Sword & Board

12/17/2023

SALE!
Now through December 31st, 15% off on in-stock items (some exceptions apply).

Hours in the second half of December will be spotty due to the holiday season, so please stop in if you see us open or call to inquire when would be a good time to drop by in order to be sure to catch us.

03/26/2022

Here's April's calendar. Please reach out if you find a mistake or a potential oversight.

03/26/2022

If you're trying to hit all the local Skirmish events, don't miss ours! See the slide for details, and don't hesitate to reach out on here or on Discord if you have any questions.

03/24/2022

Sword & Board is going to undergo some temporary, but somewhat lengthy changes in the near future. I'd like to start with an explanation, but please scroll to the bottom if you just want the TL;DR version of it.

Since day 1, there have been a lot of projects that I have had planned for the shop and have been very excited about. Unfortunately, it has now been over two years and we have not been able to reach many of those goals such as the wall façade, building a permanent counter, reaching stock levels we would like to maintain and a variety of games that we would like to offer, and many other projects.
We started up in November 2019, and before we could really build a customer base the shutdown hit. With that, a social doctrine of anti-social behavior became the accepted norm. It has now been two years and the social conditions surrounding us still have not gone back to what they were yet. There is the promise that we will lose the masking mandates and that restrictions are loosening soon, but the reality is that we just can’t trust that things are about to get better because we have seen this before. Last year they lifted the mandates and then put them right back in place and reinforced the concept that it’s not safe to spend time in public or together with each other in a setting such as our shop.
It’s ridiculous, it’s shameful, I hate it. I cannot stand the absolutely ludicrous way our society has been manipulated into a state in which fear is used to control us and keep us apart. In regards to Sword & Board, it’s affected the shop in a way that has prevented us from building the customer base needed to build toward our goals for the shop. Because of this, and because I cannot trust the state government to foster a return to normalcy again within any specific timeframe, much less very soon, I have come to a decision. It was a tough one, and made with great hesitation, but I have come to the conclusion of my deliberation and decided what will best allow us to reach out goals for the shop.
Starting the week of the 11th of April, just under a month away, I will be curtailing the shop hours to a schedule that will allow me to work another job outside the shop to build up the funds needed to achieve the goals we have been reaching for but making little to no progress toward for several years now. The idea isn’t for this to be permanent, but I expect it to last a full year before reassessment. I have accepted a job offer that will allow me to earn enough in that time to accomplish all of the financial goals that we have set for the shop’s projects and advancement efforts, and at the end of that time I will most likely return to working the shop full-time.
It pains me greatly to have to close the doors during our regular hours and that I will be unable to support our gaming community as well during this time, but I will endeavor to do all I can to support our existing gaming communities as well as possible.
Going forward, all of our weekly events will remain the same except for Flesh and Blood, which will need to move from Friday Night. I will be reaching out to our FaB community to determine what available time will work best for them, and I hope we can continue to serve the entire group we currently support with events. Magic will remain the same. Warhammer will remain the same. Our Semi-weekly Pathfinder game will have to be cancelled, unfortunately. Other than that, we’re just losing regular business hours.
As of right now, I expect that ordering through us will not change. As far as I am aware, we will be able to maintain our status with each of our distributor and game producer programs, so I expect that you’ll all still be able to order through us as you have been for each of your games. We will be expanding our inventory of products and our variety of games over the coming months, as well, so you may even find it easier to get what you want through us after some time under these new conditions.
As I said before, this is not permanent. I expect this to last approximately one year, from this April to April 2023. By next summer I should be able to come back to working full-time at the shop and have all our projects either done or at least funded. If anyone isn’t able or interested in coming in during the period of abbreviated operation, I am sorry to see you go and you will be missed but I hope to see you again when we resume normal operations.

TL;DR: From April 11th, 2022, until approximately April of 2023 the shop’s regular hours will be halted, and all events not on Sunday-Tuesday will be moved to one of those days (Pathfinder is cancelled, though). Sunday night MTG will continue during that period. Monday night Warhamer will continue during that period. Friday night FaB will be moved to another day after consulting with our FaB community, and will continue on the best day available during the Sun-Tue period. All product ordering will be unaffected, you will still be able to order your products through us. We are just losing time, that’s all. I will be working a job outside the shop for one year to build up the funds to complete the projects we have had planned since opening day but cannot otherwise fund.

03/03/2022

Here's the new calendar, hopefully I didn't make any mistakes this time.

02/23/2022

Preorders available this week. Most of these will be available for regular orders after the 5th as well, but if you want 1st wave product or you want the limited production product (I think only the dice are limited in this list) then don't miss the pre-order window. Sorry it's so short, it seems like we tend to get about one week notice for GW preorders.

12/20/2021

Facebook won't let us make this a poll, so I'm gonna ask everyone to respond in comments instead.

We aren't sure when, and demand will play a factor on how high a priority we make this, but we are considering getting our hands on a plotter. Probably a 36 or 42 inch plotter. I'm talking the kind that prints on a roll of paper.

What we have in mind is being able to print things such as tabletop RPG maps, as well as low-quality posters (not like what you'd hang on your wall, but maybe short-term use paper posters for events and whatnot).

We would like to hear from our community about whether you would be interested in paying for prints off our plotter. Whether it's printed maps for your games, printed posters (not photo quality), or any other ideas you have for what to print off the plotter. If you would pay for prints let us know the following in a comment:
How often would you likely pay for a print?
How many prints would you usually get at once?
What would you feel is a fair price for a 36x36 inch print? (Just as an example size, if you're interested in a particular other size how much would you feel comfortable paying)
What is the purpose of the things you would be having us print? (i.e. gaming maps, event advertisement posters, informational posters, etc.)

12/03/2021

Found an error, rearranged MTG events to accommodate the one I forgot about.

11/21/2021

Feel free to call ahead to check current availability during business hours: Wed-Sat 11am-7pm
Or Inquire on our Discord server (link is pinned on our FB page) in the product inquiries channel or by sending a private message to Nate.

10/21/2021

Instead of our Normal Sunday night MTG event we're doing this on Halloween, and it's not just for MTG players:

10/17/2021

Sorry for the late cancellation, everyone, but we're cancelling tonight's MTG Modern event. We will be trying again with that format next month, so if you're interested in it keep an eye out.

10/04/2021

New calendar, sorry I'm a bit late with this one.

-Nate

09/02/2021

I hope this time works for everyone, if there are better times on Monday for you then please let us know and if enough people want it changed we will change it.

09/02/2021

There we go, no more mistypes (that I've found yet, anyway). Be sure to check back periodically to see if anything changes or is added.

09/02/2021

We're doing two more Saturdays because we still want to try and catch more players for input on whether we want to have regular Saturday Warhammer events before we drop the day due to lack of interest for Saturday events. We can do two Warhammer days if we have interest for both, but if we only have enough interest for Mondays we will switch to just running one on Monday. If you want to play Saturday it's up to you to show up and tell us so.

09/01/2021

Big news, guys! Well, sorta big news. We've secured our domain name so we can start working on getting our own website! I say "sorta" big news because this doesn't mean it's coming soon but it does mean it's coming...and maybe it will be soon. I have to make it myself at this point, so it depends on both my ability to keep up with everything else and my ability to make a website (sadly, my mastery over the HTML and what little CSS we had back in 2004-2005 is of little use to me in the current versions).

See you guys on SwordandBoard.com as soon as it's ready!

-Nate

08/22/2021

07/16/2021

We would like to apologize for a mistake on our previous post advertising this event. The price for Commander Decks and entry into the event using them (which is supposed to be identical, because entry is just the cost of a deck) were entered incorrectly. This is the corrected version. If you had made plans based on the previously listed price and are unable to play at the corrected price please get in touch with us as we will make accommodations. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

06/18/2021

And for your Flesh and Blood players out there:

06/18/2021

Okay, let's try this again...Events incoming, starting the 9th of July:

06/18/2021

Sorry for the confusion, I took down our event announcement posts because I need to redo them. I forgot to include the date; I'll have them back up with all the pertinent info late tonight or tomorrow.

-Nate

06/15/2021

Note that these hours are effective AFTER our reopening date of July 9th.

06/15/2021

More announcements coming this week with further details.

05/04/2021

We've been getting a lot of last minute requests for pre-orders on product. I want to take a moment to make some things clear on this matter:

1) If you waited until the last second, you probably missed out. I would figure this would be obvious, but apparently it's not because we keep getting large numbers of inquiries the week before a product actually reaches us.

2) We had to place our preorder months before the product launches. We had to gamble on how much interest there would be, if any, because we often don't get any information except a product name by the time we have to either order it or get none at all (sometimes that's just none at launch for unlimited products, but for limited products that's usually none at all, period).

3) We are an event and social gathering based business. Most of our revenue from sales is generated through having people in the shop for an event or to just sit down and play some casual games. That means that right now, while we cannot do that AT ALL because of state restrictions, we don't turn around a lot of product and we don't make a lot of money to turn into new product.

4) Taking #2 and #3 together: We cannot afford to gamble on products right now. We have done so lately a few times, and lost a lot because of it, and now we can't afford to anymore. Please, help us make safe bets by letting us know as early as you can that you'll be interested in a product. Especially if you are interested in the product just because it's coming out, and not based on what may or may not be in it (such as if you're following standard in MTG and just buy some of every set), we need to hear from you. This is doubly true for collector's edition products, which we ONLY order if someone asks for it. If you don't ask for it before we place our preorder we will likely not be able to get any. It's way too expensive for us to order when there's no interest.

5) If we didn't have enough for you and had to turn away your preorder request, don't expect us to have enough for you next time if you don't help us make sure that happens. There are two reasons we run out before you ask: One is what we've been talking about with all the other points, and so if you don't change how early you ask you're likely to get the same answer again. The other, however, is that we can only order up to a certain amount of product when it's a popular product. It's called our allotment. Our allotment can be based on a number of things, such as how much demand we report and how much product we order since the last similar product or our organized play metrics for that game.

6) One of the most important ways you can help us have enough for you next time on any product where our allocation wasn't large enough for the demand is to get involved with us. Talk to us about how you can help us earn a bigger allotment. We don't just get more for being around longer, and different game producers use different metrics. Some of them look at our organized play numbers, some of them look at our sales on recent products they produced. The more you get involved, the better it will be for everyone and the more easily we can make sure we get a bigger allotment next time.

7) Involved customers will always be at the top of the list. That's because if we know you, and we know you'll want something, we have you on the list before the list is made. So if we didn't have enough product for you and your response was "well, maybe next time" and then we don't hear from you until it's preorder time for the next preorder then you still might not make the list if there are a bunch of more involved customers we knew would be interested in this new product. The moral of the story is this: This shop belongs to its community, and you're welcome to be a part of that community, but if you choose not to be then you're choosing to be second priority instead of first.