Dave Wallace Memorial

 Dave Wallace, long time owner of St. Louis' Fantasy Shop, passed away last week after a long illness. There will be a celebration of his life this Saturday at 3 p.m. at the St. Charles Fantasy Shop location. Scott will leave the store about noon and has room for 3 people if anyone wants to ride along.

Cryer From the Castle 8/24

New GW Pre-orders

 We are taking pre-orders for the Kill Team Tomb World set as well as the Raverners, BattleClade, Orks Kommandos  ADEPTA SORORITAS: SISTERS NOVITIATE , and Battlecards for the Raverners and BattleClade. Let us know by 3 p.m August 26th if you want any.

GenCon Comments

 

GenCon 2025 continued the trend of recent GenCons by selling out attendance (See “GenCon 2025 Sets New Attendance Record”). I can remember the days when 50,000 attendees was considered an amazing number. Now it’s “oh 70,000+ people attending”  even though it is the largest annual convention in Indianapolis and the second largest regular event in Indy, only eclipsed by the Indianapolis 500.

I judge how well a game or other product is going to do based on, not on how much buzz it gets at GenCon or Origins but rather what items my customers ask for after the event ends. This is what happened with Magic The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th editions, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, Vampire the Masquerade, Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh.

Using this metric, things I expect to do well are:

Starfinder 2E—as is their wont, Paizo released the new edition to the channel at the same time the company launched it at Gencon. We have taken pre-orders on this for months and had customers come pick up their copies as soon as we notified them they had arrived.

Gundam—Both the Gundam TCG and the Gundam Assemble miniatures game have had significant interest. The Gundam TCG has proved hard enough to stock in that I expect it to go the way of the original Final Fantasy TCG which, available while it was in demand only through one distributor, saw a drastic drop in interest when supplies became more widely available. Much as with their One Piece TCG, Bandai seems unable to print enough product to satisfy the demand, increasing speculation on the game and making it harder to hold tournament or other sanctioned play, which has become the lifeblood of most TCGs.  Since Gundam Assemble is not a collectible product, at least I hope not, and I have had a number of customers ask about it, both before and after GenCon. Unfortunately, I am not seeing an official release date posted yet and it looks as if initial orders will be allocated.  If they are, I hope Bandai has more product in the pipeline to arrive soon.

Riftbound—Despite the excitement about the game at GenCon, we have not had any customers asking about it. The buzz around it reminds of that around another TCG based on a MOBA, the World of Warcraft TCG which launched with great fanfare and filled tables at GenCon and Origins in 2005, released in 2006, slowed down enough to get sold off in 2010 and petered out in 2013 (See”WOW TCG Calls It Quits”).  The store did make a decent amount of money off WOW but primarily from people wanted to buy the packs in the hope of getting codes to unlock special in-game items.  Actual card play petered out within a year or two. From what I can tell, Riftbound packs do not include Riot Codes, so that will exclude that segment of the market. Will it sell?  Certainly. Will it displace Magic, Pokemon or Yu Gi Oh?  Yes, temporarily but over the long term I doubt it.

More Diamond Shenanigans

 

The Diamond Comic Distribution bankruptcy saga just took another interesting turn, at least based on the daily emails the company is sending (See “Diamond Bankruptcy Continues to Rack Up Fees”).  Emails like their “New to Order” come from Diamond Comic Distributors and have the following address at the bottom:

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. 10150 York Road, Suite 300 Hunt Valley, MD 21030

However, the Diamond Daily email is coming from Diamond Comic Distributors II, using the same email address but has the following mailing address:

Diamond Comic Distributors II, LLC.

10150 York Road, Suite 300

Hunt Valley, MD 21030

Same mailing address but it appears Diamond has quietly created a second LLC through which to send some of its correspondence. I figure some legal reason for it. Just one more small, strange twist in the continuing story.

Cryer from the Castle 8/19

Shashibo

Fun In Motion was kind enough to send us this video display showing off the capabilities of its Shashibo cube. Unfortunately, when the autoplay comes on, so does the audio which is quite loud.  Hopefully we can figure out a way to turn off the audio permanently. 

Pokemon

We managed to get in a small, pricy assortment of Pokemon Black Bolt and White Flare sets. When they are gone, that will be it.

 

Cryer from the Castle 8/12/2025

This week's Cryer from the Castle

Pokemon

 We finally found a source for Pokemon manga collections and have volumes 1 though 5 in stock.

Birthday

 It is Scott's birthday on August 10th so stop in, have a cupcake and take one of each of the items on the table (while quantities last) as your present.

Mike Herron

 Those of you who were in the SIUC SGS during the 1980s and 1990s should remember Mike Herron or "Wheelchair Mike" as he was also known. He played many different war , board and RPGs but I remember him as an avid Car Wars player.

According to his Facebook page, he had suffered from lung disease for several years and recently developed congestive heart failure, to the point that his weary body just gave out.  Rest in peace Mike

Cryer From The Castle for 8/5

Young Guns Magic

 If you are a Magic Player between the ages of 10 and 16 (younger ones are welcome as long as they understand the rules), come join us for Young Guns magic on Saturday afternoon from 3 to 5.  All Participants receive a free Magic booster as well as promo cards for each set of games they play.

Pokémon League

We play casual Pokemon every Saturday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.  We can teach you how to play, loan you a deck or you can come play with your own.  All participants receive a promo pack for playing and playing rounds earns you promotional cards. 
 

Final Fantasy Restock

 Given how hard Final Fantasy products have been to restock, we were happy to get in a restock of the Final Fantasy 2-Player Starter Set as well as the Final Fantasy Standard Commander Decks. Given the popularity of the commander decks, we do not expect to have them past the weekend.