one will hear. That's kind
1:51
Speaker 1: of existentially weird. Anyway, Well, it is the first recording
1:56
Speaker 1: of December, which means it's time to do a Top
1:58
Speaker 1: of the Sack. Even though we're very to do a
2:00
Speaker 1: Top of the Stack episode, nonetheless, I'm happy to do
2:03
Speaker 1: one with you. So it is December, which means that
2:07
Speaker 1: for those of you knew to the podcast, the top
2:08
Speaker 1: of the Top of the Stack episode is one where
2:11
Speaker 1: I talk about the games that I played in November,
2:15
Speaker 1: sort of a review segment, a chance to reflect on
2:18
Speaker 1: the gameplay and to talk about what my gameplay goals
2:22
Speaker 1: were and how well I accomplished them. So in I
2:25
Speaker 1: would start with some stats, what games did I play
2:28
Speaker 1: how many, how often? That sort of thing. So I
2:31
Speaker 1: start with I had seventy six plays of fifty six
2:33
Speaker 1: different games in November. That comes to a total of
2:36
Speaker 1: seven hundred and ninety five plays of three hundred and
2:39
Speaker 1: nineteen different games. My shelf of opportunity, which I'm generally
2:43
Speaker 1: trying to reduce in size, I have not made progress
2:46
Speaker 1: on that. In November it went from seventy five games
2:49
Speaker 1: to eighty three. Again, the shelf of opportunity are games
2:52
Speaker 1: that I own that I haven't played. In part it
2:55
Speaker 1: went up because I participated in I think I had
2:57
Speaker 1: good luck at Goodwill. We'll talk about at the end
3:01
Speaker 1: of the episode when I go over games I acquired.
3:05
Speaker 1: My collection size, interestingly, is stayed the same. It's at
3:09
Speaker 1: six hundred and ten, which is where it was at
3:11
Speaker 1: the beginning of the month, down four from the beginning
3:14
Speaker 1: of the year at six hundred fourteen. My most played
3:17
Speaker 1: game this month was Door Romantic Sakura or Soakara, which
3:21
Speaker 1: is the Japanese themed second game in the Door Romantic series.
3:28
Speaker 1: There's also Door Romantic Duel, but I did not acquire that.
3:31
Speaker 1: Apparently that's really only fun for two players. It's a
3:33
Speaker 1: very specific thing, and we played Door Fromantic as a
3:36
Speaker 1: four player game with my in laws. We have completed
3:39
Speaker 1: the original Door Romantic campaign quite skillfully. I might say
3:44
Speaker 1: we've played twenty four games of it, and during those
3:47
Speaker 1: twenty four games, we achieved all possible achievements. We unlocked
3:51
Speaker 1: all the possible unlocks except for there's one thing you
3:55
Speaker 1: unlock if you get four hundred points in one game,
3:57
Speaker 1: and we still have not managed that. Our best score
4:00
Speaker 1: is in the three hundred and forty point range, so
4:02
Speaker 1: we would have a ways to go before we would
4:04
Speaker 1: accomplish that top tier achievement, but everything else we succeeded at.
4:11
Speaker 1: So we picked up I picked up Door Romantic Sakura
4:14
Speaker 1: or Soccer from for Their for my father in law's
4:19
Speaker 1: Christmas game, and I gave it to him at Thanksgiving
4:22
Speaker 1: because we were going to see them and we'd finish
4:25
Speaker 1: Door Romantics. So we played three games of Door Romantic
4:27
Speaker 1: at Thanksgiving, which was enough to put it at the
4:29
Speaker 1: top of the most games played list at least or
4:34
Speaker 1: we played four games of it. I also played four
4:36
Speaker 1: games of Innovation Online, so that's my most played asynchronous game.
4:41
Speaker 1: I had three games on my top of the stack
4:43
Speaker 1: list this month, and I achieved two of them. I
4:45
Speaker 1: played Nocturn and I played Ethnos second Edition. I did
4:50
Speaker 1: not get to the table Infamy nor Great Western Trail.
4:54
Speaker 1: Some achievement there, some failure there. Nocturn is a puzzly
4:59
Speaker 1: game from the same folks who made Calico and Cascadia.
5:05
Speaker 1: I would say it's sort of on the puzzlier side
5:08
Speaker 1: of Klico, which was enough that my wife did not
5:10
Speaker 1: like it. I don't know how long it'll see in
5:12
Speaker 1: our collection, then, I only have so much room for
5:14
Speaker 1: middleweight games that my wife doesn't like. It's cute art,
5:17
Speaker 1: but the theme is entirely obsent. It's just a very
5:19
Speaker 1: puzzly game. I did enjoy the puzzle that it had,
5:22
Speaker 1: so I'm going to keep it around and play a
5:24
Speaker 1: few more times, I think, but I'm not sure how
5:26
Speaker 1: long it'll stay. Ethnos second Edition was great. I think
5:29
Speaker 1: Ethnos is a really neat game, and I look forward
5:31
Speaker 1: to playing it more. I am a bit frustrated the
5:34
Speaker 1: copy I got did not come with the bonus factions
5:37
Speaker 1: that are supposed to be part of the part of
5:39
Speaker 1: the game, as I understand it, or promos that you're
5:41
Speaker 1: supposed to get, or something so I am trying to
5:45
Speaker 1: find a work around for that, making my own. Perhaps
5:47
Speaker 1: we'll see that is Ethnos second edition. I did get
5:51
Speaker 1: a chance to play a number of new games this month.
5:53
Speaker 1: I played eleven new games. They were Nocturn Fromage the Scarlet,
5:58
Speaker 1: Pimpernel Cities, Clue, Treachery, Treachery at Tudor Mansion, Nuts About Mutts, Pandemic,
6:05
Speaker 1: Hot Zone North America, Clue, Conspiracy, Undergrove Door, Romantic soakerra
6:11
Speaker 1: and Go. That brings me to one hundred and twenty
6:14
Speaker 1: seven new games tried this year. I did try two
6:18
Speaker 1: new expansions this month. I tried the Ink and Ink
6:21
Speaker 1: and Clues mind Game Murderer, which is the next chapter
6:26
Speaker 1: or the next of the print and Play Ink and
6:28
Speaker 1: Clues Mysteries. They're okay. I don't see us playing any
6:32
Speaker 1: more of them or buying any more of them. They
6:34
Speaker 1: were fine, but not great. And then I got to
6:38
Speaker 1: try the third of the Kinfire Deve chapters. This is
6:41
Speaker 1: Vane Glory's Grotto, which is actually the first one published,
6:46
Speaker 1: I believe, and the easiest one. We breezed our way
6:49
Speaker 1: through it. We did also that we can play Scorns
6:53
Speaker 1: Stockade and got collaborate again, which is to be expected
6:56
Speaker 1: because scorn Stockade is a rough one. So that brings
7:00
Speaker 1: me to twenty three expansions tried this year. So far,
7:04
Speaker 1: we had some good luck in getting games out of
7:07
Speaker 1: the dust. To start with, I played Mega City Oceania,
7:12
Speaker 1: which is a game I had not played for six years,
7:14
Speaker 1: two months and sixteen days, as a reminder of game
7:17
Speaker 1: gets dusty if it goes more than a year without
7:19
Speaker 1: being played. I've also started keeping track of streaks. I'll
7:22
Speaker 1: talk about that in a future version, but a streak
7:25
Speaker 1: is a game that I've kept that I've actively kept
7:28
Speaker 1: from getting dusty for more than three years. So I'm
7:32
Speaker 1: keeping track of games that I play often enough to
7:35
Speaker 1: keep them from getting dusty, and I have continued to
7:38
Speaker 1: do so for at least three years, if not more.
7:41
Speaker 1: Think of it as sort of personal Evergreen games. But
7:44
Speaker 1: on the dusty front, I played one Night Ultimate Werewolf
7:47
Speaker 1: one year, five months, seven days. On that one Everdell
7:50
Speaker 1: one year, ten months and seven days. I played Guillotine
7:54
Speaker 1: one year, four months and eight days, Magic the Gathering
7:57
Speaker 1: one year, four months and fourteen days. I played Potion
8:00
Speaker 1: Explosion one year, five months and five days. Now we
8:03
Speaker 1: get into the real ones. Machi Korro is a game
8:05
Speaker 1: I have not played in a very long time. Nine years,
8:08
Speaker 1: nine months, and twenty five days. All Hombro four years,
8:11
Speaker 1: six months and twenty nine days, Broom Service one year,
8:14
Speaker 1: six months and twenty days, Guild of Merchant Explorers three years,
8:18
Speaker 1: two months, and three days. That one knocked me on
8:21
Speaker 1: my butt because I distinctly remembered being excited for Guild
8:24
Speaker 1: of Merchant Explorers. I remember when it came out, thinking
8:27
Speaker 1: it was pretty neat but not quite good enough to
8:29
Speaker 1: pick up. But I was glad it was around and
8:32
Speaker 1: well look forward to playing it occasionally. And then suddenly
8:35
Speaker 1: it's three years since I've played it. Geez. I finally
8:38
Speaker 1: Cat in the Box one year, six months, and two
8:40
Speaker 1: days since I've played that. It brings me to ninety
8:43
Speaker 1: one games that I've dusted off this year eleven this month.
8:47
Speaker 1: I really enjoy returning to a game that I haven't
8:49
Speaker 1: played in a bit. I like when I can keep
8:52
Speaker 1: a game from getting dusty, but it is fun to
8:54
Speaker 1: return to a game that I know is good and
8:56
Speaker 1: have a good time playing with playing it. I did
8:59
Speaker 1: have two notable plays this month. Ethnos second Edition is
9:04
Speaker 1: not a new play. I have played Ethnos before and
9:07
Speaker 1: I don't consider the second edition a new game, but
9:10
Speaker 1: it was fun to get it to the table, and
9:13
Speaker 1: I had a play of ark Nova where I scored
9:15
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty one points. I felt a little
9:17
Speaker 1: bad about this one because my wife really likes ark Nova,
9:20
Speaker 1: but I am much better at it than she is.
9:22
Speaker 1: So I thought I would give myself a secret personal
9:24
Speaker 1: handicap and try a different strategy, basically focusing on sponsors,
9:30
Speaker 1: and in fact, that turned out to be a winning
9:32
Speaker 1: strategy in this game that the sponsors got me a
9:35
Speaker 1: ton of extra points at the end of the game.
9:37
Speaker 1: I also set myself up to be ready to do
9:40
Speaker 1: a five point association action when the game ended, so
9:44
Speaker 1: I was very close to crossing, and then I got
9:47
Speaker 1: five green points plus another five or six green points
9:50
Speaker 1: from my sponsors, so I end up with one hundred
9:53
Speaker 1: and sixty one points, which is the if you use
9:55
Speaker 1: the additive scoring method. If you use the negative one,
9:58
Speaker 1: I got sixty one points, which is still a lot
10:00
Speaker 1: of points. Making progress on my Top fifty. As you know,
10:04
Speaker 1: one of my goals is to take the top fifty
10:06
Speaker 1: games that I've played and are my personal top fifty
10:10
Speaker 1: and try to get those games played once every two years.
10:13
Speaker 1: By the time I do the next Top fifty, I
10:15
Speaker 1: want to have played all fifty of the previous games.
10:17
Speaker 1: This month, I did play Everdell, which means that I
10:20
Speaker 1: have played twenty seven of the top fifty, leaving twenty
10:23
Speaker 1: three left to play next year, including December. I guess
10:27
Speaker 1: in the next thirteen months. The tricky part is I've
10:29
Speaker 1: played the ones that are easier to get to the table.
10:31
Speaker 1: I think the harder they are to to get to
10:33
Speaker 1: the table, the harder it is to get them played.
10:36
Speaker 1: So that's that my ten for ten. I'm making significant
10:40
Speaker 1: progress on that. I played Catan as a box. Actually
10:44
Speaker 1: I didn't play Catan. I noticed that I hadn't marked
10:47
Speaker 1: a game as having a red box, but I did
10:50
Speaker 1: play Catan right at the beginning of the year, so
10:51
Speaker 1: I retroactively said, oh, I did play a game with
10:54
Speaker 1: a red cover. And then I also played Broom Service,
10:57
Speaker 1: which is a game with an Indigo cover, meaning I've
10:59
Speaker 1: now got ten for ten on the colors category. I
11:03
Speaker 1: did play two games associated with continents. I played Mega
11:08
Speaker 1: City Oceania and the game's Cities when you play it,
11:11
Speaker 1: you pick which city you're playing in. We picked Rio
11:13
Speaker 1: di Janeiro. So thus I played a game in South America,
11:16
Speaker 1: and I have one game left in South America and
11:18
Speaker 1: one game left in Africa to play. The MGM in
11:22
Speaker 1: concludes the mind Game Murderer and the Clue Treachery game
11:28
Speaker 1: brought me up to ten mysteries, so I've completed that
11:30
Speaker 1: category and I did not make progress on any of
11:33
Speaker 1: the other categories. It's looking grim for finishing my ten
11:36
Speaker 1: for ten this year. I will get close, but it's
11:39
Speaker 1: going to take some serious effort if I want to
11:40
Speaker 1: make it. All right, So let's talk about the collection update. So,
11:44
Speaker 1: as I said, I started at the beg of the
11:46
Speaker 1: month with six hundred and ten games. First thing out
11:49
Speaker 1: of that is I sold a whole bunch of games
11:51
Speaker 1: where I traded. These are sixteen games I traded at
11:55
Speaker 1: the Chicago No Ship Math Trade. I traded Smug Owls,
11:59
Speaker 1: Capital Lux, fresh Go, Medieval Academy REX, Final Days of
12:02
Speaker 1: an Empire. That one I was a little hesitant to
12:04
Speaker 1: get rid of. But it's been a while since I
12:06
Speaker 1: played it, So time move on. Time Bomb Evolutionary Evolution
12:09
Speaker 1: Apothecary Back to the Future, Double Feature, Get Lucky Goonies,
12:14
Speaker 1: Kings of Aaronsteam, Rhino, Hero, Shadows, Amsterdam at Land, Dice,
12:19
Speaker 1: and Exploding Kittens Than Not Safe for Work Deck. So
12:23
Speaker 1: I started the month by getting rid of sixteen games,
12:25
Speaker 1: which is a good way to try to keep your
12:27
Speaker 1: collection size small. At the same time, I brought home
12:30
Speaker 1: eleven games from that Math trade. I brought home Vegas Showdown,
12:33
Speaker 1: Fire and Axe, Undergrove, Kingdom, Legacy, Nocturn, Lost Legacy, The Starship, Clue, Conspiracy,
12:41
Speaker 1: Cooper Island, Grimwood, Monster Expedition, and pretap Quote. So bringing
12:46
Speaker 1: home those games means that I really only went came
12:48
Speaker 1: down five from where I was before, and then I
12:51
Speaker 1: picked up five more games. I picked up The Birding
12:54
Speaker 1: Game and Gone Birding. These are two games about birding.
12:57
Speaker 1: They're both they both look pretty dumb. These are far
12:59
Speaker 1: more collectors games then games i'll play, although they do.
13:02
Speaker 1: Go on to the Shelf of Opportunity and we'll play them,
13:04
Speaker 1: and then we have Nuts about Mutts, Ice, Cool two
13:09
Speaker 1: and Root, which brings me to six hundred and ten games.
13:14
Speaker 1: So overall my collection sort of stayed where it was.
13:18
Speaker 1: It was a good month for gaming in November. I
13:20
Speaker 1: enjoyed the games I played. I had a lot of
13:23
Speaker 1: opportunity to connect to games of the past, and I
13:27
Speaker 1: set up I made progress on my ten for ten,
13:29
Speaker 1: although not as much as I would have liked. Generally,
13:32
Speaker 1: a good month on the ten for ten would be
13:34
Speaker 1: ten games, and I don't think I got that done.
13:36
Speaker 1: So it means I do have a very significant burden
13:39
Speaker 1: in terms of December if I want to finish that
13:42
Speaker 1: ten for ten. So setting myself up for December, I
13:45
Speaker 1: picked out four games that I would like to get played.
13:48
Speaker 1: They are nineteen oh two Melie Armelias, which is the
13:53
Speaker 1: one of the games about a year all from the
13:55
Speaker 1: same designer I can't remember his name, and it's a
13:58
Speaker 1: game about making movies. I picked out The Cattleman Moa
14:02
Speaker 1: and Five Points Gangs of New York. These are all
14:05
Speaker 1: games that have been on my shelf of opportunity for
14:06
Speaker 1: a long time, so putting them on my list I
14:09
Speaker 1: get double credit if I succeed, both for the top
14:12
Speaker 1: of the stack and for trying to clear them off
14:15
Speaker 1: of my shelf of opportunity and as part of my
14:17
Speaker 1: ten for ten. So The Cattleman looks like a really
14:21
Speaker 1: dumb nineteen seventies style game. It looks like somebody said, hey,
14:24
Speaker 1: let's make Dallas the game, but we don't want to
14:26
Speaker 1: pay for Dallas Dallas licensing. Then there's MOA, which is
14:31
Speaker 1: a Martin Wallace game where he's experimenting with some of
14:35
Speaker 1: the same mechanisms that we see in the Arrival of
14:38
Speaker 1: experimenting with a dangerous power that you then get points
14:42
Speaker 1: through and then finally five points. Gangs of New York
14:45
Speaker 1: looks like a area control gang movie about that sort
14:50
Speaker 1: of volatile time in the eighteen hundreds. I won this
14:53
Speaker 1: at a White Elephant exchange at Toggle Gaming, and so
14:57
Speaker 1: I'm excited to do that again. Play that this month hopefully.
15:02
Speaker 1: Well that's about it for me in gaming in November
15:05
Speaker 1: and setting up December. I'd love to hear what you
15:07
Speaker 1: have been playing and what you'd like me like to
15:10
Speaker 1: hear me do for the last few episodes of the season.
15:14
Speaker 1: I have till the end of December to knock out
15:18
Speaker 1: I think six more episodes or something like that, assuming
15:20
Speaker 1: this one works otherwise it's seven more. Well, thanks for
15:23
Speaker 1: joining me. Hopefully you've kept me in your feed and
15:25
Speaker 1: you're glad to have me back. I'd love to hear
15:27
Speaker 1: what you've been playing in November and December or November anyway.
15:30
Speaker 1: You can post that over on board game Geek and
15:32
Speaker 1: guild three two sixty nine. There's already a thread there
15:35
Speaker 1: started about the top of the stack. That's about it
15:38
Speaker 1: for me. I look forward to next time, and I
15:40
Speaker 1: hope that your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. Goodbye,
16:03
Speaker 1: brought to you by rattle Box