In the wake of a sort of Black hole that that summer has been for me with Magic (between 20ss shutting down events for August and what seems like September, and just plain old being really busy on my own thing) it seems like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel of Summer! I got in touch with Kevin An of the Geekery HQ, a brand new game shop in Astoria for 10 questions about the store. I know Kevin through some of the Long Island City Vintage crew, so it’s exciting to see him running the MTG side of things up there. I’d tell you more but I think that’s what the 10 questions is about… right?
Why did you choose to open your store in Astoria?
Our primary goal was to create a community-focused spot in Queens for table top gamers. We all love gaming but sometimes we don’t have the space for it. That’s an issue we wanted to address. Wendy and Syrus are the awesome owners of The Geekery HQ. They spent months looking for a great location and found a spot we all think is perfect in Astoria.
What sort of Events do you have in mind? Any big plans for your opening?
If you play board games, card games like Magic, miniatures or role playing games, we want you to be able to come play what you want to play and meet with people looking to do the same.
Do you have a Schedule of events in mind or is that something still in the works.
We will definitely have a schedule of events. The plan is to offer some weekly events for now and build upon that as a foundation to run more events as the community desires them.
For Magic, we’re going to have weekly events. Legacy every Monday and Modern every Thursday, for store credit. On Fridays, we’re going to have on-demand draft pods and Standard in the evening. Since we’re still brand new we won’t have FNM quite yet, but that’s definitely on the horizon. To celebrate our opening, we will be randomly giving away one booster of Modern Masters 2015 to a player in each event on Fridays, for a limited time.
Aside from MTG, will you be featuring any other games?
Definitely. We have over 100 board games for sale and will build a small library of board games to rent in store, as well as some free open play space. We carry many miniatures such as Warhammer, X-Wing and others. RPGers are more than welcome. If you want to play a tabletop game, we want to have you here. The full calendar will be updated before we open September 12th. You can find it on our website, www.thegeekeryhq.com.
What’s the store’s capacity?
For Magic, our capacity is about 36-40 comfortably, with the ability to host about 50 players. Comfort is important to us so we’re trying to utilize our space the best we can while maintaining room for players to easily move around.
When are you planning on opening?
Our soft open for the shop is September 12 with our grand opening coming the first weekend of October.
Plans for IQs or PPTQs in the works?
IQs and PPTQs are definitely something we plan to host. Once we are up and running, we can see where we are and go from there.
There’s a pretty tight Vintage scene in Astoria, what are the chances we might see some Vintage action at the store?
100%. Magic is a fantastic game, and Vintage is a format that desperately needs some love in the city. There will be Vintage and Old School Magic at The Geekery.
What does your stock of singles look like? Are you going to have the staples?
We are currently building our selection of singles, but already have a decent number of staples available: fetches, duals and a lot of the other goodies. We want to encourage those looking to sell to come by as we are always working to get cards in stock with a competitive buylist and fair pricing that will generally be at TCG Mid.
Can we find you on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram?
You can find us at www.thegeekeryhq.com, @thegeekeryhq on twitter and on Facebook and Instagram at www.fabebook.com/thegeekeryhq.
So that’s all ten questions. I’m pretty excited that they will be hosting some Vintage as well as some premier competitive events. Can’t wait to bust out my Stasis deck for Old School! Standing by I decent price system seems promising as well. NYC has been notorious void of competitive buy list vendors.
Next Week I’m going to give the 10 questions treatment to Joseph Vazquez. He’s opening a new shop too in the city! It’s a good time to be a cardflopper in NYC!
Zac Clark