Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

 We received Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Monday and still have booster boxes and single boosters available as well as the battle boxes and Elite Trainer Kits. They did move very briskly yesterday so not sure how much longer we will have them available and The Pokemon Company has informed us we will likely not get any restocks until after the next set releases.

40K 10th Edition

 At Adepticon this weekend, Games Workshop announced the 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000, releasing this summer, likely at Origins or Gencon. Since the first edition released back in 1987, the industry has seen a new edition release about every 5 years. For those counting, that is about double the number of releases for D&D over a far longer time frame.

BattleTech

 If you are a Battletech player, we recently got in a collection of scenario books from the 1980s and 1990s, Some of them, such as Cranston Snord's Irregulars and More Tales of the Black Widow are more expensive and listed in our eBay store. Less expensive books like Lostech are in the Battletech section of our Used games

Game Store Classification

 

A big problem for game stores with social media has always been classification. Sites like Facebook, Google+ and Yelp do not have a category for “Tabletop Game Store” or most of the time even “Game Store”. The closest we generally get is “Video Game Store” or “Hobby Store” or “Book Store”. It’s enough to make a store feel unwanted and unloved. Give the amount of searching that is done by people looking for a game store on places like Google, Yelp and Facebook, not having such a category makes it that much harder for potential customers to find us. The “ comic book store” classification does help those stores that carry both games and comic books, but quite a large number of game stores specialize in that area to the exclusion of the other and the ones that don’t care comics would do themselves no favors by listing themselves in that category, only to have to put off customers who come in looking for comics. Same problem with using the “video game store” category. It is fair to say that there are a lot more video game stores than there are tabletop game stores (though probably far fewer as more video gaming moves to mobile platforms) but listing a store in the video game category would just disappoint customers coming in looking for video games.

New Age of Sigmar Releases

 The following will release for Age of Sigmar on March 25th. We will only order one or none of these as Age of Sigmar new releases move extremely slowly. If you are interested in any of them, please pre-order

VANGUARD: BLADES OF KHORNE

BLADES OF KHORNE: REALMGORE RITUALIST

VANGUARD: HEDONITES OF SLAANESH

HEDONITES OF SLAANESH: LORD OF HUBRIS

BATTLETOME: BLADES OF KHORNE (ENG)

BATTLETOME: BLADES OF KHORNE (FRE)

WARSCROLL CARDS: BLADES OF KHORNE (ENG)

WARSCROLL CARDS: BLADES OF KHORNE (FRE)

BATTLETOME: HEDONITES OF SLAANESH (ENG)

BATTLETOME: HEDONITES OF SLAANESH (FRE)

AGE OF SIGMAR: BLADES OF KHORNE DICE SET

AGE OF SIGMAR:HEDONITES OF SLAANESH DICE

WARBOSS (ROYAL HARD BACK) ENGLISH

Chris Clairmont's Greatest Mistake

 during the X-men's 60th Annviersary Event, Chris Clairmont said the biggest mistake he ever made, at least in the field of comics, was starting crossover events. The first x-men corssover events proved so successful that the powers that be at Marvel kept asking for more of them. Clairmont said the plan was to have the event, go back to normal and then, maybe in a few years, have another one. Marvel's top brass saw what crossovers did for sales and kept asking for more. 

St Patrick's Day

 On St. Patrick's Day, Castle Perilous Games is a no-pinch zone. However, for every $25 you spend on Magic that day, you may select one green Magic card.

Incredibly Awesome Kid Day

 March 15 is Incredibly Awesome Kid Day so bring your incredibly Awesome Kid in and we will give them a free Pokemon Prize Pack. Limit one per kid but you can get more for every $25 you spend on Pokemon

Lost Art Card

 We have a limited quantity of  the new Lost Art Card for Yu Gi Oh!:  Traptrix Genlisia. You may have one with each $30 you spend on sealed Yu Gi Oh product.

D&D Documentaries

 

Did you know there were a couple of documentaries about D&D in the process of getting made? Me either, at least not until a couple of days ago.  The first one, Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary is produced by Westpaw Films /Iconoscope Films and funded through Kickstarter back in 2012. The company plans to release the finished film this year, coinciding with the 40^th anniversary of the original Dungeons & Dragons game. From the Kickstarter page for this film:

2014 marks the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, a game that is, simply put, a cultural phenomenon.

Whether you know it or not, you may be playing Dungeons & Dragons. Any computer game you play, any role-playing game you play, any online profile you fill out, have their elements and DNA rooted in Dungeons & Dragons. It's a game that has had far-lasting, powerful and yet subtle influence in our culture. 

From its humble beginnings in a basement in Lake Geneva, WI, D&D was created by a group of game enthusiasts and game designers. The story of D&D and its creation spans four decades and is a complicated, heart-breaking story. Imagine "The Social Network", the creation of Facebook, but no one ends up rich. This is a cautionary tale of an empire built by friends and lost through betrayal, enmity, poor management, hubris and litigation.

Dungeons & Dragons is a game beloved by its fans. A game that brings family and friends together, creates communities, societies and sub-cultures. D&D teaches. We have heard countless stories of gamers who have delved deeper, studying history, language, science and math purely for the desire to be better players. Gamers have created lifelong friendships because of this game and come in all walks of life; firefighters, educators, computer programmers, entrepreneurs, and yes, even a few documentary film-makers.

Sounds good, right? Well, not so fast. Here comes Fantasy Game Films with their documentary The Great Kingdom. Yep, you guess it, they have a Kickstarter too (but don’t plan to release until July 2015):

In 1969, GARY GYGAX, a family man and an insurance underwriter with an entrepreneurial mind meets DAVE ARNESON, an idle, yet brilliant game designer. Their collaboration would change the world, their families and themselves.

This is the remarkable true life story of the rise and fall of Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and the people behind the creation of the epic role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons.

THE GREAT KINGDOM explores the personalities behind the game and the families they engendered. This is the saga of the people who brought a company from its humble basement beginnings and transformed it to a multi-million dollar corporation. A story for our time that parallels the rise, fall and redemption of Steve Jobs and echoes the who-invented-what question of the creation of Facebook.

The story of families, both blood and personal bond, affected by the success of the game, a game that brought joy to millions and heartbreak to its creators. What happens to these individuals as they weather through the success; the excess, the betrayals, the downfalls and eventual redemptions, all takes place in THE GREAT KINGDOM.

It gets even better though, as it appears the makers of The Great Kingdom worked on D&D:  A Documentar, as Iconoscope Films, before creative differences led to a parting of the ways. Again, from The Great Kingdom’s Kickstarter page:

Some of you may know James and myself from a different D&D documentary project that was started on Kickstarter a couple of years ago. As projects like this go and part of the nature of filmmaking, there were creative differences that led to our new direction and separation from the previous project.

We started from scratch, raising private funds and some of our own to get us to this point. We knew there was an amazing story to tell. And like any complicated story, there will always be room for different interpretations.

So, to those who helped support the previous documentary, we would like to offer a digital, downloadable copy of THE GREAT KINGDOM for FREE. It's our small way of thanking you for your support and patience. All you need to do is email us and there will be a copy waiting for you when the film is done.

Now, Westpaw Films, the original producers of the D&D: A Documentary film is now suing Fantasy Game Films. From the complaint, Westpaw is suing the company for:

usurping D&D Production opportunities through the actions of Pascal and Sprattley (FantasyGame Films)

who were secretly competing with the D&D Production by planning and undertaking to produce

a different Dungeons & Dragons documentary referred to as “The Great Kingdom”

This will drag out the production of both for the forseeable future.

Meanwhile, if you want to watch a D&D documentary, PBS, surprisingly, has a pair of them.  Can Dungeons and Dragons Make You Confident and Successful? runs on PBS’ Idea Channel while you can find Dungeons & Dragons and the Influence of Tabletop RPGs at PBS’ Off Book. You will be able to see these much more quickly than either of the competing D&D documentaries, I’d wager.

Pokemon Prize Packs

 We received a number of Pokemon Prize Packs so are giving one away with each $25 spent on Pokemon product or for playing in our Saturday afternoon Pokemon league at 1 p.m.  We willnot have the league tomorrow due to roof repairs and the possiblity of people in the bak getting hit with some debris.

St Patrick's Day

 No pinching on St. Patrick's Day, at least not here. Castle Perilous will be designated a pinch-free zone. However, fear not. Instead, for each $25 you spend on Magic, you may pick one green Magic promo card from the selection we offer you.

The Nasty

 New horror comic coming from Vault. We will stock the book but are taking pre-orders as well if  you want a copy held. You  can see a video from the creators talking about the book here

Scotland, 1994. 18 year old Thumper Connell still has an imaginary friend: the masked killer from his favourite slasher film. Thumper is obsessed with horror and always has been. He fills his time with scary VHS rentals and hanging out with his fellow fans, The Murder Club. But everything changes when his local video shop acquires one of the notorious films known as “video nasties” — films so scary, they’re the target of the British Moral Decency League’s crusade to ban and burn. But it’s only a movie, right? It’s all just imaginary, isn’t it?

A story about the perception of evil, the power of genre, the love of fandom, the need to create art, oh, and crap-your-pants TERROR!

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Boardgame

 Picked up a copy of the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Boardgame today. It comes from the era before multi-page rulebooks, when the rules were printed on the inside of the box cover and movement was determined randomly by the roll of a die or spin of a spinner. This style of game was quite common in the US until the late 1990s and often were produced to capitalize on a popular TV show or movie. Among the smaller number of strategy focused boardgames, these types of games were referred to as "Ameritrash" games, due to the high amount of luck required to win.

This game, and othe Temple of Doom items, will likely see a resurgence of interest due the re-emergence of the actor Ke Huy Quan, who played Short Round in the film and Data in the Goonies, only to drop out of acting when he could no longer find non-stereotyped parts. With the success of Everything, Everywhere All At Once and his nominations and awards, his early career is going to get another look.