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Look Back at 2011 · 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 step out for
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a walk and deliver an episodes to you while I
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, it's a lovely day
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: here in suburban Chicago. The temperature is in the low thirties,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: but it is sunny out and it's not too windy,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: so it's actually quite comfortable. I'm out walking in my
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: sweater that I bought on an island I think in
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Galway in Ireland. I might be wrong about it being Galway,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: but it was. It's a fisherman's sweater. It was one
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of the more expensive pieces of clothing I've purchased. I
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: mean not really. I guess suits are more expensive, but
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: just in terms of like, I don't generally buy myself
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: expensive clothing, but this is really it's a really nice sweater, handmade,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and it's love. I like wearing it. You need to
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: do a little bit of repairs on and I've got
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a couple of little spots where it looks like it
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: needs a little tender love and care and I need
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: to do that. But boy, it's warm. It's perfect for
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: late fall where the weather is mostly dry but chili,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: but not cold and not too windy. It's not super
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: impervious to wind because it's nit it's a knit sweater,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: so but it's nice and warm. So that's what I'm wearing.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And I thought I would chat with you a little
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: bit about some games, as is my want on this podcast.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I was thinking it had been a while since I
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: talked about best games of the year, and so I
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: went through my archive and I figured out about twenty
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: five or thirty episodes ago, I did an episode about
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't look It was the last time I did
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: a look back episode, so it's time for another one.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: For those of you knew to the podcast, the look
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: back episodes are something I started a couple of years
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: ago where I realized that I had not done top fives,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: or I had not done top lists four years previous.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: What I mean by that is, if you go and
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: listen to the beginning of this year's podcasts, which would
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: have been halfway through last season, I have a top
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: five or whatever. I recently did a top five of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. Yeah, because last year was twenty twenty three.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I always do. I always wait a year because I
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: don't play enough games to really do a top ten
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: or top five for last year, so I'd like to
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: do a top five for two years ago. So I've
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: done twenty twenty two. I've been doing that for a while.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: So when I started doing this, I had done twenty
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: eighteen and onward as top five lists. But I realized
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: there's no reason I couldn't as a fill in go
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: backwards as well. So for the last couple of years,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: every thirty or forty episodes, I'll do one where I
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: go back one more year and I look through the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: game Geek entries and I make a top list of
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: games from that year. So today I'm doing top five
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: games and honorable mentions from twenty eleven once again. My
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: methodology for this I go into Board Game Geek, I
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: do advanced game search. I limit it to games published
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, and then I put them in order
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: by rank on Board Game Geek. Then I go until
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: the games that are in the list have a rank
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: higher than ten thousand, and I put on a list
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: every game in between one and ten thousand rank that
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I've played from the year twenty eleven, and then I
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: go through those and I cut out ones that I
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: don't think are worth talking about, and I put the rest.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: In order I make a top five list, I usually
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: make some honorable mentions, a few games that I haven't
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: played but would like to, and so on. So I'll
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: start with the top five list. But a cariat one
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: thing I always do is I go and look and
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: see in my current top fifty, which at this point
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: is three years old or two and a half years old.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: But in my current top fifty list, are there any
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: games from that year? Because those games automatically would be
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: at the top of the list. So that's boring, so
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I remove them. They're they're exempt from my twenty eleven list.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: In this case, that's Last Will and Castles of Burgundy,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: both of which are currently in my top fifty games list.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So that leaves you to ask, what are my top
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: five games from twenty eleven. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: start with number five and work my way up. Number
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: five is a freedom and freeze solo game called Friday.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Friday is a really interesting game, and so it's just
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a little deck of cards and a board and a
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: bunch of tokens. You play Friday the companion and helper
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: for Robinson Crusoe in the famous story of that name
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: or the novel of that name. In the game, Robinson
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Cruso is kind of a doof He can't really survive
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: on his own, and so as his companion, you're helping
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: him figure out how to survive. The way the game
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: works is that these cards come up that have a
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: certain amount of challenge on them, and then you play
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: a certain number of Friday Car of Robinson cards. They
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: indicate how good he is at trying to defeat the challenge.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: If he defeats the challenge, then you win the card
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: as a reward, and you sort of flip the card
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: over where you turn it one hundred and eighty degrees,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: so it's not it's still facing the same direction, but
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: when you turn over then it becomes a reward. If
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: you fail at the card, Robinson takes a certain amount
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: of damage. Sometimes you choose to You can choose to stop,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: or you can choose to draw extra cards to try
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: to fight the challenge, and that can have a benefit
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: or a penalty. You have a very limited amount of
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: health for Robinson and you have to manage it pretty well.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: But essentially what you do is you go through the deck,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and each of the challenge cards has a green dot,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: a yellow dot, and a red dot on it. Well.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: The green dot, well, each of those represents how difficult
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the challenge is, and so the first time you go
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: through the deck, you're facing the green dots, the second
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: time through the yellow dots, third time through the red dots.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Each card you beat becomes a reward card that goes
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: into your Robinson deck. Each card you fail against does
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: damage to you and goes back into the deck to
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: be faced again on the next lap through. If you
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: make it all the way through, which like if I
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: were to get this game out now and play it,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: it's been a while since I played, I would definitely
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: not make it through. But if you make it through
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: all three, then you face the pirates. And the way
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: that works is there's a pirate card that is drawn early.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I think you can see it. I don't remember when
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: you get to see it, but you can see it coming.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So you have an idea of what the pirates are
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: going to do, and then you play through to the
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: end of the You play through to the end of
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the deck on the red mode, and if you're still alive,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: then you reveal the pirate card and you have to
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: fight the pirates, and if you beat the pirates, then
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: you win. If you don't beat the pirates, you lose.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: It's a really good game, very interesting, really fun. You
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: could scale the difficulty by choosing the harder pate cards
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: and just tweaking a little bit. How much health you have,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: even like two or three health points makes a huge
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: difference in terms of your odds of winning or not.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And so it's a really variable game that has a
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: lot of staying power. Often what happens is I will
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: take it on a trip, and I'll play it several
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: times on a trip on an airplane or something, and
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: generally I get to the point where I can win
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: uneasy and maybe once or twice on medium, and then
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I'll put it away again for a while. It's not
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: in the kind of game I'm going to play every
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: week for a year, but it's really fun to play
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: three or four times in a month and then put away.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: So that's my number five for twenty eleven Friday. My
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: number four for twenty eleven is maybe the most tenuous
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: claim because I've only played it once. This is Mage Night.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Mage Night is from Vlada Shivato. It is a really
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: complex adventure game in which you play a titular mage night,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: which is sort of like a warrior king going around
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: destroying monasteries, fighting demons. I don't know if you're taking
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: over towns or helping them or what you're doing, but
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: you're gathering strength and fighting monsters. What makes the game
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: interesting is it is a deck builder and a resource
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: management engine with a very complex set of interlocking elements
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: that are super interesting to play with. I played it
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: co op with one friend. I think we've played co
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: op a noother think about it. Maybe we played competitively.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: We just didn't attack each other, but it's a relatively
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: smooth process if you don't go after each other. I
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: don't recall fighting each other, but it's really good. I
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: remember the learning curve was outrageous. Like I read the
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: rule book, I watched like an hour long video about
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: how to play. When we got together, we went over
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the rules together, we played the game. It took like
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: three or four hours, and we both really enjoyed it.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: And then we haven't played it again since. I'm not
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: sure it'll ever get higher. In my estimation, if I
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: am not able to play it my self a bunch
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: and I can't see that happening anytime soon because it
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: would be the kind of game you have to just
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: leave set up on the table and play a bunch
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of times to really get the feel for everything that's there.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: But it's it's an incredible game, really interesting, very deep,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: very hard, but really fun. I enjoyed my play of
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Mage Night enough to put it on my top five
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: list over lots of games that I've played many more
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: times than that. So if that's not a ringing endorsement,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know what is Mage Night? All right? My
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: number three game is about the most opposite I could
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: get from Mage Night. Perhaps this is a game that's,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: as far as I understand, pretty out of print. They
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: made two of them. It's the second in a series.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: I think the second one is much better than the
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: first one, although the first one's pretty amusing in its
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: own way. This is The Adventurers the Pyramid of Horrus.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: So The Adventurers is a goofy game about raiding a tomb,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: and you're a group of people rating a tomb. That's
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: kind of the it in the Pyramid of Horrus. The
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: group of people you all enter the pyramid together. You
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: go running in and you are trying to find treasure
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: and then get back out before the pyramid collapses. Essentially,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the way it works is you roll a dice, and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the dice tell you how many actions you're going to get.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: The more things you're carrying, the fewer actions you're going
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: to get, So as the game goes on, as you're
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: carrying more stuff, you get bogged down by it. The
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: board is divided into three different search areas. There's the
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: sand at the beginning, there's the rock in the middle,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and then there's like this pool or reflecting pool in
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the very center of the pyramid, and each of those
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: has different varying levels of treasure, but they also have dangers.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: In the sand there are snakes. In the rocks there
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: are scorpions, and in the pool there are alligators. If
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: you draw one of those cards, that counts as one
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: of the things you're carrying, but you don't get any points.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: So getting a scorpion sting it's like you're carrying a
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: piece of treasure but you're not. It just slows you down,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: so it's a pretty clever mechanism. There's also these sarcophaguses
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: around the edge of the pyramid that you can go
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to for even more valuable treasures. There's bonuses for having
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a variety of different kinds of treasures. There are mummies
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: that are rolling around, and then the main interesting mechanism
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: is this sort of wild chance thing where every turn
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: after a player takes so everybody takes one turn, and
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: then the active player who started the round draws a
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: block and these are sort of plastic, huge sand blocks
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: out of the box and looks at it and it's
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: got a number and a thing, and it falls down
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the pyramid. If it falls down where your
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: character is, your character takes a wound that slows you down,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: and then you get to jump out of the way
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: to one of the sides. But the main thing is
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the entrance wigh is only four blocks wide and it's
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: about ten blocks long. So things that happens is these
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: period these blocks fall down and they start to impede
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: your journey out of the pyramid. So not only are
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: you slower because you're carrying things, now if you're trying
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: to leave, there's blocks in your way, So there's an
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: element of trying to run out of the pyramid while
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the blocks are falling, and inevitably some people don't mike it,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: don't quite make it out. The game ends when everyone
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: has either escaped the pyramid or the sand blocks have
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: closed off the entrance, and anyone who's inside automatically loses,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: and then you count up the value of the treasure
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: in the people who are lot who made it out.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: It's silly, it's fun. There's it's short enough that it's amusing.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: The thematic elements really work well. It's in amere trash
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: game and all the sort of standard ways. There's dice
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: rolling and there's random chance. But it's a lot of fun.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: It's very thematic. It's a good time. So that's my
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: number three from twenty eleven, The Adventurers The Pyramid of Horus.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: My number two from twenty eleven is a game I've
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: never played on the table. This is Trajan now. Trajan
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: is a game that I do not have access to
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: anymore unless I were to go buy it. It is
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: a Stephenfeld game with a whole bunch of mini games
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that I played a whole bunch of times on Buatajou,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the lost game website where I used to play Trajan
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and Castles of Burgundy and Agricola. I now play Agricola
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: in board game Arena and Castles of Burgundy occasionally, but
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Concordia and Trajan are lost to me right now in
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: digital form, which is a bummer, and they're both games
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I really enjoy. Trajan in particular, is an interesting mix
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: of these mini games along with a very effective rondel system. Basically,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: there's this rondel in the corner with these little colorful
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: cubes or discs, and on your turn, you're going to
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: pick up the discs in the rondel and rotate them
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: around Mancala style, and wherever you drop the last one,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: then you're going to get a reward. There you get
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: a bonus. If you have overlapping tokens that land in
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the same spot, you get these like bonus tiles, and
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: like a lot of stuff unfeled games, it's overlapping Magisteria.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: There's a bunch of different sort of minigames to play
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: and you get points for doing all of them, and
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: it is kind of the original point slid game. That said.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I really like it, and it is the sort of
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: game that I could really enjoy playing on the table,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: I think, But it's pretty expensive, and I feel like
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: if I got it, I would hardly ever play it.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: If it were on board game Arena, I would play
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: it all the time. I would just have a game
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: constantly going because I really like it. But I just
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: don't have the fortitude to buy it for my table.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: If I find a good used copy for a relatively
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: low price at some point, I probably will pick it up.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, I could play Bonfire, which is similar.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I could play Castles of Burgundy. So there are plenty.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: There's plenty of stuff Unfeld goodness in my collection. I
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: don't really need to play Trajan, but I really do
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: like Trajan, and I would play it a lot if
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I had the access to it digitally. Either way, it's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: my second It's to me the second best game from
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: twenty eleven, at least of the ones that aren't exempt.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Remember Castles Burgundy and Dungeon and Last Will are both
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: exempt from consideration for this list because of the fact
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: that they're in my current top fifty. My number one
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: game I almost I slipped and almost revealed it. My
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: number one twenty eleven game that's not already my top
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: fifty is Dungeon pets. In fact, Dungeon Pets used to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: be in my top fifty. It was in twenty seventeen.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I did not look and see if it was in
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen or not. Probably was. Dungeon Pets is a
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: it's creaky by today's standards in terms of being a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: euro where there's a whole bunch of stats that you
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: have to follow, and there's a fair amount of randomness
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: to it. But it is a thematically delightful game in
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: which you are raising little monsters and you are trying
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: to get points by raising monsters that will be attractive
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to the people who want to come by them. You're
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: going to sell the monsters and gain money and reputation
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: from selling the monsters, but you also get points for
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: showing off the monsters and these little fairs, and the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: fares are judged based on these different criteria, so there's
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a much things to think about. You also have to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: think about taking care of the monsters. They need food,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and they need love, they need to be played with,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and you need to take care of their poop, and
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: each of those things becomes a different kind of challenge
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: which you could screw up and then ruin. So there's
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a really interesting element of managing those different pieces carefully.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: You also have your family members coming into town, so
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: you're trying to get more family members. There's an element
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: of choosing. You have to pick how many people are
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: going when and compare that to what other people put
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: out on the board. It's really a delight thematically, it's
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: really fun. There's cute little monsters that you get to raise,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and every time I play it, it's a delight. I
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: haven't played it on the table in a while, but
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I think that needs remedying soon. Talking about this list
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: really does make me want to get it out again,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: so it might be something I'll do soon. That's Dungeon
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Pat's my top twenty eleven game that isn't already in
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: my top fifty. All right, So there's a few more
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: games I want to mention. I have a bunch of
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: honorable mentions, and I do want to take a moment
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: here to talk about There are four games that were
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: in the list that I want to play that I
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: haven't War of the Rings second Edition. A lot of
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: people talk about that as one of their favorite games,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: so I really should play that at some point. Discworld
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: on more pork I have on my shelf I have
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: not played. Of course, Martin Wallace released a new version
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: of the game called Nanty Narking, which I do enjoy
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: quite a bit. So I imagine I would like the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Discworld game. I feel like it would work better if
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: I found other people who like the Discworld books, and
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many people. I don't know anyone
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: else who's read them, so it'd be interesting to look
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: at the Maybe I can inquire with my game club
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: and find if there are a couple of other people
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: who like the Discworld books. I think the theme would
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: land better with that. There's a great game called Village,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: which I've heard a lot about. I played a spinoff
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: version of it called My Village, which I did really like,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: but I would like to play the original Village. I
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: know they released an updated version of it a few
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: years ago, so I've been meaning to get that. I
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: just haven't gotten around to it. So that's a game
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I would enjoy. And there's a deck builder called Nightfall
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: that's about like vampires are something that I keep hearing
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: about every now and again as an interesting game, so
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: if I had the chance to play that, I would
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: all right, So some honorable mentions. Games that I think
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: have deserve mention here, but probably that didn't make it
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: into my top five. A game that's a sign of
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: things to come. A Few Acres of Snow. This is
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I think Martin Wallace's first deck building game, and in
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: it he does a lot of the things that he
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: would later do in really interesting ways in a study
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: in Emerald and Methotopia and a handful of Stars. But
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: a Few Acres of Snow is pretty good, although I
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: cannot I'm not good at it. I'm real bad. My
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: favorite stabby game from that year, Game of Thrones, second Edition.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I do like to play this occasionally. It's not my favorite,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: but when a bunch of people are going to play,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: I can get myself into the right mindset and have
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: a good time with it. The game I could easily
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: get lost in the Lord of the Rings card game.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: At one point I did play it and I considered
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: jumping into it, but right around that time they released
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the Arkham Horror of the Card game, which is essentially
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: a revamp, a reimagining of the core system from the
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings card game with a new format
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and some new mechanisms. And that was a better fit
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: for me. But oh man, I could totally see myself
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: diving into the Lord of the Rings one as well.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: The best dice game of twenty eleven Elder Sign. I
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: do really like the pushy luck element of it, although
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: it has such a snowball effect, like if you start losing,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: you're pretty much done. You don't really need to play
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: out the rest of the game. A game that I
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: seem to like that no one else does from twenty
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: eleven this is Kingdom Builder. Every time I play Kingdom Builder,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I think, oh, that's a really cute, little interesting game
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: where you're trying to figure out how to maximize your points,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and then everyone and I play it with is like, yeah,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: no thanks. And I actually had it at one point
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: because it was on sale for ten bucks. I picked
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: it up, played it with my family. They're all like, nah,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: no thanks, and so I sold it on I think
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: for ten bucks. But yeah, Kingdom Builder is a game
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: that I feel like is really good, but nobody else
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: seems to, so it's moved on. Weirdest game for twenty
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: eleven Tragedy Looper. Tragedy Looper, Tragedy Looper. I played this
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: one time. I thought it was really interesting. We had
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: a good time with it, and then it was so
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: complicated we never got it out again. It's not my copy.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I did play another person's copy and we had a
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: good time with it. I would happily play it again
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: if someone brought it, but it's so weird. It's not
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: a thing I've looked to acquire. Best game that's more
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: hype in my mind than plays on my table. This
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: is Fortune and Glory. I love the idea of Fortune
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and Glory. When we played it, it took a really long time.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: It suffers from all the worst things about flying Frog productions,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: as much as I love them, They are slow and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: difficult to play, and the rule set it's are kind
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: of clunky. But it's a really neat theme and a
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: fun idea. This idea that you get in a cliffhanger
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and then your turn is over and the cliffhanger gets
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: resolved when you get back. That's a really neat idea,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and the theming is great. So Fortune and Gloria is
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: a game I really need to get out again and play.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Best game I played in Iceland with an Icelander. This
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: is Yigra sill I don't have a lot to say
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: about it. It was an interesting co op game that was
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: pretty hard, and when we played it we were in Iceland.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: We found I think I told this story in the
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: podcast before, we found a game club that sort of
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: seems to be like Toggle, only in Iceland, and this
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: guy invited us to play Yigrisil with him and one
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: other guy. We played it. It was a good time. It
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: was really fun to meet and play game meet people
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and play games with them. It was a hoot. So
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun, really fun real time drawing game.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: This is Pictomania. I got to play this one time
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and I thought it was great. Again, this fall in
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the category of like a game I thought was cool,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: but it seemed like no one else liked. I like
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: real time games, I like drawing games. A real time
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: drawing game is kind of silly and really fun, but
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of people don't seem to be into it.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: That said, I thought it was neat and I definitely
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: would pick it up if I found it at a
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: modest price somewhere. I'm not going to go out on
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: when we wait to buy it because it doesn't seem
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: like anyone else likes it, But yeah, that's Pictomania and
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: finally an excellent Ipick you Choose mechanism game. In fact,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: this is probably my favorite I Pick you Choose game,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and this is Mammot. Mammot is funny. I got this
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: game for free when I backed the Escape Curse of
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the Temple Kickstarter case Escape Curse of the Temple Big Box.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I backed that, and I got Mammot for free and
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: New York for free. New York is basically a card
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: game version of All Hambra, and I had Alhambra the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Alhambra Big Box for a while and we eventually sold
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: that on. That's a good game too. The New York
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: game I sold right away because I'm like, I don't
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: need a card game version of another game I already
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: have And that was fine, But the Mammood I still have. Actually,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, I quote unquote donated it to my college
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: board Game club. I have yet to get anyone there
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: to play it. But it's a really neat I Pick
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: you Choose game with a bunch of different like alternate
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: scoring things. So you get these little tiles and you
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: divide them up and then everybody picks one. The thing
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I like about it is, while it is I pick,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: you choose, it's not locked, so like I choose. If
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I pick a division and then someone else picks one
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: and another player doesn't like what's there, you can kind
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: of redo the picks, which is really interesting, but they
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: get worse as they get redone. It's a fascinating little
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: mechanism that creates a kind of negotiation within the ipick
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: you choose element and makes for really interesting interplay. In
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the end, you're trying to collect different kinds of tokens,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: and there's different scoring mechanisms for the different kinds of tokens.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: It's similar to Libertalia in that way in terms of
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: like the things you get and how they score. All
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: in all, it's an interesting game, really fun, and one
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I'd be glad to play again sometime soon. There were
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: a number of other games I did get to play
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: in twenty eleven that did not make my list. King
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of Tokyo, Takenoko Skull, Flashpoint, Fire Rescue, Sentinels of the Multiverse,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Fake Artist Goes to New York Eminent Domain, Rhino Hero,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Dark Moon, The City, Star Trek Expeditions, Star Trek Deck
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Building Game, and City Square Off are all games from
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: twenty eleven, I've played that I did not think met
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: these other conditions. So what are your favorite games for
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: twenty eleven? Head over to board game Gee Guildtree two
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: six nine and share your thoughts there. I look forward
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: to hearing them. Thanks for joining me on the walk today.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Your next walk is pleasant as mindless. Oyebye, brought to
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you by rattle Bos many millions a year a