ScottVee Gaming

We made a quick stop to drop off some mail by the 7-11 near my apartment last weekend, and have some chicken at our regular spot.  When I got out of the car I immediately saw this piece of sidewalk art ... I am fascinated by how many different kinds of hopscotch boards I have seen drawn up in the last few years, but this one is easily the most creative. First, it has "follow the math problem", which is a very progressive STEM theme.  Then you hop onto 3 crayons, a notebook and two apples, ending on a "Happy School Year" finish line.   It doesn't look like it was scuffed by a lot of feet, but the art is so well done, I thought I would share the anonymous work here.  Hop hop.  It's nice to see some children motivated to get back to class. Here's another hopscotch board from the same patch of sidewalk back in May: This time it's Follow the Vines, Jump Over the Bunnies, then 1-2 flowers, 3 is some kind of box, 4 is a butterfly with "Follow the bunny...

We picked up the Deluxe Edition of 221-B Baker Street and gave it a test run.  I've known about this one for a few years now, and all the expansion packs that add 10 or 20 new cases each.  This box had 200 cases. As we played it, we got an odd vibe.  You roll dice and try to get to locations that have clues.  You read the clues from the casebooks, maybe jot down some notes, then roll dice to get back to 221-B Baker Street to give your best guess.  But ... played together as a team, the board and dice serve no real point.  It just randomizes which clue card you read next.  That's it.  We could have just stayed home, picked random clue cards and propose our solutions without rolling dice at all. I suppose this could get interesting if we wanted to compete against each other, or if there was another team playing.  As it was, we wondered why we didn't just watch the next episode of Elementary instead. I did not miss the irony that the designer's ...

We were looking forward to getting Catastrophe -- we were watching old videos of Lil' Bub, even the documentary Lil' Bub & Friends, and then got a ping from Lil' Bub's human about this new game with a tribute to Lil' Bub.  Had to have one.   The box opening was fine.  There's a gorgeous full-sized full-color booklet about famous video cats, including a whole page about Bub.  The cards had those famous cats, and other characters.  A lovely production.  They clearly loved these cats. But then, the gameplay was essentially about sending cats to their doom.  Spending their nine lives, and trying to avoid the Grim Reapurr, to be exact.  That would have been okay, pushing other cats down the tower so you can be the last cat standing.  But the action cards were almost entirely: gain/lose/steal a life unless you roll 3-6 or 4-6 or 5-6.  Sure, you can spend your yarn balls to reroll dice, which was cute, but it's hard to get more. ...

We got Zoomies a few weeks back but didn't have a chance to play it until now.  It looked simple enough, just a big stack of oversized thick dominos with fun dog art, and some little tokens. The game starts with three dominos face up in the middle of the table and each player with two dominos in hand. Basically, each round you play a domino and put a token on top.  When both players have used all their tokens (or were forced to discard them) the game is over.  Scoring is done at the end of the game.  The tokens are: - Leader: you get one point for all matching adjacent dogs in the pack - Frens: you place on one dog pointing at a different dog and those two are now friends, at the end of the game you get 2 points per pair of friends - Zoomies: you make a group of adjacent dogs with the zoomies (paw) icon, and get 1 point for a group of one, up to 15 for a group of 5. - Bones: you make a group of adjacent dogs with the Bones icon and get 2 points for each It's a bit co...

We were hoping to find a fun new game on our trip this weekend, but the ones we found were pretty ordinary.  We did bring one of our favorites, Skip Bo Junior.  It's nice to just deal out the cards and play without having to learn new tricks.  Although we always wonder if we are forced to play every card.  Sometimes, the only strategy there is is to hold back a card to not give your opponent an easy time. Anyway, kudos to the classics and favorites. We found these little gummy pizzas the next night.   Not exactly a game, just being playful. We also play Yut on the tablet a few times per week -- that simple game is still hard to beat for total Sorry-style chaos and unpredictability.

This one was a bit confusing right away: the box said Games Workshop and I got it because I like Games Workshop stuff, but the copyright said Professor Puzzle 2023. The box said it's a "rapid-fire betting game" but what's actually in the box?  There's a cute little race track, some horses that have a good feel to them, a stack of play money and some cards of decent quality.  As for the pace of the game, the main die says STAY (move 0), MOVE (move 1) and GALLOP (move 2), distributed as 0-0-1-1-1-2, and half the spaces are red making you draw a CHANCE card where half the cards send you back, and a few make you lose a turn.  So that's not going to be fast paced. Nope.  I think we started off rolling STAY three times in a row.  Whee.  Nothing happened. There is a betting aspect, which is reasonably well planned, although the default win of $150 for a 2-player game versus even a moderate bet of $100 at 15-to-1 odds means it's more about which odds cards you pic...

This looked cute, but when we popped it open the rulebook was missing.  This was a rare case where BoardGameGeek was no help.  They had only two images and no rules or messages at all.  It only took a few minutes to find someone doing a playthrough on YouTube.  They seem like a nice couple, thanks for helping out. It turns out that all you do here is spin and move.  If you land on a green space with a skull, you get a dragon token.  Land on a red ship and go back.  If the spinner lands on the white dragon you get the white dragon piece which prevents all negative effects until another player takes it away by spinning it again. That's all.  Whoever gets to the end with the most tokens wins.  There are two alternate paths where you can get more tokens.  But there are no decisions here, no actual gameplay.  The production was nice, though oddly the backside of the game board was more attractive than the front. Probably fun for kids....