Weekly Store Update: 6 February

By Stone Valley | February 6, 2022

Punxsutawney Phil has spoken and like it or not we get to hunker down for six more weeks of winter. Good thing we have plenty of games to help pass the time! Trust us though, we did a lot more than watching weather predicting rodents last week. Check out the Board Game Giveaway we have going on and browse the oodles of restocks and new games we added - plus gaming news!

INTRO

Hello there, and welcome to our weekly newsletter! For our new readers, I'm Eric, and Wendy and I are the owner/operators of Stone Valley Games. We use this newsletter to discuss both local and world-wide gaming news of interest that popped up last week. At the bottom of the newsletter we show you our restock, new items, and preorders added to the store last week. This newsletter is our way to provide our customers, both local and remote, some inside information so everyone feels like part of the action! Anyway, enough of an intro, let's get to the news!

BOARD GAME GIVEAWAY

If you haven't signed up for our February game giveaway you need to hurry - we're drawing the winner on the 12th! CLICK HERE to go to the sign in page and find out more about it! What's the game? Well, this month we're going to hop a magical train and get the heck out of this cold weather with Empyreal Spells & Steam

Empyreal Spells & Steam is in a large, well-organized box that not only has top notch production value, but excellent gameplay as well! We like the game so much we're pulling in the Deluxe Edition Upgrade, and the As Above, So Below and Far Corners expansions from Level 99 Games. You'll see them in the store soon!

PRICE INCREASES ARE COMING

It's true that Ned Stark knew winter was coming. Just as sure, we've seen game price increases rolling in much more quickly and broadly than years past.

It's really inevitable if you think about it, with the compounding problems of international shipping and storage issues, rising prices in China, and manpower shortages along the entire manufacturing to delivery chain. Knowing why still doesn't make it feel any better though.

So, as we've done in the past, we will continue to report the increases to give you a chance to grab some games you've had your eye on before the prices take effect. Unlike previous reports though, this one is too large to list the games individually. It's looking like Asmodee is raising the prices across their entire portfolio - and the last time we checked that's about 280 games. The increase goes into effect 21 February and prices are jumping from one to ten dollars across the board.

BUT...DOES IT HAVE A GOOD SOLO MODE?

Have you seen this story? Archeologists excavating Bronze and Iron Age settlements in the mountains of northern Oman discovered a 4,000-year-old board game! It didn't seem to come with instructions, most likely a failed Kickstarter... Ha! All kidding aside, it always fascinates us just how far back humanities love of moving tactile pieces around a board stretches back. Maybe a bit of DNA imprinting? I wonder if we'll see an episode on next season's Ancient Aliens...

LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED

We have partnered with numerous independent publishers along with large distributors over the years. It's always a different story with each publisher. Some we pursue as we carry so many of their titles it just makes sense. Others we stumble upon, often not realizing they even had a retailer partnership. Then there are the publishers who don't partner with retail stores at all and work only with distributors... sad face.

The benefits of partnering with a publisher are significant. We have a direct link for restocks, we obtain industry news right from the source, and can often obtain promos or other items not regularly available through normal distribution. The only drawback, and it's really not even worth mentioning, is just having that one additional line of communication involves a bit more care and feeding for each one that's added. In comparison, working with large distributors is easy, kind of one stop shopping with a line in and line out. However, the benefits far outweigh that drawback working with the publishers, so we are always on the lookout to add those that already populate our store shelves anyway.

Well, one such company that was on the 'distributor only' list has started to thaw. It's been happening a little at a time over the last several months. First, they opened up a retailer communication line, and just now they have assigned a new (and wonderful) retailer focused lead. A few emails later and we're happy to say we've added Stonemaier Games to our list of publisher partners!

What a perfect fit! I believe we already carry almost all of their games. And... with a name like 'Stonemaier Games' what goes better with 'Stone Valley Games'?! We've got the Stones! Stones'?

Talking about getting information right from the source, Stonemaier Games just released details on their upcoming title Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, which is a completely revised edition of the classic pirate game - now with a solo mode! I can tell you we're excited about it and will be adding it to our preorder section as soon as it becomes available.

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!