Let's face it. Most of the board games we play aren't items that you see on the shelves of most stores. Sure, you might go into Toys 'R Us or any number of stores and find Monopoly, Yahtzee, Life, and Candyland. But what if you want to acquire more games like Bang! or Pandemic? Where do you go for those? This is a question that was posed to me recently, and I thought it would be something good to discuss on the blog.
The simple answer to this question is: Amazon.com. Almost all of the games that we've played or bought are available on Amazon. Sometimes it's directly through them (which means free prime shipping!), and sometimes they're listed on Amazon through other sellers. Amazon usually seems to have the best prices as well.
If, however, you're looking for another place to get games, there are other options out there. Barnes and Noble has a games section, and usually has one area of "strategy" games where you'll find Settlers of Catan, Risk, and others. Last time we were there we saw Escape from Atlantis, a game that I didn't buy because I thought I could get it cheaper on Amazon (turns out it's not there - for some reason it is not really available many places right now!). I posted earlier that Target started carrying a small selection of strategy games. Another great place to look is independent shops. We've discovered a few that are dedicated almost solely to games. Although they are usually retail price (no discounts), it is nice to be helping out small businesses, especially since some of them also host gaming events and other activities. There are also plenty of websites out there besides Amazon that sell games.
I don't know where all of our games come from since we tend to get a lot of them as gifts. It seems that if someone doesn't know what to get us for a birthday or Christmas they usually go with a board game - and that's just fine with us!
What about you? Do you buy most of your games from Amazon like we do? Or are there other places you know of to get board games?
Barnes and Noble has a surprisingly good selection of games. If you're in the south Jersey area, there's a great independent game and comic shop by the name of All Things Fun that's run by some friends of friends of mine, so I also like to stop by there and support them.
ReplyDelete