LGS on the Road - All Star Cards and Collectibles

By: Dozer

I've always believed that our hobby needs the Local Game Shops (LGS) to keep our games healthy. We need to support the LGS to keep our games on the shelf. We need our games on the shelf to keep the games alive.

Canada has a healthy relationship with their game shop and I want to post about my experience about the many shops that dot Canada.

This year I am travelling all across Canada  for my day job. When I stop at a new city, I will be visiting and playing at as many LGS as I can. 

I'm in Edmonton for two weeks and last night I was lucky to meet up with a few folks from Edmonton Infinity Gaming at one of the local shops, All Star Cards and Collectibles.

Right off the bat I walked in Henry waved from behind the counter and said hello. The small shop is loaded with snacks, drinks, and plenty of odds and ends to support their local gaming groups. The prices were nice and the shop had that family owned vibe to it.

Soft lit and cozy shop run by some really nice folks

After picking up some snacks I stepped towards the large door leading the gaming area. It takes a person coming into the shop less than a second to notice the red trimmed doorway to the brightly lit play area.

Right away I ran into Aaron a Rumbler (those are folks that play at Rumble on Route 66) who I had met last year at Rumble. Hungry after a day at work and very early to play he was able to point me and my mate towards some food that was only a few kilometers away.

Plenty of product and the red trimmed door

The play area is littered with tables, more shelves for the collection of various action figures including some older collectibles. There are a set of tabletop wargaming tables that can do four games that need 4'x4' to play at the back of the room next to the sliding barn doors of reclaimed wood.

Reclaimed, sliding barn doors - for a gaming space.
Does your LGS have this fancy feature. 

There are another four tables in the large open space that are perfect for games of Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! (I saw six people playing it that night), X-Wing, and other table top games.

Huge and open gaming space

This was one of my favorite gaming spaces that I've visited. It was very well lit and it felt open due to the high ceilings and light coloured walls. The room is really clean and well kept. Behind the sliding barn doors is the warehouse filled with store terrain and other products. I'm not sure, but it looks like they could expand the play space for events into the back area.

So I played a game of Commander with my mate and his cat deck beat up my Blue Toolbox Commander deck. It was close he had 1 life left and then he stomped me with a well equipped cat. I did get my drop my Marit Lage but it was condemned when it first swung.

Later I played fellow Rumbler and Canadian, Matt. We swap some patches and played a quick game of Infinity (Decapitation scenario).

Thanks to a Tikbalang I had started to run out of KO tokens.
This was brought to by the number 20 - which I rolled a lot of.

 Lets say it didn't work for me. I learned lots from Tim who was TO'ing our game and giving lots of advice. Folks were offering up tokens and templates since I had packed light and was only able to show up with a measuring template, some orders, wound tokens, and my minis.

For me the night was awesome, great place and friendly folks putting minis and dice on the table. Way better then sitting alone in my hotel room.

If you're in Edmonton look this place up to grab a game.

- Cheers