New West’s board game scene alive and well

There seems to be quite the appetite for gaming in New Westminster, with the city home to three incredible tabletop game-related shops: Rain City Games, T&N Games, and Pizzeria Ludica. All three owners were inspired by a love of games, and sharing that love with the wider community. All three also love making space for people to try new games, whether it’s a quick card game or something that might take an hour or two to play.

“We’ve been open for 11 years. We opened primarily as a Magic: The Gathering store,” explains Ted Yee, who owns T&N Games in Uptown New Westminster. “That’s kind of always been our primary business, we brought in other product lines, and it’s balanced out a bit more.” Yee believes about 30% of the store’s current revenue comes from Magic: The Gathering. For the most part, Yee says people come in to try a new game because someone they know got them hooked onto a new game – or they want to branch out from Monopoly.

For Rain City games, it was all about taking a chance and rolling the dice on a city that looked to be a good fit for games. “We definitely ended up winging it because we opened a few months before COVID started,” says Andrea Robertson. Robertson says the previous owners of the River Market had seen their Vancouver location, and thought that a Rain City location would be a good fit. While COVID modified some of those plans – the store had to close for a little bit, and was, at one point, a shop-by-appointment-only location – Robertson says they managed to weather the storm.

“Once we got things back up and running, folks started coming back out cautiously, and grabbing puzzles and board games and everything to keep themselves from going stir crazy back home,” explains Robertson.

“Board games are the single most universal activity in all of humankind,” Darryl Boone, owner of Pizzeria Ludica says in an email to New West Anchor. “Every culture has them, going back centuries.” When people come in to play at Ludica, you can also throw in the experience of pizza, which makes for a very unique and united event for diners.”

But why would people want to play a game while having a slice or two of pizza?

“Perhaps it’s the mental connection of a shared experience: We're all playing this game together, and we're all sharing the same pizzas.’ ” Boone believes that’s part of the reason why the model at Ludica works. He believes board games work with most types of food, and that it’d be cool to see at least a small collection of board games for other patrons to enjoy.

Rain City Games and T&N are both looking forward to welcoming back more people for gaming events. While Rain City has started to do so, T&N is still taking a bit of time to make that happen. T&N also sells comics, and is looking at some other options to keep people busy.

“There’s this one called uGears, they’re mechanical models. They’re just laser cut wood models, and they’re all powered with rubber bands,” notes Yee. “The models vary greatly in difficulty levels: they have ones for little kids that are six or seven pieces. Then, super complicated ones that take three hours, but the instructions are fantastic.”

“We are doing a couple of special events over the summer. June 25 is Free RPG Day, so if people are interested in learning about role-playing games, indie role-playing games…we’ll have little excerpts and snippets of a whole bunch of RPGs that people can come and pick up at our New West location,” says Robertson.

What do people in New West like to play?

• “Timeline is a card game in which you're trying to place your cards (historical events and inventions) correctly in a timeline without knowing their exact year. Ghost Blitz is a simple but tricky speed-reaction game. And Cockroach Poker is a lying/bluffing game that's as simple as it comes but always makes for some great laughs. All three are very easy to learn and consistently make for great first-time experiences.” — Darryl Boone, Ludica

• “We’ve had so many requests for Magic: The Gathering games that we started up [our in-store game events] a few weeks ago.” — Andrea Robertson, Rain City Games

• “Usually the cheap and easy board games without a big learning curve that are relatively on the less expensive side, like things in the $20 to $40 range.” — Ted Yee, T&N Games

What tabletop games do you recommend people try?

• "Three of my favourites that I keep at our New Westminster location, so I can recommend and teach to people, are Ave Caesar, The Downfall of Pompeii, and The Rose King." — Darryl Boone, Ludica

• "If you want to keep it family friendly, Code Names is really popular right now. It's a word association communication game and it's very accessible, very quick to learn." — Andrea Robertson, Rain City Games

• "Right now a game I really like and is super easy – but it's also because I can entertain my daughter with it – it's called Kluster. It's just a bunch of magnets and you have a string in a circle, then you put magnets in. The idea is not to have [the magnets] go together." — Ted Yee, T&N Games