ScottVee Gaming

"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....

I have always been amused by the games and activities attempted on the backs of cereal boxes.  I stumbled across one last week when putting a box of Honey Nut Cheerios back in the cupboard. It's nothing special, but it's not nothing.  There have been thousands of simple mazes on these boxes over the decades.  This one uses numbers to navigate the maze, which is still pretty easy for a grownup to do, but it gives the young eaters more credit than these products normally do.  I actually had a few pauses, as I eyeballed it and found the route.  Backtracking when you hit a dead-end is a step more difficult.  It's almost easier to just start over again and make note of the area to avoid. So, kudos to Cheerios for a less-trivial-than-usual breakfast distraction. I thought about cutting out the back of the box and actually placing pieces on it, and rolling a die to make more of a game out of it, but the box had already been recycled.  And just rolling dice wo...

Just a few days after seeing Wyrmspan in Barnes & Noble and trying to explain all the offshoots and clones and add-ons of Wingspan ... and then trying to explain Wingspan itself ... I found myself at a table with three strangers actually playing the game. We were at EsCon, our local board gaming con that I had never heard about even though it has been around for 10 years.  Anne did her own thing while I sat down with Adam and Kristen and {unknown woman} and got a good introduction to the game. There are resources, cave cards, dragon cards, a player mat, a guild mat, and some other bits and bobs.  Basically, you are trying to extend the caves on your game mat from left to right, and invite dragons to each cave, then run through the cave with your little explorer meeple.  As you place a dragon card, it covers up the little stop sign that would end your exploration. You spend a coin (and sometimes eggs) to either EXCAVATE (play a cave card) or ENTICE (play a dragon card ...

Sunday was busy.  We started off at the local Kitten Adoption event at PetSmart, where we semi-volunteer semi-regularly, and we got to meet Toast, the rescue of the season.  She was found seriously burned in a homeless camp up north somewhere but after a few months of rehab and some surgeries, she's a bouncy little cat who doesn't seem to mind the remaining handicaps. After that, we went over to EsCon, which is a board gaming convention right here in Escondido, run by a guy named Steve who has a collection rumored to be 4000-5000 board games and bring a few shelves of games to the Escondido Charter School auditorium so everyone can get together and play.  Basically, pick a few games, pick a table and grab a sign saying "Players Wanted", and there's a fair chance that people will sit down and start gaming with you. I was planning to just try some new games with Anne, since the setup was just perfect for grabbing any game off the shelf and seeing how it works ... bu...