Hey, so, the reality of this is that “weekly” is an intention, a target, and it will take me a bit to be consistent at this. Starting and adjusting ADHD medication is a rockity ride, even when I’m having a hard time feeling the ride in the moment.
That said, I haven’t been sitting around not doing anything. There’s been a lot going on. Period 1 (Jan 4-Jan 31) and Period 2 (Feb 1-Feb 28) have been a lot about setting things up and getting my brain screwed back on right. This culminated in the GAMA 2026 Expo, which I attended last week, in Period 3 Week 1.
Let’s be vague and unspecific and say a *lot* happened at GAMA this year. Obviously in our space, the biggest splash was made by TCGplayer announcing their Roca Sifter. They have released some specific details about it here, but I’m holding out on judgment until I can get one in my hands (so to speak, they are as big as my EcoTank printer) to really see what they can do.
Of course, CardCastle again sponsored me to come out and give a presentation this year. My presentation was on the Chaos Engine and how I use it to scale a massive trading card inventory leanly. Been a lot of buzz lately around chaos warehousing for trading card inventory, and I jumped on the train to really get my hands dirty and figure it out a few months back. Excited to share the culmination of these few months of experimentation with you all shortly, as I really get the public-facing version of it all nailed down.
There were some very interesting new TCGs being showcased at GAMA this year. My personal favorite was The Journey TCG (check it out here), which not only has an awesome pixel art 8-bit style, but also features gameplay very strongly influenced by old school SNES and PS1 era RPGs (i.e., my *jam*). Another interesting game was Hellbreak TCG, which pits classic movie monsters against each other in a Star Wars Unlimited style gameplay. The demo deck was Jaws vs. Dracula, a combination I would never have thought of with my own brain, so lots of fun and hilarity.
There were also, unsurprisingly I guess, a lot of great accessories on offer at GAMA this year. I went in looking for anything interesting I might be able to use to expand some of the offerings in the Shop here, or ideas for custom items that you all might appreciate. Lots of great ideas have come from this. I really liked Die Hard Dice’s magnetic life counters, in the style of the Archenemy: Nicol Bolas plastic life counters everyone was freaking out about. Also Mystery Dice Goblin has a super cool aesthetic and the mystery dice sets are great! I’m looking into some custom playmat and custom sleeve ideas too, and there were also interesting basic supplies on offer from ProSafe and the premium player sleeves from Curator looked great.
