Today, we're featuring Gandalph Flensburg as part of our Store Spotlight series! Gandalph Flensburgh is a local game store in Flensburg, Germany, who began hosting online armory events in 2020.
How did you first get started with Flesh and Blood?
We started back in 2020 with the European release of Flesh and Blood. After we heard of the game on YouTube channels like Team Covenant or Alpha Investments we were sure that the game has some good potential - so we ordered some product and started building a community.
What were your early experiences with the local community?
At first we weren't able to host local events at our store in person because of the pandemic. So we tried to build a community on a discord channel we made. We had about four to six players attending our online Armory events since then. Some of them left the game after a short period of playing, but some of them even returned when we were able to play at the store again.
What are some of the things that you’ve been doing to foster your local community?
After being able to play in person again, we tried to show our passion about Flesh and Blood to people in other TCG communitys that play at our store. We teached them the game and gave them learn to play decks to try it out. We were building lots of learn to play decks ourselves with the help of the kit distributed by Joey Senart and Decks & Draughts. People have the chance to learn the game at every single armory by getting a free tutorial and deck of their choice. We were also speaking to a lot of our customers about the game, trying to spread the love we felt about it, to hopefully get a bigger community. In terms of price support we invented a system, where every player gets a reward at the end of the day. Every participant of our Armory Events receives a Armory Coin, which can be traded in for the Armory prices such as cold foils or playmats from the kits, whereas the rainbow foil promos and a booster pack are given out as participation prices. To keep things competitive the winner of each armory events has the chance of picking prices first and receiving the prices from the current armory kit aswell as additional price boosters for Top X.
For the Dynasty Release Event we wanted to make something big. We read through all the lore on the LSS page and decided to create a background story for each character that leeds into the lore of Dynasty. We split the heros into to teams: Team Volcor and Team Dracai which fought against each other to claim the throne of Volcor. Each player randomly rolled for the hero they play at the event, built a deck and then got 6 Dynasty boosters to upgrade the deck at the event. We had a Prequel story to the event about the Emperor and to different endings - depending on which team won the event. It was lots of fun to organize and our local players were overall really happy with the outcome of the event.
How did you get the idea for these initiatives?
We ourselves attended events in the past where we paid high starting fees and left the tournament with a single rainbow foil promo finishing close to top 8. We think to keep the community alive and vibrant, we need to give something back - in the form of using our leftovers from the armory kits to make the players decide what to pick from the armory coins they earned at the events. For example a guardian main can pick a Titans Fist over a Rosetta Thorn which he doesn't need because he isn't playing runeblade at all. We also believe that giving out prices to not only the top of the tier players at our events leads us into diverse metas where people aren't scared to try out new deck brews instead of only playing high competitive decks instead.
What kinds of things have you got planned for the future?
We plan to make some bigger events that are connected to the flesh and blood lore - as our Dynasty Release event. For us it was a big achievement having 15 players at our LGS to enjoy brewing decks with the new set. We of course try to expand our community further, as now more and more TCG players join our armory events. We're also trying to build a community that is heading to bigger events like ProQuest in January and enable testing groups and competitive training.
What advice would you give to other local game stores and communities?
Our biggest advice is to find a fair way for players to compete at the armory events and to also enable room for diverse metas that aren't too shy to test some crazy decks. And most of all spread the love we all have while playing this beautiful game.
What is one of your favorite experiences with the local community?
The Dynasty Release event definitely was our favorite experience, even though it was lots of work beforehand. We are also overwhelmed that we have doubled our local player base in the last months. Also the happiness from the players that are attending at our tournaments is very satisfying.