Hello gamers out there.  my name is brendan also known as the TheGamer. I work at the store.  thought I'd throw out a store update. 

Over the  weekend we had two maijor things happen. Friday the new verson of D&D came out AKA 4.0. Saturday  we had world wide gaming day the following day. We also got a boat load of new dice and gaming stuff. Pictures of the event are coming soon.  

Maiden games has also become a seller of warhammer 40k minitures. Witch leads me into working on a how to paint warhammer minis video with john the owner.  We should be uploading some segments soon so keep a look out for that.  

in the furture for you magic the gathering players. Were working on  a set of  viddeos to. 

As always suport your local gaming store. Have a great week. 

Maiden Games and Comics has survived 3 Years in the wake of many places going out of business.  In a way it is sad to see any game store go out of business.  People feel like they lost their place often it means gamers stop gaming.

Ever wonder why I push local game stores?  Because one bad month can do you in.  One bad month means you are out of business.  Hundreds of customers that hang-out and test, that make new friends or trade no longer have that resource.

Even the forums run dry from lack of posting because the mega sites have more going on.  It is very hard to be a brick store.  But Maiden Games is still here.

For anyone wanting to own a game store I give you my blessing just do it for the right reason.  To me I never looked at having MG&C as a job or a place I make money.  If I did I would have thrown in the towel every year.  This is my hobby room.  Someplace we can all gather.  It doesn't have to make money though that would be nice.

Our cake said it all "Tap: Sacrofice: Feed three people of any color."   Or atleast that is what we imagioned it saying.  We did give out 32 pieces to some of our regular customers that happened to be in here at the right time.

They also had to hold it for me, not feeling well I came in for the photo-opt and enjoyed my cake.  Thanks to miss Bald for the cake, Ryan and Shane for putting the party together and all that showed up.

Maiden Games & Comics

THE DECK

CREATURES

Insect Knight x3

Archfiend Soldier x1

Luster Dragon x2

Sabersaurus x1

Since I both play and own a store that supports Yu-Gi-Oh I decided to write an article about it.  For this experiment I decided to deal with something a young person could handle and buy.  The build and play are simple.  Keep in mind this is not meant to be a tier one deck but rather a competative deck to be played at a 12 or 16 and under tournament.

To hold down cost I wanted commons only.  Alot of game stores will sell commons for as cheap as 10 cents or as much as a buck or two.  On average though you can find most commons for 25 cents.  Hence I say this deck is a ten dollar deck.  If your local store doesn't carry the singles then a trade of a rare for 15-20 commons will do and is not that uncommon.

BUILDING

First I looked at the creatures.  I wanted hard hitting creatures of four stars or less.

Familiar-Possessed-Hiita (att 1850)

Familiar-Possessed-Eria (att 1850)

Familiar-Possessed-Aussa (att 1850)

Familiar-Possessed-Wynn (att 1850)

Luster Dragon (att 1900)

Sabersaurus (att 1900)

Insect Knight  (att 1900)

Mad Dog of Darkness (att 1900)

Archfiend Soldier (att 1900)

Goblin Attack Force (att 2300)

Giant Orc (att 2200)

Tribute Monsters

Summoned Skull (att 2500)

Spells and Traps

The spells and traps are needed to remove creatures but this will be explained later.

SPELLS

Lighting Vortex

Pot of Greed

Malevolent Nuzzler

Premature Burial

Dark Hole

Fissure

Nobleman of Crossout

TRAPS

Magic Cylinder

Sakuretsu Armor

Trap Hole

Seven Tools of the Bandit

Divine Wrath

Wall of Revealing Light

...MORE TO COME......

In some ways I really have to hand it to Sabertooth.  UFS is one of the best games on the market.  The support for these games has been mind blowing.  Now after our Foundations of Power tournament wow.

But in other ways I see Sabertooth as a little guy in a big pond.  They are in a strange position.  On one hand they are battling mega giant companies that have had strong games in the tcg market for some time.  Magic (Wizards of the Coast) and Yugioh (Upperdeck).  Both of these companies have strong parant companies too and can weather failure.  Sabertooth does have a parant company (Gamers Workshop) But what they do is so abstract I wonder how they manage.

My only real issue with Sabertooth is it seems that sometimes they don't have it all together.  Most of this is directed at their IT guy.  Now if he is anything like the rest of the group, he is friendly, dedicated and hard working.  In his defense the issue I have is minor you see they switched over servers because they grew so quickly.  I am sure the problems of having one system up and creating a whole new one then merging the two must be a nightmare.  But often, I can't find information I need off their site.  Like event we are running in our store.

Don't get me wrong but someone is always a fall guy.  Also, like I have said I never have talked with a single guy or gal there that did not impress me.  Who does their hiring I wonder?

Well, onto the Foundations of Power.  Is there anyone out there that could tell me if they played what they thought?  How was the turnout?  Any feedback would be nice.

When I first thought about doing a myspace I wanted something alittle different.  I wanted to talk about games.  I wanted to reach out and get feed back from gamers.  I wanted to break down the barriers between game stores.  I wanted to help people.  But this was never meant to be advertisement.  If it was the whole space would look incredibly different.

Now it stands to reason if we are not selling product on our own site we should expect others will not sell on our site as well, right?  Well some are just slow learners.  If you post a comment make sure it's not buy this blah, blah... Otherwise it will be deleted.  If you have a site that sells a product and drop a line merry Christmas, someone goes to your site and sees the ads that is fine by me.  Also, if you like to outside porn you will be deleted.

I do give exception to music.  I love how local bands are willing to go though hell and back to follow their passion.  If you want to see true dedication look at serious local bands.  I respect them as long as they don't overdue it.  Dark Valley Records is just one local record company in Maine, although I will show support for any local band or Independant record company.

On to players.  Let's face it more and more players roam often refered to as regional players.  For this reason I wanted to have a myspace to connect with other game stores.  If game store stop competing with each other and come together maybe we can create a better enviroment for players.  More people will play and turn outs will be better.

Another player related theme is this.  Over the three years we have been opened I have seen dozens move away from this area.  I have always tried to find them a new "home" to play at if there was one in the area.  By being connected it is easier and I can hook people up and help out not only a customer but another game store plus the community in general.

One last thing myspace is about.  Over the years I have met several owners of various companies.  From time to time they put out information that they are hiring or looking for free lance writers, play testers, artist, singers, song writers etc.  In the past I have in one degree or another helped several people.  No one has went on to be a millionaire but if someone did from my help I'd feel good about myself and I'd feel good for them.

I never turn down a friends request but I have cut out some for not playing by the rules.  I like the ability of myspace to net work.  Because of this we tried several versions of way to make friends here.  One person me did searches for people with common likes.  1100+ friends in a month with 1700 different people viewing I'd call good.  Another did the rote of trains in the same month 4000+ friends but only 400 unique views.  Really not what we'd want people that cling on as "friends" but don't even look at your profile.  The last friend only wanted people or groups that she connected to or knew.  Left a ton of comments everywhere.  50 friends with 400 views.  Great differences but it was good to see and compare.  We some times leave comments (never at another game store out of respect) but considering how much time it would take to hit everyone that would be crazy.  Not that I am not crazy mind you but I just don't have that much free time.

From all of us at Maiden Games Merry Christmas.

On a side note if any of you are missing the video games click on gamesatmaiden at the top of our friends list.

Within Maiden Games UFS is one of our biggest sellers.  A lot of people have started playing UFS where as they never played CCGs before.  With Sabertooth's commitment to supporting the game, a lower cost per pack then most CCGs and a very good game it's no wonder.  At Maiden UFS and Magic switch back and forth on which one out sells the other.

Amazing that any card game can rival Magic.  But a sad fact is that we are the only center for UFS within 50 miles.  That is a real surprise.  Sabertooth has made a commitment to not sell the game to mass market outlets.  That has been the death of sales for games such as Magic, Yugioh, and Pokemon at the brick and mortar stores.

The question is how many people have hear of UFS or know they are running major events in January (the Foundation Tournament)?  I know Sabertooth has exploded with business since this game has come out.  Yet alot of gamers haven't heard of it.

Maybe the lack of cash tournaments, maybe the same laid back casual feel of the game doesn't interest alot of people.  But this has been the first fun and fresh game since VS from Upper Deck Entertainment (Although they have a million dollars a year in cash tournaments but then again they have the money backing them.

Sabertooth on the other hand are back well enough too (Gamer's Workshop).  I would imagion with the decline in Warhammer sales over the last few years GW most be looking long and hard at UFS that has done so well where the 40k card game has small pockets of players.

Would States and Regional tournaments help?  I imagion they can't hurt the game.  Maybe more people would travel and more stores would be interested in carrying the product. 

But where does UFS go from here.  I imagion as they add new title to the game it will continue to grow and get better.

I am glad Billy and Brad got our store into UFS.  I am glad Brad has taugh so many people this game.  I hope UFS will continue to produce such a top quaility product that has always sold well yet they always have some at the distribution level unlike other games that have been in short waves and quickly have had interest die out for lack of product (WoW ccg and Naruto).