My copy of Ticket to Ride got soaked in a rainstorm and I saved it with rice and a hair dryer
I left my copy of Ticket to Ride on the back porch last Tuesday after game night and forgot about it. A storm rolled through around 2am and the box got completely soaked, about 40 cards and the whole board were wet. I panicked and almost tossed it, but my roommate said to try rice. I spread every card out on two cookie sheets, covered them in 5 pounds of rice, and let it sit for 2 days. Then I hit the board with a hair dryer on low for maybe 10 minutes. The cards are a little warped but still playable. Has anyone else brought a game back from water damage like this?
Rice works for way more than phones, which is the funny part. People only ever talk about it when a phone takes a swim, but it pulled moisture out of your cards just fine. My grandpa used to bury wet books in a bucket of rice after his basement flooded and those things came back readable. Same trick, different stuff. The hair dryer on low was smart too since high heat would have curled the board into a taco. Sounds like you got lucky twice, once with the storm missing the paper parts and once with a roommate who knew what to do.