News from the North: April 8th, 2020
Here's a look at some of the recent news in our little slice of the gaming world.
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Finding fun while staying safe during Covid-19
Hello from the North! These are strange and stressful times for many of us, as everyone adjusts to the new (temporary) reality of Global pandemic known as Covid-19. Like so many other businesses, we have had to make some temporary changes to our routines to help reduce the spread of this virus. Here's what you need to know as we move forward: 1. All in-store events have been cancelled until April. We'll be listening to what the Government and health officials have to say, and will reevaluate this decision again at the beginning of April. 2. Our store is still open for retail purchases, but with reduced hours and no in-store game play. Our temporary hours: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday: 11am to 6pm. Saturday & Sunday: Noon to 5pm. (we remain closed on Tuesdays) 3. We have a sale on board games and (non-tcg) card games! Save 10% off at checkout with the code GETWELLSOON. If you are local and coming to pick up your order at our store, feel free to call ahead and we will walk your order out to your car for you. As a small family owned business, North Of Exile Games greatly appreciates your loyalty and patronage during this time of uncertainty. We hope that things will return to normal soon, so that we can return our focus to simply being the best game store that we can for all of you. Wishing good health and happiness to all of you, -Team North
Vote for the North!
Hello, Exiles! Your friends in the North are happy to say that we've been nominated in 5 separate categories of our local newspaper's Readers' Choice awards! If you have a moment and feel like sharing a little love with the North, you can click this link and vote for us in any or all of our 5 categories. Voting ends on February 22nd, 2020!
Welcome to the North!
Hello, and welcome to northofexilegames.com! If you're new here, we'd like to thank you for visiting, and properly introduce ourselves. Who are we? We're a family owned game store, located in beautiful Penetanguishene, Ontario Canada - that's less than 2 hours north of Toronto! How did we get here? We opened in Penetanguishene in the summer of 2017. Founded by Jason and Janis - a couple of passionate fans of both board games and trading card games - who wanted to share their love of gaming with others in their home region. By the summer of 2017 Jason was already a Level 2 Magic Judge, and he had been fortunate enough to have been on staff at multiple Grand Prix events across Canada and the United States. That valuable experience allowed Jason to work with some of the most talented and passionate people currently involved in organized play, and also gave Jason opportunities to learn from some of the most highly respected and successful game stores anywhere. What are we trying to do? Quite simply, we want to be your first (and best) source for games and gaming related accessories in Canada. When we first opened, we knew that we needed to walk before we tried to run. We took our time and focused on being the best local game store we could, one day at a time. Our motto was "big city fun, in a small town". We've hosted some of the best competitive Magic events in our region, including trials for the Facetofacegames.com tournament series, and several Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifiers. We've also hosted two seasons of our free Texas Hold'em poker series, board game nights, a 25 hour live streaming marathon for charity and more! Now that we are in 2020, we feel that the time is right for us to take the next big step - to begin selling our board games, Magic and Pokemon singles, and more to Canadians from coast to coast via northofexilegames.com Are we ready? Are we expecting everything to be absolutely perfect as we take this next big step? Honestly, probably not. But we're optimistic that things will be pretty close to perfect. We've had to transfer literally thousands of items of inventory from one data base to another, and we'll likely still be busy entering in weights and quantities into our new system for another 4 to 6 weeks before it's all finally complete. In the meantime, there may be an occasional order where you order a bunch of Magic singles from us and it turns out that we were missing one or two, but those types of issues should smooth out fairly quickly once we get into the groove of things. Where do we go from here? We've got big plans for 2020 and beyond. We're focused on becoming your new favorite game store, and we're going to keep working at it until we are. Did you know that we have our own TV show? That's right, Game Night in the North is a show that's all about playing board games and voting someone into the HOT SEAT where they'll eat an insanely hot wing on camera. It currently airs locally on Rogers TV in our region, and you can also stream all of Season 1 from our Youtube channel right here. And it's only going to get bigger, and HOTTER for Season 2, as we've just announced an exciting partnership with Tennessee's Pepper Palace to be the exclusive hot sauce provider, moving forward. Thanks to them, we'll be taking the HOT SEAT to all new levels of heat this year! With all of that being said, we'd like to thank you once again for taking the time to allow us to introduce ourselves, and we can't wait to prove to you in the future that if you're looking for fun and games, you just need to #GoNorth.
