ScottVee Gaming

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....

We tried Farm-Opoly on New Years Eve, while all kinds of explosions and noise and mayhem were going on outside.  It's really just Monopoly with different cards and renamed elements. The property cards all have funny stories or blurbs or info dumps on the backside, and some of the other cards are pretty funny, too. We went around until the first player was unable to pay a rent, then we declared the winner and got back to other things. We don't need to keep this one.  It's a perfect donation item, fun for younger players.

I did try to make a set of Rescue Mission rules for Grand Canyon Adventures.  It seemed like it would be simple: start at a space on the right side of the board, put four token (missing hikers) far away on the left side of the board, and go rescue them and bring them home.  Start with three Gear Cards, all Locations are sticky, and landing on any location gives you one Gear Card.  Helipads are non-functional, as they would make it too easy to hop across the map. I figured we should ignore Spins so it's not constantly blocked by random moves.  Unfortunately, I picked the location closest to the head of the river, so I could cruise the river across the map.  So I figure you both have to start at the same location to make it fair.  I think the Helipad at middle right is probably the best place to start.  That way, you bring the rescued person back to the helipad and imagine a trip to a hospital as your winning move. It was actually too easy without the Sp...

This was a big, heavy box with all three decks still in their original wrapping.  Even the two dice were in a little plastic slip.  It is from 2007 and appears to an official product for the Grand Canyon park, originally at GrandCanyonGame.com but the site is long gone. It has a BIG heavy game board with a gorgeous detailed map of the Grand Canyon on the non-playing side.  Wow.  Absolutely no reason for it, other than to add historical detail and production value.  It was a wonderful map, but then you flip over the board and start setting up. There are Canyon Cards with obstacles to overcome, and Gear Cards that help you overcome them.  There are 10 locations to visit, each with a stack of cards.  The goal is to pick any starting location and get around the board to get a card from all 10 locations.  What makes it more interesting that a simple roll-and-move game is that you roll two dice on the river and one die on land.  And the river is on...