ScottVee Gaming

Another theme we like to try are space-based games.  Stellarion looked good and when you first open the box the presentation is excellent. There are 8 little decks of cards.   Each card has a Type and a Galaxy.  Each Type and Galaxy has its own deck.  Each Type deck has two of each Galaxy of that Type, and each Galaxy deck has two of each Type for that Galaxy.  Even though you know exactly what is in each deck,  bringing the right cards to the top to turn in matching sets is surprisingly difficult. Each round you can either trade in a matching pair of cards (same Type) to mess with the decks or trade in a set of the four different Types for a Galaxy to launch a ship.   Eight launches wins the game. I ended up having to write up a little cheat sheet about what rack pair of cards can do.  The publisher really should have printed some cards for that, since it's a drag to have to keep the rulebook open the whole time. Of course, i...

This l looked like a cute biome building game, and that's about right.  But it was remarkably cryptic.   The objective for each of the five rounds came from a uniquely weird set of objective tiles. The goal is to build a nature reserve that fits in a 6x6 grid using tiles that each have for squares on them.  On each round you take the new tiles.  Keep one and pass the others. Then all plays play their chosen tile.  Then choose one more and pass the other.   Play that tile then play the last tile.  Figure out the score from the objective grid and move on to the next round.  There are five rounds total. Your tiles can overlap but must stay within the 6x6 area.  Translating the symbols on the objective cards, our game had points for separate green biomes, solo pandas, minimal giraffes and length of river.  The page in  the rulebook that describes all the objective es is so dense with little icons it just hurt our ...

We never get tired of trying out new games.  When we opened Deep Dive yesterday and saw all the sheets of pieces, I was worried that it might turn out to be too complicated for our quick, casual play sessions.  It turns out that there ARE a lot of pieces, but the gameplay is simple and just a bit different from anything we had seen before. All those pieces represent five different layers (depths) of the ocean, with the lower layers in darker shades of blue, and with one to five pips showing which layer each chip belongs to.  For less than three players you start by taking out all the tiles with a (+) sign on them, since those are for 4+ players only.  Then you remove some number of tiles from each depth to balance the number of players, then group up the tiles for each depth face down, and that's it for setup. Each player gets three penguins.  On your turn, one of your penguins dives in to the tiles at Layer 1.  At each level you have to option of flipping ...

"Space Puppies": They sold us on the cute box and title.  Our collection is heavily geared toward games with cats and dogs.  And space.  So yeah, Space Puppies.  The game comes with a nice mat to put the draw pile, discard pile and planet cards on.  You start with 5 cards, and then the rules tell you ... pretty much nothing.  One spot says you "play one or two cards" in your turn, the other spot says you "take one or two of the moves listed here."  The tiny rule sheet says nothing about whether you play cards face up in front of you for any reason.  It actually says to study the cards to learn what they do.  Really? Here are the rules cards, which are not that helpful.  We figured there would be a website on the box with a helpful video -- that is almost the standard these days.  But the site was non-existent. What does "add dogs to your collection mean?" You can "play action cards on an opponent" but some cards must obviously be pl...

We won a gift card to Pair a Dice at the EsCon event last weekend, so we hopped in the car and went over to check it out.  It's a few blocks from the Boomers entertainment center, easy to find behind the In-n-Out Burger just off the Emerald Drive off-ramp. Wow, what a selection they have.  From classics like Illuminati (Steve Jackson Games) to rows and rows of huge heavy boxes of modern games.  Lots of smaller card games, just what we were looking for.  They had a full line of Fluxx games, other games from the same designers (Looney Labs), a full line of Munchkin games, loads of fun to choose from. They also had a community section where you can list your own games for sale, which is a great idea.  But we will still probably be donating a bunch of mid-range games anyway.  Every attempt to get cash for them these days is just a drag on time.  At least selling at the store means no shipping charges, but it is about a 20 minute drive. There was a big back...

I was not looking for another product tie-in game so soon.  (See last post about a maze on a Cheerios box.) We regularly each Veggie Straws, thinking they're "more healthy" than potato chips.  I can't not read words that are right in front of me, so I found myself looking at the ingredients.  Mostly potato powder and potato starch, flavored/colored with some other vegetable powders.  That's fine.  That's about what we expect from snacks these days. The unexpected came when I scanned the barcode and it said sensibleportions.com.  I figured that would be some general website about what the sensible portions of foods should be.  That's where we keep overdoing it.  It would be great to find a site that lists the right portions of the foods we eat.  But it turns out "Sensible Portions" is the freaking brand name.  I assumed it would be Frito-Lay or one of the endless companies owned by them -- I never cared or thought to look at the brand....