Longview Gets A Game Store

Since moving to East Texas I've been mostly purchasing stuff over the internet, since the closest game store is more than an hour away. Just this month I heard about a small local startup called Three Suns Unlimited on the north side of town. Despite being busy with end-of-semester grading responsibilities, I've found time to drop by twice. Here are some of my first impressions:

• The majority of space is devoted to gaming tables, suggesting that Three Suns is positioning itself more as a venue than as a retailer. Both times I dropped by, there were relatively few shoppers, but plenty of actual players. Most recently I arrived in the middle of a Pathfinder Society event that seemed to involve at least a dozen players, or else there was a second game going on at the same time.
•  Most of the stock was skewed toward card games, both CCGs and some of the newer boxed "deckbuilder" boardgames. Since this is the end of the hobby with which I have the least familiarity, I'm not sure how to appraise the quality of their collection, but it seemed reasonably

  

  This must be an old photo. They have more shelves than this now!

  respectable for a startup. Many of the deckbuilders have demo packs available, and at some point I want to go back and try some of them (like Paizo's Rise of the Runelords or Cryptozoic's The Two Towers).
• There were plenty of demo games on the shelves. Playing them would have been a good use for an entire afternoon, but I had to leave because 1) it was a bit noisy with the PFRPG people there, and 2) my 2-year-old daughter was in the process of systematically rampaging through the store and causing mayhem with sticky candy-cane fingers. At some point I'll go back without those complications and see if I can't round up some MEK OPS Saturday night folks to try out the games on the shelf.
• The RPG selection was pretty heavily skewed toward Pathfinder and D&D. I did see a stack of Troll Lord Games sourcebooks (most of which I already own), and a beautiful OD&D reprint boxed set (for $150!!!), but for a retro-oriented player there wasn't anything that seemed usefully system-independent. I'd like to see them invest in a respectable stock of inexpensive 25mm fantasy figures (like Reaper's Bones line), which could support some of the ACKS campaign stuff I want to set up or any other generic fantasy-based miniature system. It would be nice to be able to snap up exactly the specialty mini I need for a Saturday Domains at War session. (Get me a club-wielding stone giant in hide armor, stat!)
• Helpful hint to game store owners: You get the best revenue stream by selling minis and miniature accessories! This is the stuff that people want to touch and inspect before they buy it, which means that you won't be replaced by online pdfs and Amazon.com. Plus, there's an unassailable cool factor when you can set up a glass display case full of Dwarven Forge dungeon dioramas. Diehards are going to drop in just to gaze longingly at it...
• I really wanted a small collection of 8mm d6 dice to replace the ones that Walley took back home to Arizona with him. They are currently retailing in large lots at eBay in larger quantities than I want to pay for (when I only need a dozen or so). Buying unusual dice types in bulk and then selling them individually is a good way for a small store like this to beat online retailers. The employee working behind the desk said that they had tried to buy them, but ended up with even tinier 5mm polyhedron dice instead! Cool looking, but at about $6 for a set, a little pricey.
• They have very limited selection of historical games, which is pretty much my experience at every game store these days -- I'm part of a dying breed, I guess. I did pick up a copy of the latest Axis and Allies release, the lightweight 1941 set. It supposedly plays in 90 minutes (we'll see about that!)  I'm also going to keep my eyes open for any other players of the Axis and Allies War at Sea miniatures game, which was represented there by a single starter set. That's the sort of thing that I could justify purchasing only if I knew I could get some use out of it -- my last attempt to run a tabletop naval miniatures battle attracted only a single player!

Hopefully they can expand the variety of their product offerings. Otherwise, it looks like a good place to stop and pick up dice/card games, or look for RPG or CCG players.