Strategy & Games — Local services in Coeur d'Alene

RESPONSE TO THE “NEW MANAGER”:

Your store practices for running events are known throughout the local mtg community. Previous events run by your owner EVEN OUTSIDE YOUR STORE have been run without prize support. These practices have been happening for years. Unless there is drastic, player forward, meaningful changes from the top down, that are clearly communicated and shown in action, your store will continue down a path where you will be a glorified games section at Target or Walmart. And if you take a Quick Look at the reviews, people would rather shop at the latter.

Using free prize support from wotc to prize out an event is effectively fraud and will be treated as such. “Resolving” the issue with a “pack” is so disingenuous.

If you truly understood what player centric events and customer first thinking could have an impact on your business, there would be 5 stars across the board on these reviews, you wouldn’t be able to keep your shelves stocked, and your business would thrive.

I guarantee the mindset towards events you have is “well I don’t make any money from these events to want to run them”. Assuming $4/pack cost and. Pod of 8 players you end up with about $100 bucks WITH prizing out 1st 2nd 3rd 4, 3, 2 packs respectively. But here’s the big part: you have 8 customers in your store for hours. They have time between games, they buy drinks, they pick up singles, they boost your business. Imagine now, if you ran multiple pods and multiple events. Get the idea?

While we’re at it: You need a rewards system and more competitive pricing. I imagine your store is significantly in the red with all that product in the shelves. Idk maybe come up with a plan to move more of it?

Those are the kind of changes you need to just START becoming a better store. But if history and these reviews on google indicate anything, you and I both know that won’t be happening.

EDIT: The employees here are VERY nice. It’s unfortunate because I’d love to give my business to interact with them more.

Updated review. After many years of trying to give this place a chance to be fair on pricing and player-forward business practices, I am changing my 5 star review to a 1 star.

The owner will consistently implement predatory pricing claiming “he has to compete with Amazon”.

I Just finished playing a mtg draft that charged me $30 dollars and THEY DIDN’T EVEN PRIZE OUT. If you don’t know the standard practice, typically you’ll pay an entry fee that covers the cost of the packs and goes into a prize pool for the prize packs for the top players. I won the draft and was told “we aren’t prizing out packs this set because they cost so much”.

If you aren’t aware: shops like this pay the same price from their distributors for product no matter what the set is. So effectively the players are being told that the “potential” market value of a pack is more valuable than retaining players and holding to standard practices of mtg draft.

I won’t be playing here anymore. Too many scammy practices that are detrimental to the player.

OLD REVIEW FOR TRANSPARENCY: An amazing place with a HUGE selection of board games, miniatures and trading cards. A nerd's absolute dream. Their X wing selection is...

Honest review here, there is a fair selection of hobby items and products. This is where the good things about the store end. Between the arrogant, rude owner and equally lazy employees ,who often do not know what they are talking about in regards to certain products, the cherry on top is the inflated prices. I stood directly in front of the owner for a good five minutes, with ZERO acknowledgement, listening to him prattle on about his Space Wolves, and this and that. Finally, as I had resigned to leave he pipes up and says "Well if you want something, you gotta speak up!" This he says after I have been walking around looking at things, picking stuff up, etc. Other reviews make it out like this is a problem of the employees, but the owner is just as guilty. The rudeness I cannot even describe, as if I was an inconvenience for wanting to PURCHASE their goods. If you like being treated badly when you want to spend money, look no further. Everything in the store is significantly overpriced, when, coupled with the questionable customer service, creates an overall terrible experience. If a game is not one the owner or employees care about, dont expect much store support or regulation of events. Instead, whatever group has been controlling a game/hobby will dictate to you how and what you shall receive for participating in "store" events, so long as the core group receives the promotional items, they do not care about newcomers, and admit as much. They even go so far as to rig the tournament rosters to create certain matchups. Sealed products are often opened and "shuffled" with certain promotional items being withheld or sold seperately. Which makes it completely pointless to buy the sealed product from here, often times the same product can be found for half the price else where. Strategy and Games is a joke of a hobby game store, you are far better off making the journey somewhere else where people actually care. It is unfortunate that this is one of the few options for hobby game enthusiasts in...

The only positive is that they have a wide selection. They consistently charge above market price on nearly everything. The customer service is mediocre at best and downright rude at worst. The only employee who actually knew anything was fired for preordering too many copies of a game. Everyone there knew this because the owner was yelling at him for it at the checkout. When I first started going there, I wanted to support local business, so ordered a game through them. After a month of no news, I decided to just order it off of Amazon. Six months later I got a call from them saying that my game was in. They say they give out lots of coupons to their store on your receipt, but I have never seen one for more than 15% off, and they all expire within a week. Plus, you need to give them your phone number for all their other deals, and when you do, they spam you with text messages for every item that comes in. Finally, they have their ''bobby bux''. Every ten dollars you spend in November and December gives you one bobby buck. Then, in the next year you can spend them as real money for up to half the cost of your purchase. It sounds cool, but if you think about it you realize that it is less than 10% off. I once had three bobby bux so I went in to buy some card sleeves. They were 5.99 and they didn't let me use my three bobby bux because I was one penny short and apparently the discount only applies to the price before tax. They also don't tell you that bobby bux expire in February. You have to read the fine print on the back of the bobby bux after they give them to you to find that out.

I wish strategy and games was an even halfway decent store. If it was I would still be supporting it. But I have had so many bad experiences there that now I drive 45 minutes from my house to go to Tim's or Uncle's rather than 3 minutes to S&S. But if you are a jerk, money grubber, or spammer, you will feel...