UK Games Expo Price List

Squarehex will have a stand at the UK Games Expo this weekend (Stand K24). Here's a copy of our price list flyer. We've got a wide range of items and some of them are limited to just one or two copies. We can't reserve items so if you want something very badly please get to us early.

Dragondaze Show Offers

Dragondaze in Newport is this Saturday. The Squarehex stand will have lots of Reaper Bones Minis, Mapping Pads & Books, Cthulhu & Random Dungeon Posters, OSR RPGs, Savage Worlds RPG Books, and a selection of board and card games.

Here's a few selected offers on popular games and a few hard-to-find items. Everything is limited stock (most items 1 or 2 only):

• X-Wing Core Set £22
• X-Wing Millenium Falcon £20
• X-Wing Slave I £20
• Colt Express £24
• Pandemic £24
• Love Letter £7
• Coup £10
• Dungeon Roll £12
• LotFP Carcosa £30
• LotFP Red and Pleasant Land £28
• Dwimmermount Package £50
• Warpstone Issue #30 £9
• Creature Compendium £6.90
• Petty Gods Softcover £12
• Scarlet Heroes Hardcover £20
• DCC Chained Coffin Boxed Set £24
• Castle of the Mad Archmage Package £30
• Classified Spy Retroclone £10
• Fight On! 1-4 Compendium £13.90
• Fight On! 5-8 Compendium £13.90
• Labyrinth Lord Hardcover £20
• Labyrinth Lord AEC Hardcover £20

All items are first-come, first-served. See you at the show!

Squarehex Review of 2014

This post is a short review of my gaming business activity for the year. 

Kickstarters

In 2014 I ran 5 Kickstarter campaigns. They were all successful, with some making several times the amount set as a funding goal. Kickstarter has helped me build a range of printed pads and notebooks that I am immensely proud of. I cannot think of any better way to fund and market such niche products. All of my Kickstarter projects are carefully planned in advance. I usually set aside about 15% of the funding as a contingency pot for the project, which if not used up then becomes my profit. In the planning stage I look at a vast array of funding outcomes from 100% all the way up to 2000% (20 times the funding goal). My golden rule for Kickstarter is: Only start a new project after all the rewards from the previous one have been posted.

This year I also ran my first pre-order for print run of Isometric Mapping Pads. Although it was not as successful as an equivalent Kickstarter, the pre-orders still accounted for around 30% of the print run. It also allowed a much faster turnaround than a Kickstarter making it ideal for smaller projects.

2014 Kickstarters

• A4 Numbered Hex Pad
• A4 & A5 Grid Pads
• A2 Battlepad
• A6 Gamer's Notebook
• A5 Gamer's Notebook

Exhibitions

I've taken stands at 6 UK conventions this year. Attending the shows is a great way to reach new customers. They can be hard work, but having done quite a few of them now, I'm finding the preparations for them a lot easier. They are also made a lot easier thanks to the help of my wife, who's assisted me at all of this year's shows. One thing I have found is that it is almost impossible to guess what will and won't sell at a show. We've sold out of an item at one show, and then stocked up for the next one and sold none of that item. Selecting what to take to shows is a very careful balance of what will fit in our small hatchback and what can be merchandised on a 2 metre stand. We tend to overload both the car and the stand.

2014 Shows

• UK Games Expo
• Continnum
• Concrete Cow
• Dragon Daze
• Derby World Wargames
• Dragonmeet

Website

The Squarehex website is something that I would like to have developed further this year. For now though it remains just a basic shop front open to customers from all around the globe. It features all the products created from past Kickstarters and a small selection of games and accessories.

Business

Squarehex as a business started in Spring 2013. Before that I had published issues of Oubliette (first issue was 2010) but that was very much a hobby activity. With Squarehex I planned to run it as a business, but one without any financial pressure to meet a given level of revenue or profit. My hope was that in the first year the business would make enough money to cover the its internet and storage costs. It achieved this with ease and this year it looks set to do better again. The growth of the business has also meant that the stock has moved from a 75 sq' storage unit to a 160 sq' unit.

Whilst the scale of the business is modest, I've still made sure that it is run correctly. For every Kickstarter I keep full accounts detailing income and expenditure along with profit and loss. Every project is also carefully planned and budgeted for. I want to make sure that the business is sustainable, and know from watching other Kickstarters that one poorly planned project can be lethal to a business in the gaming industry.

So that was this year, if I get a chance I'll post a follow-up article in the New Year detailing my plans for 2015. Thank you to everyone that has backed my projects, bought things from the webstore, or from our stand at a show this year. Also look out for the Squarehex January Sale which starts on New Year's Eve.

UK Games Expo 2014

I'm busy packing lots of games, books, pads and figures to take along to the Expo this weekend.  This year the Squarehex stand is in the Library suite.  We had a great show last year, and I think this year we've got a much better selection of products to tempt customers old and new.

I've also created a new Squarehex logo, which I'm quite pleased with.  Our stand will have signage with the new logo so we should be easy to spot.

Derby World Wargames Show

I've booked a small stand at the Derby World Wargames show. It takes place at the Castle Donington Exhibition Centre on Saturday/Sunday 28th/29th September. As the title suggests it's a show for wargamers rather than RPGs. However, as the stand wasn't expensive, and it's only a 20 minutes drive away, I figured I'd give it a go. It looks like a fairly large event. I'll be taking all my own publications and pads, and whatever else I can find that will fit in the car. My biggest worry is being tempted by what other traders are pedaling and coming back with more stuff than I take to sell. Details of the show may be found at:

www.worldwargames.co.uk

I was very pleased with our takings at the 2013 UK Games Expo earlier this year. I plan to be there again in 2014. I've also penciled in a stand at Con-Quest which is another Derby show. If sales continue to grow I'll look at shows further from home.

UK Games Expo 2012 Report

Had a great day on Saturday at the Expo in Birmingham.  Seemed busier than last year, but the numbers seemed to thin out by mid-afternoon, thanks to the mini heatwave the UK is currently enjoying.  The stands and format seemed to be pretty much the same as last year.  It's a great show to visit if you are a boardgame fan with money in your pocket.

I had it in mind to pick up a copy of Stars Without Number.  Unfortunately, they had sold out by the time I got to the Mongoose stand.  There was also no sign of Dungeon Crawl Classics, but it may be a little too hot off the press for the UK distribution copies to have hit.  However, I was happy to come away with a Slayer's guide for one pound, to add to my collection from the ever popular bring-and-buy stand, and a bargain figure storage case from Chessex (of which I really should have bought two or three).

The highlight of the show for me, was a game of Living Munchkin, which is a semi-LARP version of the card game and was great fun.  We also sat in on Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson's TopTen Games seminar where they each listed their top 10 games.  They both opted to put D&D in the number 1 slot, and had on display a very rare original boxed set signed by both Gygax and Arneson.

Here's a list of the other games from their lists.  They are not in order and I'm missing about five of them as my recorder ran out (if anyone was there and can add to the list please do so):

•Ticket to Ride
•Puerto Rico
•Acquire
•Can't Stop
•Small World
•The Great Dalmuti
•Lost Cities
•1829
•Balloon Cup
•Diplomacy
•The Warlord
•Caylus
•Civilization???

Ian Livingstone also announced a new Zombie-themed Fighting Fantasy book, which will be released in August this year to mark the 30th Anniversary of the series.

Overall, a great day was had by all.  It will be interesting to see how the show does next year in its new, bigger venue.

UK Games Expo 2011 Report

We had a great day out on Saturday at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham. I've attached some photos but they only show a few of the things the show had to offer. For the UK it's quite a big event, although it leans a little more towards skirmish games and board games than RPGs.

The OSR was represented by a small stand cleverly pitched opposite Otherword Miniatures. They had copies of Vornheim, which they said were selling well, along with numerous adventures and a couple of Fight On! Compilations. Leisure Games had a selection of OSR publications for sale; including the Oubliette Compilation which was nice to see. However, I didn't see a single Labyrinth Lord book and, come to think of it, I'm not even sure there was a copy of The Dungeon Alphabet either.

We reminisced with one of the guys running Talisman demos - a game we used to play as teenagers in First Edition form. We also played a cracking Gun Fight at the OK Corral game using 90mm figures and a giant scratch-built model of the town. The OK Corral game played out using some rules the guy had made up. It worked really well. He had a pack of cards with the names of characters on and he turned them over, one card at a time, and gave that character a single action. The more important the character, the more cards with their name in the deck.

We also sat in on a RPG seminar featuring; Lew Pulsipher who was good in a Grognardy sort of way, a OTT Finnish guy who was nuts but OSR friendly (it wasn't Raggi but he might have been cast from the same mould), and then a couple of others - one who'd written a setting that he really wanted to be a novel, and a lady from Cubicle 7, who had worked on Call of Cthulhu and a load of other stuff. They wasted a bit of time talking about what's great about RPGs and how kids today don't have the attention span to pick them up. They didn't talk that much about the industry, but the two publishers agreed that new products these days only have print runs of 500-1000 books.

I came away from the day full of ideas and with a bag full of goodies (mostly board games) to play with. However, I couldn't help feeling that, as far as the UK is concerned, there's a big OSR shaped gap in the hobby. Nealy all the OSR products I've picked up over the last year have come from the States, and it's not until you visit a convention that you realise the lack of representation by the UK in the OSR.

I'm planning on visiting a few more UK shows this year, but I'm already starting to formulate ideas for a stand to promote Oubliette and other OSR products at the UK shows next year.

Con-Quest Derby Show Report Saturday 30th April

I had a great day at Con-Quest on Saturday.  Con-Quest is a single day RPG con held at the Assembly Rooms in Derby (UK).  The venue was very good, and the organisers did a great job: the main hall had traders set up on the periphery of the room and demo games running in the centre,  the other rooms were divided into separate gaming stations using free standing office partitions, enabling several different style rpg games to run concurrently and without interruption.

Forty games were organised into morning and afternoon sessions, and they covered a wide range of systems and settings including: Pathfinder, Traveller, D&D, Savage Worlds, Realms of Cthulhu, and loads more. 

I played in John Wilson's morning game of Labyrinth Lord, The Body in Question.  Our party (all goblins) went on a mission into the big city for their master.  It was really funny game, with some of the goblins getting a little over excited (eg. our attempt to avoid the town guards by hiding in an alley met with chaos when one of the goblins, unable to contain themselves called out to the guard, another goblin tried to throw off the watch by pretending to be a human drunk and singing a drinking song which had all the hallmarks of actually working when another goblin found itself incapable of handling the tension and shot one of the guards with a crossbow).

Here's some pictures of the show.  The last one is of me and my fellow goblin players.