Out Shopping at Pair a Dice, Vista CA

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 room with several games going on, and probably a full schedule of Magic the Gathering and D&D games each week.

Anyway, we found an eclectic bunch of smaller games, including a Dog Park expansion with 29 new dog cards.  What an obscure and unexpected find.  Here's a shot of the goods. 

 


The gift card turned out to be $25 as expected, so the whole pile was $119.  Yeah, these things are expensive, where even a medium deck of cards is about $10.  But we spend more than that on supposedly free app games that nag us into doing micropayments for things we can never actually touch.  Playing real, physical games is also good for getting my eyes off the screens.  Good for the non-stop eye strain.

This is definitely a shop we will be going back to.  Easily the best selection of games for moderate to serious gamers we've seen anywhere.  Not just stacks of Monopoly like other places.  There were big-time titles here that you can dedicate lifetimes to playing.  Cheers.


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