Greetings to all of our amazing customers in exile! We felt that it was about time for an update about how we at BKG are coping with the ever-changing landscape of a pandemic-world. We’ll start with the bad news: we have made the tough decision to cancel all in-store events in May. Even if we are very lucky and can someone re-open our doors in the next several weeks, it would not be wise to host you all in a busy event space, and it’s just better to rip off the band-aid. But there is good news:

Our BKG Deliveries program has been a very strong success for us, mostly thanks to all you amazing loyal gamers. Thank you for doing what you can to help keep us at your Friendly Local Game Store going. Every order that you have made helps us keep the staff here going, and helps to make sure that after all this craziness BKG will still be here ready to get back to the business of games in the city of Hamilton.

We have also been looking for ways to run more and better events remotely. We just ran our first paid MTG event remotely using MTG Melee and Arena, and it went quite well! We also just announced the first of our remote D&D sessions using Roll20. We are looking forward to making these remote events as regular an occurrence as our in-store events were.

Our Black Knight in Exile Facebook and Discord communities have been amazing places to collect and keep in touch with other members of the BKG community. They have been important touchstones where our communities can participate in fun challenges, win some prizes, vent, and share how they’ve been spending their isolation days.

As a store that has always focused on a well-merchandised space, excellent in-person service, and a great in-store event atmosphere – none of us were expecting to suddenly be thrust in to a world of remote delivery and online events – but we are adapting as best as we can. Thank you for your patience as we try out some new things to keep this community going.

In the near future you will see some other new efforts that we’ve been working hard on:

• We have been working on setting up a new website which will include an online cart so that you can better see our stock.
• We’re working on improving the remote event experience, where you’ll be able to register and pay online.
• We’re working on adding more online events in general, everything from RPG sessions, to hangouts, to leagues.
• We’re working on more online deals and bundles, to make the shopping experience easy, and so that you can pre-order important releases like the new Pokémon set, and get some savings on things we have in stock.
• An we’re working on other ways to engage you at home, like more challenges, better organized online spaces, and better communication via newsletters and other means.

So thank you for bearing with us as we morph our business in to something that looks very different, but hopefully feels quite similar. It’s because of your continued engagement and support that we will get through this.

Cheers,
-Jay Mason-Grant
Black Knight Games