Tag: Aberdeen

As part of our mission to shine a light on local trading card game communities across Scotland, we sat down with Thistle Tavern Games Hub, a welcoming and growing TCG shop based on Aberdeen’s high street. Now celebrating their first full year as a retail shop, Thistle Tavern has quickly become a hub for players and collectors in the area. In this interview, we chat to Stuart about how they got started, what the local scene is like, and what they’ve learned along the way. 

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your role at Thistle Tavern and how it got started? 

I’m Stuart. My business partner, Andrew, and I previously worked together. Andrew was instrumental in getting me back into Magic: The Gathering. We regularly played at a local shop in Aberdeen called Reset, which functioned as both a LAN Cafe and a Local Game Store (LGS). Unfortunately, Reset closed its doors at the beginning of 2023. While other stores remained in Aberdeen, we felt they didn’t quite align with our desired atmosphere. We believed we could cultivate a more tailored environment for trading card game players.

The Genesis of Thistle Tavern

We initially launched a website, ThistleTavern.com, primarily to gauge market interest and assess if we could generate sufficient income to support a physical gaming space in Aberdeen. Aberdeen has experienced an economic downturn, but this has also spurred initiatives like ‘Our Union Street’ and Aberdeen City Council Grants, which offer incentives for new businesses to open on Union Street. After a year of operating the website, it showed promising revenue. We concluded, “We can likely afford rent somewhere. In the worst-case scenario, even without foot traffic, we can still cover our expenses,” given that Andrew and I were both still working full-time. Consequently, Thistle Tavern Games Hub will mark its one-year anniversary on June 29th!

Overwhelming Success

Since opening Thistle Tavern Games Hub on Union Street, we’ve been genuinely overwhelmed by the store’s success. The community’s response to having a dedicated TCG-focused game shop has been phenomenal. We host groups virtually every night and are often at near capacity daily.

Recognising this growth, Andrew transitioned to full-time work at the store in early April this year. He now primarily oversees stock procurement and business expansion. My focus has shifted to business development, and our store manager, Marcus, handles the day-to-day operations alongside Chloe, Joel and Reece. We believe a crucial element of our success lies in identifying and embracing our niche. Andrew and I are passionate TCG and board game players ourselves. Andrew, in particular, is a highly skilled trading card game player with a strong competitive history dating back to age 12. His deep understanding of the communities and the scene, what works and what doesn’t for various games, is invaluable. We’re always eager to explore new games and give them a chance, and I think our customers appreciate that we genuinely understand the hobby.

What are the specialisms within the shop? 

Magic: The Gathering is undoubtedly a cornerstone of any TCG business. Our Commander nights consistently remain our most popular event by far, closely followed by Yu-Gi-Oh. We boast a very active Yu-Gi-Oh community; in fact, many are currently in Liverpool for a tournament, with Marcus joining them for the weekend, which is fantastic to see.

Flesh and Blood is Andrew’s primary game at the moment, and he has achieved significant success with it. We now have an active Flesh and Blood player base of 12 to 15 individuals. I personally enjoy Lorcana, and we have a dedicated group that has been playing regularly at the store since the game’s launch a year ago. 

Beyond these, we cater to a wide array of games, including Shadowverse Evolved, Weiss Schwarz, and we’re planning events for Gundam and Riftbound. Ultimately, if people want to come in and play a card game, we aim to provide the space. The TCG market has experienced considerable growth over the past few years, particularly Pokémon, where demand has been exceptionally high.

What approach have you taken in terms of being able to stock products? How have you found balancing the demand between the most popular games and newer ones?

Andrew works diligently to ensure we maintain ample stock on our shelves. Our goal is to be the store that offers a comprehensive selection and sufficient product for our players. We collaborate with several distributors, and Andrew is continuously exploring new sources to meet demand.

Battling Scalpers and Bots

The popularity of games like Pokémon, however, presents challenges. As a game store with an online presence, we contend with scalpers and bots. This has necessitated the implementation of specific policies. For instance, customers can purchase products at RRP, but we will unseal the box. If a sealed box is desired, the market price applies, as we can typically infer their intent. 

We’ve also imposed restrictions on certain product sales during pre-release nights: participation in the pre-release event grants purchasing privileges. If a customer isn’t playing the game, we generally prefer not to sell our limited stock, as it’s intended for our community. This is unfortunately the current reality of the TCG market due to stock limitations. 

Despite these challenges, the hobby is undeniably growing. We’re seeing an increasing number of players, and we strive to balance stocking enough product for our local community while simultaneously growing our online business.

Thistle Tavern also has a well curated selection of board games for sale. Do you host any kind of board game nights in the shop? What is your approach to events?

That’s an interesting question. We did attempt to host board game nights when we first opened. As a board gamer myself, I try to meet with friends weekly to play. However, from a business perspective, TCGs consistently attract recurring, week-on-week players. We’ve definitely leaned more into that. Honestly, space is now our primary limitation. If we had more room, we would likely explore cultivating more dedicated board game nights or D&D nights. 

Our current focus remains on TCGs, as that’s where our players’ demand lies, and we’re content with that. The board game selection is important for attracting street traffic, as it offers a more accessible entry point into the hobby than TCGs. We’re continually working to find the right balance of integrating the board game hobby with the TCG hobby.

When visiting the shop, we also noticed you have a small selection of snacks. We understand that some shops like to have a cafe style offering. What was your approach with this? 

It’s definitely something we kept in mind and ultimately we wanted to focus on the games. While we value the importance of snacks and drinks, we didn’t want to over-complicate things. There are lots of great takeaways nearby and people are more than welcome to bring their own food into the shop, as long as they are considerate of course. As you noted, the financial margins for food can be appealing to card shops considering a cafe element.

What do you think makes the shop unique compared to some of the other ones that are in Aberdeen already? 

I think it’s definitely that we have this slightly more competitive edge. We encourage our players to get better when they’re playing so that they can go on and travel. That’s been a big part of why Andrew enjoyed playing card games as you get to travel and see the world playing these games. 

We try to cultivate a fun atmosphere, but there is a level of competition to it that you don’t necessarily get at other stores. We host larger events at the weekend to try and encourage that approach; for instance, tournaments to win a box, win a case, special promos with higher entry fees to support it. 

Why do you think it’s important that the community and trading card game players should support their local game shop? What’s stopping people from sitting at home and playing with their friends? 

That’s exactly why me and Andrew wanted to open a store. Not everyone has the space at home to invite their friends around and play. And if you’ve got a family, you can’t always be at home playing with your mates. So having a space that is open and welcoming so that anyone, regardless of their financial situation, can come and play. 

In terms of why it’s important that you pay a little bit more from your local games shop compared to Amazon or buy your singles from us instead of Cardmarket. I mean, the truth is we have bills to pay. Like I say, Andrew’s now going full-time, so his family is on the line. He is trying to commit to this so that we can build a good business and a good community. 

We hope that people enjoy coming in, speaking to the staff and speaking to the other players and meeting new people, especially from our perspective when it comes to trading card games. Playing with more diverse players is going to help increase your skill. That’s an absolute fact and one that we think is really important for trading card game players. 

Can you tell us about a moment interacting with a customer or at an event in the shop that you are quite fond of? 

A recent one was our Lorcana Championships. We had to put a 32 player limit on it because there just wasn’t enough space in the shop. As soon as we announced that, we almost sold out all our tickets. The Lorcana community are dedicated and players travel up to compete. 

The tournament organisers recently changed it so that there wouldn’t be a second place playmat. So I had this idea, “we’ll use a retail playmat and get everybody to sign it and give that to the person that comes second place”. It was a really nice group of players getting together and having fun. Everyone wanted to sign the mat at the end of the day and we  gave it out as a prize. 

It’s just little things like that that I think give a uniqueness to an event that just makes it worthwhile. 

How do you see the future of Thistle Tavern, but also the wider Scotland TCG community developing in the future? 

Future Growth

It’s definitely one that we want to help support, and certainly from a Thistle Tavern perspective, we’re hoping to grow and continue to expand over the coming years. That could lead to more shops and more locations around Scotland. It could mean a bigger presence in Aberdeen that is able to host and bring bigger events. That’s what we’re really missing from a TCG space in Aberdeen, or Scotland generally, the big events. We need regional and national championships. We want to bring those styles of events to Scotland. We’re pushing very hard with Flesh and Blood to try and make that happen. 

Scotland TCG Community

We’re going to be at Tabletop Scotland in September with a stall to let the wider Scotland community know that we exist because I don’t necessarily think that’s true yet. I like being part of these conventions and bigger events. We’re always there, we’re helping buy and sell cards, which in itself is really useful for players because if you’re stuck with cards and nobody, no store or no place to trade with, we’re going to try and be there so that at least once every few months you’ve got an option to come in tp offload your old cards and get some new ones that you need.

I think that’s where Scotland as a whole needs to band together to try and showcase to these tournament organisers that Scotland is a viable venue and people are willing to turn out in force for these events if they are in Scotland. 

What are your closing thoughts you would like to share, either about the shop or the community as a whole? 

Just my thanks! Again, like I say, I want to thank our community. I want to thank the wider community. We’ve had folk travel in, the one-piece players in Inverness come down to play, they’re great. The Lorcana community in Arbroath and Dundee come to the store to play. We’ve had groups from Glasgow and Edinburgh, they’ll travel for Magic. 

I think it is important that the community as a whole is recognised. It’s like a fun welcoming community, just a broad thanks to everybody for helping us get our feet under us in our first year. 

Where else can people find you if they’re new or just finding out about you? Whereabouts is the shop, what socials are you most active on? 

Thistle Tavern is located in Union Street in Aberdeen. We are also on Thistletavern.com. We are semi-active on our social media, but our Discord community is probably the best place. 

We’re hoping to be a little bit more active on X and Facebook and Instagram going forward. And that’s part of our growth strategy. We’re also working with marketing agencies to help us promote us in the best light.

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You can find more details about Thistle Tavern in our Shop Directory.