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

Transcript

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

0:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I
0:06
Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I head out for
0:08
Speaker 1: a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
0:09
Speaker 1: stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning listeners. It
0:22
Speaker 1: is January tewond and I'm out for a lovely brisk walk.
0:27
Speaker 2: Here.
0:27
Speaker 1: It is twenty eight degrees fahrenheit. My phone tells me
0:31
Speaker 1: that there's a windshill that makes it feel like nineteen
0:33
Speaker 1: So I bundled up nice and warm, and I feel great.
0:37
Speaker 1: The sun is out. The sky is blue, which actually
0:40
Speaker 1: makes a little colder. If it's no clouds, then it's
0:42
Speaker 1: colder usually than if it's cloudy. But the sun makes
0:46
Speaker 1: you feel like it's maybe a little warmer. And I'm
0:48
Speaker 1: out for my first podcast of the new year. I
0:50
Speaker 1: actually have two more banked up ready to go. I
0:52
Speaker 1: may release them all in one or two days. Here,
0:55
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cut out the bits where I say like,
0:57
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to get these out before the end
0:59
Speaker 1: of the year because I recorded them on like the
1:01
Speaker 1: thirtieth I think. But yeah, so glad to talk to
1:06
Speaker 1: you here. Happy twenty twenty five, Good riddance to twenty
1:09
Speaker 1: twenty four. Everything's looking great. Okay, So what is looking
1:17
Speaker 1: great is the end of the month. That's right, It's time.
1:18
Speaker 2: For the Top of the Stack for the year.
1:21
Speaker 1: Or Top of the Stack January twenty twenty five. For
1:24
Speaker 1: those of you new to the podcast, welcome. It's a
1:26
Speaker 1: new year and I'm glad to have you here. We're
1:28
Speaker 1: on episode six hundred and eighty one, I think, and
1:31
Speaker 1: the goal is to round out get up to episode
1:34
Speaker 1: seven hundred and will round out the year by the
1:36
Speaker 1: end of January, which is usually when I try to
1:39
Speaker 1: end my season. I do not have my zombie class
1:42
Speaker 1: this year, so I actually have a couple of weeks
1:45
Speaker 1: where I'm doing work from home and not going into teach,
1:48
Speaker 1: so I do have more time to podcast, so I
1:51
Speaker 1: may in fact make that deadline.
1:52
Speaker 2: We'll see, We will see anyway.
1:55
Speaker 1: For those of you new to the podcast, Top of
1:57
Speaker 1: the Stack is a monthly episode I try to do
1:59
Speaker 1: right beginning of the month, in which I talk about
2:02
Speaker 1: what I played last month and set some goals for
2:05
Speaker 1: the next month. We are ready for December twenty twenty four.
2:09
Speaker 1: This is the last Top of the Stack of the
2:11
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four talking about the twenty twenty four year.
2:14
Speaker 1: So we'll see how I did. In the month, I
2:16
Speaker 1: played ninety five games. I played ninety five times, sixty
2:21
Speaker 1: four different games. In twenty twenty four, I played eight
2:24
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty eight hundred and fifty plays of three
2:27
Speaker 1: hundred and eight different games, so not quite a thousand.
2:30
Speaker 1: I like to get a thousand plays a year, and
2:31
Speaker 1: I guess I slowed it down in December.
2:33
Speaker 2: I thought I was on pace for that, but not quite.
2:36
Speaker 1: That's a lot of plays, so eight hundred and fifty
2:38
Speaker 1: still feels pretty good for.
2:40
Speaker 2: Those of you knew the podcast.
2:41
Speaker 1: A lot of those are asynchronous plays on board Game Arena.
2:43
Speaker 1: Probably half of them are, maybe even more than half,
2:46
Speaker 1: but that's okay. I love playing games asynchronously online. My
2:50
Speaker 1: user name there is Wombat ninety two nine. Invite me
2:52
Speaker 1: to a game. My shelf of opportunity started at sixty six,
2:56
Speaker 1: and my goal was to get it to less than
2:58
Speaker 1: thirty three. I ended up at sixty one, not quite
3:03
Speaker 1: thirty three, but lower than I started. In fact, I
3:06
Speaker 1: started the month at sixty seven, so I got rid
3:08
Speaker 1: at six games off my shelf of opportunity, despite it
3:11
Speaker 1: being the holidays and acquiring some new games. My collection
3:14
Speaker 1: size was supposed to go down. It started at five
3:16
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy six. Well I did not succeed at that.
3:19
Speaker 1: We're at six hundred and fourteen games now, including nine
3:23
Speaker 1: that I acquired this month, so yus. My most played
3:27
Speaker 1: game in real life was Woos and Wagers with five
3:30
Speaker 1: plays this month, mostly because I played it with students
3:33
Speaker 1: a couple times, and three plays of Through the Ages online.
3:37
Speaker 1: Still loving that one, all right. Top of the sack.
3:41
Speaker 1: The top of the stack each month is a set
3:42
Speaker 1: of games that I picked that I'd like to try
3:44
Speaker 1: to play before the end of the month, and if
3:46
Speaker 1: I play, I usually pick four games. If I pick
3:48
Speaker 1: three of them, I consider that a successful month. So
3:52
Speaker 1: this month, the four I picked where pig Mania also
3:54
Speaker 1: known as Past the Pigs, Mystery Date for Our Funny Friends,
3:59
Speaker 1: and Hunted Ridge. As a solo game. I managed to
4:02
Speaker 1: play pig Mania and Mystery Date. I did not play.
4:05
Speaker 2: Funny Friends or a Hunted World Ridge. So that's two
4:07
Speaker 2: out of three.
4:08
Speaker 1: My overall for the year twenty five out of thirty
4:10
Speaker 1: six possible, so not quite two thirds of the top
4:13
Speaker 1: of the stack. Sometimes this makes me reflect like hmm,
4:16
Speaker 1: I didn't even make two thirds. Should I keep doing
4:18
Speaker 1: it the same way I did it before? And I'm thinking, yeah,
4:20
Speaker 1: I should. New year, new chance to recommit to playing
4:23
Speaker 1: the top of Stack games. Maybe I don't know. I
4:25
Speaker 1: did get to try a lot of new games this month.
4:27
Speaker 1: This was very exciting. At the beginning of the year,
4:30
Speaker 1: or at beginning of the month, I had ninety one
4:32
Speaker 1: new to me games played this year. At the end
4:34
Speaker 1: of the month, I had one hundred and eight new
4:36
Speaker 1: to me games played this year, so a huge step
4:39
Speaker 1: up in terms of the number of games played. Seventeen
4:42
Speaker 1: new games tried this month. I'm going to list them quickly.
4:45
Speaker 1: I will talk about them more in the coming weeks
4:47
Speaker 1: in top in four Game Espresso episodes. So I tried
4:50
Speaker 1: out Look at the Stars Evolution, Let's go to Japan.
4:55
Speaker 1: Uno Seinfeld Ulterior Design, Disney Villainous First takes them All.
5:00
Speaker 2: That's the original Disney villain.
5:02
Speaker 1: This game Wrath of Fire Mountain, Sky Team Harmonies, Senate Miaui.
5:09
Speaker 1: It's like Maui, but with an extra ie in it.
5:11
Speaker 1: For some reason, I spelled Themaui, even though it's about cats,
5:15
Speaker 1: so it should be meow I. Anyway, the Office, Downsizing Game, Flipology,
5:21
Speaker 1: Shaman's Mystery Date, Electronic Mall, Madness, and Careers. So, like
5:27
Speaker 1: I said, that's one hundred and eight new to Me
5:29
Speaker 1: games tried this year. I did manage to get a
5:31
Speaker 1: couple of new expansions played as well this month. Up
5:35
Speaker 1: to before this I had seventeen New to Me expansions
5:37
Speaker 1: played this year. This month, we played Exit the Game,
5:41
Speaker 1: Advent Calendar, The Mystery of the Ice Cave. This is
5:44
Speaker 1: the second or third second Mystery Advent Calendar that we'd played.
5:50
Speaker 1: The last one was the was The Golden Book. I
5:54
Speaker 1: think they were about equally interesting. The Golden Book one
5:57
Speaker 1: I actually maybe liked a slightly bit better, but they
6:00
Speaker 1: were both pretty good. It's they're like exit games, but
6:03
Speaker 1: you have one puzzle to do each day, and they're
6:07
Speaker 1: generally pretty easy. There were only one or two of
6:09
Speaker 1: them that we thought were difficult. I don't think we
6:11
Speaker 1: looked at clues for any of them. Yeah, so let's
6:18
Speaker 1: Exit the Game, the Advent Calendar, Mystery of the Ice Cave.
6:21
Speaker 1: We also played Exit the Game The Hunt through Amsterdam.
6:24
Speaker 1: This is just a standard Exit the Game game. These
6:27
Speaker 1: are always a good time. I can't believe Inca and
6:30
Speaker 1: Marcus Brand can just keep making new puzzles and they
6:33
Speaker 1: keep being great, So good job on them.
6:36
Speaker 2: We had a lot of fun with that one.
6:37
Speaker 1: So that was the expansions played this month, which brings
6:40
Speaker 1: me up to nineteen new expansions.
6:42
Speaker 2: Tried for the year. Out of the dust games.
6:45
Speaker 1: These are games where I have not played it for
6:47
Speaker 1: a year or more and gave it a try this month.
6:52
Speaker 1: Start coming in the month, I had fifty seven games
6:54
Speaker 1: dusted off. Here are the ones I dusted off. This
6:56
Speaker 1: mone Pigmania. Now I had that in the new to
6:58
Speaker 1: me games because if I buy a game that I've
7:01
Speaker 1: played already, it goes on my shelf of opportunity and
7:04
Speaker 1: then I will play it. And normally I wouldn't then
7:08
Speaker 1: log it in new to me games, but Pigmania turns out,
7:12
Speaker 1: oh I didn't. I didn't log Pigmania as a new
7:15
Speaker 1: to me game. I had it on my shelf of opportunity,
7:18
Speaker 1: but I did not log it as a new.
7:20
Speaker 2: To me game. Never mind.
7:21
Speaker 1: So Pigmania is actually was republished a couple of years
7:25
Speaker 1: after the original publication. Originally, it was published as Pigmania
7:29
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six. Or something, and then nineteen seventy
7:31
Speaker 1: seven they republished as Past the Pigs and they changed
7:34
Speaker 1: the rules slightly. I'll talk about that in a board
7:35
Speaker 1: game espressal episodes soon. But it'd been four years, eleven months,
7:39
Speaker 1: and nine days since I played Past the Pigs and
7:41
Speaker 1: I played pig Mania. This year I played Xcom the
7:44
Speaker 1: board game it had been. This is one I know
7:47
Speaker 1: I've played before once or twice, but it was before
7:50
Speaker 1: I started logging games. But Xcom the board game came
7:54
Speaker 1: out in twenty fourteen, and I started logging games in
7:58
Speaker 1: late twenty fourteen early twenty fifteen, So literally, this might
8:02
Speaker 1: have been one of the last games that came out
8:04
Speaker 1: that I played before I started logging games. It was
8:07
Speaker 1: nine years, approximately nine years since I played Xcom.
8:12
Speaker 2: The game.
8:13
Speaker 1: Next up was Isle of Sky. This is a game
8:14
Speaker 1: that I feel like I've played somewhat recently. It's a
8:17
Speaker 1: game I keep it in my memory that I think
8:19
Speaker 1: about a fair amount because it's I think it's really good.
8:22
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting little tactical game. It takes about
8:25
Speaker 1: an hour. It's easy to play, fun scoring, nice tactics.
8:29
Speaker 1: But I guess I haven't played it. It's been three years,
8:31
Speaker 1: four months, and twenty eight days since I played Isle
8:34
Speaker 1: of Sky. I also got Out in New York Zoo,
8:37
Speaker 1: which was one year, two months, and twenty five days. Dusty,
8:40
Speaker 1: that's a good one. I may have to try to
8:42
Speaker 1: get that outs more often. It's cool like zoo themed games.
8:47
Speaker 1: Dungeon Mayhem Now, this is a game that I played
8:49
Speaker 1: a few times on a camping trip quite a while back.
8:52
Speaker 1: My son had borrowed it from a friend, and I
8:54
Speaker 1: think my son came across it again or somehow he
8:56
Speaker 1: ended up asking for it for Christmas. He got it
8:57
Speaker 1: for Christmas. We played it a couple times. It's back
9:00
Speaker 1: to the top of the list. Five years, seven months,
9:04
Speaker 1: four months, seven days, Dusty on that one. Marvel Dice
9:07
Speaker 1: Throne again. This is the game my son really likes.
9:10
Speaker 1: We flated a bunch. He had a good time with it,
9:13
Speaker 1: but we haven't played it a lot since then.
9:16
Speaker 2: He got a new batch. So originally we played it.
9:19
Speaker 1: We borrowed it from some friends, and so we had
9:22
Speaker 1: the whole set of eight different characters, but that set
9:29
Speaker 1: I don't have. That's very expensive, and so last year
9:35
Speaker 1: then I got him the four base set, which is
9:37
Speaker 1: so much cheaper than the Big Collection edition, and then
9:41
Speaker 1: he asked for the other characters now, so he now
9:43
Speaker 1: has all eight of the Marvel diyce Stone characters, even
9:46
Speaker 1: though the original ones, even though the original ones did
9:52
Speaker 1: not happen. So that's Marvel Dystone. It's been one year,
9:56
Speaker 1: four months, and thirteen days since we played that. I
9:58
Speaker 1: played it a bunch of times. It is a skill issue.
10:01
Speaker 1: He beat me both with Doctor Strange several times and
10:03
Speaker 1: then with Black Widow, whom I couldn't get to work.
10:06
Speaker 1: I played Yatzi as well. This is a game I
10:08
Speaker 1: had not played in at least ten years. This is
10:10
Speaker 1: just a totally guess, so I put more than ten years.
10:13
Speaker 1: I haven't played it since I started logging games, but
10:15
Speaker 1: who knows how long it's been since I played Yatzi.
10:18
Speaker 1: Glory to rome Ooh, this was really fun. I got
10:20
Speaker 1: to play two games of this. It is a real
10:23
Speaker 1: treat to play Glory to rome when you get a chance.
10:26
Speaker 1: It'd been one year, five months, and twelve days since
10:28
Speaker 1: I played it before. I'm definitely gonna have to start
10:31
Speaker 1: bringing this to game night again, see if I can
10:32
Speaker 1: get other people to play, because it's really fun and
10:35
Speaker 1: I think.
10:35
Speaker 2: I'm having played it again recently.
10:37
Speaker 1: I'm pretty fresh on the rules, so getting it out
10:39
Speaker 1: a few times would not hurt. I think thirteen dead
10:43
Speaker 1: End Drive. It's three years, eight months, and twenty eight
10:46
Speaker 1: days since I played this. I did play thirteen thirteen
10:49
Speaker 1: dead End Drive sometime recently, and in fact, that counted
10:53
Speaker 1: as my four digit number game. But I needed a
10:57
Speaker 1: two digit number game.
10:59
Speaker 2: But I did have. I have thirteen dead End Drive,
11:01
Speaker 2: which is the older edition of the game.
11:03
Speaker 1: You know, as I look at the two I think
11:05
Speaker 1: thirteen dead End Drive I like better than thirteen thirteen
11:08
Speaker 1: dead End Drive. They did tweak the rules a little
11:10
Speaker 1: bit for the second, the new addition, and I like
11:12
Speaker 1: the older one better.
11:13
Speaker 2: And then I had one more game.
11:16
Speaker 1: So that made a total of sixty six games that
11:18
Speaker 1: I dusted off this year. I did have one more
11:20
Speaker 1: game that I put in sort of honorable mention because
11:23
Speaker 1: this is a game that I play literally once a year,
11:25
Speaker 1: usually sometime around Christmas. This is Santa's Workshop. Santa's Workshop
11:29
Speaker 1: is a workerplacement game from twenty seventeen. They recently released
11:32
Speaker 1: a new addition that looks really snazzy. The art is
11:35
Speaker 1: lovely if you like this sort of game, I'm sure
11:38
Speaker 1: the new addition is even better than one I have.
11:40
Speaker 1: The one I have is fun, but it's not amazing,
11:43
Speaker 1: so I'm not driven all that much to play at
11:44
Speaker 1: other times of the year, but it's fun to play
11:46
Speaker 1: once a year. We played it on Christmas Eve, and
11:49
Speaker 1: that was three hundred and sixty days since the last
11:51
Speaker 1: time I'd played it, which was I believe New Year's Eve.
11:53
Speaker 1: So that's not technically dusty yet, but it's close. And
11:56
Speaker 1: now the moment you've all been waiting for, did I
11:58
Speaker 1: finish my ten for ten? So ten for ten is
12:02
Speaker 1: a kind of personal board game challenge that some people
12:05
Speaker 1: have come up with, in which you pick ten games
12:08
Speaker 1: and try to play them ten times in a year.
12:11
Speaker 1: This is not something I've generally been very good at.
12:12
Speaker 1: I'm too much of an omnigamer. I like to play
12:15
Speaker 1: lots of different games, so playing one game ten times
12:17
Speaker 1: in a year is difficult unless.
12:19
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do that anyway.
12:21
Speaker 1: I might have a natural ten for ten if I look,
12:23
Speaker 1: especially if I count games I'm playing online. I definitely do.
12:26
Speaker 1: There might even be ten games I played physically in person,
12:30
Speaker 1: but there were games I was gonna play anyway, And
12:32
Speaker 1: for me, the point of this is to push yourself,
12:35
Speaker 1: push yourself a little bit to play stuff you wouldn't
12:36
Speaker 1: have played otherwise, as opposed to the normal ten for
12:39
Speaker 1: ten is to pick ten games you're really going to
12:41
Speaker 1: deep dive on. And that works if I have a
12:43
Speaker 1: group that's into it, but generally that's not the case
12:46
Speaker 1: for me. So instead of a regular ten for ten,
12:51
Speaker 1: I have experimented with other variants on the adult idea.
12:56
Speaker 1: And the one that I last year, which I really liked,
12:58
Speaker 1: was categories. I picked seven categories and then I picked
13:01
Speaker 1: the alphabet as the other three as the other thirty games.
13:05
Speaker 1: And so what I did last year was I had
13:08
Speaker 1: so I want to talk about each category and did
13:10
Speaker 1: I achieve it or not?
13:12
Speaker 2: So here we go.
13:13
Speaker 1: The first category was legacy or campaign games. This one
13:16
Speaker 1: was kind of a gimmy because frost Haven is a
13:18
Speaker 1: legacy slash campaign game and we play that very regularly.
13:23
Speaker 1: So most of the plays of that were from frost Haven,
13:27
Speaker 1: but not all of them. There are a few other
13:28
Speaker 1: ones we played as well.
13:29
Speaker 2: But that's a delight. I did achieve that a while ago.
13:33
Speaker 1: The second one was Nature Slash Animal and this was
13:35
Speaker 1: intended to be games where you're playing in nature, you're
13:39
Speaker 1: doing stuff with animals in their kind of realistic nature,
13:42
Speaker 1: and animals wingspan would fit in this. For at Shuffle
13:45
Speaker 1: would fit in this. Everydell would not fit in this.
13:49
Speaker 1: By way of example, I did complete the nature in
13:51
Speaker 1: Animal one a long time ago, mostly due to Zoo
13:53
Speaker 1: games like ark Nova. Next up was games that took
13:56
Speaker 1: three hours to play. Again, frost Haven kind of made
13:59
Speaker 1: this one easier than I expected it to be. I
14:02
Speaker 1: did have plenty of three hour games, so that one
14:05
Speaker 1: was achieved. That might have been the first category I completed.
14:07
Speaker 2: Actually, Cute Animals is.
14:09
Speaker 1: The first one where I still had work to do
14:11
Speaker 1: this month to complete it. I had seven plays going
14:15
Speaker 1: in and I played three games this month that I
14:18
Speaker 1: count as cute animal games. The first one, if someone's
14:21
Speaker 1: going to fight me on this, the first one is
14:23
Speaker 1: probably the one where you're going to.
14:24
Speaker 2: Fight This is Evolution.
14:26
Speaker 1: Evolution is a game kind of about nature, but the
14:29
Speaker 1: animals in it are all made up, and a lot
14:31
Speaker 1: of them are very cute. All of the animals that
14:34
Speaker 1: are sort of in the category of proto mammals, they're
14:38
Speaker 1: drawn just like really cute they're like lemurs, and but
14:41
Speaker 1: they're not lemurs, they're animals like lemurs. So I think
14:44
Speaker 1: the variance in the animal what they are, the fact
14:47
Speaker 1: that they're not actually real animals. A lot of them
14:49
Speaker 1: are drawn really cute and intentionally pushes this into the
14:52
Speaker 1: cute animal category for me. So that's evolution. Then I
14:55
Speaker 1: talked about pig manial. Already the pigs on the box
14:58
Speaker 1: are very cute, and then you get these c cute
15:00
Speaker 1: little rubber pigs that is what you're rolling, and so definitely,
15:03
Speaker 1: even though they're just pigs, they're not anthromorphic pigs, they
15:07
Speaker 1: fit that category. And they're finally Miaui. Like I said,
15:10
Speaker 1: this is a game themed around Maui and cats, and
15:14
Speaker 1: the way that that is meant to play is just
15:15
Speaker 1: that you are these cats living in a fantastical Hawaiian
15:21
Speaker 1: type environment and you're going fishing, and so you're cats
15:24
Speaker 1: with like fishing spears and you're trying to catch different fish.
15:28
Speaker 1: So Miawi definitely fits the category, and that put me
15:31
Speaker 1: at ten for cute animals. So I'm now four categories completed,
15:35
Speaker 1: all four. Next one fifth escape room. Now this could
15:38
Speaker 1: be either actual escape rooms that we went and played
15:42
Speaker 1: or escape room games like Exit and Unlock, So I
15:45
Speaker 1: achieved that. We achieved that pretty handily. Ten there. The
15:50
Speaker 1: next one is novelty games. Coming into the month, I
15:53
Speaker 1: had only played five novelty games. Now, novelty is kind
15:56
Speaker 1: of a weird category because it's very personal. But the
15:59
Speaker 1: idea of a novelty game is a game that I'm playing,
16:01
Speaker 1: not because I think it's gonna be a good game,
16:03
Speaker 1: but because I'm interested in playing it as an experience
16:07
Speaker 1: or as you know, it's amusing the idea of playing it.
16:11
Speaker 1: In the past, it has been when I've thought about
16:13
Speaker 1: novelty games, it's a game that I own because it's
16:15
Speaker 1: amusing to own it, not because I think it's probably
16:17
Speaker 1: a good game. I did manage to get five more
16:20
Speaker 1: novelty games played this month. It was a challenge, but
16:23
Speaker 1: we played Senate SNT, which is an approximation of the
16:29
Speaker 1: game that was very popular in Egypt. We don't really
16:32
Speaker 1: have the rules, but they kind of thought they figured
16:34
Speaker 1: them out. It was, i mean, not good by modern standards,
16:37
Speaker 1: but it was an interesting experience. I lost at the
16:40
Speaker 1: last minute. We'll talk I'll talk about that more on
16:42
Speaker 1: a podcast. The Office Downsizing Game, another very simple game
16:46
Speaker 1: with a very poor rating. It's like, if you wanted
16:48
Speaker 1: to play The Resistance with an office theme, you could
16:51
Speaker 1: play that. I played that so the Senate December twenty eighth,
16:54
Speaker 1: The Office Downsizing Game December twenty ninth.
16:57
Speaker 2: Then on the thirty first we played Mystery Date.
16:59
Speaker 1: Which I have the Nostalgia edition published in the mid
17:02
Speaker 1: two thousands, which is just a replica replica of the
17:04
Speaker 1: original game, and boy it's weird. Basically, you're just going
17:08
Speaker 1: around the board randomly acquiring things, sometimes swapping things with
17:12
Speaker 1: other players, are stealing. You're trying to get a complete outfit.
17:15
Speaker 1: And then you open the door and see if you're
17:17
Speaker 1: dressed for the date that shows up at the door,
17:20
Speaker 1: and if you're dressed for the wrong date, they leave,
17:22
Speaker 1: or if the Dud shows up, which is one of
17:25
Speaker 1: the five boys who is very head noormative. We're all
17:28
Speaker 1: white girls trying to get these outfits. They're all white
17:31
Speaker 1: boys coming to the door. If the Dud shows up,
17:35
Speaker 1: then not only do you not get to go on
17:37
Speaker 1: a date, but you have to throw away that outfit
17:39
Speaker 1: because he saw you in it, I guess, And then
17:41
Speaker 1: try to acquire a new outfit. It's pretty silly, pretty dumb.
17:44
Speaker 1: But we played it electronic mall madness. You're running around
17:48
Speaker 1: trying to buy stuff at a mall. Again pretty dumb.
17:51
Speaker 1: The device that tells you to go places is sort
17:54
Speaker 1: of amusing, but again it's a lot of rolling dice.
17:57
Speaker 1: Can you move as far as you need to then
18:00
Speaker 1: randomly sometimes you can't buy the stuff you need to buy.
18:02
Speaker 1: You get to the store and it's like, oh, we're
18:04
Speaker 1: out of those sorry, And that part's pretty dumb. And
18:07
Speaker 1: then finally we played Careers and we finished at about
18:10
Speaker 1: eight pm on December thirty first. So, if I haven't
18:13
Speaker 1: revealed yet, if this is the category that we need,
18:15
Speaker 1: the only one we need to finish, but if it was,
18:17
Speaker 1: we finished at eight pm on December thirty first, to
18:20
Speaker 1: get up to ten novelty games.
18:22
Speaker 2: Careers was the best one of the novelty games, by
18:24
Speaker 2: the way.
18:25
Speaker 1: Even though it is a roll and move game, as
18:27
Speaker 1: the game goes along you get a bunch of dice mitigation,
18:29
Speaker 1: so you get to start really deciding when you want
18:32
Speaker 1: to roll and when you want to move on purpose.
18:34
Speaker 1: There's also an element where you pick your own win
18:36
Speaker 1: condition that I think works really well. So as far
18:39
Speaker 1: as these games go, Careers is better than most. I
18:41
Speaker 1: also lost by one turn, which was infuriating. The next
18:44
Speaker 1: category is expanded games. These are games where an expansion
18:48
Speaker 1: is part of the mix. We played ten of those.
18:50
Speaker 1: That one was pretty easy to resolve. And then, like
18:53
Speaker 1: I said, we have an alphabet category. So the three
18:56
Speaker 1: year rows are A through J, K through T, you through.
18:59
Speaker 2: Z, D and four numbers.
19:02
Speaker 1: The four numbers are a game that starts with a
19:04
Speaker 1: single digit, a game that starts with two digits, a
19:07
Speaker 1: game that starts with three digits, and a game that
19:09
Speaker 1: starts with four digits.
19:10
Speaker 2: So how do we do well? A through J, and
19:13
Speaker 2: K through T.
19:13
Speaker 1: I had resolved before this month, so that was ten
19:16
Speaker 1: and ten done. Zip zip U through Z and four
19:19
Speaker 1: numbers was the challenge. I had left X Y, two digit.
19:24
Speaker 2: And three digit.
19:25
Speaker 1: So I already mentioned already mentioned earlier dusting off thirteen
19:28
Speaker 1: dead end drives. You know, I got the two digit
19:30
Speaker 1: game done. We also got two twenty one B Baker Street,
19:34
Speaker 1: which is the three digit game, and now that I
19:36
Speaker 1: think about it, that's also one we dusted off. I
19:38
Speaker 1: definitely have played that before. I think it was more
19:40
Speaker 1: than a year. I'm gonna have to check. I might
19:42
Speaker 1: have a one more dusted off game which would make
19:44
Speaker 1: sixty seven, so two twenty one b Baker Street. So
19:46
Speaker 1: we got the numbers out of the way. I mentioned
19:48
Speaker 1: Yatzi and x Calm already, so I guess I kind
19:50
Speaker 1: of gave it away. I did play x Y one
19:53
Speaker 1: digit and two digit or two digit and three digits,
19:56
Speaker 1: so we resolved that as well, meaning that I did,
19:59
Speaker 1: in fact, as of eight something pm, December thirty first,
20:03
Speaker 1: complete my ten for ten list.
20:06
Speaker 2: What a hoot it was.
20:07
Speaker 1: We had a really good time doing it, which brings
20:10
Speaker 1: me to the end of the podcast for January. Here
20:14
Speaker 1: let me get out my information about January, because the
20:17
Speaker 1: last thing I always do as I talk about what
20:20
Speaker 1: I'm doing next time. So first I pick four games,
20:23
Speaker 1: three of which I need to play by the end
20:25
Speaker 1: of the month. The four games are Earth, Space Freaks,
20:29
Speaker 1: Sky Joe, and Badass Zombie Killers. Space Freaks and Badass
20:34
Speaker 1: Zombie Killers are both games that I have played a
20:36
Speaker 1: number of times before, and so they are going to
20:38
Speaker 1: be in the list again. Sky Joe and Earth are
20:41
Speaker 1: both new games that we acquired this month, and so
20:44
Speaker 1: you will hear about them or not. And then finally
20:49
Speaker 1: I have my ten for ten goal, the new ten
20:52
Speaker 1: for ten list that I have put together the new categories,
20:56
Speaker 1: so I am keeping the alphabet and numbers categories, so
20:59
Speaker 1: we're going to do those again A through Z and
21:01
Speaker 1: four number games. But I've added a wrinkle. I cannot
21:04
Speaker 1: use the same game for the same letter this year,
21:08
Speaker 1: so I have to find a different Y game in
21:09
Speaker 1: a different X game.
21:10
Speaker 2: And so on.
21:11
Speaker 1: Here are my other seven categories. I've decided to really
21:15
Speaker 1: use this opportunity to push my shelf of opportunity to
21:19
Speaker 1: get it down there. So I have to play ten
21:21
Speaker 1: games that have been on my shelf of opportunity since
21:24
Speaker 1: before January first, twenty twenty. I think there are nineteen
21:27
Speaker 1: to choose from. I have to play ten games that
21:30
Speaker 1: have been on my shelf of opportunity since before twenty
21:32
Speaker 1: twenty three, and there are another twenty five to choose
21:36
Speaker 1: from there.
21:36
Speaker 2: I've decided I'm.
21:37
Speaker 1: Going to play five mystery or ten mystery games. These
21:42
Speaker 1: are games where you're prenominantly solving a mystery. I'm going
21:45
Speaker 1: to play ten games where the theme or what you're
21:47
Speaker 1: doing in the game has to do with Magic. I'm
21:50
Speaker 1: gonna play five continents, so not including North America in Europe,
21:55
Speaker 1: which is where most of the games I have take place,
21:58
Speaker 1: We're going to play two games from each of the
22:01
Speaker 1: other five continents. Finding games that take place in the
22:05
Speaker 1: anarch in Arctica will be interesting. I'm going to play
22:08
Speaker 1: games with a variety of colors on the boxes. I
22:11
Speaker 1: wrote roy GBIVBBW so red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, blue, violet, black, brown,
22:18
Speaker 1: and white, and then so to count one of those,
22:22
Speaker 1: it has to be a game where that's kind of
22:24
Speaker 1: the predominant color on the cover. And then finally, we
22:29
Speaker 1: have games that five X on the table. So this
22:31
Speaker 1: is kind of cheating one hundred the top the ten
22:34
Speaker 1: for ten lists because it's not one hundred games.
22:35
Speaker 2: It's going to be a lot more than that.
22:37
Speaker 1: Normally, when I play a game, I can't count it
22:40
Speaker 1: for two categories. So if I play a game that
22:43
Speaker 1: takes place in Asia and uses Magic, I can't count
22:46
Speaker 1: it for both Asia as a continent and Magic as
22:48
Speaker 1: a content. I have to pick one or the other.
22:50
Speaker 1: If I play the game a second time, I could
22:52
Speaker 1: use it for the other thing, but each play can
22:54
Speaker 1: only cover one box. However, for this last category, I
22:58
Speaker 1: can double up on plays because the last category is
23:02
Speaker 1: I get one checkbox or one completed entry when I've
23:06
Speaker 1: played a game five times on the table. This is
23:09
Speaker 1: pushing me to do a little bit more repeated gaming,
23:12
Speaker 1: kind of along lines you the original ten for ten,
23:14
Speaker 1: but it needs to be in person. Online games don't count.
23:16
Speaker 1: We'll see this one's gonna be brutally hard to play
23:19
Speaker 1: unless I'm very diligent, and if I pick the wrong
23:22
Speaker 1: games to focus on, nobody's gonna want to play with me.
23:25
Speaker 1: So we'll see how that goes. Well, that's about it
23:27
Speaker 1: for my time today. Thanks for joining me. I'm a
23:29
Speaker 1: walk today. Happy New Year friends. I hope you had
23:31
Speaker 1: it a lovely end of the year gaming experience.
23:33
Speaker 2: Tell me about it.
23:34
Speaker 1: Over on board game Geek in Guild three two sixty nine,
23:37
Speaker 1: or send me a message. Wombat nine two nine is
23:39
Speaker 1: my user name over there. Thanks for joining me in
23:42
Speaker 1: my walk today and every walk this year. I look
23:45
Speaker 1: forward to seeing you more in the coming year or
23:47
Speaker 1: talking to you more in the coming year. I hope
23:49
Speaker 1: your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. Byebye,
24:20
Speaker 1: hold on, I think I missed a stat here getting
24:25
Speaker 1: out my phone, double check that. Because that seems low stats.
24:31
Speaker 1: I keep dragging my stats on the stats, the best
24:34
Speaker 1: stats anyone could be.
24:38
Speaker 2: Okay. Brought to you by rattle Box