Weekly Store Update: 20 November

By Stone Valley | November 19, 2022

The cooler weather is pushing folks back inside... where all the games are! The storefront is still closed while Eric continues to heal, but that doesn't mean it's a ghost town around here - as it's been just as busy as ever. Check out our new arrivals, we share news on the upcoming game giveaway, and so much more. Check it out!

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!

DECEMBER BOARD GAME GIVEAWAY

As we're not doing the giveaway in November due to my recovery, we're going to do two separate drawings in December. We now have the first one figured out. It's going to be a collaboration with Meeple, Myself and I. Jason's going to celebrate the finale of his 100 Top Reviewed Board Games with the giveaway, and we provided the giveaway items. Once he's officially announced it, we'll share the details here so you can get your chance to win as well.

For our regular monthly drawing we'll announce the game(s) next week and kick it off the week after. We want to make it really special for Christmas. Also, it may be our last regular giveaway...so we'll go out with a bang. After all, we've got something better in the works.

In one of our operations streamlining changes heading into 2023, instead of the monthly giveaway we're going to do some game sales every month - maybe even weekly or bi-weekly in some cases. The concept is one to thirteen (you know...baker's dozen) titles spread across all our products at a time. We'll also have unique categories getting singular sales (like a Pathfinder Special) throughout the year.

As the entire concept of the giveaway has always been to give back to the community that supports us, this - we believe, will impact more gaming enthusiasts in more places and in more ways. We're going to reward our subscribers by keeping the sales in this newsletter first and general release afterward. It's going to be amazing!

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE - BUT COULD

As I'm writing this, we're still waiting for our allocation of the highly desired Cyberpunk Red - Street Stories. Yes, it's been seen out there in the wild here and there, but our distributor hasn't received their shipment from R. Talsorian yet. Honestly, it's been like this with every release in the Cyberpunk Red line... and we should know, as we've had them all in prerelease at one point or another.

There is a significant disconnect between what is published on the R. Talsorian website vs. reality. I guess they do it in order to garner attention, which is a good tactic. However, second and third order effects is upset customers calling and sending emails wondering why we're not shipping out their book yet. Hey, I get it...that's what the publisher website says. Not reality though. And who thought you couldn't believe everything you read on the internet?

So, if you're one of those fans of Cyberpunk Red and need a little something-something to get you over the hump, you might not know that R. Talsorian provides a good number of free downloads right on their site. Check them all out here. It really is a wonderful RPG, and we're so glad the publisher continues to support their amazing fanbase! Now, if they would actually send the product to the distributors 'before' they updated their website I think we'd all be happier. Well...at least we'd be happier 😀

OUT WITH THE OLD

One of the things we do in our daily processes is add a unique Stone Valley Games sticker to the majority of our shipments leaving the store. The only items that don't receive the sticker are those shipped via Medial Mail...as the sticker violates the 'no marketing' rule.

We started doing it for two reasons. First was brand recognition - so you knew where the package came from. The other was so our packages stood out from the crowd. This became especially helpful during the pandemic where we did not lose a single shipment. Yes, dozens were late or misdirected - but they all eventually found their way home. Having that distinctive SVG sticker helped keep our packages flowing.

After several years with the same design, I wanted to shake it up. So, I spoke with a local artist and voila, here is the comparison with the original on the left and new version on the right.

The new version is much busier, but definitely looks good. We might also change it up slightly to correspond with the seasons. It will be a while before we run through the remainder of our original stickers, but these new ones are in the hopper and will be appearing on items heading from our store soon! Heck, we might use these as regular stickers too since they look so good.

WHAT'S THE STORY MORNING GLORY?

I am healing, but so very slowly. At least I think it's slow. I thought that I'd be much further along now, but reality is quickly setting in that this is going to take some time. Don't get me wrong, according to the doctor I'm right on track...I just thought I could do better. Here's to being human.

One of the outcomes of this inability to get around is the lack of new item photographs. As you may have noticed, the preorders over the last several weeks and new items have stock photos. Up until now, I have prided myself on always having our own photos for everything we sell. However, that era is coming to an end. It's been several weeks now without photos and... the earth is still spinning, and we haven't (yet) been sucked into a black hole. So, I think I'm going to continue this trend going forward and use stock photos as the world hasn't ended with this transition.

As a final bit of business operations nuances, I am very happy our local customers have continued to keep us occupied with a significant uptick in curbside pickup requests. It really helps us keep the lights on, and every little bit helps!

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!