Saturday, April 29, 2017

Happy International Tabletop Day

I didn't know there was such a thing as International Tabletop Day until one of my gaming friends told me about it. That made me understand why there were some tabletop game-related activities over several days leading to April 29 (and no, I'm not counting the game night in Ascott that I organized). First, Amazon had a one-day board game sale on April 24. I decided not to purchase anything from there since I was more focused on another sale that week: the Annapolis branch of Gaming Library would have its Summertime Warehouse Sale on April 26 and 27 and I decided I wanted to check that out.



This sale started at 10 AM and while I had wanted to be there when it started, I woke up late and got there at 11:30 AM. By the time I arrived, the place was packed and a lot of games, especially the popular ones, were gone. I had a list of games I wanted to get but only three of them were on the shelves when I got there. The way that the sale worked was that if you get any two items, you get 10% off. Get any three items for 20% off, any four for 30% off, and any five or more items for 40%. At that point, I had only three items in my pile so I had the brilliant idea to message my boardgaming friends to ask if any of them wanted me to get anything for them while I was there. Very quickly, my concern that I wouldn't be able to get five items to get me 40% discount was gone. In the end, I went home with a total of 14 games. Wow! Note that only five of those fourteen games were for me. :) It also occurred to me immediately after my shopping spree that 14 games are very, very heavy LOL. I got my exercise for that day as I carried all those games to my car that was parked quite some distance away. :)

My Gaming Library haul during their Summertime Warehouse Sale

My games include three planned purchases - Dungeon Petz, Tem-Purr-A, and Blueprints - and two unplanned ones. The first unplanned purchase was an extra copy of Tem-Purr-A which I decided to get since it was quite cheap and I thought I could use it as a gift for someone later in the year. The other unplanned game I got was Food Chain Magnate. I got "sales-talked" into it by three different customers. The first was someone who was getting a copy himself who explained to me how good this game was, the second was someone who saw me looking at that game and said that I should get it, and the third one was someone who saw my reserved stack and mentioned that Food Chain Magnate was really good.

While I was there, one of the gaming lib folks mentioned that they were having an All Aboard 2.0 event on April 29 and 30 at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall. This event was free and open to everyone. I had a few friends who were planning to go a board game place that same Saturday so I suggested that we go to All Aboard instead. As such, my friends and I played board games in the All Aboard event on International Tabletop Day. Cool!



We ended up playing Machi Koro, Lords of Waterdeep, and three rounds of Splendor before calling it a day. We also passed by the Gaming Library store in Alter Ego on the fifth floor to buy sleeves for the Sushi Go! Party I got for her during the warehouse sale.

It's amazing how deep I have gotten into tabletop gaming. It's a bit of an expensive hobby but it is a good one to have because it requires you to think all the time, helping you sharpen your I have also made so many new and amazing friends and gaming has strengthened my friendship with people who were already good friends to begin with since I now have a lot more shared experiences with them.

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