Weekly Store Update: 28 August

Just another week living the good gaming life! The late summer weather here is hot, humid and full of rain...perfect for board gaming in the A/C! Everything at the shop is humming again, with happy customers rolling thru as well as new items, restock and preorders hitting the shelves. We have a few other tidbits to share as well, why not stop in and 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. All in all it's not too difficult to navigate, so let's get to it!

ALMOST TIME FOR THE NEXT GIVEAWAY

We generally time the winner to be drawn after running the giveaway promotion for two weeks. So, next week we'll unleash the giveaway for September. Due to the 5- and 4-week months snuggled close to each other, there will only be one week between the September drawing and the October giveaway launch. I'm sure there won't be any complaints out there 😉 

Now, what will we be giving away in September? Here's a hint - it's going to something to do with the Labor Day holiday. We have it narrowed down to one of three titles, and each of those titles will be a bundle of the entire series. It's going to be great!

PREORDER PAGE UPDATE

If you've been over to see the Preorder page lately, you'll see it's been cleaned up. No longer do we have it split between board games and roleplaying games, now everything is in one place. We also set it up to scroll like the other product pages so that when you get to the bottom of the page, it continues to refresh.

Behind the scenes I added a product category just for preorders. Now, instead of having to go in the preorder page and manually add and remove each and every preorder game title, I just have to toggle the game in or out of the preorder category in the product page itself. I don't have to go into the preorder page at all anymore to make the modification. 

It amazes me just how long I do some things before a very, very easy solution just pops into my head. I've only been running this updated process over the course of this week, and it's already saving time - very happy with it!

SLEEPING GODS?

In the ongoing saga that is our Sleeping Gods preorder, we had an interesting week. With very little warning, we had a few copies of the base game, but a whole slew of the expansions appeared.

For those who don't know our pain, the oldest preorder for Sleeping Gods was December of 2020. 2020!! It's been that long since we've had any games from our initial allocation show up. There was an initial horrible distribution of the game, and BOTH of our main distributors were basically left out. To add insult to injury, it was one of our most popular preorders with lots of excited gamers signing up. However, many, many folks dropped off the preorder over the years as the lack of information from the publisher just pushed people away. However, the several that have been hanging on this whole just might see the game before 2023!

Well...maybe. I reached back out to the distributor about the base game availability, and they do not have any idea if or when the next batch of games will be released. So... more like fingers crossed we can finally close out this preorder before 2023. 

The whole debacle with Sleeping Gods is one of the primary reasons we generally cap our preorders at 10 or less now. Much easier to manage then in the 40's, especially if there are problems with the release. I can tell you this, we're going to have a store celebration when we push out that last Sleeping Gods order!

THE WRAP UP

Okay, we were really busy with customers, intake and setting up new items this week - so not a lot of other news to share. 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!