Time Well Spent...

Chances are, if you come for a visit or dinner at the Casa del Blake, the evening will end with some game playing. While we will play the occasional game of Spades, we especially love the lesser known and much more entertaining games from companies such as Days of Wonder,and Rio Grande Games.

Why play games instead of watch a movie, play video games or sit around and talk? Games have a particular way of bringing people together. They are great for starting conversations and allow you to interact and get to know people in ways sitting in a dark room watching tv doesn't. Games bring families closer together and add an element of fun and competition.

Why the more unusual games? Scrabble remains one of our favorite games, and we do own many of the classics such as Monopoly (in its various forms), Rummikube, Uno, Skipbo, Parcheesi, and Stratego. However, the particular genre of games we prefer are much more heavily reliant on strategy and truthfully are just more fun.

Why are some of those games SO EXPENSIVE? True, many of the games we play are a little more expensive than your average game of "LIFE" found at your local WalMart. Many of these games are imported from other countries (lots of German games), use high quality materials such as wood pieces and heavy cardboard instead of plastic and thinner stuff, and are not sold in such huge quantites at national retailers. All of those add to the cost of a game, but you can get some great deals if you know where to look. Time Well Spent is our preffered spot to get games. There are numerous places to order these games online, but we typically stick with TWS because their prices are good, their customer service is great and they are a Christian-owned small business, and their values line up with ours pretty nicely. A lot of these games are available at Barnes and Noble, or even local game specialty stores (if you are lucky enough to have one.)

A lot of our friends have played a lot of our games, and this week I want to highlight a few of our favorites in a bunch of different categories. Hopefully you will find something that interests you, give you a great gift idea and maybe even start a new hobby!

I'd like to thank our good friends back in Raleigh, NC- Bert and Meg for getting us hooked on gaming. We miss them a lot and still look to them for game suggestions!

Other helpful links relating to games:
** A great place to check out games of many types is Board Game Geek. If you have a question about a game, want to see photos of the actual parts, or want to pick up replacement pieces, this is the spot to check.

** Defective Yeti is a big gamer with a blog that covers a lot of things, none of which I can be held responsible for. However, his gaming advice is usually really good and I have taken recommendations from him and been quite happy.