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

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

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Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast, where I pick up my audio
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recorder as I head out for a walk and deliver an episode two while I
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stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, hello listeners, it's a lovely
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day here in suburban Chicago. It's November first already, yauza. It's been
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a busy couple weeks at my work and just with different things going on in
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my life. I kind of fell out of having time to record the podcast
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for a bit there, so we had an unplanned two week break. I
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did publish one episode yesterday that I recorded back in mid October, and then
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finally just got around to posting. And now it's November already, So I
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guess if you're listening to this later or catching back up, there was like
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a top of the stack, then like three episodes. Now we're on the
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next top of the stack. But so be it. That's how it is.
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We're back to November. I have to really record a lot if I
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want to finish the season by the end of the calendar year, which is
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usually my goal. I suspect I won't manage that, so probably this coming
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year I'll be doing like I did last year and finishing this season in the
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first month of the new year. But we'll see how that goes. So
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it is November one today, and thus it's time for the November twenty twenty
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two three Top of the Stack. For those of you new to the podcast,
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Top of the Stack is an episode that I do once a month where
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I talk about the last month's game plays and look forward to the next month's
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gameplays. I have a metaphorical stack of games that I want to play,
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and I discuss how well I did at clearing off that stack last month and
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how well I'm going to do what games I want to have on that stack
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for the coming months. It's fun. I think it's fun. Maybe you
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don't, in which case check out the next episode, but hopefully you do.
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It's also leaf drop in season around here in suburban Illinois, so if
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you're hearing crunching, it's because I'm walking on leaves. It's also gotten a
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bit colder. It was cold enough for Halloween last night that i'd built a
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fire in a brazier in my driveway, and I'm now wearing hat and gloves
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along with a more wintery jacket to celebrate the cold weather woo. All right,
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so let's just jump in with some stats. In October of twenty three
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my monthly SATs I played sixty two plays of forty one different games last month,
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bringing my total plays to eight hundred and nineteen for the year of two
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hundred and seventy three different games. My shelf of opportunity started the year at
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fifty five. It started the month at sixty four, and it went up
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to sixty five. That's by the fact that I checked a number of games
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off, but I also acquired some new games, hence kind of treading water
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on that. The collection size, however, started the month at five hundred
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and seventy one games and dropped to five hundred and fifty eight, so I
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have gotten rid of quite a few games. I'll talk about that in a
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bit. My most played game this month was month in person was Fuji Flush
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with three plays, and my most played online was Through the Ages with five
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So to start off with October's top of the stack, the three games are
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the four games I was I put on this on the list were Last Friday,
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A Touch of Evil, Hunted wood Ridge, and Vagrant Song, and
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I did manage to get Last Friday and a Touch of Evil played. I
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learned Vagrant Song, but we discovered it's a campaign game, and so it
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threw off our plans to play it a little bit because we were going to
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play it with my mother in law. But playing campaign game with her doesn't
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make a lot of sense because she's not here often enough to make it worth
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during the campaign. So that got messed up, and I did not get
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around to playing Hunted wode Ridge. So they're two out of three. As
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a reminder if you're brand new, I was put four games on the stack,
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and it's considered a successful month if I played three of them, So
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all right, I did have some first plays this month. I had.
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These are new to me games. I played Five Minute Mystery Last Friday,
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Telestrations, Upside Drawn, grab Well second Edition, Kingsburg, and the one
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play Hunter Killer game Death at a Dive Bar. Now, I've never played
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a one play Hunter Killer game before, so I'm calling that death' that's my
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first play of those. If I play another Hunter Killer game in the future,
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I will call it an expansion because that's how I handle those. So
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like if I play an unlock game now, I don't call that a new
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game. I call that another unlock expansion, but that was my first Hunter
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Killer game as far as I can remember. I did not try any expansions
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this month, and I dusted off a few games. I'll put these in
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reverse order. The least dusty game, that's honorable mention. My family played
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Broom Service, and looking up, I had not played it. It had
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been five hundred and sixty four day or three hundred and sixty four days,
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so one day short of a year, which means technically Broom Service was not
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dusty, but close enough, So I just want to mention it that one
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wasn't dusty. However, I did dust off The Loop, which had been
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a year and ten months, Voluspa, which had been a year, eleven
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months, six days, a Touch of Evil which is a year, eleven
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month and ten days. And then here's some bigger leaps, Fuji Flush,
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which it had been six years, four months and nine days since I had
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played. Last time I played that was at Origins Game Fair in twenty seventeen,
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when I first played it, and I thought it was pretty fun and
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I wanted to pick it up, and I finally did get a copy.
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Then the game Gloom from Atlas Games. Which is about placing transparent cards on
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other cards. Last time I played that was eight years, two months,
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and twenty days ago, so it's been a little bit of time. And
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finally, when my students brought one of their favorite games to the board game
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club that had run at my school, and so we played the game Set.
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And I haven't played Set since before I was recording my gameplays, and
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so I had to estimate, and I believe the last time I played Set
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was in grad school with my roommate who liked that game, which would be
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more than fifteen years ago. That's an estimate. I didn't certainly have played
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it since that more than fifteen years suggests that I have played it since grad
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school. I think I have, but who knows, but fifteen years is
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probably a good estimate. So that brings me up to fifty six games dusted
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off this year, not counting broom Service because that's an honorable mention. So
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my daughter commented to me not doing so hot in that ten by ten challenge.
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Dad, She's right, I'm not. My original plan, as you
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remember, is I picked out ten designers, and I want to play each
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of their games ten times. I want to play games by them ten times
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each, and I've been tracking both in person and asynchronous plays. On the
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asynchronous side of things actually doing surprisingly well. I have completed ten plays online
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of Vladimir Suki game ran your Kinesia, INCA brand Tom Layman, and Karl
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Chuddick. I've got nine plays of Martin for Martin Wallace, six from Phil
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Walker Harding, eight from Elizabeth Hargrave, eight from Vladahlatl, and eight from
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Uvid Rosenberg. So I'm really close to having a ten for ten online plays
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of those designers, so I'm definitely gonna try for that in the next two
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months. I've got thirty nine real life plays of games by those ten designers,
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so I think my new goal is to have fifty plays total of those
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ten designers. Now, one way I could do it would be to try
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to have five of each, but I think that's unlikely to work, and
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so I'm going to aim for fifty total. And you know, however they
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work out. That don't mean I have more of Vladimir Suki plays plays of
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games by him than by Elizabeth Hargrave, but so be it. But that's
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kind of where I am with that my h index this year so far is
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at twelve. I have twelve games I've played at least twelve times each.
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That is through the Ages res Arkhana, Frost Haven, Mathainai Gaya Project,
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My City, Arkham, Horror, lcg Ark Nova, Apple Jack, Great
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Western Trail, Quicks, and that time you killed me. So I'm enjoying
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all of those, all right, truck in along. Next up, we've
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got my fifty two game Challenge, so as you'll remember, the fifty two
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game Challenge is a list on board game Geek. It's a challenge that someone
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had created where you have there's fifty two different prompts and you're supposed to try
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to do something in each something a play of each of a game in each
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prompt that fits what they're trying to do. As of the end of September,
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I think I had twelve left to go, or as of the end
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of August, I had twelve left to go. In September I accomplished none
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of them, and here maybe I had I had eleven left to go.
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Sorry at the end of August. In September I accomplished none of them or
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maybe one. Either way, I came into October with thirty nine of the
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fifty two plays completed, and I completed two this month without a significant effort.
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Two isn't great, but there it is. The two I played.
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Play a game whose title begins with the last letter of your previous game.
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So the previous game on the list ended with a K, and that means
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the game that I had to play needed to start with a K, and
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I did play Kingsburg this month, so I counted that. The other one
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is play a game with a harbor. Now, the game A Touch of
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Evil has in one of the expansions, a harbor where a ghost chip has
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crashed and there's a lighthouse and everything, so I did play that this month.
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So I've played a game with the harbor, meaning I'm at forty one
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out of the fifty two challenges, meaning I have eleven left. So for
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the next two months, I actually made a list of the eleven rather than
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working from the list of ones that I'm completed. I made that separate list
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so I can really focus on trying to get all eleven done because I finished
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it last year and it was really fun, and I really want to get
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it done this year. So if I'm doing well, I've done six or
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more games under that umbrella by next month. Painting challenge. I did make
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some progress on my painting challenge. This month. I painted two minis from
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the game Cerebria. I'm looking forward to painting more, but I got two
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of them done, and I want to keep going on that, in part
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because I want to play Cerebria sometime before the end of the year, hopefully
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after I finished painting the pieces, so we can play with a painted set
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of the game. All right. I mentioned at the beginning of the episode
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that my collection size was town You'll know You'll remember that it is a perennial
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goal of mine to reduce the collection size. Generally. I think five hundred
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is a pretty good number in terms of how many games I should own,
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and I own quite a few more than that. Five point seventy one was
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the collection size at the beginning of October. So if I'm reducing the size
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of the game collection, that is a significant That is a significant amount I
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need to reduce by well, I donate my son to take sushi roll to
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the high school board ying Club. I said, go for it, so
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we donated that. I acquired two games, Discworld onk More Pork and Chicago
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Express which were being given away free by one of the One of my friends
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at Togo Gaming brought a few games that he wanted to get rid of,
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and so I took those. That brought my collection size up to five seventy
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one. I also got Fujiflush and Core Worlds Galactic orders from the garage sale
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at the Bonus Round Cafe where I ate lunch this month, meaning we're up
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to five seventy three. But Brendan, that doesn't sound like a reduction in
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your collection. Sounds like you're up three well haha. The fair Game,
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my local game store, Fair Game, had a garage sale of their own
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and individuals our households. They're allowed to submit up to twenty games for the
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sale, and I submitted twenty games for the sale. Actually nineteen, I
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think, no twenty, it was twenty, and of those twenty fifteen of
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them sold, so I got the other five back. But now I am
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at twenty, I'm fifteen fewer games than I had before, meaning my collection
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size at the end of October was five point fifty eight. Here's the games
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that I sold, and I'll comment a little bit on why I got rid
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of them. Dingo's Dreams. This is a fun game, but it's extremely
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light, and we weren't playing it anymore. We weren't playing it anymore,
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as the most common answer. Yeah, so that one's really fun, but
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not playing it anymore. Last Defense I thought was way too easy. It's
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a cute game for families. So Streets this one. I actually didn't like
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it that much. This is a game that came in an interesting size box.
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It's part of a series of games, starting with Villagers and most recently
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Moon. These are games all produced by the same person, and the publishing
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company is producing them in the same size boxes, so it's kind of a
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series. I just didn't like Streets very much. I played it a couple
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times in person and once online. It's just not my favorite game. Really
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nice, but gameplay not my thing, so glad to get rid of that.
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Hughes. It's a fun real time game, but it's not as good
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as See It's also that's the other thing with a collection as big as mine,
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sometimes not as good as another game makes the difference, So fuse fun
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real time game, not as good as Escape. Curse of the Temple.
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The Captain is Dead. That's a fun cooperative game, but if I'm going
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to play a big cooperative game, I probably want to play Victoriana, or
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if I want to do a space one the uh lot of Schevado game where
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you're it's a real time space game. I can't remember what it's called.
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It's not called Space Team Space Alert. That one I think is better,
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or I like that one better than the Captain is Dead or just pandemic.
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Any of those work for me, so I didn't need The Captain is Dead
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anymore Ratus along with the Pied Piper expansion. This is the one I really
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did like, but it falls into the category of nobody ever wanted to play
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it. I mean, I guess I could push it and say, like,
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I want to use I really want to play this game, can we
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please play it? But there's only so many times I can do that,
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and I often want to use that for new games. So it was one
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of those ones that's just gathering dust. And I didn't know when the next
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time i'd play it would be. And if I never got to play it
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again, I'm not gonna be too sad, So off it goes cat Box.
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This is a cute little matching game. We never played it and it's
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very simple, So that one went res Publica twenty two thirty a d.
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This one was It's a Reiner kinizsia re theme of an older game also called
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res Publica. There were a couple of times that I learned the rules to
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this and wanted to play it, but I never really got it played.
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So I've had it for four years and never once played it, and it
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gets got to the point where I'm like, it's silly to keep keep this
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around if I'm never going to play it, So off it went. Machine
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of Death is a storytelling game that we played once or triice. I thought
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that was fine, but not that special, and happy to let someone else
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try it. A School of Sorcery is an interesting two player dueler. If
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we want a short two play a dual game, something like Shot and Totten
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or Tides of Madness are both more up my alley and something I'm gonna want
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to play for looking for something a little longer. Your Seven Wonders dual will
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do that, or patchwork all of those. I kind of like better than
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what's going on in School of Sorcery, so that one can find another home
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Science and san once Society kind of a same answer as School of Sorcery.
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The asynchronous elements and that were pretty good, but just you know, didn't
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really grab me. The Expanse. I like this one. It was a
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card driven game, but again it's one of those things where I wasn't getting
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played. The theme means it's never going to at my house, so that
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means I'm you know, spending capital to take it elsewhere. And you know,
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if I'm making a list of ten different games I kind of want to
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get played or revisit, the Expanse is probably never going to land on that
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list. So I enjoyed it for what it was. It's an interesting game,
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but just you know, the needs of this collection size push it to
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move on. Gankopolis is another one I got rid of. This is the
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game I really recognize is interesting, but it was entirely it just didn't click
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for us, And again I have too many sort of medium weight euros to
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hold on to. Another one that didn't grab us Cottage Garden. This might
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be the first time I've gotten rid of an Uber Rosenberg game. I like
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her just fine, but it's you know, tile laying and light so I
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have other games in that category. From that designer. You know, I
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can go Patchwork or I can go New York Zoo. I find both of
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those more interesting than Cottage Garden. I found a little heavier. I can
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go Feast for Odin. And then there's also Barren Park, which Baron Park
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is sort of in the same spot as a Cottage Garden, but better so.
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And then finally, Princess of Florence. This is a classic Euro game
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that I thought was really interesting, but it's an auction game. It's a
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little on the bitey side, and the graphic design and theme were just not
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that attractive to me, So again falls into that category of like middleweight Euro.
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I'm glad to have played it, but I'm also glad to pass it
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along to some else who will play it more. So. Those are the
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fifteen games that I got rid of at the fair Game Garage Tale. I
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haven't looked to see how much money I get in credit from the store,
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but the way that their store works is you get eighty you mark you games
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whatever you want. Minimum price is five dollars. On the first day of
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the sale, everything is full price. Second day of the sale, everything
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is twenty percent off of whatever price you had. So if I had a
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game marked five dollars and it sold on the second day, it sold for
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three to fifty, and then whatever it's sold for I get eighty percent of
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that in store credit. So I don't imagine I have a ton of money
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at the store because I priced these things to move. I priced them pretty
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low, but I have some It'll mean the next time I buy a full
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price game at fair Game, it's probably going to be free or cheap.
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So that's fun. And my collection is smaller. So I did acquire one
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expansion as well. I got the islif Sky Journeyman expansion. That's about that
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at the Bonus Round Cafe Garage Tale finally my Top fifty challenge. I have
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just a few games left to play on that Android, Netrunner, Cerebria,
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Vampire, The Eternal Struggle, Tera Mistica, and trism Justice Terroristica. I'm
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playing right now online and I think that's the best I'm gonna do. I
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really want to get Tris, Magistus and Cerebria played before the end of the
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year. I've given up on the idea of playing Netrunner and Vampire. If
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I play net Runner, I'm gonna fall back into it. So I shouldn't
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play it for a while at least and Vampire. I'm sure people playing it
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online, but I just haven't. It's a lot of extra lyft to get
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that back to the table, so see how that affects it. It's spot
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in my top fifty. Finally, the last thing is what games I'm gonna
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play in November. I am going to keep Vagrant Song on my list.
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That's my stubborn choice I really want to keep. I really want to play
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that. For my solo choice, I'm gonna put in Hadrian's Wall. I
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may play that with other people, or I may find a time to play
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by myself. If I have an evening on my top fifty choice is gonna
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be Tris Magistics. I need to reread the rules for that, but I
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think I can probably get it out at Toggle Gaming one of these nights.
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And for my time choice, I'm gonna pick ap Hollo, inspired by the
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NASA Moon Missions. This is the game I got at Goodwill. Looks pretty
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interesting. It's a cooperative game, and I think I should be able to
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get it played sooner rather than later. So that's it for my November.
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How did your or that's it for my October. How do yours Go head
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over at boord Gie Guild three D six nine and share your experiences in the
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comment comments. I'd love to hear what you played, what you're going to
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play next month, and just check in with everybody. Thanks for sticking with
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me and joining me on my walk today. I hope your next walk because
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Plusinces mine was Bye Bye. Brought to you by rattle Box