Community Garage Sale & Two No-Brainers

We stopped at a community garage sale in San Marcos (CA) this morning, in a big string of apartment complexes off the train tracks.  They posted a flyer on Facebook last friday, and it said "Toys & Games", so I screenshotted it.  That has become the easiest way to remember stuff these days.  On the weekends, we can look at all the stuff I clipped and see if any events are worth doing.

Driving by, it looked like just piles of clothes, but there was a little indoor community area, super hot and sweaty and crowded, with a couch piled high with games.  Most of them, we had already seen, or they were in the party game category we don't care for.  We picked up these items for a whopping $4.  So I finally have a Catan -- I kept skipping that one due to the dexterity  issue of trying to line up the little bits along those borders, not sure if Anne will want to do that.  But we have one we can tuck away for some future day.


Those two little games were surprisingly lame when we tried them out.  For Blink, you split the deck evenly, deal one card per player face up, then you just try to get rid of your cards first, matching color, number or symbol.  When I saw that it said "World's Fastest Game", I didn't expect much.  We don't do speed trials.  But this manage to be even less than we thought it would be.



After that was an even less skill-based card game called Left Center Right (LCR).  This is not even technically a game, as there are no decisions of any kind.  You just flip cards and move chips to the player on your left or right, or to a center pool.  The tiny rules did not say how many chips you start with, but did say that whoever gets rid of their chips first "wins the chips in the center pot."  Wins them how, exactly?  They are just chips not connected to any reality.



The one funny thing about Left Center Right was that Anne remembered playing it a few times many years ago, but it was a dice game.  Sure enough, the little booklet has an ad for the dice version, but I'm sure it would go down the same way, just passing chips back and forth with no actual choices to make.

It looks like the original dice version came out in 1983 and the card game in 1992.  Here is a hilarious discussion on BGG about using real money to make it worth playing.

Actually, most of the BGG forum posts for this game are snarky and funny, and make all kinds of wacky suggestions, including a strip version where you need to bring a spare set of clothes to go home in.  And one or more posters said you start with 3 chips each.

It was a nice little excursion, and we still have Chihuahua-Opoly and Code Master to try out later.

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