playing with the queen of hearts

I found a new store today!!  You'd think I'd have previously discovered a games store that I walk past roughly once a week, but no.  I was utterly unaware of its existence until this afternoon when I asked a coworker where that handy set of "The Art of Conversation" cards had come from.  Turns out they were from just up the road.  Literally.  Like three blocks away.  There was this whole store full of all my favorite games (except Perquackey) just waiting to be discovered.

I will say games, like books, are exceptionally overpriced in Australian, but I suppose if you think of $50 of a game as being divided out between all the players on all the occasions when they'll play it, it's really not that bad.  Of course when it's just you coughing it up at once (and really there are about six games you feel all qualify as "essential") it feels a bit much.

So I resorted to my standard plan of falling back and regrouping without buying anything, which is really the only one the bank feels entirely comfortable with as well.  What I did manage to do, though, was to make a list of the primary factors one needs to consider when purchasing a game.  Namely:

• Will my friends actually play it?  (Helpfully supplied by the friendly salesman.)
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• Can I actually make it at home myself?  (Scattegories, much as I love it, really seems to fall into this category.  It's the great debate of "will I actually play it more if I shell out for the game instead of pilfering lists of categories off the internet?"  Things in a Box fits here, as does Clue(do), though I might add it takes considerably more work to make than Scattegories.  Yes, I would know.  Yes, I made three copies.  No, you may not borrow them, they took way too much time for the likes of you to muck about with them!)
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• Will the outrageously priced game run out of cards (i.e., become unplayable because everyone remembers all the answers) in a short period of time?  (Dumbass I believe it is that fits here.  Taboo can if you play it for a really, really long time, but generally then it gets a hiatus for long enough to be replayable.  Or maybe you just find a friend with a different version.  Whichever, Taboo is good.  I wholly support its purchase.)
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• Can this game fit in Katie's purse?  (As much as we love travel Scrabble tiles, we've played so much speed Scrabble we're starting to think it's time for a new option.  Obviously not all games fit into this category -- indeed, only a very select number do -- but who said only one game gets to be purchased?  Surely we can find one new one for this very niche market.)
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• Do any friends already own this game?  (Articulate, Sorts and Dumbass fit here, though whether or not said friends will remember to bring them along remains to be seen.  This presents a challenge:  one is tempted to buy Articulate, but on the off chance it does come along, then there is little point.  In my opinion, the best solution is to buy a similar game (i.e., Taboo) and use it primarily, but potentially have access to the other on occasion.
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• Is it fun?  (Obviously some games are out.  This may make me unpopular, but I'm really not a fan of Balderdash.  Settlers of Catan just doesn't do it for me.  Neither does chess, though I was highly impressed by an Australian animal game of chess, which was just plain adorable.)

In conclusion, I've thought things through and narrowed down my favorite contenders to Apples to Apples (tried and oh-so-true!), Killer Bunnies (you've never played it?  you've got to) and Taboo (surprise, surprise).  I'd also really like those Art of Conversation cards (bonus point!  I can use them at work!), but was nearly equally tempted by the literary conversation cards and the travel conversation cards.  Really, I just liked looking at everything and going "oh!  yes, that one is fun!" and "wow, it's been ages since I've played that" and "hey, I really am rather well versed in games, aren't I?"  There were decks of cards, too, which just made me happy to look through.  All in all, it was a lovely little trip -- game over.