We are very lucky in our hometown of Rochester, NY. For many years, there have been at least two, if not more, FLGS in the area.
I started my resurgence into gaming at Boldo’s Armory where I first learned about Eurogames, CCG’s and a wide array of miniatures lines. My son and I (and daughter and wife, at times) spent many, many hours there playing in MTG tournaments or just learning the latest in board gaming. Boldo’s is still around today as a neighborhood hub for the gaming hobby.
At that time, there was also Crazy Egor’s which was more like a warehouse of games. That was eventually sold off and turned into Millennium Games, one of the larger stores in the Northeast. A few years ago, Sam Healey visited the store while in the area for The Gathering of Friends and did a whole video on it..
Then there’s the newest in the area that has become sort of our hometown store (because it’s only two miles from our house), Just Games. In the few years that this store has been open, they have received a number of large accolades, including being named one of Wizards of the Coasts’ top stores for Magic the Gathering and, last year, receiving the GAMA Power Retail Award for Outstanding Organized Play.
Just Games did many things during the Pandemic to keep gamers engaged in the hobby, even when they couldn’t be open to the public, including on-line RPG campaigns and miniature painting classes.
Now that everything is opened back up, they have returned to many of their regular events including, last Saturday, their biannual Board Game Swap and Sell. Karen and I attended with the idea of just seeing what was around and not expecting over 1,000 titles to be available. At that point, things went way up for our gaming collection and way down for our bank account.
Before we were done, we had purchased fourteen games, many that we had wanted for a long time and a few that just struck our fancy with us deciding to take a chance at the reduced prices.
As a matter of fact, by the time we walked out, Karen had picked out eight of the titles and I had picked out only six. My haul included the base game of Root, which I was thrilled with as I had been looking for a copy at a reasonable price, a copy of Potion Explosion, which I also felt lucky to find as just about every retailer seems to be out of it, along with Paperback, The Grimm Forest, Agricola (one of my favorite games but I had only played the app and on BGG), and My Farm Shop.
Karen’s choices were Mr. Jack, Space Explorers (the Kickstarter version with the playmat and patch), Eminent Domain (I’m not totally sure why she picked that one as it a space theme and she’s not that big on those types of games, but I wasn’t complaining), Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North, Mombasa, and her three “these look interesting, let’s take a chance” picks, Menu Masters, Guatemala Café, and Fast Flowing Forest Fellers by, of course, Friedmann Friese.
This, of course, leads to the next dilemma (outside of paying the bill)…finding the time to play all these new acquisitions.
Here’s the thing. I know we may not get to these for awhile but we couldn’t pass them up at the prices being asked and we’re both only a couple of years away from retirement, so let’s just call it an investment for the future.
