Untitled - October 2, 2025

00:00:00 Speaker: Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast, where I pick up my audio recorder as I head out for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, greetings listeners, I had all set myself up to record the top of the stack episode yesterday on October first, and then I left my recorder in my backpack or in on my desk instead of in my backpack. So no recording an episode yesterday. I'm just about to head out to a conference, but I have a little time this morning to squeeze in an episode recording, and I didn't want to wait until October fifth or something. Gross. So time for top of the stack. For those of you new to the podcast, top of the stack is a monthly episode and a monthly format in which we talk about what games I played last month and what games I'm planning to play next month. It's full of stats and lists, and hopefully you will enjoy it because I do. So to start off this month I played sixty one plays of forty different games. This includes my online plays. I do log my plays on board game, arena and yukata. So this sixty one plays does include plays on online forums for the year. That brings me to a total of six hundred and forty two plays of two hundred and seventy two different games. Feeling pretty good about that. My shelf of opportunity is the list of games that I own that I haven't played. My goal is always to make that list smaller, but generally I hover around the same point. Often I'm acquiring games from. I don't buy very many of them at full retail, but I acquire games at about the same rate I play them, so it's hard to get that list down. That said, I did drop the list by two this month from seventy seven down to seventy five, so making progress there. My overall collection size went up by four, so that's more impressive. Maybe that I reduced this, reduced my shelf of opportunity by two despite going up by four. So I went from six hundred and fifteen to six hundred and nineteen games. My most played game on the table was regicide with ten plays, and my most played game online was the Great Zimbabwe with three plays. Still haven't won one yet, but getting closer. My top of the stack, which is a sort of metaphorical list of the games I want to get played this month. I always pick four games and my goal is to play three of them. Um, my top of the stack. This month I had Salt Fjord, fallen Angel, the mirroring of Mary King, and Dungeon Pets, and I'm afraid I only played one of those salt fjord and just by the nick of my teeth, right. Or the skin of my teeth. I think I played it on the twenty third. So toward the end of the month, I'm not really sure why the other ones haven't gotten played. I guess willpower is one of them. Uh, I'm also in the situation where most of the games on my top of the stack aren't games that my family wants to play, which means I have to play them outside the house, which makes it harder to do so. I did have five new games that I tried this month. These were this was Nice Buns Up and Down, Tree Society, Salt Fjord, and collapsible D the final minutes of the Titanic. That brings me to about one hundred and six new games tried this year. I did try three expansions this month. None of these expansions I owned. Rather, they were brought out by a friend when we played Disney. Villainous. We tried the despicable plots. The evil comes prepared and the wicked to the core expansions, because we were using characters from each of those. So I didn't I haven't tried the whole thing of each of those expansions, of course, but I have played in games where they were in play, so I count it. It was a great month for dusting off games. As a reminder, a game gets dusty when it's been a year or more since you've played it, and I have a bunch that it's been a year or more since I played this this month. The Dustiest game was Red Dragon in at ten years, seven months and twenty three days. Dusty. That represents kind of an event horizon in information. I started regularly logging plays somewhere around twenty twenty or twenty fifteen. And so to be able to attribute to the day the last time I played a game and it was more than ten years ago represents a game that I certainly logged within the first six months or year of my game logging. So that's kind of fun to see something go that far back. Uh, the other games that I dusted off were dead man's draw one year, eight months, eight days, dusty flame craft two years, five months, six days. Dusty. That game feels too new to be. Two years dusty. But there it is. Uh, mountains of madness. Six years, eight months, twelve days. Dusty apiary one year, nine months, twenty six days. Dusty red Dragon in ten years, seven months, twenty three days. Dusty monster baby rescue three years, nine months, twenty days. Dusty. World's fair eighteen ninety three seven years, three months, twenty eight days. Dusty. That's when I got to pull off the shelf of opportunity as well. Fill or bust? Five years, four months, twenty five days. Dusty and peruto. Two years, twenty three days dusty. It occurs to me that regicide was not listed in my first plays this month, but I definitely played it this month. Checking my BGC BG stats app here to see when was the first time I played regicide. I did get ten plays of it this month, so um, certainly my first play was September fourth. Oh, so regicide should have been in my list of new games played. So I actually have one hundred and seven new games played because regicide is one of those. Okay, great. I did not get any of my top fifty games played. Actually, that's I mean, if you count online plays, I played several of them, but I don't count online plays for this stat, so I did not do that. Uh, I did not get any painting done this month, which is kind of a bummer. I really do like painting, but finding time to do it is tricky. So while I'm making good progress, I still have a long way to go. As you know, I do a ten for ten each year, and this year my ten for ten is ten. Different challenges of various kinds of complications. The ten challenges I have are as follows. Playing a game with each different box. Cover color. I haven't played red or violet or red or indigo yet. Indigo or violet? Indigo I think. So I've done eight of those ten. Uh, playing two games from two two games that take place on each of five continents. I've played five games this month. I did play Mountains of Madness, which takes place in Antarctica, and Let's Go Japan, which takes place in Asia. I have not played, so I'm missing, uh, five of those. Of course, if you're in your head saying, wait a second, Brendan, there's seven continents. I don't count North America and Europe as continents to try to play games where they take place, because there are lots of games that take place on those continents. Playing games I, I have fully resolved the category of playing games having to do with magic. I've played seven out of ten mystery games, none new. This month. I completed my five times on the table category, so when I say it's a ten for ten, it's actually a little misleading because one category of ten actually counts fifty plays in it. So it's kind of a ten for for ten for there's one hundred and forty plays documented in this, uh, ten or maybe a little fewer, because my rule for the five times on the table category is that plays documented elsewhere still count. So for example, if when I played regicide, I counted it as the R game. I could also count that play of regicide toward the five times on the table category. But like when I played Mountains of Madness, if I only played it once. I could not count the mountains of madness play toward both the M and the Antarctica category. So the only category where I'm allowed to double dip is the five times on the table. That said, I now have ten games I've played five times on the table. The last one was Las Vegas, and then ironically, within the month I played regicide ten times as well. So so actually could could have used regicide as my eleventh game that I played five times on the table, but I didn't. I don't need to do that. Uh, next up we have trying to play games that I had on my shelf of opportunity from twenty twenty one and onward. I played, I've played for and I did not get any played this month. That one is going to be really hard to play. I'm going to have to do two a month in October, November and December to get that done. I'm doing better at games that have been on my shelf of opportunity since twenty twenty four. I've played eight out of those ten, so I need to do two in the next three months, the alphabet games I have for letters A through J. I've played eight of those I don't remember off the top of my head which two letters I'm missing for K through T, I have played all ten of those, and for U through Z plus four numbers, I've played six of them. The way the numbers work is if the game starts with numbers, it counts and the game starts with one digit counts, a game starts with two digits counts, and so on up to four digits. It has to start with the number, and it can't be the one I played last year. So like seven wonders I couldn't use for the single digit game because I played seven wonders last year, so I'm still working on that. That one's the hardest. I've got four more to do in that section of the alphabet, so my shelf of opportunity, as I mentioned, went from seventy seven to seventy six. This month I made progress. Huzzah! Uh, I had two games that I acquired and played this month. This was Tree Society and Collapsible D. wait a second. Oh, yeah. Those are both listed in my new place. Okay, I added two games to the shelf that I did not play. A friend found a used copy of Game of Thrones, and he already had a copy, so he gave that to me. I don't know when I'm going to get that one played. That's going to be a challenge, but I'm glad to have it. It's one of those games that if I ever feel like playing it and, you know, having it is nice. I also received perseverance castaway Chronicles episodes three and four that fulfilled from Kickstarter, and so I am pleased to be using that as our, uh, to have that as well. I finally have that arrived, but that was added to my shelf. I haven't played it yet. And then I did have three games that were on the shelf that got removed this month because I played them. This was regicide, World's Fair eighteen ninety three, and Salt Fjord. Now, World's Fair eighteen ninety three was a dusted off game because I had played it before, but the copy on my shelf I got after I played that and generally my rule is if I acquire a game, I have to play it again for it to be removed from my shelf. I don't require that I play my copy though, which is maybe funny because if I'm not going to play my copy, why have it? That that argument may go for a Game of Thrones, honestly, but we'll see. And I did not cull any to remove games from my shelf this month. My expansion shelf moved a little bit as well. I acquired the Perseverance Chronicles expansion, which allows you to make a single four episode game where you're moving from game to game to game to game, and you're carrying things forward, making the making the Perseverance Castaway Chronicles into a kind of story, which, of course, I definitely want to do. Which brings my unplayed expansions from eighty five up to eighty six. My collection size started at six hundred and fifteen this month, and it's all been acquisitions. I acquired Tree Society, collapsible D, Build a Game of Thrones and perseverance. Castaway Chronicles episodes three and four, so that's four games acquired added to the collection. No games removed. So finally, the games that I'm going to play next month, it's going to be it's October spooky season. So I looked through and picked out games that feel like they fit spooky season. And my four games are beast, which I picked up in Colorado in July, which is the game. It's a one versus many game about hunting a mythical beast panic station, which is a very old game about intrigue and suspicion. It's based on the thing. It's inspired by the thing you. It's an Arctic station where some sort of virus has gotten out and people are infected or not, and your goal is to not be infected. Frankly, it doesn't have a great review, but I like the theme enough that I've always wanted to play it. I acquired it early on in a trade, and I want to play it before I get rid of it. So it's been there for a long time. So that's Panic Station seems like a good October game. We have the mirroring of Mary King. This is been on my list for the last three months because I acquired it at GenCon, and I really want to play it. I just haven't found the time yet. And then finally, The Hunger is a top fifty game for me. It's about vampires running around, so it's definitely apt for spooky season. And why not play it during spooky season, I ask you. So there we are with that. So a really fun month of games to play. Top game tried this month is going to be Salt Fjord for me. I really liked the combo tastic nature of it. I will talk about that in a board game espresso episode coming soon. I'm a little bummed I didn't get any time to do any painting. Hopefully that will open up as we go along, but I find that I am pretty stuck in terms of how much time I have for that sort of thing. Not much is the answer. Overall, it's been a fun year and I'm looking forward to the last three months of it. Really focusing on getting that ten for ten played. Uh, getting that ten for ten whittled down. I've got a bunch of games to try in that time. Well, that's about it for me today. If you have been playing games in September, I would love to hear what you're playing. Uh, I see that regular listener and forum participant John has already started the thread for October. Well done John. Thank you. I am going to post something on there after I publish this episode. If you have made plans for what you're playing and have made some progress on them or not, head on over to BoardGameGeek Guild three two six nine the Pickup and Delivery Guild where we can hear about what you've been working on. We would love to know if you want to reach out to me directly. I'm over on BoardGameGeek as username wombat nine twenty nine can send me a direct message there. You could also email me Brendon at rattlebox games.com or reach out on Board Game Arena where I really like playing asynchronous games. Hey, do you want to play an asynchronous game with me? Head on over there. I want to play one with you. Awesome. Well, that's about it for me today. I want to say thank you for listening, and I hope that you have an excellent month of gaming as we roll into the spookiest month of months, October. Thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope that your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. Bye bye. Brought to you by Rattlebox. Games.