Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step

off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.

I'm Brendan Riley.

Well, hello listeners.

It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.

It's pretty warm.

It's the beginning of September and I think I've inadvertently taken a two week hiatus

from the podcast.

I was clipping along at a good rate recording episodes and then I had a journey to take

my daughter to college and I did not release one episode in there.

So sorry if you've been missing it, I'm back.

We're definitely off-pace to finish by December but we'll see what we see.

So today is, I'm recording this on Wednesday, September 4th.

But it's the first episode I've recorded after the beginning of September so it's time

for a Top of the Stack episode and I know that that's really close to the last one but

it is what it is.

It's the one regular thing you can expect when you get an episode of Pick Up and Deliver.

So for those of you somehow new to the podcast, a Top of the Stack episode is where I talk

about the games I played in the last month and the games I'm planning to play in the next

month.

The notion of the Top of the Stack is the idea that I have a sort of big stack of games

I want to play and I intentionally put a couple games on Top of the Stack to try out.

So there we are, let's just jump right in.

So start with our final monthly stats for August of 2024.

I had 66 plays of 46 different games, bringing my year total to 606 plays of 225 different

games.

It's been a good year so far, playing lots of different games, having a grand old time.

My shelf of opportunity has been growing rather than shrinking.

It went from 66 to 70 games in August.

That's actually, I feel pretty good about that actually since the GenCon was in August

and I did pick up a few games there.

I also had a couple games given to me and found a couple games at Goodwill.

So having a robust influx of games and I still managed to play enough of them that I only

added four to the collection or I only added four to the unplayed list.

My collection size however, expanded by nine so I went from 596 games to 605 games.

I've now crested 600, folks.

This is truly perilous.

We'll see if I can do some good work here this fall to get that number down below 600 but

I doubt it.

My most played game on the table was Palaces of Carrara.

That might be a July stat.

Hold on a second.

Did I just give you a July stat?

I might have.

How can you stand for me giving you stats that aren't correct?

My most played game on the table was Dorfromantik, the board game with five plays.

That was pretty great.

My most played game online is a tie between Pax Renaissance Second Edition and Pax Premier

Second Edition both at four plays.

So I'm getting a lot of plays of those games in but Dorfromantik was the winner for most

plays on the table.

I had four games that I put on top of the stack.

As a reminder, I always pick out four that count as the top of the stack.

If I play three of them in a month, it counts as a successful month.

So of the four that I picked, Aquatica, Got played, Deadly Derigables, Got played, Leaf

Got played, and Switching Signal did not get played.

So three of the four got played: Successful Month.

That's been, there's been few and far between this year.

My total for the year is 17 out of 24 possible games.

If I'd had all successful games so far, it would have been 24 out of 24.

And if I'd played all four games, it would be 32 out of 24.

Well, it was a great month for playing new games.

I played 13 new games this month.

Coming into the month, I had 52 new games played this year.

Coming out, I had 65.

So really robust months for that.

The list of new games I played, Burn the Fort.

The Art Project, A.R.T.,  Aqua, Biodiversity in the Oceans, Ziggurat, Keyflower.

And that's how I died.

Perspectives, Master Data, a fake artist goes to New York, Deadly Derigables, Dorfromantik,

Ingenious Challenges, and Ingenious.

All together, 65 new games played.

I also tried out three expansions this month.

I played Exit the Game: Prison Break, another of the Exit games.

I played Monikers Classics, which is another Monikers Game.

And I played Orléans Invasion.

This one was really great.

Orléans Invasion is the co-op module of the Orléans expansions.

And basically as players, you are trying to accomplish a bunch of different things before

the invading forces of the Mongols or the Picts or whoever.

I think it's the Picts show up.

And if you do that together, you win.

I played with my buddy Paul and we managed to succeed in the second to last turn that we

possibly could.

So that was pretty cool.

Actually, I think we succeeded on the last turn, but it wasn't until the second last turn

that we were sure we were going to be able to.

So that was pretty fun.

That was Orléans Invasion, which brings me to 15 new expansions tried this year.

Next up, we have Out of the Dust plays.

Out of the Dust is a categorization of a game where you have played this game before, but

you haven't played it for more than a year, hence it's gotten sort of metaphorically dusty.

Or if it's during your own collection, literally dusty.

So the idea is if you play a game that you haven't played more than year, you dust it off

and it goes on the Out of the Dust list.

There is a board game geek list that people post to of their own Out of the Dust plays

each month.

It's maintained by an and journey and it's pretty great.

So you should check that out if there's something you keep track of.

So before this month, I had played 36.

I brought 36 games out of the Dust or an average of three a month, like one though.

It's month eight, month seven, so 36 divided by seven, it's like five to six.

Yeah, it's like five.

So on average, I'm bringing out five a month.

I did bet it in that this month, I brought out, oh, I guess five.

I brought out Power Grid, Scotland Yard, Rear Window, Scythe, which I played on board game

arena and Carpe Diem, which I played on Yukata.

Side, oh, Power Grid is the biggest gap of five years, one month, 27 days.

And after that, Scythe with four years, three months, 14 days.

So lots of different, lots of distance in some of those plays.

It's great.

I did have notable plays noted this month.

Dorfromantik was a really fun co-op game that we played with my in-laws.

And I think we're going to kind of save it to play with the in-laws.

It's going to be something we'll generally play just with them.

And then I think Fake Artist Goes to New York.

Is the game I've heard about a lot, but I've never actually played, so it was fun to get

that to the table.

My 10 for 10 progress.

I did move a couple more categories toward 10 escape room games by playing exit the

game, the prison break.

We're now at 10 in that category.

The playing Ziggurat puts us up to four stars in the alphabet, U to Z, and four numbers

category.

So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven categories that are now at 10 stars.

So we're well past 70.

Just have to get the last three up to 10 and we succeed in the 10 by 10.

I did not do any painting this month.

Boop.

I've already mentioned these games, but the games that I removed from my shelf of opportunity

list were ingenious challenges and dastardly dirigables.

Then these other games are games that I bought and played this month, Burn the Fort, Aquatica

Leaf, And That's How I Died, and Dorfromantik.

Although, And That's How I Died was a game that was given to us as a gift.

While I did buy a few games at GenCon, namely Burn the Fort and Aquatica and Freedom the

Underground Railroad and Leaf, I brought those four at GenCon.

I also picked up a number of expansions.

I got the Orléans the plague expansion, the Freedom the Underground Railroad event card

expansion, Revive Call of the Abyss, the Arc Nova Zoo map pack one, and two, a Touch of Evil,

card packs one last on an Earth card pack, the Orléans fifth player expansion, and the Orléans

trade and intrigue expansion.

I ended up buying those used from somebody who had them, but they were mixed into the base

game of Orléans as well, but the base game of Orléans is something we don't have at the

toggle game club and we really should.

So we decided to get that game for a toggle, and then I got those expansions paid for myself.

As I said, the collection size is ballooned to 605.

I acquired Burn the Fort, Aquatica, Freedom the Underground Railroad and Leaf at GenCon.

I got Forest Shuffle and that's how I died in Dorfromantik, just in purchases.

Forest Shuffle was a purchase that I got because of points.

Dorfromantik was a gift, so was, and that's how I died.

Finally I found Azul: Stained Glass of Cintra and Hamilton duel or deal at Goodwill.

And on our trip to drop my daughter off, we did stop in at one game store where we picked

up Antiquity Quest and El Grande.

Finally, I got a chance to play Ingenious Challenges, and it was fine, but not great, not something

I was super excited about.

So we decided to donate it since toggle has a copy of Ingenious, and Ingenious Challenges

is like a play on the Ingenious system.

It comes with a dice rolling version of the game and a card version of the game, but it

also comes with an alternate rule set to play with the tiles, but you can only do that if

you actually have the Ingenious base game as well.

So I donated the Ingenious Challenges game to toggle, and I put it inside the box for

Ingenious.

So now it's a secondary set of things that people could do with Ingenious.

And that reduced my collection from 606 to 605, which is where we are now.

After all, like I said, it was a good month for game playing.

It was really neat to get to try those games.

It was neat to knock two games out of my shelf opportunity and have five games that were

going to come in, but then didn't.

That means the games that were added this month were Freedom, Dual or Deal, Azul: Stained

Glass of Cintra, Antiquity Quest, and El Grande.

I'm most interested about Azul: Stained Glass of Cintra because if you go back several

years to the time that I played that, I didn't like it.

I thought it was okay, but I didn't like it that much.

I'm interested to try it again now that I'm a little older and I've played more Azul games,

but that's an interesting element of just being a collector while it isn't something

that I want to play every day or even all that often because I have regular Azul and

I have Azul, I have the Crystal Mosaic expansion for Azul and I have Azul Summer

Pavilion having Azul: Stained Glass of Cintra when I can get it for cheap feels like

a nice collection moment even if it's not a game I'm going to play very often.

It does sort of beg the question though of whether I'm going to get Azul Queens Garden

which is the heaviest of the Azul and from the stuff I've read feels a lot like Calico

in which case why not just keep Calico which I have and enjoy?

And then I'm really excited to try the two games that I picked up on our trip to visit

my daughter which leads me to the final thing we always do in the top of the sack episode

which is nominate the next top of the sack.

So for September I have picked out four games that I want to put on top of the sack.

The first is Switch & Signal this is a cooperative game that I've been trying to get played for

a while.

It's got a boring theme, train management but it's supposed to be pretty good and I would

like to give it a try.

We'll see.

Maybe I'll bust out the solo mode to get that played.

Then we have the two games that we bought on our trip El Grande which I regularly hear

is one of the best games ever made.

It's definitely up in the top ranks of the board game geek list and the new printing is very

pretty so I was excited to get it.

It's also got it's Hans and Gluck game I believe and they've got a new environmentally friendly

packaging system that's also part of Dorfromantik that I really like.

So the cards are wrapped in like wax paper rather than plastic and the game comes with

a bunch of small boxes that are flat cardboard boxes, thin cardboard boxes that are flat

and then you sort of expand them up and put them together and then that's where you put

the components.

So instead of giving you plastic bags they give you little cardboard boxes.

The game Leaf also came produced that way.

So I'm liking this shift away from plastic even if the boxes are a little weird but I

bet soon they'll be commonplace enough.

That's El Grande classic area control game and then Antiquity Quest is a small box set

collection game from Uncle Beck's games or Grandpa Beck's games and that game looks really interesting.

That company is really interesting.

This is the first game of theirs that I have but it came with a little insert explaining

that Grandpa Beck's games is like a family activity.

Grandpa Beck is the sort of lead designer of the group but a bunch of members of the family

participate.

Here's the thing I really like.

It comes with a help line information which is Grandpa Beck's email address and Grandpa Beck's

phone number and so if you want help with the game you can just call email call or text.

The email email address call the number or text it and you can just talk to Grandpa Beck

and he'll tell you how to play the game which I think is really cute.

There's also a picture of Grandpa and Grandpa Beck and their grandchildren in the game.

So looking forward to Antiquity Quest.

It looks like a pretty simple, Rummy-inspired set collection game but I think it looks fun.

Probably going to be pretty accessible for when we're playing games with people who don't

play a lot of games.

So that is Antiquity Quest and then for my shelf clearer game of the month I picked five

points, the Gangs of New York which that one's going to take a little effort to play but

I think it'd be fun and I should watch Gangs of New York first so I can pretend to be

dangled.

Well that's about it for me today thanks for joining me on my walk.

What games did you play in August?

Head over to board game geek guild 3269 and share your plays and share your play on the

September.

I'd love to hear them.

Until next time I'm Brendan and I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine lost.

Bye bye.

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