Rule Number One: “Please keep your ass crack covered at all times.”

Of the initiatives I took, the one that I was the most proud of was setting up a VERSUS league that not only wound up being one of our most attended events, but also our most diverse one. It’s probably no surprise that hobby gaming is chiefly an interest of white, suburban males. VERSUS, with its DC and Marvel comics theme, was able to pull in a much wider demographic and as a result African-American gamers comprised most of my sales of the game and an overwhelming percentage of the attendance at the Sunday afternoon event. It was nice to see gamers other than the typical white suburbanites and some of these guys- a couple of whom were driving an hour or more to get to the store three to four times a week- wound up being some of my absolute best customers. It wasn’t long before these guys were playing board games and miniatures games with the rest of the AGF crowd.

Our MAGIC community really started to come together as we headed toward summer and one of our regulars, Kold Karl (to distinguish him from the previously mentioned Hot Karl), was the #1 ranked MAGIC player in the state. We feted him with a poster which we proudly displayed on the MAGIC singles counter. Friday Night Magic soon became an absolute riot, drawing 50 or more players in a madhouse environment that the store could barely contain. I let the erstwhile Deezy, a sanctioned MAGIC judge, and Hot Karl manage the event while I poisoned the minds of the younger players with films such as DOLEMITE, KRULL, and MEET THE FEEBLES. It was a glorious fray of life counters, pizza boxes, and scattered common cards, all cleaned up by 1 or 2am by the tirelessly cheerful Roomba vacuum cleaner.

There were a few games that had languished on the shelves that I had noticed- particularly the miniatures games CONFRONTATION, published by the French company Rackham, and WARMACHINE, one of the most popular miniatures games available today. It baffled me why these awesome miniatures games that apparently had big followings were literally covered in dust on my shelves. So I broke open a few, picked out some of the Vallejo paints we had stocked on the counter, and started painting and assembling the figures. I talked a couple of the employees and a regular or two into trying it with me. Before you know it, other people followed my lead and bought figures, paints, glue, and books. By the early days of summer, I couldn’t keep WARMACHINE products on my shelf and I was constantly special ordering hundreds of dollars worth of CONFRONTATION figures. Miniatures lines that were generating $0 of revenue were suddenly turning in thousands. All it took was a spark to start a fire.

Everything was on the right track then, it seemed. Lots of useless product expunged, more sophisticated branding and marketing were in place, the community was developing, and the Barrister’s hand was much reduced in the whole affair. Dollar Bill had hired him to run his other retail business, one that seemed as if it would benefit more from his managerial style, so the outlook was overwhelmingly positive.

But let the reader never forget that this is a story fraught with doom and ill tidings. One Saturday in May the store was completely booming. There must have been 35 or 40 people playing CCGs, miniatures games, board games, everything. I had another employee in the store with me, the Noble Giant, and we had everything completely under control. We brought out folding tables and chairs to accommodate everyone and things were working just right. Sales were constant and it was one of the best days we had ever had. When the store was busy like that, there was always this strange haze that seemed to settle over everything.

Out of that haze emerged a group of gamers who asked me to show them SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT. I had a copy open because almost all of my game collection- at the time somewhere around 500 titles- was in the store. Of course I agreed to not only show them how to play, but also to play it with them. We set up a special “captain’s table” by the front counter and played halfway through the game before The Barrister showed up. He walked in, stood over the table and with much bluster and anger said “What are you doing? You can’t sit here and play games!”

The situation went almost immediately out of control. The Barrister brought the wrong kind of energy to the environment and not only was I furious, but the Noble Giant was as well. I stood up, towering over him, and I said with as much sternness and power as I could muster, “You will not talk to me like that in front of my customers, you have no authority to come in here and act like this in a store that you completely failed to manage with any degree of success.” He stormed out, his 5’0 husky frame cutting a path through happy gamers oblivious to the situation. I apologized to my customers for the embarrassment.

The funny thing was that he called Dollar Bill. He came back in and handed me his cell phone and Dollar Bill said “What’s his problem?” I explained the whole situation to him and he laughed about it, which actually calmed me down a lot. “He just doesn’t understand.” I agreed, of course. He didn’t understand. He didn’t get that what he was seeing was how a game store operates when it’s completely working and humming along its way to success and digging itself deep into people’s hearts as that place you can go and the store owner will sit down and play a game with you. He apologized to me in the parking lot but I know he still didn’t get it. I still wonder if part of that whole confrontation was that he was jealous to see me at the center of a successful business that he would never fully comprehend. When he left, I could sense defeat in him.