Whether you’re visiting from out of town or a local with or without PAX passes this year, we are always your Capitol Hill home away from home for all things nerd, geek and pop culture. We are an easy walk from the Convention Center, have great food and drinks in an all ages environment, and are hosting five days of special events just for you so come on up and see us while you’re in town.

Thursday, Sept 1

7:00 PM
Geek Out Trivia

The hosts of Nerdhole and A Podcast for All Intents and Purposes come together for one night a year to challenge you and yours to a trivia night like no other. Free entry, the geekiest questions the world has ever known and prizes galore await you!

Friday, Sept 2

8:00 PM
Game Jolt Indie Arcade

For one night only, those indie madmen, Game Jolt transform our space into a free arcade to demo, play and discuss this year’s newest, hottest, and indiest computer and console releases.

Saturday, Sept 3

Noon & 4:00 PM
Conspiracy Drafting

Come experience Magic’s latest sensation for yourself. $15 buy in. Pods of 8. Smart, competitive, friendly players

1:00 PM
Hearthstone ‘One Night in Karazhan’ Official Release Party!

Orcas Distributing presents and hosts Blizzard Entertainment’s Karazhan Release Party and PAX PRIME Tournament. Registration begins at 1:00PM, tournament proper at 2:00. Come see what all the excitement is about!

6:00 PM
Pink Party Prime Preparty

Though PAX’s gayest, queerest, afterparty, Pink Party Prime kicks off at Neumos at 9:00, we are the Pink Party’s only for you to prefunk, test your costume, win prizes (including tickets to to the event itself) and have a generally grand time in between events.

7:00 PM
PAX CRITTERCONCRAWL

Those fervent Critical Role fans, the critters, are in town for PAX and they’ve chosen us to be their official crawlspace. The last time they did this, a bunch of surprise special guests showed up. This time? Who knows. But it is PAX…

Sunday, September 4

Noon & 4pm
Conspiracy Drafting

Come experience Magic’s latest sensation for yourself. $15 buy in. Pods of 8. Smart, competitive, friendly players

6:00 PM
Mark Dago & the Red Bennies
High Score Tour

Nerdcore Superstars DJ Shanty, Lord British & Jade Knight join Mark Dago for the last leg of his legendary High Score Tour and you’ll be there to personally witness the mayhem!

Monday, September 5

6:00 PM
The Book of Starry Wisdom Release Party

Strix publisher and collection editor Simon Berman and illustrator Valerie Herron invite you to join them for the release of their latest kickstarted work, .

You can always learn more about these and all of our events on our Special Events Page. We look forward to seeing you while you’re here, whether it’s for a day or for a lifetime.

Then come check us out! Not only are we the only tabletop gaming store within walking distance (or a quick affordable cab ride!) from your downtown accommodations, but we’re also an all-ages game pub serving beer, wine, cider & mead AND a barcade featuring 7 arcade cabinets and 6 pinball machines of your favorite retro classics.

And that’s not all! This week we’ve got a number of special events guaranteed to make your Seattle experience memorable!

Thursday 08/27 8:00pm

Bring your nerd knowledge a-game for a very special PAX edition of our very own featuring special guests from a Podcast for All Intents and Purposes and NERDHOLE!

Friday 08/28 7:00pm

Join the women of Bitch Team Alpha and Can’t Talk Media for , an evening of gaming, reveling and general awesomeness to support the Take This project.

Saturday 08/29 6:00pm

Whether you are on your way up to the PAX Pink Party Prime or are looking for an inclusive all ages alternative, come out and join us and Queer Geek Seattle for the second annual official Preparty.

Sunday and Monday 08/30 & 08/31

We will be open all day both days for you to have one last great experience with friends new and old before you head back home.

So come on up and see us while you’re here. You’ll be glad you did. We’ll see you soon.

Come on up and see us!

We’re just a short walk away from the Convention Center through Seattle’s premiere Capitol Hill neighborhood. Not only do we have food, drinks (including a beer and cider bar), a tabletop game library and a retro arcade for you

but we’ve got great events for you all weekend long!

Starting with on Friday Night! Across the Board Games, , Skulldug and Sindicate Lager team up to bring you a fun, friendly, welcoming night of party gaming. This is a GREAT way to get to know people and start your con right.

Then, Saturday, at noon and 4pm. We give you your first chance anywhere to draft Magic’s exciting new Dragons of Tarkir set. Drafts will be 2 Dragons 1 Fate, cost $15 per person, run in three round swiss style pods of 8 and have generous prize support. This is a GREAT way to give the new set a spin and come out with some high value cards.

Then, on Saturday Night, come and join the creators of and their special guests from throughout the comics industry for our 2nd Annual , a meet and greet benefit for Gay City.

And finally, to help you recover from the Rat Queens Social Club and the Pink Party, our BFFs from Queer Geek are hosting a special Comicon edition of their monthly Boardgame Meetup for you to meet people, play games and have a GREAT Emerald City Comicon experience!

So come on up and see us! We promise that we’ll have something fun and engaging for you to do see and experience every day that you are here from noon until at least 10pm every night (later on Saturday 😉 ).

With Summer gliding gracefully into fall (it is, don’t fight it, Autumn’s beautiful too), I thought it was time for a quick update- in 4 parts (what can I say, we’ve got a lot going on)!

PAX

PAX is right around the corner and we will again have a booth in room 305 loaded with indie RPGs and story games to support our BFFs, the Games on Demand crew. We’ll also have convention exclusives & specials and limited edition free beer coupons so come on down and visit us!

And speaking of free beer, we’ll be holding special events at the Raygun Lounge all PAX Weekend long, including our 2nd Annual PAX Pink Party (remember last year’s party where we didn’t have lights installed yet? Epic.) and a Monday night event featuring special guests like Supercommuter that we’re putting together with the Cipher Crew that I’ll talk more about soon.

Kickstarter

We’re still grinding away on fulfilling all of our Kickstarter rewards and are currently in the process of finalizing the Wall of Awesome and the personal lockers. If you’re in town for PAX and would like to pick up your rewards, we have your cups, pint glasses and some of your shirts and underwear ready. Strangely, the custom D20s have turned out to be the most difficult thing to try to obtain. If you know of any companies or individuals willing and able to make a few hundred custom dice, tell them to email me (gammaragamestore at gmail.com, feel free to use it yourself!) because we’re not getting anywhere with the usual .

Gamma Ray Games

With the seasonal transition (seriously, you’ve just got to accept it. Yes, it was the most beautiful summer we’ve ever seen, but this Autumn really is going to be beautiful too. Remember those long September evenings? Yeah…) comes our annual personnel turnover. And this year that turnover involves our very own Andrew taking his sword and and wandering into the mysterious wilds of the Commercial Real Estate Kingdom.

Though we’ll miss Andrew, we’re pretty stoked to not only have Aric step in, but with the lounge and Kickstarter finally coming together, I’m particularly excited to announce that I’ll be coming back to the counter on a regular basis as well.

Starting in September, I’ll be behind the counter at least every Tuesday and Sunday and probably more depending upon Aric’s school schedule so come on in and see me some time. I’ll be the one in sweet ass blue cape.

The Raygun Lounge

Though it’s taken us almost a year (I’ll announce our September anniversary plans soon), we’ve stabilized the lounge, built a kitchen and got a consistent, awesome, team in place.

Now we’re in the process of ensuring that everyone get equal access in a way that allows us to grow and expand our hours and offerings.

To that end, we’ve implemented our new paid reservation system. If you or friends would like to reserve one of our massive 8 top tables for your personal gaming, they’re available for $20/hour minus the cost of any food or beverages purchased by you and your party so reserve space with confidence and throw yourself your own private party.

And that’s it from me. I’ve gotta get back to work but I look forward to seeing you soon,

-Eric

The initial buildout projects are nearly complete thanks to the super human speed, efficiency and focus of Nick, Jensen and Dominic. And not a moment too soon with Wednesday’s big Lounge preview event just around the corner. An important note about Wednesday’s event – it does NOT require an invite and IS totally open to the public. The private, invite-only founders party advertised as part of our Kickstarter backer rewards will be happening in September when we’ll have all the pledge rewards ready to go – stay tuned.

And just when we thought things were as busy as they could get, this upcoming week we triple the stakes! In addition to continuing to develop the lounge (upgrading the lighting, installing the sound system, establishing new vendor relationships, forwarding the licensing process, etc), we’ll be hosting FIVE special pre-opening PAX events (some open to the public, some not- stop by and ask if you’re not sure). AND we’ll be building and running our amazing Gamma Ray Games booth inside PAX itself (located in glorious room 305/306 this year- stop by and say hi!).

I will be bouncing between all three locations (store, lounge, PAX) from about 10:30am until around 10:30pm every day for the next 10 days or so, keeping everything moving and trying not to get in the way. If you have any questions feel free to flag me down or ask one of the team. Just know that if it’s me, both the question and the answer will need to be short and I’ll probably be walking or working while we talk. Heck, some of the last people that stopped by to chat with me wound up helping unload a trailer full of benches with a lawyer and a Pentecostal pastor. You just never what’s going to happen around here. Which is why, for the next ten days or so, I’m going to be around a LOT.

See you soon,

-Eric

Wow. The 48 hours since we launched our have been amazing, exciting and, at times, a bit… emotional.

Take last Saturday morning when Seattle’s scheduled an impromptu meeting with me to discuss some “concerns” that they had with the phrasing of some of our Kickstarter pledge descriptions. With us having recently sponsored, provided t-shirts for and walked with their Pride parade float, figured it was going to be all

but when they all showed up wearing leather vests and headbands

and I realized that it was going to be a lot more

So I start hitting AB AB hoping to figure out how the kick and strike work when their lead negotiator pulls a CD Right Trigger Power Combo and just as I’m wondering how many buttons these things even have on them, their wartime consigliere, who shall remain nameless lest I reveal him to be Andrew, shouts “Phoenix Wright Objection Strike!” and pulls out his own controller and while I’m whining about how I thought this this was a sidescroll fighter they all yell 3vP Multiscreen and just go to town on me for the next twenty minutes straight. Absolutely brutal, I tell you. Toughest negotiation I’ve ever experienced.

On the happy side, their lounge date has been secured and is going to be totally great, our Kickstarter pledge goals have been adjusted appropriately, and Dominic got to overhear the most intense in-store business conversation since the legendary Tom Ko phone call of 2010.

And that was just Saturday morning.

Stay tuned for more daring tales of thrilling game store adventure with me, your host, Eric Logan.