Speaker 1: Every table has rules, but the best stories usually begin
when someone ignores them. A risky move, a broken alliance,
a perfect role at the worst possible moment, and suddenly
it's not just a game anymore. It's the victory nobody expected,
the argument everyone remembers, and the story your friends will
still be telling years from now. I'm Scott Ralph and
this is table tales, where board games, card games, and
role playing adventures become stories worth retelling. So pull up
a chair. The next tale is already on the table.
Speaker 2: So hopefully when we reopen or even before, we'll have
the shelf stocked with neilize a new games.
Speaker 3: Sounds good, and you've got a few available to borrow,
I believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we've got games here. Like we haven't quite
got the collection that we would like, but yeah, we're
always on the hunt for stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So again, for anyone that's maybe looking to give
it a go, anyone that's not particularly familiar with modern
board gaming, you know, beyond your scrabble and snakes and
ladders and Monopoly.
Speaker 4: Every time someone buys or plays a copy of Monopoly,
a part of my soul just buyes.
Speaker 3: I just I have to bring up Monopoly when we
talk about it, because I like seeing Wayne's reaction.
Speaker 2: It's there's only so much you can There's only so
much you can do, isn't it. You know what's going
to happen. I mean, probably the most fun I had
with Monopoly the last time I played it was with
my little brother and we played the Lord of the
Rings one and the most fun we had was changing
the names so when we landed on certain minds, it'd
be like, instead of back end, we were just king.
I've landed on ball back end of course and be done. Yeah. Absolutely,
And it speaks to.
Speaker 4: How fun Monopoly is where that's the most one you have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fair enough.
Speaker 4: It's the bane of no no. But I'm going to
stop now before I talk for twenty five minutes on
the bane that I have for Monopoly. Game design has
moved on in the last four years.
Speaker 3: People, let's be over it.
Speaker 2: But I think I think that's actually that's a great point.
I think everyone's go to is Monopoly because initially it
was probably such a great game too in the beginning,
because it's like, well, I'm sure the first light car
looked amazing, but if you look back now, it probably
looked like a heap of ship. Yeah, so it evolves,
doesn't it. So I think gaming has evolved and it's
left it in its wake. But I think people are
probably like, and this is great to start with, a
little bit scared to put it to go and try
something new. And that's what is great about us and
a great great about talking to you guys and your
show is because you're helping people go, Actually, you know what,
that sounds really cool. I'm going to give that a go.
They gives you the confidence to go. You've kind of
got a little bit of a prelude to what you're
going to be getting yourself into rather than going, I'm
going to go and pay money for that game, and
I'm I really going to like it, because I mean
some of the games can be quite expensive, but once
you've played them, you could go, I'm going to play
that forever. That isn't bargain. Yeah, absolutely, it's that sort
of jump forward from that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you might pay well, probably Monopoly retails about twenty
twenty five pounds and you'll play every Christmas. I suppose
that's the common notion of it, isn't it. But something
like scythe or anything else that we've talked about already
on the podcast, or we'll be looking for maybe cost
you twice that amount, but the level of detail and
involvement and the enjoyment you'll get from it will last
for a lot longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what happens. Everyone
plays Monopoly at Christmas, hate each other.
Speaker 3: It's trash.
Speaker 2: Someone picks the board up, sprows it at the wall. Yeah,
demon gets pissed off, hates each other. We're going to
eat some more food.
Speaker 3: And then, Yeah, I don't personally have those memories of Monopoly.
I remember my brother always buying Mayfair, but beyond that,
I always seem to remember enjoying it. But maybe I
just haven't played it recently enough. Maybe.
Speaker 4: But also I think, while we're on the subject, instead
of Monopoly, folks, maybe pick up ticket to ride or
as we're in this environment at the moment, Pandemic a
great family.
Speaker 2: Game played that before that is that that actually was
a really good game. It was quite It was quite
tongue in chake because we played it just as all
this kicked off and everyone was sort of like, is
this serious? Is this not serious? Should we really be
worried that we were still open at the time, and
most people were like, it was just a few people
had called it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of the last games I think we
played here before.
Speaker 4: Also, you played Dead of Winter with us again, another
great I wouldn't have known it was out there.
Speaker 2: Again, You've got to think about what people are doing,
and they're going into Google going I really want a
game that's got zombies and winter and it's got this
and this and this, Because people aren't looking for that game,
they will find something in.
Speaker 3: Or whatever.
Speaker 2: When you're in the shops. Hung Yeah, actually is a
really good game.
Speaker 4: Obviously the shop is called the Comic Shop, and let's
talk a little bit about the comics that you have
here and how that works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty crazy. We started off with a small amount.
I mean there's only we do get people still coming
here that initially came when we opened, but everyone sort
of either didn't see it or forgets that. When you opened,
we were literally just this enormous, humongous shop with a
couple of tables and a few comics, like literally a
few comics, And since then it's sort of just been
another table, another shelf, another set of comics, another box
of comics. So we've grown massively since we started. However,
we've also got some great additions like the Magic Gang.
We get people playing Yu gi Oh, small groups of
Yu gi Oh, all sorts of Vanguard. There's a couple
of Final Fantasy trading card game ones that came in
as well.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of don't getting started on Final Fantasy.
Speaker 2: Actually, I promise myself we won't talk about it.
Speaker 3: That's a whole other podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, the range of comics is always fresh,
and I mean I don't know much about them, but
you've always got brand new releases. You've got the pool available. Yeah.
Speaker 2: H pretty much deals with anything comic y and I
sort of just did my duty and send them his way.
But we've got we get the new comics in and
we get collections in as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a strong back cast log down towards the coffee
end of the shop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. And then yeah, so if people want stuff,
we can order it in. If people are looking for stuff,
we'll always trying to help them. But we sort of
morphed into something that that really is so much more
than a comic shop. A geek can essentially so yeah,
it's it's pretty lovely to still have the comics in here.
But we are so much more than that.
Speaker 3: We've got a whole backgrange of mango. You've got coffee
mugs and so on that you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we even sell our coffee. We genuinely thought that
people were blind smoke up our ass. We're like saying
we had lovely coffee. Were like, yeah, of course we have.
It's just coffee. And even me, like I'd never made
a cup of proper cup of coffee before, Like my
coffee skills involved the granu was going in and the
that was it.
Speaker 3: That'd be the limit of my ex exactly.
Speaker 2: And now I'm such a coffee not I don't even
drink I'm not even allowed to drink coffee. But when
I make coffee at home, it's literally just I look
at the I look at the hot water going in
over the grains.
Speaker 4: I'm like, what is this?
Speaker 2: This is just peasant, just peasant coffee. But like so
I had to learn. I mean that that again, I
mean if if people know me or people don't know,
that's that's something I was like, I'm never going to
be in my own shop making coffee There'll always be
someone else doing that for me, and I was thinking, well, shit,
what is this. I've got to do it myself quick.
So I did have to learn quick. But everyone loved
our coffee and it's good. And then we realized we
realized everyone wasn't lying. It is good coffee, so people
actually buy it by the bag, which is phenomenal.
Speaker 4: So what was the initial driver for getting your own
branded coffee? Because you have your own brand coffee here, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I looked local. We tried to keep everything local.
I tried to source like the coffee from local, like
any buying any equipment off local, Like I said. We
even went to the British Heart Foundation to try, and
I think it wasn't even just a British Heart as
all the charities we went into to try and sort of,
if we're going to buy anything and give anyone money,
could we give it to the right places. So we did.
But the coffee place they the best machine we got
offered or could get. Because obviously we were still on
the budget. We had to be sensible and realistic. They
had a deal where they said, we can give you your
own coffee and we can brand it up for free,
so our lovely mate Mario helped us do some artwork,
which was the geek fuel. So we designed our own
comic to go on stickers, which would then go on
the bags, and sadly like obviously we just use those
bags as anything and they get chucked away, but if
someone wants to buy the bag, they've got our own
designed artwork on the front.
Speaker 4: We'll touch on what we haven't talked about already here,
which is one of the other big hobbies that you've
got at the shop, which is the card gaming and
the behemoth that is Magic the Gathering. And you are
something of a little bit of a player for Magic
the Gathering too, right.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm learning, and I'll be honest with you.
A year ago I would have laughed you out of
the shop if you said you're you're not only going
to be playing Magine, You're gonna know things. You're going
to know how it works and the mechanics.
Speaker 4: You're going to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I still remember the first person that came in and
asked us can we play magic here? And I said,
I genuinely just thought they meant like magic tricks, and yeah,
of course, and then another one came in and I
was like, okay, what do you mean, what do you mean?
And I've got them to explain, and after I said yes, cool,
when they went off away and then another one came
in and it was the guy that came in first,
and I said, he said, so I hear that you
are going to let magic play in and I said yeah,
he said, I said, he said what format? And I
was like format. There's more ways that I don't even didn't.
I've just got my head around. It's a card game.
Speaker 3: Magic needs are never happy. They always need another thing.
Speaker 2: But they they on my council. They are They've they've
become my friends, and they're they're lovely people and they've
helped this shop grow into a magic center because the
came in and when we want this and went can
you get it? And I mean yeah, and they're like,
we'd rather pay you than the internet, and I'm like okay,
So I'd get the stuff in, they'd buy it, we'd
do more, and it sort of just kept like again,
snowballing out of control to the point where they're like
can you get this, this, this, and this? And then
we got in touch with the Wizards of the coast,
all sorts of sponsors and stuff official. Yeah, so we
are now and we're yeah, and we're looking to go premium,
which is obviously quite a big status for the Magic stores.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's pretty big.
Speaker 4: I got into Magic probably around ninety six ninety seven
when I was very young, plaid for about a year
or two. I had all those original sets, which which
my momth threw out. I know, I know, think about
it now, it hurts me, hurts me deeply anyway. But
I came back into it through the shop seeing a
bunch of the guys that I played D and D
with crossing over and playing Magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that works both ways. We've seen
a lot of players that have played D and D
and that seem magic in the shop and like, I
want to get back into it, or I want to
get into it, and you've seen players Magic players that
have gone I want to get involved in a bit
of D and D that looks really cool.
Speaker 4: And yeah, getting back into it has been a real pleasure.
There's been a great variety of people to play with,
playing with yourself as well.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean we've played in
the planes Walk colleague. Yeah, that's why recently which got
absolutely destroyed by current proceedings. But we were having fun.
I'm amazingly terrible. Like in fact I say terrible, I'm not.
I'm that player you would hate to play against because
every now and again I know what I'm doing. Most
of the time I don't, so you'll probably beat me,
but there's a chance that I also whip your ass
a little bit. But yeah, it's funny and I enjoy
it because when you're playing games like that, I mean,
you can take them too seriously, but the guys here
just want to have Most of them just want to
have fun. And I think having that as the core
in the shop attracts so many more people because it's
so chilled and people just go, do you know what,
I just want to come down there, play some cards. Yeah,
social li and enjoying myself. So yeah, it's not really
the aggressive competitive environment that some other places have. We
get we get and I think we get a lot
more out of that because a lot of people, a
lot more people enjoy it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. People never look ramped up and attacking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no table flipping and.
Speaker 3: It's hanging out. It's obviously what does that card do
that's amazing, super enthusiast.
Speaker 2: And they help each other and they go actually, like,
I mean I've played in games where they've actually scored
me and gone actually, like you could have done that.
And like, honestly, losing is the best way to learn
because when you get like you're hand it to you
in a game, you don't do that again.
Speaker 3: You don't.
Speaker 2: You learn from your mistakes and they might just be
missing one or two little tricks, but you realize actually
that missing that one or two trick, you can't do that.
And if you want to win games. So I mean
we're talking about in the sort of semi competitive environment
that we have. We have Friday Night Magic and we
have the pre releases. Yeah, so you're there to have fun,
but also you would like to win some cool stuff
of course. So that's when you get sort of those
situations where people will help you go, actually, I'm going
to beat you, don't.
Speaker 3: Worry about that.
Speaker 2: But here here's for the next person. And yeah, it's
pretty great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, common phrase it ausoritizing. With the martial arts that
Wayne and I by studies, you win or you learn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, that's yeah, that's so true. Here, So I've.
Speaker 4: Come to the end of my sort of general overview
question staff with regard to the shop, and we want
to talk about a little bit about general any general
nerd geek culture topics that you were interested in. And
you said about how the greatest RP year of all
is life, right, the one we're living, the one we're living.
Speaker 2: It would be great if people saw life that way.
I mean, don't get me wrong. Don't go knocking on
your like some random stranger and Crawley's door saying excuse me,
so can I spend the night here? And my horse
is dead? And I'm really culd because yeah, yeah, you
might roll the dice and get twenty, but you're still
dying that night. Do you know what I mean? You're
going to be in Crawley News because you'll be.
Speaker 3: Dead, although if you do give them a gold coin
you might be in said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean again, it's the taking the chances,
isn't it. I mean, you can, you can take the chances,
but there might be dead, but you don't really get
to come back to life at the end of the campaign.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't help, but everything is dn D these days. Life.
Speaker 2: We should we should try a mass movement where we
always walk around with D twenties and just like just
make decisions. Yeah, I'm going to go and ask that
person for a for a drink, and it's like rolling
D twenty, roll of twenty. It's like, I'm going to
go and I'm going to go and do that. I'm
going to get or roll the one and go I'm
going to trip myself up, throw a drink over them
and accidentally stab them and see how that goes.
Speaker 4: So one of the reasons that we got Chris on
the show is because not only are we are we
massive fans of of his in general, but we are
massive fans of the shop. And for me at least,
it's incredibly important, especially at the moment, that we support
our local stores.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, it will become even harder, I think
now to break that addiction almost to internet shopping. It's
good in the current environment to encourage that and stay
safe at home and get stuff to you, but as
soon as as possible, get out there to your local shop,
and especially this one. If the comic shopping cruelly is
your local shop, support them so they can continue to
be here to support you and your community.
Speaker 4: This place has been very important to me, and I'm
sure for you guys out there, your your local store
is important to you guys. So if you have a
friendly local game store, shout them out in the comments below.
Tell us where they are, tell us what they offer.
We'd love to hear the different places around. So maybe
when we're traveling and I've got somewhere to pop in.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, travel and visiting places.
Speaker 2: Oh forgotten what that feels like. Well, I generally have
because I probably I'm nearly left the shop. Many I
have been out. I have been let out occasionally, but yeah,
generally I live here.
Speaker 3: We do a shop swap.
Speaker 2: But it is, yeah, it is exactly that we need you.
And that's speaking from all local little game shops. We
need you because what people don't see is like they'll
come in and sometimes people see it as a niche
little shop and go, this is nice, and oh that's
why their prices are hiked up. Sometimes we literally make
no money on some of the stock we get in.
We got as we're trying to compete and it's just
almost impossible. So sometimes when the prices are a little
bit higher, don't think it's because they're just trying to
milk you for your money. It's because actually sometimes when
we're trying to compete, the discounts that the big online
stores get probably put them at prices that we can't
and probably less than what we even buy them for.
So it's not about greed and just have a little
thing that we obviously need you to survive, so we're
grateful that you turn up and support us. And I
think I can speak for all gaming stores where they
probably feel the same. So it's it's always stuff that
goes on behind the scenes that you might not think about.
So yeah, but we need you and they need you
as well.
Speaker 3: That little extra pound or two. Think of it as
as the love and appreciation that you get from the
community that is available for you in the local shop.
You might save a couple of quid online, but you
won't get the feedback and the appreciation that you get
from coming into a place like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, it's almost like a mini investment of keeping
us open because obviously if we go down, then these
and any shop goes down and you lose your local
game store, and that's not just tragedy for them and
for everybody.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it goes for wherever you are in the
world while we're in this situation at the moment. Yeah, definitely,
definitely show them some love and let them know that
you're already.
Speaker 3: In hype to come back. And Comic Shop Online is
available for some purchases.
Speaker 2: At the moment, it's just Magic for the new set,
so pre orders and so on. So we're getting pre
order for the next set Chorea, Chorea. Yeah, yeah, definitely,
so we're looking forward to that. And again, it's it's
heartbreaking to have to say to everyone just wait, because
everyone's just dying to get in here and play. Luckily
they've got empty j arena. But it's not I think again,
people are probably finding out that these things are fine
and at least you still get your fix of magic.
But it's not the same as interactions human interactions, playing cards,
seeing them, physically having them in your hand. It's just
not the same online as much as like, even I've
had a little dabble on it because I've had the
opportunity to and yeah, I've enjoyed it. And it's actually
a good teaching format for new players because in your
own comfort, in the comfort of your own home, you
get to sort of relax and actually learn because you
can't make mistakes in the computer won't allow you to
do that. So I've I definitely see the benefits, but
I think generally the Magic community want to be with
each other and playing the same.
Speaker 3: We've played games on Roll twenty and Discord, but you
need those just not the same. You need to be
able to see when people are going to speak like
we're doing now. We're pausing for each other because we
can see each other. You're giving each other that space
and that respect, and it really does matter, I think.
So anyone out there keep in mind that we're waiting
for you, and we want you to come back and
do as much as you can and maintain that community
and build it and let it grow.
Speaker 4: So what do you think? What's your favorite thing about
the comic shop? How excited are you to see it
open again? I know I am dying to get back
here on the regular and see all your faces. Get
to play some D and D with everybody, gets to
play some magic the Gathering and some board games. Let
us know what you think in the comments below. What
do you want us to talk about next time? Did
you like crisping on the show? I loved it, or
have him back anytime so