Vienna's Boardgame Shops
Another trip and another visit to the local game stores. While in Vienna, we decided to check out the local game stores to see if they had any interesting/fun/new games. We seem to have developed a tradition now wherever we travel — picking up at least 1 new game as a little souvenir. This trip was no different!
First on our gaming tour was:
Damage Unlimited Games Center
The store was easily found just off the main high-street and is packed FULL of every kind of board, card or roleplaying game you can think of. There were several rooms each dedicated to a different aspect of the gaming hobby like a wargame room, a trading/collectible card section, roleplaying books and even a LARP (Live action role playing) costume section! Obviously I went straight to the boardgames…
As always, I was umm-ing and ahh-ing forever about what game I would like until Vanessa suddenly grabbed one of the shelf and said, “We’re getting this!”
It was a game called ‘Patchwork‘.
It’s a 2 player game about making a patchwork quilt. And I love it. It’s honestly one of the best games I’ve played in a long time, regardless of weird theme! The game is designed by Uwe Rosenberg who also made another of our favourite games, Bohnanza. There will be a write-up about Patchwork in the near future so watch this space for more information!
The next stop on our board gaming geeky tour was:
Planet Harry
Planet Harry was located, very conveniently, around 10 minutes down the same high street from Ultimate Damage Game Center. It’s a much smaller store with barely any form of web presence but after walking in there, it’s clear that 1. it definitely doesn’t need any help with promotion as the place was super busy and 2. they have so much stock that it’s pretty much impossible to keep track of all their inventory!
The games here were stacked as high as the ceiling with a surprisingly different selection than the previous store. Planet Harry seems to focus on stocking the latest releases in great abundance. There were several games that I have been drooling over for a long time, that have not even been released in Germany or England yet, and it was very hard to not just throw my credit card at the cashier and walk out with a stack of games taller than myself.
Luckily, while I was too busy drooling, Vanessa was looking around the store and found yet another incredible game that I missed. It’s small, portable, and has the greatest name/theme of a game I have seen yet… Five Cucumbers! The game is very simple to play but great fun. It’s a trick-taking game similar to Hearts or Wizard and you are trying NOT to win the very last trick of a round. If you do, you take a certain number of cute little wooden tokens shaped like cucumbers and if you take over 5 of them… you lose! We played several games in the evening and were laughing out loud every time anyone took some of that dastardly fruit!
Anyways, that’s about it for a board gaming tour. If you are in Vienna, I would definitely recommend checking out both places. There’s plenty of difference between both stores but both are equally well stocked with games and fun things to discover!
Damage Unlimited Games Center: Theobaldgasse 20, 1060 Wien, Austria
Planet Harry: Otto-Bauer-Gasse 19, 1060 Wien, Austria