Commander Legends Green

 Just got word that we will receive our order of Commander Legends Green this Friday. Price will be $124.99 

BattleForces

 We are getting in 10 of the Holiday Battleforces, 1 of each of the available armies. So far, we have pre-orders on :

Chaos Space Marines

Tyrannids

Tzeentch 

These were  produced to order and we had to order in lots of 4, 6 or 10. We opted for 10 to bring in one of each so if you want one please contact us quickly.

Sunday Of Black Friday weekend

 Tomorrow: Open at Noon Please wear a mask. We will happily deliver to the parking lot or in Carbondale ($50 minimum please)

New Blood Bowl releases

New Blood Angel Codex and figures

Force of Will Epic of the Dragon Lord Pre-release sets available $25 each for 1-3 $20 each for 4 or more.

Get one discount coupon envelope with 2 stamps on your Castle Card. Limit one envelope per customer per day

All bagged and boarded back issue comics, buy one get one Free.

In stock Magic Collectors boosters Buy one, get one at Half off.

Buy a copy of King of Tokyo or King of New York, get a promo item of your choice.

Weekend Specials

 Bring in 10 non-perishable food items and get a free pack of dice

Buy a copy of King of Tokyo or King of New York and get your choice of a promotional item for the game. Bring in a copy you have already purchased and get a promo card.

Magic Collector Boosters buy one, get one at half off

Regularly priced Bagged and boarded back issues, buy one get one free 

New Blood Bowl on sale

Epic of the Dragon King pre-release kits available

Get 2 stamps on a Castle Card, receive a Castle Perilous Games & Books Surprise Discount Envelope.

Black Friday Weekend

 All bagged and boarded comics are buy one get one Free

All Magic Collector boosters are Buy 1 get one at Half off

New Blood Bowl releases

Epic of the Dragon King pre-release kits for Force of Will  1-3 kits $25 each  4 or more $20 each

Get a CP Discount coupon envelope with 2 stamps on your Castle Card. Limit one envelope per day.

Thanksgiving Hours

 We will open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving day and will start giving away the Discount coupon envelopes. One per customer per day, must earn two stamps on a Castle Card to receive one

Scouting for Food

 We are a scouting for food drop off point. Drop off at least 10 non perishable items by this Sunday and get a free set of dice.

Black Friday Discount Envelopes

 The store will open from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving day. We will start giving away the Black Friday Discount envelopes while quantities last. Earn 2 stamps on a Castle Card, get an envelope containing a discount from 5 to 25% off. The catch is, the envelope is sealed and you have to open it before us at the time of purchase to take advantage of it. 

We will also have the new Blood Bowl rules, rulebook , Necromantic Horror team and Spike Journal as well as the new Force of Will set available for purchase and buy one get one free on all bagged and boarded comics from the back issue room.

Brian K Morris

 

We stock in a number of Brian K. Morris' books on the Local Artist shelf at the front of the store.

 

Illinois native, BRIAN K. MORRIS, is an independent publisher of novels and comics, a freelance author, an "award-winning" playwright, and former morticians assistant.

Brian's work blends horror and contemporary fantasy with humor and leans towards strong female characters. He's sold books on three different continents and livecasts two shows on YouTube and Facebook, Nevermind the Furthermore and Clever Title Pending.

Brian lives in Central Indiana (but keeps his ties to Southern Illinois) with his wife, no children, no pets, and too many comic books.

Tasha's Cauldron

 We have sold out of the limited edition covers of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. If you picked up one, take good care of it. Asking price for the limited cover of Xanader's Guide is $400.

Commander Legends Breakdown

 The full Commander legends goes on sale tomorrow with draft boosters, collector boosters and pre-constructed decks. Draft packs are $3.99, Collector boosters are $29.99 and pre-constructed decks are $19.99. You can read more about what comes in the set here.

Drew Tucker

 Drew Tucker, one of the original 25 artists for Magic, graduated from SIUC with a Graphic Design degree. After a couple of years, he moved to the Seattle area and , while he had done commercial work for a few years, got his first illustration commission from Wizards of the Coast for Magic. Eventually he moved back to the Carbondale area and taught art and graphic design at John A. Logan College for a number of years, until the Rauner administration when potential budget cuts caused him to find a position outside the area.

Black Friday Discount Envelopes

 Doors will open from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day and then regular hours the rest of the weekend. We have 100 Black Friday Weekend Discount Envelopes to give away. Get two stamps on a Castle Card and get a discount envelope. Only one discount envelope per customer per day and only good while the 100 we have last. Discounts range from 5% to 25% and do stack with a Preferred Customer Card.

 How much is the discount? It is a surprise. You open the envelope after we have totaled your purchase and apply the discount to the total. Envelopes opened before the purchase are void. If you make a mail purchase and request one, we will include a discount envelope while they remain in stock. Discounts are good on in-stock merchandise from Nov.26 through Dec. 31.

Tasha's Cauldron

 Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, both premium and regular covers, arrived today along with the wilderness specific D&D DM Screen. This comes with charts specifically designed for wilderness adventuring as well as separate carts and charts for the GM to use.

Game on Every Table Update

 Since we had a customer ask, yes, you can just send us money and we will select games for you to donate to the Toys for Tots program. We will take 40% off the list price of the game or toy so we had one $50 donation purchase about $90 worth of games for the program. However, if you opt for this method, you leave it up to us to select the game. If you want to make the choice you need to purchase them under the original buy one at full price, buy one at 40% off program.

Haunted Carbondale Rain House

 

I have no idea how this house acquired the name “Rain House” but Jim Justus refers to it by that name in his 2009 book Weird Egypt. The house stands at the corner of Poplar and  Oak and, back in 1982, was the property of a SIUC marketing professor by the name of Sion Raveed, who before coming to the university had been involved in some questionable international money transactions. Along with teaching at SIUC, Raveed also acquired several houses in the Poplar Street area, subdividing and renting them out to students. At the time, SIUC was still seeing high numbers of student enrolling, finally peaking at around 24,000 about 1990. This influx of students produced a concurrent demand for student housing. Many of the mobile homes parked around the city date back to this era and Raveed took full advantage of the demand, in the case of Rain House hanging curtains to divide the basement into living quarters.

Spring break of 1982 found Carbondale deserted, as students and faculty both deserted the town for other climes. Most faculty and students returned to class the Monday after break, Raveed a noticeable absence. A second day passed without Raveed showing for classes. Meanwhile, the residents of Rain House started noticing a foul odor coming from the basement. Originally thought of as a particularly vile bad of laundry left by a student that had not yet returned, the smell increased in foulness. Attempts to contact Raveed to have something done about it proved futile so a house resident finally ventured into the laundry room from whence the stench emanated. Finding a laundry bag the source of the smell, the student opened it and inside found Raveed’s body stuffed inside with over a dozen stab wounds in the chest.

Due to Raveed’s international connections, this is the only time, as far as I know, that local, state and federal authorities all investigated the same crime. Unfortunately, despite the amount of investigative power focused on the murder, the authorities did not capture a suspect until a couple of years later when Raveed’s former property manager, who had left Carbondale for Canada, confessed to his current girlfriend that he had stabbed Raveed during an argument.  Extradited to the US, he was tried and convicted.  Even Raveed’s funeral was somewhat strange as only a few members of the marketing faculty along with one lone woman attended the funeral in Pleasant Grove Memorial Park off old Highway 13. Saying she was his sister, she quickly wrapped up his affairs and left, never, as far as I know, visiting the grave or Carbondale again. If you want to visit Sion Raveed’s grave, it is located along the road in the far right corner of Pleasant Grove but be sure to stop by during daylight hours

Over the years, residents have reported the smells of both something dead and a strong cigar (Raveed was known to enjoy a good cigar). A strong breeze has been felt moving through the house and televisions have changed channels by themselves.  Lights and fans turn on and off by themselves and dogs have always been uncomfortable there. If you stop by, remember the house is private property and best viewed from the sidewalk.

A Game on Every Table

For the Game on Every Table promotion, when you buy one game, you may buy a second game at 40% off and we will donate it to Toys for Tots. This promotion will continue through December 13 and is good on every game or toy in the store.

King Of Tokyo Promo

 If you buy one of the new King of Tokyo Dark games between now and Christmas, we will have a set of promo cards and pieces for you to select from. If you buy one before the promos arrive, we will take your name and contact info and will get ahold of you when they arrive.

Commander Legends

 We are down to 2 pre-release kits, at $40 each, and 1 box of commander Legends boosters available for purchase and pickup this weekend. Remember, if you prepaid for a pre-release kit or booster box, you can pick it up after opening time on Friday.

Game Poems

 A game poem is a one page game. It could be a role playing game or some other time of game. Basically it is a little game that you can pick up, read the rules and start playing immediately with games taking 15 minutes or less. The publisher released a signed book of 24 of them at GenCon 2010. It is a interesting idea that gets play among fans of indie RPGs.

GW Releases for 11/14

 Here are the releases coming out this Saturday. Get us an order in by 9 p.m. tomorrow if you want anything on initial release

This year’s Christmas miniature is Jakkob Bugmansson XI, Brewmaster General – non other than the descendent of the most illustrious Josef Bugman!

The Shadow and Pain battle box for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, features the rival forces of Slaanesh and Morathi.

We launch the Broken Realms series with four new army box sets.

And we also launch Series 3 of the ever-popular and highly-collectible Space Marine Heroes.

This week Black Library release a host of new titles including Covens of Blood by Anna Stephens, Liane Merciel and Jamie Crisalli, the Heirs of Grimnir audiobook by David Guymer, and five new short stories.

Saturday D&D

 Since our Teen Saturday D&D group has dwindled over the months of the pandemic, we have decided to open it up to older players but keep it safe for younger players as well so no cursing or inappropriate player behavior will be tolerated.

Used RPGs

 We posted a few more out of print RPG items in the eBay store. you can see them here.

Commander Legends Pre-Orders

 Our pre-orders for Commander Legends draft booster boxes close at 6 p.m. on November 8th. After that the price will increase from the pre-order price of $129.99. You will be able to pick up your draft booster boxes on Nov. 13.

A Glut of Games

 

We really have a glut of gaming products hitting the market and really have had for the past few years. It is to the point, though, that only a web based store can offer every thing that comes out on a monthly basis and even then, stocking them all would tie up a whole lot of warehouse space, meaning that they likely receive an order, forward it on to the publisher, and then take possession of it to ship onto the customer. What brings me to this conclusion? The current issues of Meeple Monthly and Game Trade Magazine.

I did a quick count of the number of games and expansions offered in each, not counting novels and non-fiction books or miniatures figures, and came out with over 120 different items. Of course, publishers want to produce new products for their customer base and there are some customers, not many, unfortunately, who will buy everything that releases new for a game.  If we count in miniatures and books, we are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of  over 150 new items each month. That works out to about 1800 to 2000 new gaming products every year. That is a lot of products for the market to absorb. Online stores have infinite shelf and display space to display products but for the brick and mortar store, carrying that many new products on top of perennial selling products like D&D, Catan, Betray at House on the Hill, Fluxx, Dead of Winter, Munchkin, Gloom,  etc. (though some companies are considerately making the FLGS job easier by offering exclusives to chain stores such as Target, Barnes and Noble and Walgreens, meaning we don’t have to worry about stocking them, but that is a subject for another column).

So we have a lot of games that already sell on a regular basis AND we have about 1500 or so new products releasing every year, more than the market can reasonably absorb. A rule of thumb is that approximately 10% of the products released during a year will still sell 5 years for the date of release, meaning that of those 1500 products releasing this year, only roughly 150 will still be sought by customers 5 years from now.

The trick, and the job of the retailer, is to figure out what customers will want. If word of mouth starts trending on a product and we start seeing mentions of it in the mass media, such as what happened with Catan (popular among gamers in the know since the 1990s) and Cards Against Humanity, customer will come in asking for the game. The other thing really driving game sales is the TableTop effect, expanded to other media. A game appearing on TableTop or Watch It Played or getting lots of attention at GenCon creates awareness among other customers, creating positive word of mouth and driving sales.

The problem occurs when neither of these situations happens. A publisher sells a game through the channel and the distributor and retailer have to decide whether to stock it or not.   If they do and it doesn’t sell, it winds up on a distributor’s sale list or the retailer’s clearance table, which unfortunately happens way too often.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

 We expect the next D&D book Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, to arrive on Nov. 17th with two different covers. We have ordered heavily on the alternative FLGS  cover but if you want to be sure of getting one, put in a preorder.

Commander Legends Pre-orders

 We are taking pre-orders on Commander Legends through Nov. 8th. Draft booster Boxes are $129.99 and Collector Boosters are $274.99. We expect Draft Booster Boxes to arrive for pick up on Nov. 13 and Collector Boosters on Nov.20th.

Downtown Carbondale Halloween

 The Carbondale Main Street Candy Scavenger Hunt was a resounding success with some 150-200 kids running from store to store to get the candy placed on table outside of them. The staff had made up several hundred bags of treats and ran out about 3:30 in the afternoon. Happily, we at the store were also giving out candy and had bought a couple of extra bags which we gave to the Main Street staff to replenish their tables. Incidentally, the store had about 70 trick or treaters over the course of the day, starting out about 10 a.m. and petering out about 7 p.m.

Drove through downtown after 9 p.m. and only saw two groups of costumers walking around. A couple of the bars may have been having "private parties" inside as a few people were hanging around outside a few but there was no "Open" sign on.