Around the Table Game Pub

Went to the a game store up in Lynwood called Around the Table Game Pub with some friends. We've seen them a few times at conventions, such as Dragonflight GameCon and recently at OrcaCon 2025 - Day 1. Arti was interested in visiting them since they serve beer and mead. Overall, I was really impressed with their highly varied selection, three of which were high on my wishlist:

• Civolution
• SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
• Altay: Dawn of Civilization
• Minos: Dawn of the Bronze Age

Most notably, they actually had stock of Slay the Spire - The Board Game, which was something that Fergus was highly interested in when we went to PAX West last year - a game that also sold out of all copies at the convention before Friday ended. Was funny how during PAX West, apparently they got calls asking if they had stock and they had to tell them no.

I was mostly surprised with how many games we played. Before people arrived, we tried to get a game of Sea Salt & Paper played with just the two of us. I like the simplicity of the game and it is very Push Your Luck with the card draws. Having extra actions also feels really engaging. Not going to count this as a full play or review since we didn't get to finish it.

After people had arrived I opened with playing the card game Trio. It deals with memory and matching sets of 3, trying to find out where the trio of cards are to claim them as a set. We played on "spicy" rules because I felt that the group could find enjoyment in the little dash of complexity. Yeah, in some ways it's elevated Go Fish, but I think the rules add for interesting deduction, similar to say The Crew.

Unfortunately did not get pictures for the next two games. Next up was a fan favorite with our group, Green Team Wins. It's a nice and light party game where whatever is the majority answer is the winning answer. This game always leads to really fun discussion on answers and how sometimes people will play to the crowd for points even if they feel differently - which is completely in line with how the game is. Like most party game with judges it's a viable tactic to "play to the judge" sometimes with inside jokes or references, just witth Green Team Wins the judge is literally everyone else playing. The game technically can scale higher than 6, but others would need to have something to write their clues on.

Last game of the night was Century: Spice Road. I was hoping to play this one as it'd be new for most people and it's a great and simple resource conversion game and fulfilling contracts. I kind of wanted a more "gamery" game but was a little worried given playing at 5 would take a while. But overall, it felt like the teach went over smoothly, and it is a fairly straightforward game to understand and play. I even included the Century: Golden Deals expansion, since I'm such a fan of transparent cards.

Apparently, reading the rules online, we played the expansion wrong. I thought that the extra action on the bottom was permanent, but based on the rules explaination on the BGG forums they're meant to be one time use only. 🤷

At one point, I legitimately felt like Century: Spice Road didn't need to be in my collection for many various reasons: that it was too simple, that I have better engine builders, and more. Now, while some of this applies to some games (looking at you Splendor), I changed my tune on Century: Spice Road because of the expansion - look, I am that much of a sucker for transparent cards. Plus, its nice to have something at this kind of lower complexity weight to show to people.

All in all, a nice time. I do hope to get those wishlist games at some point. But we managed to get Slay the Spire so that should be really good.