Flipside Gaming - Clifton Park — Local services in Town of Clifton Park

Friendly & accommodating staff, good prices on cards (Magic the Gathering and now Pokemon TCG singles.) Lots of tournaments, leagues and events, and the local crowd is all pretty nice. The "play area" isn't huge, but it doesn't feel cramped up until you get a big event like a prerelease going, when it can be a bit more difficult to get around than at some larger places in the area. Nice big windows overlooking the parking lot and past that a forested suburb, park, and lake. It's inside one of those multi-business office-style buildings which is handy if you need a ride.

Also never seems to have that "gamer stink," which is nice.

Their collection of things like Yugioh, Vanguard, tabletop games and rpg books is a lot less than larger game stores in the area, so if you're mostly looking for those I'd recommend going to one of the larger local stores in Albany or Saratoga.

(Feel free to ignore this part if you're not looking to play Magic here....)

EDH/Commander league on Mondays is nice. I've played at Flights of Fantasy in Colonie at the past and Flipside CP's EDH meta is substantially more casual, ranging from "let's play fun yet functional theme decks" to "I'm going to blow up your sol ring on turn 1 but I would do it to anyone, sorry." People aren't typically going to be locking another player out of the game on purpose, or comboing out early. EDH night is $5 and offers a choice of a Standard-legal pack as well. It starts out with getting a stamp on your card - which can get you such benefits as reduced prices on snacks/drinks, a t-shirt, packs, etc. Round 1 you're put in a randomized pod with an average of 3-4 other players and you play until time. Round 2 is typically the room's choice of randomized pods or free play, and the store offers Planechase and Archenemy as well. You can often get trades or 1v1 games at this time too, advice on decks, etc, as with your typical EDH night. Rarely there's door prizes (I got a box of Dragon Shield sleeves, saw people get playmats, precons, and deck boxes from various tcgs.)

My experience here has been good. I'm happy to see a local card shop serving the area between Albany and Saratoga and doing well in...

Visited yesterday afternoon with my 11yo daughter for the first time after hearing about the place through some acquaintances. Both daughter and I are starting to learn to play Pokémon TGC and, with no intention other than to look around, we decided to swing by. I see a few comments in this thread mentioning a “rude” and “pretentious” staff. Simply put: our experience was the antithesis.

To be sure - this place is definitely a Magic: the Gathering-first shop, but they were far from unaccommodating to us Poké-trainees. Tons of MORE-than-reasonably-priced GX singles to choose from, deals on boosters, and a service where you fill out a sheet of desired cards that they’ll pull for you within a half-hour’s time! (We were even invited us to message the shop through Facebook for this service! Very cool!)

We were warmly greeted by Pat when we first came in. Despite my daughter and I being both 15 years older and younger than what I imagine their typical clientele is, we were helped from minute one, and given nothing but respect our entire visit. While Magic appeared to be Pat’s passion, his knowledge of Pokémon was outstanding as he was able to answer questions we had. We were gifted a TON of energy cards to help get my daughter’s first deck off the ground! (Side note: I have to give a immense amount of credit to Pat’s colleague who was tasked with gathering our cards from the shop’s HUGE singles collection, who overheard my anecdotal story about how my daughter beat me in a game because I chose the wrong color energy (I was born colorblind) to power the Pokémon i was playing with. After hearing my story, he went out of his way and found an older version of the energy cards I was using which had a design more easily distinguishable from the cards I was confusing them with! Then gave them to me gratis! As someone who still gets easily embarrassed by this not-uncommon malady, I can’t tell you how touched I was by this simple gesture. Amazing.)

My only disappointment is that I foresee MUCH of my income funneling to this place. Hope my little girl likes ramen noodles as much as she...

I decided to check this place out on a business trip this weekend and [like so many other people on here I’m now seeing] was less than impressed with their customer service. I managed to get the attention of one guy after standing there for five minutes and had him grab a couple cards from the display, and requested a few singles. He told me to write them all down on a pull sheet. So I spent the next five minutes doing that, filling out all the rarities and set names for 6 cards. I hand the sheet to an employee and he says “put your contact info on there and we’ll get in touch with you, we close in 15 minutes so there’s no way we could put this together tonight” meanwhile he’s on the computer and talking to his friend, and the other guy is back on his phone. I tell them nevermind then I’ll just take what I had them pull from the case and it’s $32. I’m surprised since it’s a $20 card. He tells me they use some other non-standard pricing. Why in the world would someone want to pay 30% more and not even be able to take the cards with them? What benefit is there to shopping here over saving a massive amount of money online? I get better customer service from the robots on the websites. And why can’t these guys on their phones pull a whopping 6 [higher end] cards for me after making me fill out their list and mentioning nothing about not being able to?...