ScottVee Gaming

After a two-day trip to Temecula found no worthwhile games in any thrift shops, and no game shops in the area, we hit a jackpot on the way back from a haircut in Vista today.  The Goodwill shops in Temecula had hardly any games of any kind, and a disgruntled guy explained how they "sell everything good on their website these days," but the Goodwill in Vista says otherwise. We found Chickapig (which looked like a strategic piece-moving game), Shut the Box (because we've mentioned it a few times recently), a rudimentary molecule model kit (my house feels oddly empty without one ... once every few years) and the Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game! (which qualifies as a WTF find). Then we went to Pair-a-Dice games again, because the Leggs gave me a gift certificate at my birthday party.  Of course I overdid it.  Gift certificate times 5.  These days, one of the challenges in shopping for games is trying not to buy something that's just an expansion you can't use.  There ...

A few more quick finds: We stopped at B&N last weekend with some leftover birthday gift cards and found a few small games that looked like they were worth trying.  We also made mental notes on a few larger games, only to watch videos and find they were way more complex than we wanted.  I'm not going to stand there in the store and look for reasons not to buy, or pester them with second-hand tales of sales from halfway around the country.  If I can't remember the game by the time I get home, then it didn't make much of an impression. These days, to trigger the "buy" impulse, a game needs to sound like it has a quick setup, only a few pages of rules, and hopefully some new game mechanic that hasn't been done to death, although cute cats and dogs will score big points. Anyway, we found Boop Shuffle and Diced Veggie.  Boop Shuffle was obviously a card game version of Boop, which we already reviewed and found both cute and perplexing. Diced Veggies boasted a ga...

So I had my 60th birthday, and a party was arranged ... and survived.  Mostly gift cards for Barnes & Noble, which does have games.  Here is the haul as of today: Botswana was a gift.  Splendor was actually from work, from the weird Recognition program they have where you can send points to coworkers -- I had 110 points saved up which are worth about a buck each, and this was listed for 17 points and arrived the very next day. The rest were from B&N.  It was really annoying that I didn't notice the Command of Nature one was just an expansion set to a game we don't own ... so that's useless, but it was $10 on the cheap table.  The other two look good.  Will test them out when we get a chance. I also made mental notes of some of the games that looked good, like Botany, and took some pics of what was on their discount table.  Came home and watched some videos about those, and they just seem too complicated for our current lifestyle, or require d...

I got a day of PTO for my birthday, so we drove up to Julian hoping the place wasn't so madly crowded on a Friday.  It worked.  We got there at about 10:30am and I don't think we saw even 50 people while we were there.  We weren't planning on looking for games, but they do have a way of finding us.  We always have to stop at the Toy Chest ... this time they had a few neat little games we had not seen before.  And a copy of Shut the Box which I just blogged about last night. After lunch at the Miner's Diner (really good reuben and some cream cheese pickle balls), we went into the Old Julian Garage next door.  The Garage is actually an eclectic gift shop full of mostly hot sauces and beer collector items.  They have a lot of games, but mostly smart-aleck gags and drinking games involving puns and crude language.   Still, we came home with these:  

On our trip back from Sedona to San Diego, we took some backroads to avoid crowds.  There's really no alternate route except Interstate 17, but there are some exits with small towns where unusual items might show up. We started off in Lake Montezuma.  There's a little shop next to the building that says Post Office (but hasn't been a post office in years), across from the Beaver Creek Inn.  I'm not sure it had a name, and there was such a frenzy of Halloween decoration we're not sure we'd recognize the place again.  But it said "Little Bit Of This, Little Bit of That, New $ Thrift Store" out front.  There was a surprising variety of things here, from games to books, plush animals, 3-for-$1 stickers, cards and more.  The game section caught my eye with 3 different editions of Fluxx.  There were some funny spawns of Cards Against Humanity, including Kids Aginst Maturity and Stoners Against Sanity, plus a range of small card games.  We grabbed Gloom ...

We covered the Tlaquepaque area yesterday.  Today we spent a lot of time driving and walking the main roads and back corners of Sedona.  Of course we came here for the great outdoors, but every time we tried to get near a trail it was a clog of No Parking signs, No Hiking signs, so I guess you can only get to those landmarks by shuttle these days. There were some games to be found in town, just not together in any one place. The local Goodwill had only one board game that was out of the ordinary, and it was Buffalo in a Box, a Monopoly clone for Buffalo NY that somehow ended up in Sedona -- I didn't see the name of the company that made this, but it was not one of the usual Opoly knock-offs.  Did not buy. The library book store had lots of jigsaw puzzles but no games. We did find one very unusual game at the Twice Nice Thriftique, for the Verde Valley Sanctuary, a charity for battered women in the area.  We also saw a donation table for them at a local supermarket....

We were on vacation in the Sedona area, so we went over to the Tlaquepaque Shopping complex where Google marked a toy shop for us.  Right away, we were slapped in the face with how insanely expensive most things were in these shops.  $8000 metal sculptures, $1000 paintings, $30 salads and appetizers.  No point even walking into the jewelry shops.  We're both at the point in life where we don't want "things" anymore.  So, the buildings were gorgeous, and the whole structure was a mind-blowing fun maze of little passages and narrow stairways.  But we stopped going into the shops because they made us feel poor and unwanted. We did stop at the Tlaquepaque Toy Shop on the second floor and it was like a small piece of our world, an oasis in the sea of unattainable things.  They had about 20 small board games, mostly games we already owned, like Set and What's the Point, but it was more about toys and science kits than board games.  They had an entertain...

We had some time today in between making new copies of house keys and taking Mango the Cat to the vet, and halfway between A and B was On Board Gaming .  So we stopped by to see what was new. There was a big Magic: the Gathering game going on, filling two long tables.  And a few other people were milling around.   We were amused by how many cat-themed games had appeared on the shelves compared to our last visit.  We saw Boop the Halls -- see my blog post about that series .  There was a new Cat Fluxx game -- how did it take them 20 years to think up a cat-fancy version of that one?  About eight other other cat games caught our eyes (House of Cats, etc), but most looked to be more complex or full of tiny parts than what we enjoy playing.  Not counting the Exploding Kittens or Kittens in a Blender -- what is WRONG with those people?  That's not funny. We saw a board game tie-in to the recent animated film Flow, which, if you're an animal lover ...

I ran a strategy game in my head to guess if there is any good time to drive up to Julian (CA) where it would not completely swarming with people.  Before Labor Day weekend, I had a Thursday appointment at the DMV so I took Thursday & Friday off.  In my head, I figured a friday morning would be the right time for that Julian trip. It worked out perfectly.  Half the shops didn't open until 11am, so 10 o'clock on a friday was optimal: there were barely a dozen people walking around town. There were tons of games tucked into different shops.  Julian Mercantile had a big game section upstairs and then a huge back room with some really fun themed booths with even more games.   After lunch we went to the actual game shop next door: Julian's Toy Shop.  This had a big selection of classic board games, card games, puzzles and toys.  We already owned almost every one of these games, at least some version of them.  The only thing I could find that I...

I took a day of PTO as the job I've had for the last 4 years is finally transitioning over to Cardinal Health, the company who bought us.  So we got a hotel room in Del Mar that turned out to be below/behind the Peruvian restaurant on the Coast Highway.  On our first quick walk we stopped at a thrift shop and found a few games for $1 to $2.  We unpacked tham and tried them out.  None of them were very good, so I guess there's a reason some things end up at these places.  Anyway, we got "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World - Path Game", the BBC Earth Animals game, and a little card game called Tapple 10. Meh.  Will look for some more tomorrow. It's tomorrow already.  We stopped at the Rancho Coastal Humane Society Thrift Shop.  Technically, it's a bit north in Cardiff By The Sea.  It's one of our favorites and usually has some good picks in the board game area.  Today, it was common stuff (Trivial Pursuit) and silly party games (Sh...

On the way home from work, I keep trying more obscure back roads to avoid traffic.  Driving through Furniture Row in San Marcos, I saw that these roads went for many blocks behind the big stores.  I googled the area and found a possible game shop (Knowhere Games and Comics), a possible dog boarding place for Dory, a huge consignment/antique shop Anne already knew about, and a cider/mead brewhouse that wasn't open yet. It turns out that Knowhere did have a good assortment of games.  There were shelves of D&D books and other RPGs.  There was a reasonable selection of  about 100 different board games, but mostly not our style.  Then there was a big back room setup for D&D and Magic the Gathering games and tournaments.  Along the back wall was a shelf packed with games.  See here: Players are welcome to come over if there's no big game event going on, and try out those games.  That sounds great, since buying so many games only to have abo...

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...

Our home town is Esondido, CA ... and we have a lot of thrift stores.  Last weekend we were surprised to find that the Goodwill next to the post office has no game section at all.   Today we stopped at Deborah's Consignment Shop while Toyota was working on my car.  I didn't expect anything since it's almost all clothes and furniture, but there was a shelf way in the back that had a few games.  It was an odd selection of games, with Monopoly Empire (never heard of it but I have not liked any of the official Monopoly offshoots), a Christian Study Game, classic Scrabble and one other obscure title.   I ended up getting the Grand Canyon Adventure and Farm-Opoly.  The Grand Canyon game was a heavy box, and just sounded good.  Farm-Opoly was NOT made by the companies that have been pumping out Monopoly games skinned for every TV and movies franchise in the last decade, so I figured it was worth seeing what odd things it threw in there.  $12 each was a b...

Someone on Facebook blurbed that Barnes & Noble was having a nationwide 30% sale on all games.  So we stopped by to check it out, and yes, it was a thing.  So I found an armload for $100.  Two different clerks asked me if I wanted a bag for that pile, and each time I said, "No, stacking them so they don't fall is a game of its own." Here's a shot of what we found.   We like to grab a few from the grown-up section and then look at the kids section for clever little games.  We also saw Risk: Dune Edition, but with the thousands of custom games on Warzone, I didn't need it.  There were the expensive, complex games with Wingspan having all kinds of spin-offs and expansions now (Wyrmspan and such).  But if the setup takes more time than we've got to play the whole game, we have to skip it.  Others have gorgeous art but look like too much bookkeeping. I don't know what kind of discount program we signed up for at checkout.  There was a game wit...

We headed up to Ramona today to see some live music at a winery at 2PM.  We were early enough (thanks to the extra hour from setting our clocks back) that we had a chance to look into a few antique shops and thrift shops. At the Ramona Food and Clothes Closet, there was a surprisingly long shelf of board games, about 8 feet long down at ankle level.  We almost didn't do inside at all, since it "food and clothes" didn't sound like the right place for what we were looking for.  And we saw no food items. But they did have games.  It was mostly kid stuff and trivial pursuit packs, even a big box game of trivia about wine, and a few Bible learning games (no thanks).  But we did find some keepers: Box One was the big game put out by Neil Patrick Harris a few years ago.   Blokus looks like a tetris game where you try to block each other on an actual board. Utter Nonsense might be fun, and there were some card game for $2: Low Down, Skipbo Junior and Bold. We ...

On a trip to Mission Valley and Mission Beach, we randomly stopped at the Fashion Valley Mall for some food options, and came across a colorful toy/game shop called Geppetto's.  It had a big selection of games, toys, activity books and overall fun, playful things.  The games were mostly casual classics and party games, no really heavy boxes or Wingspan, just quick basic games and puzzles, from Bananagram to Monopoly. Comically, two days later we would be in Old Town San Diego, where there was another Geppetto's to visit.  It turns out this was the original shop, and the woman who worked there said they now had 9 locations. Here is their website. I'm sure I have run into them before, after all, the website says they've been "San Diego's Toy Tradition for Over 40 Years!"  Although, none of their locations are in places we visit regularly. The nearest store is in Carlsbad, so I am making a mental note to go check them out (again) soon.  Probably next payday ....

We were on a weekend away from home.  What we like to do is get away to a town 50-100 miles away, get a hotel room as a base of operations, and explore the thrift shops and game shops in the area to see what odd games we can find. We were not expected a downpour lasting hours, but we went out anyway.  I picked Orange CA for this weekend expedition.  I covered the Tiddywinks game shop in my previous post.  Today (Sunday) we went over to Tustin Ave and found nothing at the first thrift shop, but there was a good wall of games at the Orange Lutheran Thrift Shop. We found these: Monopoly Cats vs Dogs, CSI Miami, Sherlock Holmes puzzle game, and The Inventors. Then we got to the Salvation Army shop in the very next strip mall and got doused again, but they had an even bigger game section.  Most of what you find at these places are very common, very generic games like Life, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit ... bleah.  The trick is to find the unusual ones.  We came...

Tiddlywinks, Orange CA We stopped at a game shop in Orange CA today, named Tiddlywinks.  There was a sign out front about how they are open again -- it sounds like they just moved from a few doors away.  Their website is https://www.tiddlywinksoc.com  They had a fun variety of board games, a lot of toys and dolls, a stand of Little Golden Books (remember the Pokey Little Puppy), gags, novelty items, a back room of books for kids, and a lot of odds & ends.  It was a fun spot.  Interesting to see how every customer (whatever age) has some set of memories about these items.  Gaming is very much a part of our collective psyche. After about half an hour of comparing games, I ended up buying these: Set, Monopoly Card Game (different from the Monopoly card game we put in our own donation box recently), Niya, Toil & Trouble, Last Letter and "We Didn't Playtest This At All" -- I have no idea what that last one is, but it looked like blank cards full of smart...

We stopped at a grocery store last night (Dec 17) and saw quite a line-up of board games right up front.  It really stopped us in our tracks, built from the floor up to eye-level.  Very distracting.  Games for the holidays, I suppose.  It was nice seeing them put out so carefully as a suggestion of things to do with the family.   Of course there was Monopoly, Sorry, Trouble and Scrabble, but also Connect 4, Wordle, Life, some little jigsaw puzzle stocking stuffers.  Plus Hungry Hungry Hippos and even a Robo Turtle.  They sure packed a lot into that prime retail space between the pies and soda.

Staples (a major retail chain that we generally think of for office supplies) had a big new section for board games when we stopped for some padded envelopes in November.     They had an interesting mix of games, though the games blend right in to the educational stuff for kids.  So the section has flash cards at eye level and a variety of science kits mixed in. The games are sprinkled throughout, running from the standards like Clue and Monopoly and Jenga to Jumanji.  I even spotted Cat Crimes, which is the game that kicked off this blog series a few years ago.  It's a really odd selection.