Weekly Store Update: 18 December

By Stone Valley | December 18, 2022 |

It's almost Christmas and we're looking forward to family time and games! We also reveal the winner of one of our drawings, but there's still another giveaway to go! There's more to discuss too, so why not drop the marshmallows in your hot coco, if that's your thing, and click on in?

INTRO

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! For our new readers I'm Eric, and Wendy and I run Stone Valley Games. This newsletter is our way to share both local and world-wide gaming news of interest that popped up last week. It also provides our subscribers, both local and remote, some information on the going's on around here so everyone feels like part of the action. At the bottom of this newsletter we show you the restocks, new items, and preorders added to the store last week. It's not too difficult to navigate, so let's get to it!

WINNER OF AEON TRESPASS: ODYSSEY

We have drawn the winner of the highly desired Aeon's Trespass: Odyssey (the Core Kickstarter edition).

In a nutshell, it’s an epic 1-4 player massive campaign game of adventures, exploration, base building and fierce tactical battles with giant monsters. It’s a fully co-operative, choice-driven boardgame played over multiple sessions, with over 200 hours worth of unique game content (1500+ cards!), a novel’s worth of narrative and a slew of awesome miniatures (some almost 6 inches tall!). It's over 30 pounds of glorious fun!

This was the most popular giveaway we've ever conducted, and we'd been doing a monthly giveaway for over two years now. In any case, we drew the winner's name at noon on Saturday, 17 December and it was Dana from Virginia, Minnesota. We've since contacted them and I'm sure they are just a little bit excited by this one.

But wait, if you didn't win this one, there's still another chance to win in December! That's right, we still have the Oniverse Giveaway going on! Read more about it next!

THE ONIVERSE GIVEAWAY

From Meeple, Myself & I and Stone Valley Games, welcome to the Oniverse Giveaway! All six games in the Oniverse will be given away to one lucky winner, who will be drawn on December 26th, the same day the Top 100 Reviewed Games reaches its ultimate conclusion! Make sure you also tune in to hear what games made Jason's Top 5!

We've been working with Meeple, Myself and I for a long time now, and we appreciate Jason's approach in both his written and podcast reviews.

Check out this link to find out more about the Oniverse Giveaway and sign up today!

WHEN A PROCESS GOES WHOOPSIE

Late one evening I received an email asking why several of our sales prices had reverted back to MSRP pricing. I took a quick look, and my heart sank. I instantly realized I had missed the quarterly sales price date range update.

Oh, it's such a silly thing, but required by Google and Facebook. It's silly because it's not even seen by customers. No, it's a digital handshake between our system and theirs. Basically, the date range validates that the items are on sale for a "period of time". The date range missing will sometimes cause that item to be rejected, which means it isn't being shared on the 'net.

In any case, the system simply reverts the price to MSRP once that date passes. Bottom line, that date passed, and I missed it. Crazy. With the surgery recovery, uptick in seasonal sales, and doing our best to get the shop ready to open again, I forgot about it.

Well, as it was pointed out to me late at night I slapped a band-aid on it at the time with the pricing from our old backup, and then fixed it up the next day. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but several hours later, once again things were humming.

Usually, keeping it all straight is just part of what I do, but instances like this remind me just how cobbled together this overall sales solution is. But, like rubbing my belly and tapping my head while juggling plates on sticks with my feet while tightrope walking up the stairs...it's all so easy!

WHEN THE SEASONS CHANGE

We have finalized the new art that will be on all the packages we ship out. We initiated this concept a few months ago by wanting to update and refresh the shipping sticker we'd been using forever. After the refresh, which we have been using for a few weeks now, we asked the artist if they could give us a seasonal touch to the art so we could rotate the sticker throughout the year along with each equinox and solstice. Here's what he came up with:

So, we have Winter turning to Spring, followed by Summer and then Fall. As we just had these designed, we're a bit late on getting the new Winter stickers on the boxes, but the stickers are on the way and will be used as soon as we get them in. Just one more thing that helps keep our packages standing out in the crowd. Game on!

YEAR END CLOSEOUT SALE

Our regular customers and readers know we've had the storefront closed for several weeks now as I've been healing from a recent hip replacement surgery. Because of the healing process we missed our usual Black Friday thru Cyber Monday sale. As you may know, this event is usually the largest sale we hold all year and has become a customer favorite.

Well, we're going to try to make up for it in a year end sale. This also gives us the opportunity to provide closeout prices on several titles that we don't plan on carrying into 2023. So, it's the best of both worlds. Fantastic prices for our customers and helping clear the books in Calendar Year 2022 so we don't carry them forward into the 2023 tax year. Everyone wins!

The sale is going to run from approximately 9 PM Central Time on Christmas, 25 December and close around noon on 28 December. Kind of the same timeline I usually run the Black Friday sales event - just a month later. I haven't decided if I'm going to run a special sales page or provide a listing of the sale items, but I'll have that worked out by next weekend's newsletter. Stay tuned here for more!

THE WRAP UP

Okay, enough news for this week! Below are the Restocks, New Items, and Preorders added to the shop last week. You can click on the item to learn more, and many of the products have review and gameplay videos so you can see the game in action. If you're visiting our page and you'd like to keep up with our giveaways, sales, new products, and articles like this one just create an account here. Once created you will be subscribed to our newsletter and become enrolled in our loyalty system, instantly earning 50 Stones that you can use on your very first order. A Stone? One Stone is equivalent to One Cent. That doesn't sound like much, but you earn 2 Stones for every dollar spent and 5 for each product review, so though it may seem small, those savings add up fast! Redeem your Stones upon checkout, and they can save you up to 10% off your cart total. Loyalty Matters!