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

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

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Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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as I step out for a walk and deliver an episode two while I stroll
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around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a
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strange day here in suburban Chicago that my weather app told me it was going
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to be forty one degrees. It feels warmer than that to me, not
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a lot warmer, but forty one feels like it should be really cold,
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and this just feels a little chilly. It's grow kind of gray weather and
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it's actually sprinkling, just a very light sprinkling of rain, which is going
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to be awkward as we go along because my glasses are going to get all
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wet. But I'll do my best. I did not bring an umbrella because
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I want to keep the sound pure. We'll see how it works out.
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Hopefully I don't have to rerecord this later. But I did want to get
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out and pick a walk today because one it's Monday too. I'm getting a
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little behind on my timing, not very much, but I do want to
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make sure I'm putting out eight or nine episodes a month, and I think
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I was a little short in April. Also, today is May first,
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and on May first, you know what that means. It's time for Top
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of the Stack, all right. So, for those of you who are
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new to the podcast, Top of the Stack is our monthly sort of games
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a round up session where we talk about games we've played recently and what we
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plan to play next month. I'm a person who makes lists and plans,
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and so I really enjoy making a list of what games I have played and
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what games I want to play and sort of ticking things off of that list.
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It's enjoyable and fun and amusing, and so I do that with you
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here on the Top of the Stack podcast at the Top of the Stack episode.
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Now, if you like to track these things as well, or feel
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emboldened by my conversation about doing so, feel free to head over to our
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guild on board game Geek number three two six nine, where you can Google,
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pickup and deliver guild, or go to rattlebox dot Games or rattlebox games
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dot com and find the show notes for this episode, where I'll have link
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to our guild and you can join the conversation about the Top of the Stack.
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Usually each month, somebody posts a top of the Stack roundup where they
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talk about how they've been doing. I think Chris Graves already posted one for
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this month, so nicely done, Chris. All right, let's get into
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it. Oh. I do like to take a moment to mention that I
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stole the phrase top of the stack and the idea of kind of bookmarking what
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I planned to play from the beloved podcast of Nonsensical Gamers, which has been
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gone. I think as long as my podcast has been running now, I
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think I don't think it was. I think it was already gone by the
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time my podcast was running. In fact, this podcast has been running longer
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than that one, did, I believe, So take that for what you
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will. Anyhow, all right, onto the episode. So I'd like to
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start with my final monthly stats for April. I played eighty five plays of
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fifty different games, putting my year total at three hundred and forty three plays
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of one hundred and fifty different games. Doing well there. My shelf of
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opportunity dropped three four spaces this month, from fifty seven to fifty three.
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My collection size went down one from five to fifty eight to five fifty seven,
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although I'm still up four games from the beginning of the year when I
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was at five fifty three. My most played this game this month in real
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life was frost Haven with four plays, and in online it was Takenoko with
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five asynchronous plays. That one showed up on Board Game Arena and one of
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the groups that I sort of play a regular rotation of games with has been
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playing it kind of NonStop. Since it's the second editions, they've changed some
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of the rules and taking a little getting used to, but I think it's
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probably a better game with the rule changes. The original edition was a bit
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too swingy. It was too easy late in the game to just score points
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by taking a plot action and drawing. Plot cards are cards that you scored
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by having the right hexes. You also have to, oh, and then
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the bamboo growth ones. You have to actually have the gardener on one of
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the spaces that you're scoring for, so that makes a little harder as well.
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My top of the stack list for GR four April was New Game Champions
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of mid Guard. I did get that, played top fifty choice Terraforming Mars.
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Unfortunately I did not get Terraforming Mars to the table. I may have
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a chance of this Thursday, though, we'll see my novelty game Risk Plans
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Versus Zombies. I did get that to the table, and my dusty choice
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was Mythotopia. I did not get Mythotopia played alas so two out of the
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four. And remember that three of the four is considered a success for the
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month. That brings me to nine of my twelve attempted Top of the Stack
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games. That means if for the next three months I get all four completed,
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I'll be back on track after If I don't get all four completed next
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month, especially if I get fewer than three, I slip behind the ability
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to get caught up and they'll I mean not permanently, but it gets harder
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and harder, all right. So on to first plays. This month.
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I had a few new plays coming into the month. I had thirty seven
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new to Me games played. I got to try five games this month,
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Stick Stack, the Thing, the board game Champions of Mid Guard, Risk
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Plans Versus Zombies, and Marvel United. That brings me to forty two new
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to me games this year. I did try one expansion play this month.
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This was asynchronously on board Game Arena. That was a zul Master Chocolate Tier
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which had a very slight difference in rules from regular AZUL, but not much.
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Out of the dust plays I had quite a few. I had six
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wait, one, two, three, four, five, six, yep
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six out of the dust plays this month I played Celestia One Night, Ultimate
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Werewolf, Photosynthesis, The Adventurers, The Pyramid of Horace, Unstable Unicorns,
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and Clank, a deck building adventure that brings me to twenty five games dusted
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off this year. Now, as you know, some years I like to
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do a ten by ten challenge. In case you're not familiar with that,
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a ten by ten challenges where you choose ten games, the sort of original
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ten by ten challenges. You choose ten games and you try to play them
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ten times each over the course of the year. I have in the past
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done a variety of different kinds of ten by ten challenges. This year I
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decided to do a design or ten by ten where I picked ten game designers
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whose work I'd like to play more, and I play them each ten times
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over the course of the year. I'm also tracking two ways that I'm playing
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the games by those designers. I cansidered a minor victory if I play ten
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by ten and include the asynchronous plays. So if I do asynchronous plays of
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a designer so playing on board game arena mostly and I get it correct and
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I get all ten, that's perfect. But a big victory would be if
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I got ten plays of in real life. So it's a minor victory if
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I get ten plays in on digital plays. It's a major victory if I
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get ten plays in real life. So here's how I'm doing on that.
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In real life plays. I've got four Martin Wallace games played, three lad
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Flee, three Vladimir Suki games played two ryner Kenisia games played zero Inca Brand
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games played three, Phil Walker Harding games played two Tom Layman games played zero
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Elizabeth Hargrave games played two Vlada Shravado games played two Rosberg and three Karl Chuddick.
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Those are the real, the real life in person plays. So I
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really should be at four to five with each person at this point, and
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I'm not close to that. So I'm running pretty far behind the curve.
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And if I don't take some serious steps to try to finish that, I
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maybe I'm not gonna make it. It might be worthwhile for me to think
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of it. If if I get fifty five by ten of those designers that
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I could think of that as a major victory as long as I get the
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other five asynchronous lee, I'll keep that in mind as a middle victory.
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So there's low victory is ten for ten asynchronous plus real life, middle victory
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five five ten real life, the other five for ten asynchronous, and major
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victory if I get ten for ten real life. Okay, so here's my
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asynchronous plays. Martin Wallis, I'm up to four asynchronous plays. I played
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a few acres of Snow twice this month. Vladimirsuki, I'm up to six
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asynchronous. Ryan or Kenzia, I have played ten times asynchronously. Inca Brand
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ten times asynchronously, mostly because I played a whole bunch of m Raja the
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Raja of the Ganges dice Charmers. I played quite a few rounds of that,
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and that's great. Phil Walker Harding, I'm up to four asynchronous games.
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Tom Lehman, you know I'm always playing Zarkana online, so I've i
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finished with Tom Lehman ten plays. Uh. Elizabeth Hargrave, I've got four
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plays of Wingspan under my belt online. Uve Rosenberg, I'm up to seven
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plays online and Karl Schodick. I played two two rounds of Matina this month
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Supt. Two all right, so that was a lot of numbers, but
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hopefully you're finding interesting. I'm curious which of those designers do you like best.
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Are you playing any of their games? Head over to our guild and
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let me know. So far this year, I have an h index of
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seven. Remember H index's number of games games times number of times played.
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For the year, I have seven games that I've played seven times or more.
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This is both asynchronous and in real life. It's through the ages my
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City res Arcana, Age of Civilization, guy A Project, Rajas of the
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Ganges, Frost Haven, and Lost Cities, and that's probably Rajas of the
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Ganges. The Dice Charmers is my guests, all right. The fifty two
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Game Challenge. This is the one where there are a variety of different amusing
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prompts and your goal is to complete them as you go along. I only
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completed two prompts this month, which brings me to twenty five out of fifty
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two, which isn't bad. I need to be at twenty six by the
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end of June, so I'm two months ahead to get to halfway. Although
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generally the first half is easier to do than the second half, so I
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want to keep it up. But this month I only had two. I
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had play a game where money is important. I decided Obsession certainly one of
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those, and play a game with modules, and I chose Baron Park,
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which has the scoring module that you almost always use. Then it also has
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the if you have the expansion. It's got the Grizzly Bears module and the
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Monorails module, both of which are a delight. I have added a painting
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challenge to my monthly Thinking about games, and this month my painting challenge was
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to paint the starting class models for frost Haven. I have not quite completed
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that, but I considered a victory anyway, because the reality of that goal
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was to paint the models that we're using to play frost Haven. And we
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did, in fact play three rounds of frost Haven this month using the standies
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because I had the models away from the table to paint them. And then
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our last game of frost Haven this month in April, we got to play
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with the miniatures because I had finished painting the Necromancer Banner, Spear, death
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Walker, and blink Blade. I had not yet finished the Geminate or them,
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but I have since started the Geminate and then we Axvill had one class
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that we unlocked as well, which I won't say the name of because I
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don't want to spoil anything, but I have started that one as well because
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we've started a second party and we're just playing through. I'm using the gemin
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eight and he's using this other class we just unlocked. So my painting goal
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is going well. I think that if I finished the other two this month,
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which I suspect I will, then I'm thinking I'm going to paint the
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miniatures from Cerebria next. I really like those. They're pretty, they're big,
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and I want to play Cerebria sometime soon. It would be fun to
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play it with miniatures rather than without miniatures. So yeah, there's that.
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Not a lot left my shelf of opportunity log. The shelf of opportunity is
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evolving nicely. There were fifty five games on the unplayed list as of January,
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and of course I acquired a bunch when I did that trade, so
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that went up even though I had been going down. But I've been vigorously
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applying myself and to fifty three games. So the shelf opportunity is actually smaller
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than it was when I started. More importantly, I acquired zero games in
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April. I did find one or two things at Goodwill this month. I
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found a copy of Codenames Pictures, which I'm donating to the Board Game Club,
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and then I found a copy of Escape Room. Escape Room, the
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game, one of the ones we haven't done yet. I don't really count
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those in the collection because as soon as we're done with them now I we
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donate them somewhere else, So that's not really my bag, all right.
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Finally, the Top fifty challenge. For those of you will remember that every
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other year I do a Top fifty games, and I made a goal to
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play every game on my Top fifty between last time I did a Top fifty
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and this time, and that means at the beginning this year, I had
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twelve games left to play, and I haven't been doing great on getting those
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played. I should be playing one a month for sure, And this month
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I had planned to play Terraforming Mars, but I did not get it played.
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But we did get out Clank, a deck building adventure, which is
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a game I had not played for a while, and we played that had
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a good time. I pushed my luck and ended up winning by about sixteen
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points. So it came down to the last two rounds where I was trying
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to get out. The other two players were both out and I had four
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health left, and then I took two damage, so I had two health
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left. And on the last draw we were drawing eight tokens, and if
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they had drawn two yellow tokens from the eight, then I would have died
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and I would not have gotten the twenty point thing and actually had a card
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that was worth another five points or ten points if I had a mastery token,
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so I would have been like twenty five points down from where I was
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had I fallen inside the temple. And upon drawing the last round of things,
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they drew seven cubes that were not mine and one that was mine,
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meaning I still had one health left, and my last turn, I drew
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some movement and I was able to get out of the thing and win.
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When we looked in the bag, way more than half of the cubes in
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the bag were mine. So whoa pure luck, Just push, pushing,
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push and push in and I managed to squeak out a win really good time.
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Clank was a lot of fun. We had a good time playing it,
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and I think we may look at this summer starting to play Clank Acquisitions
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Incorporated, which is the legacy game. Because my daughter is always busy,
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so my wife and son and I tend to have a little bit more time
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in the summer, so we may play that as a three person fun game.
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All right, Well, that brings me to the end of the stuff
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I had to cover today. Feels like I did not. Oh, I'll
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tell you what other games I have yet to play on my Top fifty challenge.
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I still have to play Netrunner, Ultiplano, Terraforming, Mars Cerebria,
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Vampire, The Eternal Struggle, A Touch of Evil, Shipyard, Terromistica,
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and Trismagistics. Now Terromistica. I may end up playing online, Vampire the
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Eternal Struggle, and Netrunner probably online, although Netrunner maybe not. We'll see.
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I may play it with my neighbor. I was thinking about getting back
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into it this summer, but we'll see, so many things to do,
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so little time. Well, that's that brings me to the end of the
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episode. You know. All in all, April ended up being a pretty
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fun month, but I did not end up hat playing as many new games
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as I usually do. Between that and not buying any games, it was
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a weird month in terms of my overall I don't know approach to things I
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liked. I liked it. I had a good time playing a lot of
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games. It was fun dusting off the games that I dusted off. It
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was fun trying a few new things that belong to other people. Yeah.
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Overall, a really nice time, really fun time, and looking forward to
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continuing to play more games in May. This is a good opportunity for me
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to check in and say, hey, I really appreciate you listening to the
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podcast. If you have a friend I think mine enjoy it, why not
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mention it to them. If you haven't given me a review anywhere, go
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to the place where you get your podcast from and drop a review. It'd
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be nice to pick up some more listeners, of course, but I love
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our dedicated audience and our community that we've built here. If you'd like to
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get a hold of me, the easiest way is send me a message on
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board game geek wandbat nine to nine is might use your name. I do
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have an email address as well, Brennan at Rattlebox Games, which I don't
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check is off and I'm afraid, but you could certainly email me there and
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I'll get to it eventually if you'd like to play a game with me.
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I'm on board game Arena and Yukata most on Badaju, but I'm kind of
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winding that down, so I would say don't reach out to me there,
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But Yukata Dot or board Game Arena are great places to set up an asynchronous
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game and we can have some fun. Well, thanks for joining me on
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my walk today. For your next walk as as pleasant as mine was.
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Good Bye. Brought to you by Rattlebox three year year