Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Shelf of Opportunity Update 3 (400 Back)

Transcript

Shelf of Opportunity Update 3 (400 Back) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:05
  Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast, where I pick up my audio
• 0:08
  recorders and head out for a walk and deliver an episode two while I stroll
• 0:11
  around. I'm Brendan Riley. All good morning, listeners. It's a lovely
• 0:23
  day here in suburban Chicago. Or at the end of this warm streak which
• 0:26
  is still keeping the temperatures up into the seventies at the beginning of October,
• 0:31
  which is a really strange feeling but generally quite pleasant. Today, I thought
• 0:36
  I would do an episode that I do occasionally called four hundred back, where
• 0:39
  I look back four hundred episodes and see what was I doing four years ago
• 0:44
  on the podcast and reflect on it. And four hundred back was episode one
• 0:49
  sixty one, or you know, give or take one or two episodes.
• 0:52
  I usually nudge it up or down to see what's around there. Episode one
• 0:56
  sixty one, which was Shelf of Opportunity Update number one, or a Shelf
• 1:00
  of Opportunity revisited for those of you who are, I don't know, very
• 1:04
  new to the podcast. Shelf of Opportunity is the phrase I use for the
• 1:08
  metaphorical shelf of games that I own that I haven't played. I prefer shelf
• 1:12
  of opportunity over the I think slightly more common shelf of shame, because while
• 1:18
  I do have some shame about how long some of these games have been on
• 1:21
  this metaphorical shelf, in all honesty, playing new games is my favorite part
• 1:26
  of the hobby, trying out a new game, seeing what it does,
• 1:29
  enjoying it, and so having new games to play doesn't feel shameful to me.
• 1:34
  It feels like an opportunity that I haven't made full use of yet,
• 1:38
  and so shelf of opportunity is the term I prefer to use. That said,
• 1:42
  my shelf of opportunity has been hovering at around between fifty and sixty games
• 1:48
  for a couple of years now, because basically, as I not games off
• 1:53
  of the shelf, I acquire new games as well. Sometimes I'll have stretches
• 1:57
  where I go for a while without buying a new game, and I feel
• 2:00
  pretty good about that. But sometimes I get a bunch in a row.
• 2:02
  Often I'm able to get them at discount, which is nice, but generally
• 2:07
  being frugal isn't. Frugal with games isn't always something I've been good at,
• 2:13
  and so I keep acquiring new games at the speed that I am taking games
• 2:17
  off the list as a result. While the list stays about the same length,
• 2:22
  it's content changes as I buy games and play them and remove them.
• 2:25
  But sometimes I'll buy a game and I don't get it played and then it
• 2:28
  gets added to the list. Or I'll play an old game that's been on
• 2:30
  there a while and I just get around to playing it. So what I
• 2:32
  thought i'd do today is reflect a little bit on the arc the list has
• 2:36
  taken. I looked through the archives and there were three episodes in which I've
• 2:39
  talked about my Shelf of Opportunity, Episode thirteen right at the beginning, episode
• 2:44
  one sixty one, which is our four hundred back episode for the day,
• 2:47
  and episode two hundred and thirteen, which is update number two. So by
• 2:52
  that logic, this would be update number three. And I guess I'm about
• 2:54
  two hundred late. It looks like I was going to try to do one
• 2:58
  every hundred episodes or so, and I missed one at three twenty four twenty
• 3:04
  or three twenty and four twenty, and now I'm back on episode thirteen.
• 3:07
  I just pointed people to I talked about it, but I didn't do extensive
• 3:12
  show notes on episode one sixty one, I did show notes and I talked
• 3:15
  about several games that I was really that are sort of front of my mind
• 3:21
  as games I want to play. Since that time, I have played a
• 3:27
  bunch of them, but there are a few that I have not. In
• 3:29
  episode two hundred and thirteen, I did the same I picked out a few
• 3:32
  that I really wanted to play, and then started talked about those. So
• 3:37
  I thought, what I would do for today is talk about those two previous
• 3:40
  lists where I've succeeded and where I still have to play, and then I'll
• 3:45
  add a few more games from the list as it stands right now that are
• 3:49
  top of my priority list. And then I think what I'll do is make
• 3:53
  a strong effort to have these be the picks that I am adding to my
• 3:55
  top of the Stack list each month. Perhaps it'll be a challenge next year
• 4:00
  in my top of the Stack goals, or maybe I'll have cleared out some
• 4:03
  of these by then. We'll see. In episode one sixty one, here
• 4:09
  are the games that I listed that I have since played. Lords of Zidit,
• 4:14
  Queen's Architect, Argent, The Consortium, SPQF, Glory to Rome,
• 4:18
  and Vast. Those are all games that I've played since I made that list,
• 4:23
  so that's good. However, Libertae, Founders of gloom Haven, New
• 4:29
  Angelus, and The Dawn of the Peacemakers are all games that I listed as
• 4:32
  games I wanted to play but I had not gotten around to playing. And
• 4:35
  now it's four years later and I still haven't played any of those games I
• 4:40
  just listed. Now there are other games on the list as well, but
• 4:43
  these are the four I was sort of very excited about. When I got
• 4:46
  to episode two hundred and thirteen, I had a list of five games that
• 4:49
  I wanted to play. Buffy, Miscontonic School for Boys, Panic Station MOA,
• 4:55
  and New Angelis. I'm sad to say I've played none of those.
• 5:00
  One of them I played the Buffy game. None of the other ones have
• 5:01
  I played. So this means that of those old lists, I already have
• 5:06
  like nine games that I'm gonna put on this new sort of high priority list.
• 5:13
  And I think what I'm gonna do is reorder the shelf of opportunity by
• 5:18
  how much I want to play them, or actually, you know what I'm
• 5:21
  not gonna do that. I'm gonna keep this list, but I am also
• 5:24
  gonna remind you. This is something I started a long time ago, but
• 5:26
  it didn't really gain much traction, Which is if you, dear listener,
• 5:30
  would like to participate in helping me figure out what I'm gonna play, I
• 5:33
  would love for you to head over to that board game geek list and give
• 5:35
  some thumbs to the things on the list. By thumbs, I mean the
• 5:40
  little thumbs up green icon. When I go and look at that, one
• 5:44
  of the things I look at is which games have the most thumbs. And
• 5:46
  one thing I could do is try to play the game with the most thumbs.
• 5:49
  Have that be a priority. I have used that metho in the past
• 5:53
  sometimes I got stuck for a long time. I was trying to play the
• 5:56
  Murdercery Road game because I had the most thumbs. It took me a long
• 5:59
  time to get it played. But I'd be interested in seeing how that works
• 6:02
  as a path. All right, So those games that I mentioned are all
• 6:05
  games I'm still interested in playing and keen to try. That said, there
• 6:10
  are right now sixty four games on my shelf of opportunity. Any game that's
• 6:15
  added in the past year I consider sort of new enough and exciting enough that
• 6:20
  I might just play that without too much concern or effort, I might just
• 6:24
  go Hey, time to play this one. So the ones I'm more interested
• 6:28
  in motivating myself for are the older ones, and so I'm going to lay
• 6:32
  those out for you. First up, we have Tyramid earth Sphere. This
• 6:39
  is a legendary game. I encourage you to go back and listen to previous
• 6:41
  episodes in which I've talked about. It was one of the first very expensive
• 6:45
  kickstarters I backed, and it was a disastrous financial thing for the people who
• 6:50
  made the game. I eventually was able to get my copy through a little
• 6:55
  back channel conversation and paying a twenty extra bucks for shipping, even though they
• 7:00
  had said shipping was going to be free. It took me like five years
• 7:03
  to get it, and then I'm sad to say I got it and I
• 7:06
  never got around to opening it. So it's still, you know, the
• 7:11
  the excitement of getting it was there, but I didn't actually try it yet,
• 7:14
  so I probably should. It feels like I should. They also have
• 7:16
  the airship Minis, which I need to get set up as well, so
• 7:21
  that's Chairman Earth's Sphere. The game is about being a airship pirate and going
• 7:27
  around. I don't know, collecting loot and stuff. It looks pretty neat,
• 7:30
  but I haven't even opened it. I think I'm going to do that
• 7:31
  today, actually open it. Second one Aeroplanes Aviation Ascendant. This is an
• 7:35
  economic game from Martin Wallace. I picked it up I think cheap at a
• 7:41
  used copy at Half priced Books, and it's right up my alley. You
• 7:45
  know, Martin Wallace Economic game. It's not the best reviewed of his games,
• 7:48
  but most of his games have something interesting in them to play, So
• 7:53
  this is one I've just kind of been putting off. I mean one of
• 7:55
  the main things is I think it's either only three player or a best a
• 7:58
  three player, and it just has found its way to the table. But
• 8:01
  I would like to try it. That's Airplanes Aviation toscend It. Next up
• 8:05
  is Circadians First Light. I got this one as a free I think I
• 8:09
  got this one as a prize from blue Peg Pink Peg during one of their
• 8:15
  live shows. I answered a question or did something and I got Circadians First
• 8:20
  Light. I've heard good things about it. I know they released an updated
• 8:24
  version of it, but the old one is supposed to be pretty good.
• 8:26
  I just haven't gotten around to playing it. It's got lots of neat little
• 8:30
  wooden tokens and a neat idea, so I think that the premise of that
• 8:35
  one looks pretty fun and I would like to give it a try. I
• 8:39
  haven't had a ton of success with the other Garfield games in terms of my
• 8:43
  pleasure with them. Of the North Sea games never really did it for me.
• 8:48
  I've played Architects of the West Kingdom a couple times and it's fine,
• 8:52
  but it never really clicked for me. Maybe Circadians First Light will be the
• 8:56
  one that does it. I'm interested in try it. It's going on the
• 8:58
  list next up as Spirits of the Rice Patty. I love the idea of
• 9:03
  this game. It's got water management and as a key part of it,
• 9:07
  it looks really nice. I think it's a game that's just never grabbed hold
• 9:13
  of the gaming community's attention. I know Rotto really liked it for a while,
• 9:18
  which it's hard to gauge whether a game is good based on whether Rotto
• 9:20
  likes it or not because he only talks about games he likes, and he
• 9:24
  talks about a lot of games, so he's so hyperbolically enthusiastic about everything that
• 9:30
  sometimes it's hard to use his enthusiasm as a gauge about actual quality, but
• 9:35
  I do take it as a thumbs up thumbs down. If Rotto likes it,
• 9:39
  it's probably good. It's just a question of how good. So I'm
• 9:43
  interested to try it. I got that used that Spirits of the Rice Patty,
• 9:48
  and then the last game I wanted to put on this list is Struggle
• 9:50
  of Empires. This is a Martin Wallace, big heavy area control game in
• 9:58
  which you are one of the Empires in the Age of Sail, going around
• 10:03
  the world imposing your will on everybody. It's not particularly moral as an idea,
• 10:09
  but it's supposed to be an amazing game. A friend got me got
• 10:13
  it for me as a gift, and so I have the deluxe Egle Griffin
• 10:16
  addition with Design by Tool. It just looks beautiful and it's the sort of
• 10:20
  game that I think would be really interesting to play. And it also looks
• 10:26
  like it's going to be pretty big and meaty. So part of the reason
• 10:28
  I haven't gotten to the table is I think it's going to take a fair
• 10:31
  amount of work to get to the table, but I am interested in trying
• 10:33
  it. So a Struggle of Empires is going to be the last game that
• 10:37
  I put on the I don't know what you call it, the bumped up
• 10:41
  priority of the shelf of opportunity. These are the games that sort of rise
• 10:45
  to the top for me of games that I want to play. So putting
• 10:52
  that out there, these are the games that I'm going to try to prioritize
• 10:56
  playing maybe in the next year on the top of the stack, or really
• 10:58
  make an effort to get to the table. And I'd be keen to have
• 11:03
  your help as well deciding what else I should prioritize. And the way you
• 11:07
  can do that is to head over to board game Geek and go to my
• 11:09
  shelf of opportunity. You can find the link in the show notes for this
• 11:13
  episode at rattleboxgames dot com and thumb the games that you think it would be
• 11:16
  interesting to hear me make it a special effort to get played. Alternately,
• 11:22
  you can head over to the guild and share what games are at the top
• 11:26
  of your shelf of opportunity lists, what games are you really keen to see
• 11:31
  played, and what games are you really keen to play. Thanks for joining
• 11:35
  me. I'm a walk today. I hope that your next walk is as
• 11:37
  pleasant as mindless Bye Bye, brought to you by rattle Box