How hard could it be to open a friendly local game shop? Writeup a good plan, gather a bunch of money, find a good location, buy some inventory, build some shelves, and put said inventory on said shelves. Oh and open the door. Yeah. Well this, where a dump truck lived in our store, was February but the story starts well before then.

The Question

If you could live anywhere and do anything what would you do? That is a tricky question and one we faced about a year ago now. The question has some implied finality to it as well which is misleading because really what is wrong with having a goal that only encompasses the indefinite time of “…for now?” After deciding to leave my academic position the question of what to do was a huge hurdle and that’s when this harebrained idea of opening a game shop first came up, immediately followed by the even bigger question of where.

Denver and the Front Range is a pretty saturated market when it comes to game shops and we needed a change of locale anyway so we started looking for a new home, a place that could use the kind of shop we envisioned, and a place we could really enjoy living. We looked at cities of over 50,000, more if there was already a shop or two there, predominately in the West and we also looked at beer towns, places with a like minded population that might enjoy tabletop games, and places that were walkable and bike-able. That’s when we found Bend.

Here was a great, off-beat location in a former lumber mill with a lot of potential and just the right amount of rough edges. Promises of a new parking lot outside, new restrooms and dividing walls inside, and a thriving community of businesses including a skateboard shop and cider tasting room on either side and a new grocery store across the street. A lease was drafted, money was exchanged, and we started preparing to move to our new home and get to work in March.

Game Shop Recon

We started by visiting every game shop in our local area, visited shops when we traveled, and made a point of visiting every shop along the route from Colorado to Oregon. At last count, at least 27 game shops in total with some good but sadly most not so much.

Nothing says friendly local game shop like tripping over piles of junk stacked in the aisles. Obviously not one of my favorites. When the store worked however, and appeared even moderately successful, it would at least be clean and well-stocked with various degrees of friendly staff.

The ubiquitous slot wall was ubiquitous but otherwise the important thing we noticed was that game shops needed to be inviting and comfortable–a place where you felt comfortable spending some time, a place like a cafe or bar.

A place where you could play a good game with a good drink in hand.

The Plan

A full-fledged cafe was pretty much completely out of the picture from the beginning however serving bottles of beer wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility and nothing goes better with game night than a good beer.

Something like a brewery with cozy yet open spaces, modern interior, and roll-up doors–a proper gathering place. Above is Mockery Brewing, one of the newest breweries in Denver showing off some serious design chops in their new tasting room.

This formed the basis of our design process.

Slow Progress is Slow

Frustrated trying to get the game shop started from 1,200 miles away, we accelerated our relocation plans and rolled into town in February only to find that the property was a very long way from the promised March completion date. Problems with the plumbing meant large trenches cut out of the foundation and even larger dump trucks.

Since nothing else was being done, we thought we might as well have these hundred year old beams sandblasted. Not cheap but totally worth it.

From here, because of in part the age of the building, we’ve been in an odd state of purgatory while our change of tenancy is held in limbo by the city until some series of at least unknown to us events should come to pass of which I only have vague notions of. Some walls have been built…

But it’s usually in odd fits and starts.

And because there are not already enough half started projects we might as well tear out the parking lot…

To Be Continued

If you’ve made it this far you might be thinking that I come across as, well tired or frustrated might be fitting, but I honestly couldn’t be more excited and happy for the future of our little tabletop game shop and hobby bar. I just wish the powers that be would move a little faster. Part two will hopefully pick up with the sheetrock, painting, and furniture building as we move ever closer to store opening.

-Brian

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In our first week in Bend, we managed to find a great place to call home in a 1920s cottage in town just a mile from the future store–not an easy task given Bend’s insane rental market. Problem was we couldn’t move in until March and it was still the first week of February. Since we had some time to kill we decided to go see a bit more of our new Northwest home.

We ended up staying with this great couple that lived on this amazing property in Grants Pass. Calm, quiet, serene, and the perfect base camp for adventuring. It was time to go see some trees. The enormity of these little trees is hard to convey so I’ll just leave this here…

That just had to be done. This is the Jedediah Smith Redwoods in Northern California where we spent an entire day hiking until we could barely walk anymore.

The Boy Scout Tree is a thing… up a little unmarked side trail to a tree that makes all the others envious. Then on to Fern Falls and the end of the trail…

A meditative place for lunch and a restorative break before heading back. With the woods behind us we had to have a look at the southern Oregon Coast before heading back to the High Desert.

Where there were a few rocks. And some water.

And a fairly epic way to end a weekend.

-Brian

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We needed a change. Change of scenery. Change of lifestyle. Change of career. Denver is an interesting city, we had a great house, and of course all of our friends were there but we had set our minds to opening a game shop and had to find the right place for our business and the right place for our family regardless of where that took us. In January, 2015 we sold our house and set off west moving to Oregon.

First  real stop found us outside Salt Lake City only as a place to sleep for the night before making the voyage to see Robert Smithson’s seminal Spiral Jetty.

Leaving the hotel in Ogden early we made it down the rutted dirt road–seen in the first image of this post–in the dim light of dawn to arrive at our destination just as the sun rose over the mountain range.

Completed in 1970 out of 6,000 tons of basalt this earthwork laid hidden under water for most of the last 40 some odd years. As an art professor, this was a pilgrimage that I have wanted to take for a very long time.

After leaving Utah behind we made our way to Boise, visited the small but excellent game shop All About Games downtown before having drinks and playing Tiny Epic Kingdoms at the fittingly named Modern Hotel.

Working our way into Oregon on a cold overcast day, we stopped off at the John Day Fossil Beds…

It was like arriving on another planet.

Hiking through the painted hills with barely another soul in sight and only the songs of a few birds to remind us where we were. It was such a surreal experience and what a way to transition to our new home.

-Brian

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Cheesy and dorky I know but that’s where I’m at so deal. Two weeks ago I entered into a resignation agreement with my University so any day now I will officially be unemployed and a former university professor. That is a bizarre thing for me to write. Teaching is awesome and I will sorely miss hanging out in the wood shop and metalworking studio showing students how to make cool things. Unfortunately, that was only ever a small and sadly undervalued part of the whole being a professor thing and I will not miss those other parts whatsoever. Disillusioned maybe. So time for a big change–new career, new home, new lifestyle. We will see what that brings. Also new blog. 

While all this was going on instead of staying home freaking out, my wife Susan and I figured we might as well go to GenCon 2014 in Indy. Good call. Queue obligatory queue photo:

Yep Thursday morning before the doors open is a thing. Record attendance of 56,000 gamers.

Right inside the gate was the huge Fantasy Flight lines which we skipped past to check out a demo of the newly announced Star Wars: Armada. I was skeptical but it looks really cool and the movement and strategic planning that goes into the game is intense. Like Star Wars: X-Wing for big boys and girls. See dear reader, you knew there would be a Star Wars thing happening in this post. Also caught a demo of Robotech RPG Tactics which I am pretty excited about.

The core box has a ton of plastic models in it. Also, it appeases my inner child that used to watch the Macross Saga after school. Also also awesome terrain and demo tables. Somewhere in here we played a few rounds of Run Fight or Die by Grey Fox Games which is a good zombie dice game–the perfect thing to play after a few beers on Halloween. Also caught a demo of Five Tribes by Days of Wonder which I will have to pickup when I can. Privateer Press was also represented at GenCon, as always, and managed to suck more money out of my wallet.

Privateer’s all-volunteer Press Gangers were in force demoing both Warmachine and Hordes… I talked Andrew, aka mod_faultie, into giving Susan a demo before the dealer hall closed Thursday night:

Great tables and good fun–thanks Andrew! Later that night, I was off to a Warmachine Speedmachine tournament in the game hall while Susan headed over to spend a few hours playing Wyrd’s Puppet Wars and Say Bye to the Villains by AEG. A little background first: I have collected and been involved with the Warmachine hobby for nearly five years but until two weeks prior to GenCon had never actually, you know, played a game. So signing up for my first Warmachine tournament sounded like good motivation. Thanks to the gamer community at the FLGS, Enchanted Grounds, over a couple of Sundays they gave me a crash course in ass-handery. Anyway, game hall:

So. Many. Gamers. The actual tournament was small with only 8 players and not the very best run event either. Supposed to kick off at 7pm but registration didn’t happen until after 8 and matchups were not announced until nearly 9. It had also been advertised as a 16 minute clock, 25pt battlegroup only event and turned out to be a 20 minute clock, open list format so I wasn’t the best prepared for Warspears and Bloodtrackers but whatever I should learn to not care about these things. First game against Legion:

Blurry photos are blurry. In the first game I decided not to worry about the scenario and ended up, you know, loosing on scenario. Too much stuff to kill and he just sat on the flags–which I idiotically did not contest–so that was that. Second game was over so fast I didn’t even get a photo. Assassinated by Bloodtrackers top of round 2 by completely underestimating their movement and range. By this point I had very quickly fallen to 0-2. Third game was a little different:

Typical Menoth list with Choir, Redeemer, Avatar, etc. I have a list with a lot of ranged firepower and fast warjack missiles and he has clouds to negate my entire list. At the same time he couldn’t kill enough of my stuff and had way too much stuff of his own to slog through on a 20 minute clock that I just had to outlast him. With 8 minutes left on my clock he ran out of time and I won on clock for a 1-2 record. Overall, I had a great time and met some awesome people like Chris, aka agamemnon, who brought his glowy Stormwall:

Oh and I won a Gator voodoo priestess that I put together the first thing when I got home…

By this point after the tournament it was near enough to midnight so off to the RAM for obligatory cheese fries, beer, and more Warmachine ambience.

With that it was a hell of a way to wrap up our first GenCon experience. We will definitely make it back when we can and try to make it two or three days instead of just the one. On Friday we wandered around Indy…

Saw a crazy pointy thing, played Carcassone in the hotel lobby waiting for the taxi… (We played a game of Camel Up at the Z-Man Games booth on Thursday that was a surprisingly fun game betting on camels but we didn’t see ourselves playing the game more than a few times so we bought Carcassone instead…)

And Takenoko happened when we finally got home. Susan would not be appeased without pandas.

I know, panda, gardener, bamboo, whatever it is still an awesome and freakishly fun game.

So GenCon 2014 recap:

• will call lines: avoid at all costs and no its not any better at 11pm on Wednesday night
• O’Reilly‘s for a quieter place for beer and pub food but horribly slow
• Bee Coffee Roasters – best coffee ever
• the RAM is a classic GenCon experience but ridiculously busy unless you head in on some really off hours
• Scotty’s makes some damn good grilled cheese sandwiches
• no you definitely can not see all that GenCon has to offer in one day
• rather than waiting until the last minute like we did, register as early as you can for GenCon tickets (January?) to get a closer hotel and get in a few more events (opens in May?)
• Chatham Tap was a fantastic English pub up Mass Ave… sure it was a walk but much calmer place to eat away from the crowds
• Thursday morning… not sure its worth it unless you want an exclusive that you would stand in line for 2-3 hours to get. Better to get coffee instead and stroll through the doors at 10:30.

Anyway, let’s see where this whole life/work thing goes from here…

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