Finding Comics and Games in Perth

On the weekend I made my way to a game shop and comic shop here in Perth. I haven't declared allegiance to any at the moment, just checking them out. Online, there were plenty of recommendations for Quality Comics for comics (well, duh!) and Tactics for RPGs. Quality Comics was a pleasant surprise: spacious layout, friendly staff, wide range of product. Like most comic shops it suffers a little from warehousing problems; having some "concealed" piles of stock around the place, but that didn't really detract from the overall experience. I also managed to pick up a copy of 100 Bullets volume 1. That's been recommended to me before, and I have some other titles by Azzarello. Let's see where it goes.

Tactics was a mixed bag. I had my family with me so we took the lift to allow the pram in. It's fair to say that the store is not especially friendly to prams and I imagine equally so to gamers with mobility difficulties. It's a cramped shop, but large. In other words, it has a bit of everything. RPGs, board games, miniatures, Osprey, collectibles, plastic kit models, dice, paints, and so on and so on. I even managed to find a copy of Diaspora on the shelf, so I'm a little encouraged that there might be enough indie gamers in Perth to have some indie game days. The gaming space is as confined as the retail section of the shop. Maybe they do something special with the layout on their game days. I should also say that the staff are friendly as friendly can be. They'll happily talk plot details from a campaign or whatever, or help to find particular products.

It bodes well for a gaming community. I need to make more contacts on the Perth RPG meetup site and the facebook page. And then blog about it. Stay tuned for more.

Featured in Fenix

After the hiatus around here, it's time for a return to blogging with a pointer to Fenix. It's a Swedish gaming magazine that has recently published an article by Nathan Russell about the Australian gaming scene. Nathan interviewed me for the article and from what I can tell, I had a little feature corner in the print edition with a review of Siege.