Ok, somehow, some way, we not only made it to 10 years of me having the store, but we also managed to survive last year!!! So in August, we are gonna party like it’s… (ok..a little like it was last year, cause we are having to go back to masks indoors).
Big note…we’re gonna keep the events sized nice and small to make sure everyone has plenty of room, so sign up fast, cause these will go quickly once everyone knows they are there. If we have a lot of people who can’t get in, we’ll add more events if we possibly can.
Oh…and one more thing before we move onto the “what are we gonna do for the 10th anniversary month”. We did finally get the bigger loan (eep). But that means that we are really in need of some great people to help us do some major improvements for the store. That includes installing a serious skylight/vent in the place, a great interior design/set design person to help us make the place interesting and gorgeous, and an electrician that can handle a very confusing bit of upgrade on an ancient system. (If you know of any great electricians that also love magic, I’m willing to do some amazing bits of barter so we can make it happen.) We also are looking to do some high quality after-school programs, so we are looking for great people who can run D&D adventures for kids, and someone to potentially run a chess program. These are D20 kids we are talking about, so we are really looking for top notch folks, and we will be doing full livescan/background checks.
- Magic–Every weekend is a prerelease that we missed last year. (we have more than we can stick into only one month, but this’ll get us started. We are gonna do 13+ events, Jr. events, and events that are carefully mixed. Fun, sure…but also keeping safe. And we are gonna do giveaways for just a ton of promo cards…all winners this month.
We are gonna bring back one of our all time fav events, Two Headed Giants. This team version of Magic is perfect for buddies, couples, and parent-kid combos. It is a great way to get to share something that you (or your potential partner) loves in a very low pressure kinda way. These will be Saturdays, Starting at 3 pm. These will be with each of the “Prerelease” events till the last of the month when we do the higher cost Modern Horizons 2 events. For that THG Sat, we are gonna bring back one of our all time most popular events, Fat Pack Wars. (Each team has a member reach into the mystery box and pull out a pack that matches with a Fatpack from up to 7 years ago. We make sure the number of packs reaches 10, and they open all of those to make their two decks to play together. These could be Born of the Gods to Strixhaven…its all up to the fickle fingers of whoever pulls the pack.) (we will be bringing back single sales in the next week or so. We are also looking to start playing modern, commander, and standard as well, but those will start in a bit.)
(Oh yes…in terms of FNM…we are gonna hold on drafts until the safety settles down. In its place will be the sealed events.) - Pokemon…We are just working on getting packs in stock for the kids to buy that aren’t snapped up by the adult collectors. We will bring back the Pokemon league in a month or two when it is safe.
- D&D..we will start doing regular events again after this month, but we will do some special events for the anniversary, including a special all day event on the last Sunday of the month. This will have 4 tables of adventurers all working to an epic battle together at the end of the event. We did this once before, but it was back in 2013, so I think we are good to repeat it. 😉 We are also extremely well stocked on dice and D&D goodies that have been sitting there, waiting for people to come back in the store and find them, including full dice made of actual gemstone/semi-precious stone.
- Board games... oh my do we have a bunch of games we’ve saved up. We will have some serious quick sales on games from Cover your Assets to Gloomhaven. Keep an eye on Facebook and the D20 Twitter feed for our equivalent to Blue light specials. (if you’re a kid, ask your parents. If you are a parent and don’t get the reference, don’t tell me so I won’t have to admit my age. 😉 We will also be having a used board game mega sale, as well as a return of the mystery game loot bags.
All kidding aside, we are incredibly grateful for people having helped us make it through all this. Now we will really need your business on the regular as much as possible so we can truly survive, and pay off the loans etc that let us make it through. And it really is important to try and keep the family/friend game night as much as you can. For those of us who are fighting the battle of keeping people face to face, not face to screen, it was a tough year. But there were some cracks in families starting to see each other again, so I’m a big advocate for turning the night you toss the cel phones into a basket and play together into a regular habit.
(If you need to make room at home for more games, consider donating them to the women’s shelter or any number of the hospitals, etc.)
Warmly,