Spiel des Jahres

The nominations for the 2011 award were released on 23 May 2011. The three games nominated were

• Qwirkle - Susan McKinley Ross, Schmidt Spiele
• Asara - Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling - Ravensburger
• The Forbidden Island - Matt Leacock - Schmidt Spiele

This year, an additional category "Kennerspiel des Jahres" was also introduced for more complex games. The three nominated games for this category were

• 7 Wonders - Antoine Bauza - Repos Production
• Strasbourg - Stefan Feld - Pegasus Spiele
• Lancaster - Matthias Cramer - Queen Games

7 Wonders Expansion

The first expansion for 7 Wonders, which has proved extremely popular, selling out nationwide, will release in July.

Why Advertising?

A recent thread on the Game Store Resource Forum (if you are not familiar with it, the GSRF is hosted by Brian Guenther of Diversified Games and is  a forum for aspiring game store owners to ask questions of those already owning and/or managing game stores, hopefully to keep them from making mistakes already made multiple times) dealt with advertising, specifically what forms of advertising should he use? 

Advertising is necessary for any business to succeed. Word of mouth is great and works extremely well to reach a limited target market.  However, to get word out beyond that immediate group, you need some form of mass communication. A famous story, attributed to William J. Wrigley of the eponymous chewing gum company, tells of the time Wrigley flew back from a business meeting and was discussing his highly successful company with a companion. The conversation turned to advertising and the companion asked Wrigley, “Your company is one of the best known companies in the world.  Wrigleys’ Spearmint and Doublemint gum sell at stores throughout the company.  I can’t walk into a grocery store and not see Wrigley’s products, yet you spend millions of dollars a year advertising a product found in the pockets of every boy and girl in America.  Why?”

Wrigley thought for a moment then pointed out the window.  “For the same reason the pilot doesn’t turn off the engines once we are airborne.  Advertising is the engine that propels our sales.”

Rifts: Thundercloud Galaxy

Got in a preview copy of Rifts Dimension Book 14:  Thundercloud Galaxy by Brandon Campbell and Kevin Siembieda.  It retails for $20.95 and focuses on what the back cover refers to at the"most mysterious of the Three Galaxies" in the Rifts universe, so probably most useful for players and GMs with an intergalactic focus in their campaigns.  In 160 pages, you get 17 new alien races, 9 new alien monsters, info on the Elder Races and Gene-Tech, monster and adventure creation tables and an overview of the Thundercloud Galaxy. Not bad for 21 bucks.

Dave Trampier Alive and Well Driving a Cab

As the article notes, Dave Trampier, creator of the Wormy strip that ran in early issues of Dragon magazines, has been living here in Carbondale, driving a cab.  He has no interest in the gaming industry any more and, to my knowlege, has only been in the store once, when a company re-released Titan, a game he designed.

Free Comic Book Day/ New Pyrexia Pre-release Crossover

Just finished up with the Magic the Gathering New Pyrexia pre-release/Free Comic Book Day event.  Overall, things went pretty well. Since we are a gaming store that sells comics, our layout works very well for running the two events. We already have a large gaming space available so handling the pre-release turnout was no problem, we even had space available for a pick up Warhammer 40,000 game and a HeroClix teaching session.



Free Comic Book Day events, meanwhile, stayed at the front of the store.  We put the display of free comics as well as the raffle prize and the actress in the Wonder Woman costume there, which did cause a little trouble at the beginning, since people clustering around the display of free comics impeded traffic flow for about half an hour but the first rush soon subsided and we put Wonder Woman running the cash register for a chuckle from our customers.  We never were swamped with people coming in for free comics so were able to handle the customers with only  a small increase in regular staffing and and a 70% increase in sales over a typical Saturday.

New Pathfinder Release

Coming This Month

JBE0305

PF: Book of the River Nations

$13.99 SRP

The Book of the River Nations: Complete Player's Reference to Kingdom Building organizes all the rules players (and GMs) need to explore new lands, build nations and defend against invading armies consolidated into one easy to reference tome.

Starting with rules included in the Kingmaker Adventure Path, this volume expands every aspect of kingdom building and mass combat and delivers new feats, spells and class options to give PCs the edge in conquering and ruling their own corner of the world.

All Jon Brazer Enterprises' publications are accompanied by a free downloadable electronic version of the text as part of our PDF Guarantee.