Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Top of the Stack, March ’25

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Top of the Stack, March ’25 · Pick Up and Deliver

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Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver the Podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
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off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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I'm Brendan Riley.
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[Music]
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Well, good afternoon, listeners.
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It's a gloomy day here in suburban Chicago and it's already March 3rd... 4th?
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March 4th and I'm only just now getting around to recording my top of the stack episode.
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This is appalling.
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In fact, I published an episode in March that wasn't a top of the stack episode.
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I can't believe I haven't gotten deluged with commentary in all the channels by which
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I'm available for contact.
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I'm shocked, shocked, but that's okay.
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So I will record this today, publish it tomorrow, and my apologies for the delay in the
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top of the stack episode.
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For those of you new to the podcast, wondering what the heck I'm going on about, "top of the stack"
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is a segment in which I talk about the games that I played last month and the
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games I'm planning to play next month.
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It's called Top of the Stack because there's a metaphorical stack of games that I'm hoping
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to play and these are the games that I name are the games I've put on top of that stack.
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And I always like to acknowledge I swiped that phrase from the much beloved and long gone
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Podcast of Nonsensical Gamers.
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You are missed, friends.
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Okay, so let's talk about what I played in February.
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So I start with some stats.
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In February, I had 65 plays of 46 different games.
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That means my year total so far is 149 plays of 84 different games.
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That's a good pace, definitely not on pace for 200 a month, or 1200.
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150 or 149 plays, I don't think that puts me on pace for a thousand either.
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Let's list, I'm really going to pick up my game.
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It's on pace for about 900, I guess, which isn't bad.
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I wouldn't mind cresting a thousand, but I'd really have to increase my gameplay.
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I do get more games in over the summer, so maybe we'll see an increase there.
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My shelf of opportunity, which I am working on reducing, started the month at 66 games and
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went up to 68, so, not making progress there in terms of that direction.
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My collection size, I'm supposed to be reducing it, but I went from 618 to 619 games,
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so not really making progress in either of those directions in terms of my goals.
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I'm still enjoying myself, don't get me wrong.
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My most played game of the month on the table was Bomb Busters, we played four times, and
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my most played game online was Praga Caput Regni, four plays.
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It's enjoying a bit of a resurgence.
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At one point I was playing games on both Yucata and the board game arena.
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I'm not sure which implementation I like better.
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I actually am more used to the one on Yucata, but board game arena gives me access to more
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people who might want to play it.
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So perhaps Board Game arena is the place where I need to focus.
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It's still a delight, I still enjoy it quite a bit.
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Happy to play it.
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The Top of the Stack for this month, I picked out four games that I would like to play.
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As always, three games play this considered a success.
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And four would be overachieving.
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The four games that I wanted to play, I wanted to play Capital Lux, Alien: Fate of the Nostromo,
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Miskatonic School for Boys, and Dungeon Petz.
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For those of you who've been listening carefully to the podcast, Dungeon Petz is the only
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one of those I haven't played.
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The other three not only have I played, I've also talked about them in board game espresso
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episodes, which I think have already been released.
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If they haven't, I have recorded the board game espresso episodes that they're in, and
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they'll be coming out soon.
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But Dungeon Petz, I did not get to the table, which does put me a little bit behind the
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ball in terms of my goal of playing all 50 of my top 50 games between this year and the
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next time I do the list, two years from now.
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But it'll come back around.
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Dungeon Petz is one of those delightfully weird games that it's fun to play every now
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and again on the table.
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I did get to play a number of games for the first time this month, not quite as good as in
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January.
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I played 10 new games.
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In February, it was a mere nine.
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And perhaps you could point to the fact that February is only 28 days, whereas I had 31 in January.
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So those extra three days is actually about 10%.
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So yeah... that's... I'm blaming the calendar.
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So the games that I tried new are Homeworlds, Capital Lux, Mistborn the deckbuilding game,
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Alien Fate of the Nostromo, Miskatonic School for Boys, Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West,
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Bomb Busters, Histrio and Dracula's Feast.
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Probably all of those games have been mentioned in a board game espresso episode that I've
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recorded already.
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Whether or not I've released those all, I think I have not released most of them, but they
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are coming soon.
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So I won't, I won't do much more commentary on them right now.
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I got to try out a number of expansions for the first time.
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I had six "new to me" expansions in January and I added three more, so a total of nine
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so far this year.
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Revive Call of the Abyss, right at the beginning of February.
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I got to try that one.
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Deckscape Behind the Curtain, as you'll recall, Deskscape is one of those genres of games where
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all the games play the same, but they've released multiple standalone games in the series.
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And what I do is I consider the first game from the series a new game, and after that I consider
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them expansions.
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I know that board game geek doesn't, but that's the way that makes the most sense to me.
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So there it is.
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Deckscape Behind the Curtain, I played this one was pretty fun.
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I was able to solve most of the puzzles.
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There were a couple I didn't get, maybe just I was lazy or when I saw the answers I was
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like, yeah, that makes sense.
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There weren't any where.
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I just didn't understand how they got the answer.
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So that one was fine.
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We played Escape Room the Game Jumanji.
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That was a good time as well.
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We played that at toggle gaming and we discovered.. we were playing a used copy and the
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people who had put it back hadn't put it all back properly.
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So we skipped a couple of the chapters.
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One of the things we discovered is the little code breaker thing expects you to put in the
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codes in order.
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So if you skip one of the codes, it then doesn't work.
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So heads up if you decide to play an Escape the Room game, you need to put all the codes in
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in order.
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That's how it knows which code it's waiting for.
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I got to play a few out of the dust games this month.
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As a reminder, an out of the game gets dusty if it's gone more than a year since you've
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played it last.
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So if I play a game that has been more than a year since I played it, I've pulled it out
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of the dust.
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The first one is Bloom.
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That was a year, seven months, and twelve days ago.
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Bloom is an interesting little role in right game.
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It comes in the same form factor package as Qwixx.
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Also from game developer Gamewright, it's not nearly as good as Qwixx.
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It's good.
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It's entertaining.
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It's kind of game that's fun to play once every two years.
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Definitely not a bringing on every trip staple that Quicks is.
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Fast forward Flee.
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This game I played for the first time three years ago.
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I think we played two or three rounds.
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My wife and I did, and she got tired of it, and we didn't ever play it again.
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Finally I got it out.
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We were on another trip.
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It was my wife and I, and my mother-in-law, we played two or three games of it.
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They got tired of it, and we did not get it out again.
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I think I either need to play with somebody who's not going to get tired of it, who's
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going to be willing to try several times in a row, or I'll just play solo to try to figure
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out the game.
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It's a fun little co-op with interesting strategy choices, I think, and a weird theme.
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It is one of Friedman Friese's Fast Forward games.
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So the ideas you learn to play at as you play, there's no rule book.
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There's just rule instruction cards that you pull out in order.
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So that's Fast Forward Flee.
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I got to play Friday again, also on this trip.
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It was five years, ten months, and one day
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since the last time I played that, Friday continues to be an amazing solo game.
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I really do like it, and I think any day that you get to play it is a good day.
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It's flexible, it's got interesting choices, there's a healthy amount of luck.
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It's very replayable because it's very hard. Top notch.
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So if you haven't played Friday and you have access to a copy, I encourage you to,
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because it's great.
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One year, 11 months and 23 days before the current play of it, I got to play
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Heat: Pedal to the Metal, so bringing that back to the table.
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My previous plays of it, or I think I played two or three times online with board game
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arena, and I will confess, even though I read the rules, I had a lot of trouble understanding
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the game.
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Playing it on the table with a very competent rules explainer worked wonders.
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I understood the game, I got the flow of it pretty well, and it isn't actually that hard
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once you grasp how it works.
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It makes a lot of sense, and it's pretty fun.
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That said, I'm not really a huge race game person, and so it's not a game I'm going to
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buy or anything, but if somebody is putting it on the table, I will certainly want to
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play it, and it's like, hey, do you want to play Donwforce or do you want to play
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Heat: Pedal to the Metal?
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It will be Heat every time, baby.
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So, it's Heat Pedal to the Metal.
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Finally, we got Calico out.
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If you had asked me how long it'd been since I played Calico, I would not have been able
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to tell you it's been two years, six months, and three days.
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That was a long time.
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I really like Calico, but it gets a lot less play on our table since we got Cascadia.
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What happens there is that Calico and Cascadia have a very similar game feel.
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They both use a drafting mechanism.
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You're trying to get matching hexes but where Cascadia lets you expand outward
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in order to hopefully later get something that matches and helps.
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In Calico, you're constantly squishing inward, constantly cutting off possibilities, and as a result,
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it's much more tense.
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I really like it.
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It's a great game, but wow, it is very tense.
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I also have decided I don't really like the ending, the way that Calico ends, you have a market
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of three tiles.
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You pull one tile, so you have two left, and then on your next turn, you fill a tile into
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the last space.
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So, why do you have to wait while it goes around the table?
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And more importantly, you know immediately that you've already failed.
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There's no possibility of a last minute hope because even if the tile you need comes
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out into the market, on your last turn, you can't take it.
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And that is not cool.
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So, I don't like that end of Calico, but overall, it's a really fun game, a real brain burner.
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You definitely, it's definitely swingy with luck.
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I had one pattern I was trying to get, and they just never, the tiles just never came out.
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And that part is a little frustrating, but boy, it was a lot of fun.
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I did get four of my top 50 games to the table this month, Orleans, Revive, Coimbra,
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and Lords of Waterdeep.
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All of these are excellent, and I'm glad happy to have played all of them.
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I will note, Rob, if you're listening, Lords of Waterdeep is my number 38 game.
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Last time we played, I got on tilt.
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I had a rough last round, which is one of the reasons Lords of Waterdeep is not higher on my list.
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But, yeah, it is on my list, number 38.
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So, Rob gently teased me and said, "What kind of person doesn't have Lords of Waterdeep in
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their top 50?"
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Not this guy.
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This guy does have it.
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It's number 38.
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I don't know what it says about me that I forgot.
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it was on my top on my list, or I looked and didn't see it, but there it is, number 38,
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Lords of Waterdeep.
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So, now, I've played nine of my top 50 games on the table since I released my new top 50
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at the beginning of the year.
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On my 10 for 10, I'm making some progress.
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We declared the cover of Calico as orange, and the cover of Frosthaven as blue, so I'm
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up to four games with predominant colors on their cover.
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We played Mistborn, which is a magic theme game, meaning I'm up to two magic theme games.
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And then I played my first game that's been on my shelf of opportunity since 2020 or earlier.
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That was Miskatonic School for Boys.
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And Alien Fade in the Nostromo was also on my list in 2023 or earlier.
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So, knocked off two of those games for my list.
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So last note, finally my collection size, it's detracted and expanded, expanded by two,
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Mysterium Park and Hollywood 1947, which I don't feel guilty about because those were
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work purchases.
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Those are games we're playing in one of my classes, so I had to buy them.
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I sold Flick 'em Up, Schroedinger's Cats, and 7th Continent to reduce the collection by three.
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And then the new Vladimir Suchy game, Rasafa came in, which put back up one.
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I donated Alien Fate of the Nostromo to my college board game club.
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That reduced it by one.
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And then two Kickstarter games finally came in, Apothecary: Plague Doctors,
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and Innovation Ultimate.
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Both came in, pushing me up to 619, 1 higher than I started the month.
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All right, so going into March--we're already a couple days into March, I had to pick
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out three or four games to put on the list to try to play.
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And they are Rasafa, the new Vladimir Suchy game.
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I might as well try to get it played.
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Love me, Vladimir Suchy, why don't you give that a try.
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I was looking at the action selection mechanism and it looks really neat.
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I think it will be excellent.
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It is aggressively old-fashioned in its styling.
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I can't imagine this game is ever going to take off because, like, whoo, what I wanted
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to see a game about, camels, and building a town.
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Not a great theme, Vladimir, not a great theme, but still looks great.
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And it's not exploitative or awful. That hasn't been a problem with his games generally,
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but you know, there's always a chance someone will make a colonialism game.
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I put on here the novelty game Clue the Office.
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This would be one that's been on my shelf for a long time, so it would meet the 10 for 10
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goal.
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I thought I would bring it to my college board game club.
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Some people there would enjoy playing Clue, I think, and Clue the Office could be interestingly
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unique.
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I would really like to get Sherlock Holmes Baker Street Irregulars to the table.
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My daughter is coming home at the end of March, and this is a game that I bought her at
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GenCon a couple years ago.
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It is a shared mystery game in which you're reading comic books and talking to each other
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about what you see in the comic books.
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It looks pretty great, and I would like to play it.
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And finally, I would like to get my top 50 game Carpe Diem to the table.
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This one is non-stop fun of the creaky Euro sense.
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It is maybe my favorite Stefan Feld.
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I sure do like it, and so I'm happy to play it when I get the chance.
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That's Carpe Diem.
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So that is about it for me.
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That sets up when I'm planning to play, and I hopefully lets you think about what you've
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been playing.
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So I would love to hear that.
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You head over to Board Game Geek and go to Guild 3269 to let me know what games you've
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been playing, how often you've been playing them, have you been enjoying them, have you played
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any of the games I played?
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All of these things you should answer over there.
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I'd love it.
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Otherwise you can reach out to me through Board Game Geek, username, wombat929.
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You can also email me, Brendan at rattleboxgames.com, or I guess post just randomly in the Board
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Game Geek forums and hope that I stumble across them.
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That would work too.
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I hope that your March is full of delightful games, and otherwise I will say thank you for
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joining me on my walk today.
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I hope your next walk
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is as pleasant
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as mine was
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Bye-bye.
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[Music]
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[begin outtake beep] Well good afternoon listeners.
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It's a rainy gloomy day here in suburban Chicago.
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I'm a bit on a bit of a time delay.
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I've gotten ahead a little bit.
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I'm a couple episodes ahead of where I'm broadcasting, which means that I did have a blunder.
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I recorded my top of the stack episode.
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Wait, did I record my top of the stack episode?
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Hold the phone. [end outtake beep]
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[begin outtake beep] We got to play a couple out of the dust games.
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I got to play a couple of games, bring a couple games out of the dust.
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Okay. *disappointed raspberry noise* [end outtake beep]
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[Music]