Alpha Clash Blazes New Path For Indie Card Games

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Covenant Cast. I'm Zach, and I'm Stephen, and you won't be hearing much from me today. In my place, you'll be hearing from Garrett from Rising Empire Studios, the makers of the Alpha Clash TCG. They recently made some big announcements regarding distribution and uh, other things which I'm sure you're going to get into.

So, Zach, can you tell us uh, what this conversation was and why you think it's important?

Yeah, at at the the heart of the conversation is their recent announcement to go fully indie. They've gone through the ringer, and they have a lot of stories to share. And I knew a lot of them, and I didn't know some of them, and it is amazing what indie card game publishers have to go through to create a game and get it in the hands of players. So definitely a journey worth engaging with, regardless of whether you're ever going to play Alpha Clash or have played Alpha Clash, and just a great conversation all around. So stay tuned.

[Music]

Hi, Garrett. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

First question I have for you, for anyone out there watching or listening, who is Garrett and what does Garrett do at Rising Empire Studios? Can you give me your first take at that that question? Who is Garrett? That's a big question, but yeah, you can say how you want, you know.

Yeah. What I do at Rising Empire, um, title be chief of operations. Okay. Um, what that entails is a whole lot of a lot of things as a indie studio and a, you know, small team that incorporates a lot of tasks. I would say most importantly would be logistical things, finances, and really just that path to keep the business on on uh, all projects. Um, I would describe me as more of a Swiss Army knife. We've uh, talked about where I I need to be able to do a little bit of everything um, and kind of plug the gaps for the team and pick up a lot of roles.

I I feel like with a title like that, it it might be easy for people to think you have dozens or tens or hundreds of of people at your command to execute, you know, and operate this machine. You said small. Uh, can you give me some context on what that means?

Yeah. What does small mean for Ryzen partner?

Yeah. So we have five of the core members of our team and the ownership team that cover various tasks within the team um, that kind of head up different things, work together on things. And then beyond that, we've got somebody who's a dev um, for the TCG side, and then we have some play testers, a couple people that prospect some sales calls and people that help with conventions, but a lot of those people are crossing over multiple things as well. And so it's a pretty small team to accomplish a long list of goals and objectives.

So at that size, is it is it fair to say you're kind of the catchall?

I would say that's Yeah. Ridge has his finger in everything. I have to be behind everything. Just being the catchall for things. Actually like making finishing taking things across the finish line.

Yeah. Yeah. I would say like uh, Ridge's the dreamer, and I'm the have to steer the ship a little bit sometimes of the team.

Okay. Well, how I want to back up a little bit. So, you know, I asked who you were. We'll focus in a little bit because that could get we could go off the deep end pretty quick. Uh, what is I? Who is you? Tell me how you got into card games.

So, Ryzen Park Studios primary product y is the Alpha Clash TCG.

Yep. That's our flagship. It's a card game.

Yep. So, how what's the story of you as a person before all this?

Yeah. With cards actually getting into cards.

Yeah. So, kind of an interesting uh, way that we got into it was when we were kids, my mom's brother, our uncle, owned a card shop, and it was sports cards. That was what it was. And so our first introduction, the thing that I fell in love with just of cardboard things was sports cards.

Loosely what decade is this?

That would be I was born in February of '86. So like by the time I'm really into it, like 1990ish.

So your uncle Yep. in the '9s owns a uh Yeah. '8s and '90s. shop, you know, all that 80s, '90s, it had some of the older stuff, but stuff that we were getting. So, like every birthday, every holiday, every anything, we would get sealed boxes of cards, which as kids, you know, there's nothing better than not being able to open your present that you need to save cuz you're going to retire when you sell those someday, right? They're going to be worth a ton of money as kids, clearly.

So, that's how we that's how it really started with cards. Yeah. Was sports cards. And so it was mostly baseball, basketball, which is funny cuz I don't really follow either of those sports today, but that's really where it started. And then it kind of became this family hobby where we would go to the sports card shows. We would go to the conventions. We would go to things. I was chasing anything. Frank Thomas, that was my guy. Didn't matter what it was, I wanted it. Ridge was Ridge was King Griffy. Our dad was Cal Ripken. And we would just go to these things and we would try to collect the cards. Just kind of became this like cool family thing that evolved to other kinds of cards, you know, and so whether it was I guess if you consider it sports, we had like the WCW cards and the WWF cards and like I even laughed the other day. Ridge's kids were at my house and they were digging through like this old box of Beanie Babies that we had as kids, and in the bottom of it was a whole stack of like the Beanie Babies trading cards that I pulled out that apparently we I didn't even know they made, but we have those. Um, so just kind of like just we liked cardboard, we liked cards, had all the binders, had to have all of them, do the whole sets, you know, of the ones we were allowed to open.

Yeah. And then I think as most kids, like about that time, Pokemon hits becomes a thing where there's like a new way for us to get involved with cards. And we never knew how to play the game ever of Pokemon. But we had the cards. We had all the cards, collected them, traded them. We had our friends, our cousins, people. Um, and that kind of was the genesis of like non-sports cards for us as kids that later turned into Magic and all these all these times where like a lot of my best memories is just us with our friends. We would get together on weekends and we would play for like 8 to 12 hours on a weekend. That's like we weren't out getting in trouble doing crazy things is like we were playing cards in our free time, and it just really became this different hobby that I probably never would have envisioned getting from like Frank Thomas cards to Alpha Clash. So that just that trajectory that would go like after Magic it was mostly Dragon Ball and other card games like that that really just kind of spurned this for me.

Was was Magic the first card game you collected that you played?

Yes. And the one I remember uh, the other one I don't think we ever played any of the other games we had, and we had multiple other games throughout the years, but like we played that like obsessive amounts of playing it when we were younger.

Yeah. And then you said you went to Dragon Ball. What What that mostly?

So the transition between that was we had a whole play group of people who would play Magic, and we played it all the time. Like we played it a lot. Well, eventually people are going off to college, doing different things. You kind of going everybody's separate ways. The play group kind of breaks up, and then I'm dabbling in this, I'm doing that. I'm busy, you know, doing different things. I was a college athlete, and I didn't really play some of these games and things in college. I kind of got away from it for a few years and then really still had the cards interested but wasn't highly involved in the playing and then really Dragon Ball was Ridge had started playing it, and he had gotten into a few other games and tried to get me to play him, and I was just like that's not into that. I don't just that's not for me, which is fair. Not every game is for everybody. And we're talking about Dragon Ball Super.

Super. Okay. So this is like 2010s 2015 2018. Had some of the Dragon Ball cards that were out before that, but didn't play it for whatever reason. We just liked Dragon Ball, so we had some of the cards.

Why do you think he was able to convince you to play Dragon Ball?

Well, I don't really know. It was an It was an interesting story. Um, because I had said no to multiple other games, and just I liked Dragon Ball. He was really into it. He had been playing. He was playing in some tournaments. He was doing these things, and I was going over to his house, and the story of me playing Dragon Ball, like actually playing as I had played zero times before I got to his house. He sits down. He's like, "Hey, I want to show you this game. We're going to play this with we're getting into this." And he says, uh, we start playing a game, and he goes, "Well, I'm playing in a tournament tomorrow. So, I signed you up. You're playing in a tournament tomorrow." Well, I had never played the game before. So, we played one game at the kitchen table.

Mhm. And then I played in my first tournament the next day at a game store with a deck that was I had no idea what I was doing. And so that really started me playing the game. And a story we had told recently was like from that I probably have an obsessive like personality of like whether it's work or anything I'm into. Then that turned into like I was investing in the cards. I was collecting them. I had a whole collection, and probably within a year I had one of probably the best raw collections like in the world of Dragon Ball at the time and just got like obsessive with cards.

So it seems to me in one way or another you might have a little bit of a competitive nature.

Yes. Where do you think naturally you think that you were born with that?

Yeah. That's just been your whole life.

Yes. I our parents tell stories because our dad just he worked a lot. Maybe he was working nights, weekend, swing shift, things like that. My mom will tell stories that like she and my grandma, her mom would like try to take us bowling, try to take us miniature golfing. And if we didn't bowl a 300, we were mad. We left mad. It didn't matter if we didn't get a strike every frame. We were mad. If we went putt putt and we didn't get a hole in one, mad. Like they just it wasn't even fun to like take us and nobody had to teach us that like straight out of just built in.

So you started playing Dragon Ball.

Yep. It it sounded just the way you were framing the collecting. It was almost like some people enjoy collecting as almost its own sport. Y it it feels like you were taking that because you said I had probably like the best raw collection. You were a competitive collector.

Yeah. Which is a new persona that I haven't really identified until just this moment.

Yeah. Well, and it the genesis of that collecting is a really funny story in just that Ridge, you know, I was now an adult with money and a job and you know, like when you're a kid, you want all that stuff and you can't have it and then you're an adult and you can afford it. It was one of those moments for me where I'm working hard. I've got these kind of hobbies and Ridge hits me up and says, "Hey, you won't believe it. There's this guy selling this collection. It's worth, you know, 10 grand and he'll sell it to you for five. Like, you need to get this now. I was like, well, obviously I need to get that right now. Clearly, obviously I need that.

Um, probably like all the cards I thought I was going to retire on when I was a kid. It just seemed like a great idea at the time.

You still have those cards?

I don't, which is also a really good story, actually.

Yeah, cuz you said you couldn't open them, so you saved them. I mean, clearly you're retiring on those early like

Yeah, that didn't work out. Turns out that card sports cards from the 80s and '90s not the most valuable time to get into sports cards like it might be now. So, a lot of those sports cards are gone. The Dragon Ball cards are gone, too, which is a great story because at this point in time of the story with Dragon Ball, I was working a full-time job, overtime full-time job, not Alpha Clash, at the time this hadn't even started.

job was it?

I was coaching division one wrestling. So I came from a world of athletics, working yeah very competitive and you know working 68 hours a week traveling doing all these things but I really like cards and I'm getting this hobby and I have all these things and I start buying and selling and collecting and I've got like eight binders full of stuff not as much at that point because game you're playing is collecting.

Yeah. At that point I became collecting more than I was playing any game. And finally, it would be like I would work a 10, 12 hour day. I would get home, Ridge had helped me get set up on TCG Player. I was selling all these singles and then would be like I get home from work, I have to fill orders for the next 5 hours. Then I go to bed and it was just Groundhog Day over and over. And I became like a card shop. And I was working a second full-time job.

Yeah. To sell this collection so I could buy other ones and do these things. And finally, it's it's months into this, like more than a year, and I finally hit a bridge and I'm like, I cannot do this anymore. I can't do it anymore. I'm like, I can either just keep it or I'm going to sell. And I have to sell all of it cuz if I keep some of it, it's it's this thing that I'm going to keep doing. I don't think I can just like have it and not be moving it. And so he's like, "All right, we'll sell it." He sets me up with this guy. It turns into me meeting up with this guy in like sketchy Walmart parking lot to sell off my Dragon Ball collection. And here's how I know I sold it way too cheap. The guy flew in, took an Uber ride about an hour from the airport to meet me, showed up to Walmart, went inside, bought suitcases, came back out, paid me, loaded up the suitcases, got in an Uber, and went back to the airport. So, probably sold it a little too cheap, but that's how I got mostly out of Dragon Ball. I needed out. It became like not a good thing.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a second full-time job and though like just a little unhealthy and and you would say that's part of your personality.

Yes. That kind of like Yeah. If I like if I'm into it, I'm into it.

You're really into it.

Well, let's talk about how in the world. So, Ridge convinces you to play Dragon Ball. Y which then leads to this and you eventually get out, you know. But then after that, Ridge convinces you to do something else. Even more scary.

Yeah. So tell me how did you actually officially get involved in Rise Empire?

Yeah. And what's that story? You know back in 2020 2021 during the pandemic you know Ridge is furoughed at that time he's got this idea for Alpha Clash. It starts with this whole vision of like this story and a game and like what would happen if this game was mixed with this game and what would it look like in a video game? and he's he's just telling me about it. And at the time it's like, "Hey, that's a phone call or that's phone call, you know, and it's like he's telling me about this character and he this idea he has and he just tells me, hey, one night I had this I just woke up. I had this idea. I had to write it down. I had all these things and I'm like that's really cool. Like that's really neat. like it's and the just end of I didn't think anything of it and it just kept kept coming back up and kept talking about it and kept talking about it and I don't think that I ever envisioned any of this at that moment in time because I had carved out a very straightforward career path, a successful career path that I was enjoying that I had just always that's what I had envisioned for myself was this coaching career. and he's telling me about it and he's starting to win me over on it a little bit and then it's like, "Hey, well, I'm going to build out this car. I have this card game idea. I'm going to build it out and let's just just see what it is." And it starts with just pieces of paper on a table, kitchen table, handwriting stuff, playing it out, and he's like bouncing ideas off me. And he's talking to at that time Al and Ephine for we can, you know, other guys on our team. and Efron's drawing up the characters. He's a graphic designer that's now one of our partners. Al, the guy who writes the story, the comic books, the novels. They're coming up with this whole story as Ridge is developing this game. And it's just kind of becoming it's a thing. It's kind of becoming a thing. Like as he first told me about it, I've I've sold this back to him, but I was like I was almost a little worried at first. They're like, "Hey man, you're furoughed. Like you're telling me about these characters and this universe and you've got this whole other thing." And I'm like, "You doing okay?" Like, "I don't know how you can I get some of whatever you're taking, you know?"

Yeah. Whatever that is, I need some of that right now because he just had these creative juices flowing. And that's always been him. Like an idea, a dream. He sees this thing and it's like, "Hey, we can just do it. Like, why can't we do it? What could go wrong? What what could possibly go wrong? Like why not me?" Which in the grand scheme of life, that why not me attitude is great. Like it's why a lot of people are successful because it's why not me? Why wouldn't we do it? And so we just kind of fleshed it out and it turned in from paper cards to cardboard cards of actually printing on card stock at home with a printer playing it out. That's what a lot of people see now. They collect or have those little V1 test cards that we've kind of sent out. Those are the original cards that we kind of built the game around and tested. And at that time he built out eight like master sets of those. And so eight of us each had one set. We didn't even all live in the same place. At the time I was in Colorado, he was in Las Vegas, but I had a set at home that I'm just goldfishing it out, playing, writing stuff, you know, and he's like, as we're building it out, he's explaining like, I want this, I want that. We're testing this. It was like three sets worth of cards. The original design. There are so many things that you see in those V1 test cards that are coming out in set three, four, five, six years later down the road because there's no way you could fit that into that early game. But he just saw it early. And it's cool to see that now. But at the time it took me a little convincing to like really be in on it because at first it was more like, hey, I want to do this. I want to send this to Kickstarter, which I had never backed to Kickstarter before. I wasn't I wasn't the person out backing Kickstarters. That wasn't me. You know, we're seeing obviously there's all other these games. They're having big success. You know, you see, oh, this game's out there. They did a million dollars on Kickstarter. And I'm like, why? Like that didn't didn't even strike me that that was a thing at that time.

Mhm. That that was happening behind the scenes. Because to me, as just a person playing cards, it was the Magics, the Dragon Balls, the Pokemon. Like that was my frame of reference for trading card games largely. You know, I didn't wasn't into as many of the indie games, smaller games throughout the years. He was into a lot more of them than I was. So, his frame of reference was a lot different than mine.

Yeah. As far as that goes. So, he's he starts this thing.

Yep. And you're kind of concerned about him and it becomes more of a thing, but at some point you officially get involved.

Yeah. So, what what was the breaking point there?

Breaking point there was I had the cards, we started playing it and it finally was like I didn't really get it at first like just the universe like how are we going to build a univer like how are we going to do that I don't know what that path looks like and then I it literally happened where I sat down and I played the game that he was like okay play these two against each other and I played it once and I was like this is actually a re like if this was in the store and I played this. I like this better than the other stuff that's out. That was how it started for me was like my first thought was and that's not actually the reality. But it's like well if you just put the best thing out you have the best game. Why wouldn't people want to play that?

That's when you say that's not the reality. What can you give me some context on that? Just maybe the most popular things aren't the best gameplay at all times.

Yeah. And and whatever that looks like. It doesn't even have to be cards. It could be anything. Music, comic books. Yeah. Like just because movies, just because the most popular doesn't make anything. Just because it's the most popular doesn't mean it's the best. And I played that and I thought, well, this is be I I like this better. This fits my game style, my gameplay experiences, the things that I like better than the other games I've played.

Yeah. Yeah. We can do this. If you had to Have you had to say what's the most notable one thing? So there might if someone's listening to this and they've never played off class. Yeah. When you say you like it better y if you could say one thing only one only one that makes you like it better what is it and why why do you like that so much?

Oh boy. I got I got like five things. So I'm going try to I would say the best way I can put that would be sequencing. And the reason I say that is because that encompasses a few other things I like about it. I like the resource system. I like the speed. I like how punchy it is. I like that we have interactions between us on our turns. I like that my things can attack the turn it comes into play. And just when you put all that together, it completely changes the order that I play my cards, how I play them, how things are valued, whether I put it in, I attack, what I resource, and it just changes a sequence of like everything I do. It just seems to matter more. I'm having more fun. I'm interacting more with my cards and with your cards throughout the game.

Yeah, I think punchy is a really good word for it.

Yeah, it definitely has a pace befitting the indie hero theme, right? It's a lot of lot of stuff going on very very quickly.

So, okay. So, you play the game, you're like, "Hey, I'm in."

Yep. But at that stage, what does that actually look like?

At that stage, what that actually looks like is I partner with Ridge and these other guys. We form an LLC. We start a company. You put money into it. You actually create a business.

Loosely. What year are we in?

You're in 21 going into 22.

Okay. So, pandemic hits. Yeah. Ridge is furoughed. Y he has these crazy visions and dreams and ideas and

Aspirations. He convinces a bunch of other people to get involved. He starts building out sets and stuff. You play it. You're like, "Yeah, he's not crazy actually. Like, maybe there's something here." Then you form an LLC. 2021 is where we're at. Yep. Partners join. Yep. Okay. I want Yeah. Then it turns into like, okay, how does how does we how do we go from this how do you go from this cardboard thing that you're handwriting on your table to people's kitchen tables, game stores, like whatever you think that's going to look like down the road? How do you get there? Right? And it's like, okay, here's Kickstarter. Go look at these other people who have been successful, whether it's card games or not. Let's study them. What do we want to be? And you try to formulate that. And you start building out that pipeline. And then it's like, okay, where can we manufacture at? How does what does international manufacturing look like? What does American manufacturing look like? Shipping. Is that a problem distribution? That was a Garrett problem to solve at that point.

Yeah. R is over here dreaming, having fun, making cards. Hey, have you seen this deck that I made? And I'm like, did you see this rep from China I talked to at 1 a.m. to get a quote on this this thing to make this happen? Right. And so, no, he's he's obviously involved in a lot of that stuff, too. But operations is always the like unsung heroes of every carry on.

Yeah. I think for a lot of times the ongoing joke in Alpha Clash was I wasn't a real person cuz nobody had ever met me or seen me. I just met you. Yes. Just physically met you. Very behind the scenes. That was always my thing. I had another job that I was in my industry was of a higher profile in my industry. So, like the fact that I was also doing this on the side, working for a few hours every night, getting up at 4 a.m. so I could work on it for two hours before I go to work, come home, work on it to like just help build this thing wasn't really the spot for me to be the face of anything. Alpha Clash.

Yeah. And now you have become more of a face recently, which we'll come back to. So 2021 company forms and then you all have to figure out a bunch of different things. Yes. In order to launch a Kickstarter and when give me the highlights from forming the LLC to the Kickstarter.

Yeah. So then it was really you know hey we want this card game to come out. Okay. How does that happen? Well, we need people to care about it because if we just put out a card game, what that you're just you're just banking on people saying, I that looks cool or I think I can collect that or I think I would like the game play. And it was really it started with a Patreon because we're like, hey, we just we need to build some people. We need to get some people interested. We're making promo cards. Hey, here's some promos. We have a game coming eventually. It's soon.

Were those being made at the factory? The promo cards back then? Not where we're making them now. Okay. Yep. Different different place. So figuring that out, getting those made. Some of those are made in America and we're working with different people and trying to figure out international. And then it's like, well, the first thing we want to come to the industry with is actually our graphic novel, which I think naturally you might think like you're you want a card game. Why wouldn't you release a card game? Makes sense, right? Hey, you want a card game about a card game? It checks. You know, you would think that makes sense. But for us, we really talked as a team like we want people to care about the story. We care about the story. It's really who we were from the beginning. Eventually leads into the trading card game. Full-fledged, born at the kitchen table. Try it out. And it's like, you know, are we crazy? Is Ridge crazy? Yes. Yes. Actually, we are crazy. And that's totally fine. We're okay being, you know, owning that. And we had a big enough graphic novel campaign and a trading card camp c campaign that really just propelled this thing forward to like, okay, people actually care about what we're doing enough to keep it rolling forward and just continue to build this company. And then that's gone from the first set to the distribution and the retail and all the challenges of that and second set, third, fourth, fifth, the draft box and really just building this brand and building this IP, but learning so many lessons along the way that has led us to making a decision like actually going independent and have it make sense.

I there's so much weight in some of the words you're using as you're reflecting back and telling the story. Um, so can you give me just kind of the where I ultimately want to talk get to is you you released an announcement this week that we're recording this about going fully indie and quite a quite a path between that time and now. Yeah. And and so the going fully indie um you know, you make a TCG. Y you're talking about making comics and you're deciding to opt out of the three-tier distribution system. And so there's a story in between Kickstarting, releasing four months later, and making this announcement because, you know, I have a little bit of extra context knowing this announcement doesn't just come out of nowhere. Yeah. So, can you can you give me what I would call highlights, but perhaps low lights Yeah. of what happens now with Alpha Clash and Rising Empire? Uh, that kind of leads us to this announcement and we will talk about the announcement and what not in a minute, but just so I think it can it'd be easy to have no context, see this announcement and say, "These guys are nuts."

Mhm. If with you know if you're just looking at this with zero history. So what what is that history? Yeah. Highlights, low lights, however you want to. And how do we connect it? So you do your you hit print. Yep. What happens now?

Yeah. So we print the Kickstarter, we fulfill it. Well, so fulfill it means you ship it to backers. We're we're now into the first quarter of 2023. We're shipping stuff out. People are getting it. people are playing the game as most people as a lot of people. I don't know if it's most that want a game. They want a place to play it. They want people to play it with. It's not all just collectors. Although like we had a lot of that with the early Kickstarter stuff. There's a lot of like, hey, I'm going to collect this thing and like I did with my baseball cards. Like this is going to be the thing that I hold on to and I sell and and I'm going to buy a house someday with this box, you know? And so there's a lot of that collector aspect, but people wanted to play the game. And so how do we at that time navigating this new thing give people a place to play? you partner with distribution and you go to game stores obviously like that's obvious. Why wouldn't you? It is the tried and true. It's tried and true. Like look at all the games that are the most successful. They're in distribution. They go to game stores. People are selling it. Whether they're at big box or not, they're at least at the local game store and we wanted to follow that path. It seemed wise. It was definitely the advice we were getting from the m just majority of people was like, well, hey, look at look at those things. Everyone else is doing that and they're successful. You should probably do that.

Yeah. So, you start chasing that thing. You start chasing that thing. As an example of this, how how do you even get into distribution? Yeah. You know, so you have a Kickstarter. Yep. What now?

Yeah. Well, I think we talked to every distributor probably anywhere early on and you know, some of them who picked us up later had zero interest in the beginning. Hey, that was that was cute. He did a Kickstarter. Like, I don't know about that. Other ones were like, hey, we'll give you a shot. We'll carry it. We'll at least offer it to the stores. We'll help you get it in there. There's a as anything, there's probably some false promises of like, "Hey, we'll solicit the We know some stores that would be really good for you. We'll solicit it. will help you get in these things and send us your stuff and we'll really help you out. Which probably some empty promises that led led, you know, peeking ahead uh spoiler at, you know, towards the end of things that just weren't happening.

Yeah. But how do we get there? I mean, you start pounding you start pounding the pavement. You're making phone calls. You're sending emails. And like Rich and I, one thing I was we've like always said the worst thing somebody can tell you is no. Like I think people are probably afraid to ask sometimes, but it's like we're just going to go find the people of whatever that is. And at that time it was distributors. And when you believe in your product and you back it and hey here's the thing, here's our plan. Some people gave us a shot.

Yeah. So you get in with at least one distributor. Yep. And then what happens? The game releases. Game releases. The tough parts of that is as you learn in the early parts of distribution was we had released the Kickstarter. It was very limited print run. We only printed X amount of boxes. We put out the the the print run of that which we don't haven't done with any other product since. But it was very like here's what it is. Then it's we're going to go to stores. We're going to go to distribution. You talk to the distributors. They say, "Hey, we'll we'll place an order, but we can't tell you what that number's going to be." So, you're going to print on our first set at minimum blind, like completely blind, printing a unlimited print run of the same set that just came out on Kickstarter, knowing those thousand people that just bought the Kickstarter probably not out there unless they just need more boxes going after this. So, you're attempting to get into new stores, new markets, new players, and you think, "How do I reach these people?" Well, obviously, it's the distributor. That's I need to go. This is this is how you do it. So, you're printing in China.

Yep. And you're making this call. You know, distribution is going to order some amount. Mhm. You don't know how many, right? And you have to print. Yes. And ship. Yes. Before you know Before you know that information. Yes. So, then you print and ship. Print and ship. And what? There's some natural problems that occur here. There are Yeah, there are some issues with that. What happens if distribution doesn't want all the product that you printed? They don't want to store it. They don't want it, you know, and so then it's like, hey, you printed X amount of boxes. Well, I know that that product is already on a boat coming from China to us right now. Maybe we only want half of that or threequarters of that. And and then can you even split a shipment up once? Not at that point. then you're pay actually just paying double shipping because it's going to their warehouse at that point. You're you're not you're not redirecting that product. So then it has to be picked up from the distributor to then come to come somewhere else to your garage or to us or to someone who's willing to take those things have happened.

Yeah, those are real examples of things. Yeah. Um so they do eventually place an order. So how how close to the release of the first set are they finalizing an actual order? So fortunately, as we got further down the line, we tried to take that into our own hands and say, "Hey, this set comes out March 28th. Your order deadline is January 7th." Well, just because we say that doesn't mean they're going to do that. That order might come in on February 28th and the deadline was January 7th. They haven't solicited any stores, anything. That creates its own issues and headaches similar to the ones we were just talking about.

Yeah. Yeah, but that timeline is they're ordering it way closer to release date than we have to place that order overseas like a significant amount. So you would almost have to have somewhere to go with the product in the US to hold it until distribution is telling you until they're ready. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy because it feels like distribution is partially there to warehouse things. Now you has no words. He just pauses. Yeah. True. Okay. So, they place orders really close to this thing. Closer than you would want. Yeah. Closer than you need, you know. And we're fortunate that we work with a manufacturer who can turn around product in a fairly short amount of time. Mhm. They do some other games. They they're busy. So, like sometimes we still have to get into the queue and it might be one month longer to print it than we wanted. But we've met with other manufacturers over the time where it's like, "Hey, we need a 9month lead time. We need a 12-month lead time versus weeks." So, you're talking months. So, we're even in a fortunate we were in a fortunate position where we could still print it closer, but it wasn't Yeah. near enough. That's not close enough.

So, you you've been publishing the Alpha Glass TCG for about two years. Yep. Since the the original release of this thing, you've produced five sets. Yeah. Five sets that have gone through distribution. Obviously, other products and stuff, but five booster box sets, not counting the draft five stuff. And you've now recently made this announcement. Yeah. which is going fully. Andy, so I think this this this is a how would you summarize that announcement for anyone that is listening to this that has no idea what I'm talking about?

Yeah, I think what I would summarize it as we took a list of all the problems we were experiencing. Okay. We are talking to stores non-stop and we have been for months. This has been in the works for months. They have all these list of problems. We have these list of problems. A lot of those problems match. How do we get across and solve this? Because where that problem is happening is somewhere in the middle. We have things we want to give them. They have things they want to get from us. We can't get them to each other. What's give me like an example of that like a particular like we have banners or we have box of rivalry kit, boxes of promo cards and we talk to a distributor and we say, "Hey, any store who places an order, send them a box of these cards. We don't we're not we don't want to do that." Well, then the store, they're getting promo cards from these other three games that the distributor carries. Well, Alfash doesn't support me. I can't get promo cards. I can't get XYZ thing. I can't get marketing materials. We're over here. We have them. They want them. We don't even know what stores carry the product. So, we can't even just blindly ship to a store. Like, we have to look on Google like who carries Alpha Clash in Texas. Okay, these stores because the only people that have that information is the distributor. Yeah. Obviously, they're not sharing their customer information with us. Yeah. You would you would hope like, hey, there's stores in this state. We want to support them. So, you're constantly having to adjust like, okay, they ordered this many boxes. We printed this many. This distributor has four warehouses in America. They're shipping so many to each region. You can kind of map out, but not really. Yeah. You're mostly blind. Yeah. So you essentially moving forward, you're going to be serving local stores directly. Yes. And you have a champion store program, which is part of this announcement. So you announced you're not going to be using distribution anymore. Y for stores that want to carry and support Alpha Clash, they need America. They need in America. They need to reach out to you directly. Yep. And they're going to work with you directly. So what what's what's a champion store? Yeah. H how does this how's this gonna work?

Yeah. You know, obviously we're super excited about it, right? And so we've been meeting with stores privately for a few weeks and just hey this is coming here's the things we can offer and it's been overwhelmingly like positive. You know I think that the stores are hearing back from us the things that they're hearing that they want these problems solved. So if you were just say hey what problems are you experiencing with distribution? Uh it's products out of stock. I can't get it. I can't get the marketing materials. can't get this uh this other store is selling it for half price and they're releasing it a week before release date. All these things like well every one of those is bad for us. Every one of those is bad for them, right? And so that's that's that whole meet in the middle mark. Well, the champion store is designed purely to solve those problems. Yeah, that's just to get over those hurdles, make people feel supported, make them feel connected, make them feel like somebody actually cares. They're not a line item. They're not somebody on a spreadsheet. We actually know who they are. We talk to them. We converse with them. Us personally, you know, it's not through eight layers of people and they have this different rep and those sorts of things. And we actually just genuinely care and we hope that that comes across when we talk to them on the phone, when we meet with them on video calls, when we do those kind of things. And when they say, "I want to feel supported. I want marketing materials." Well, actually, we we have your address. We're just going to send it to you every time a new set comes out. or hey this guy I see somebody on TCG player has boxes posted for half price a week before the set releases. Well that guy can't get product anymore. So that's not going to be a thing. Yeah. Let's let's There's so much to unpack here. Yes. So Champion store program stores can reach out to you on your website now. Yep. So now we have a little place they can fill it out on the website. We're also out prospecting and talking to stores and things but so we're out looking for them and the ones that already know about it can find us as well. That's right. So if a store is listening to this and they want to work directly with you y uh to to basically build a community around Alpha Clash and sell this product, they can reach out to you. And you you mentioned there's just a lot here. I I've jumped all over all over there. There's like I can't take notes this fast. So you mentioned a very particular example which is uh and a few strings sort of tie together but a set comes out like your last set equilibrium just came out not that long ago and someone was it sounds like it was a real story someone was literally selling boxes on TCG player at half price before the set even came out. Yeah. And this is a problem you think you can solve by not going through distribution. Can you explain that to me?

the very least we can have a big impact on it and hopefully solve it completely. And so what happens is and and I actually just reached out to the guy. I saw him posting on Facebook and somebody had shared it with me and just said, "Hey, this guy's out here selling this product." And so I actually just messaged the guy just, "Hey, I'm one of the owners of this company. Just wanted to reach out. Here's how this works. XYZ, what's what's your story?" Fortunately, the guy responded, which was awesome because I got good market research. I got more context too because sometimes you see these things and it's you don't know who these people are. And so the guy had basically just responded and said, "Hey, the distributor," he goes, "I don't carry your product. I don't have anybody in my store that plays it. We don't support it." But the distributor is saying, "If I want these other games, I have to take a bundle deal of all these other games." And he said, "I just say yes to everything they ask me because I need these other products. So I'm carrying your product. I don't need it. I don't want it. I'm just going to post it online for what I paid for it and dump it. Well, that's not good for anybody involved in the game for him to need to get his money back, which totally respect the guy. Like, yeah, he's doing what he has to do. The guy owns a business. He operates it. He wants these other games. Totally cool. Like, there are a million games. That's great. But the fact the distributor is making them carry our product, you would think you made a sale. That's great. Which is hard as a business in the beginning. People want to buy your product. Why wouldn't you say yes? You're a business. That's kind of the point. Unfortunately, when somebody buys it, post it online for half price, especially a week before the set releases. It just becomes this race to the bottom where all the other stores, not only would they lack confidence in the game, but everything they're waiting on to post just became instantly devalued if you can get it for half price from somewhere else. And so the idea would be that we're cutting out those deep discount online retailers because it's now actually going to be people who support the game. Yeah. Where you realistically as a champion store should be able to sell the product at MSRP. You don't have to post it even at 20% off or 30, you know, any kind of map policy that Yeah. might be followed otherwise.

Yeah. So clearly there are trade-offs in either case, right? Y uh you've now had firsthand experience as an indie card game. Yeah. Going to distribution. You can't you can't reach out to the stores directly. It's hard to get them promotional materials. You're not in control. You get late orders. Uh you can't control where the product goes. You have no understanding if someone is breaking a street date or doing these kind of situations. And that that story is insane to me. Yeah. Very true. Just like just happened. And it makes sense, right? Because it doesn't make sense. It's logical. Yeah. Because if I was a store and I had to buy six boxes of Alpha Clash to get the thing I really want and that actually makes me money, yeah, I would get the alpha clash in and sell it as quickly as I possibly could to get my money back. Um, and distribution gets to make a sale and so you are like, "Ah, my sales are going up. This is great." But on the back end, it's like uh horrible. So, you have first time experience with the downsides, right, of going through distribution. And, you know, I think we have an industry discussion channel on our Discord. After you guys post the announcement, it went crazy. Yeah. So when there's something different happening or new, it's really easy for the I think natural response human response is like discomfort. Yeah. Or disbelief. Um so what are the the positive in your mind? Like what are the most positive trade-offs to being able to go direct? And can you paint me a picture of you have a champion store program, you're cutting out distribution, what success looks like?

Yeah. and why this is this is the pathway. I think there's inherently trade-off. I wish there was some system that was only upsides. I like I don't know why anybody hasn't thought of that yet where you're not having to like give something up to to be this other thing. For us, success now looks very different in light of this just we're owning the indie, right? Like we are an indie studio. It's literally who we are. We're a small team. Success looks different. I think when you come into an industry and we experience this a lot, sometimes people are pushing you that way and you feel other people's expectations and like who wouldn't want to be magic at some level of like, hey, you're the biggest game. You do all these things and every city you go to, people are playing your game, but that's great for them, but sometimes in your year three, people want you to be someone else's year 30 and they think like you have to be this thing. And that's just not realistic for us of what success looks like right now or even what we aspire to be at this point. Yeah. Right. And so success for us is we care a lot about the stores, care a lot about the players. We care a lot about the health of our game. Not just in terms of like it's a healthy meta

And people play a lot of things, but like we understand the impacts of like we're not in the secondary market, but we see it. We know how that affects stores and players and collectors and all kind all kinds of people like that.

Success for us looks like there are a lot of stores that say heck yeah. Like I want that. Like if you hear it and you say I can be supported, I can do these things. It's a pretty risk-adverse thing with our exchange program and all these things that we're doing for stores and you want to actually have a relationship with a publisher. You want to actually be supported. Like that is what success looks like for us. It doesn't have to be this wide net where we need to be in a thousand stores in America. There's thousands of stores in America. Not all of them care about every game. They can't. There's too many games. Yeah. For us, success is we're in the stores that care about games like us. We're in the stores that care about indie publishers. We're in the stores that actually hear something like this and like, yeah, I want to be a part of that. That's what success looks like. That number changes, you know, over time. I if we get to the point that there's so many stores that think this is cool and we need to hire more people to manage more accounts, like we'll deal with that hurdle when we get there. Yeah. But we've we're not not there yet.

So let me ask you this way because I think a lot of time people define success numerically. Y and there's a lot of ways to define success. So if this move to go fully indie and you you've also made some really fundamental changes on the organized play side.

Yep. As well which we'll get into in a second. But let's say we get five years down the road and the things you're doing right now are successful.

Mhm. How how how do you hope or what is it you're hoping that we'll start with retail that your re your champion stores? How are they talking about Alpha Clash or what are they saying? How do they describe Alpha Clash?

Yeah, I think I hope that people describe it in the ways that we aspire to describe ourselves. We're fun and competitive. We want it to actually be an experience where people have fun in the stores with a game they can also be competitive with. And we want people to generally care. We're big on the lore. We're big on the comics. We're big on the story, the characters. For people who care about it and they want to dive into that next thing besides just play a game, we have that for them in a big way with more big ways coming up. We're we're all in on the comic book thing.

Yeah. Um, and also just like genuinely that company cares about the stores and the players and like I hope that that actually comes across as like genuine whether it's on our phone calls or a video or an interview or something we do because if we didn't feel that way, this would be the last thing that we would do is to spend hours a day calling stores and doing video calls and changing this business model. That's scary. Like we have a thing right now. We have a business. So like we're selling booster boxes. We're on our fifth set. It's continuing forward. We have a business, but we're trying to be this thing that we're not and trying to fit this mold that we're not. And so it changes what success looks like when you just own what you're actually are.

Yeah. Well, to be clear, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, set five, your most recent release, you were selling enough product through traditional methods and etc. that if you sustained that level, you would be able to sustain Rising Empire.

Yeah. We would just moving forward. Just keep just keep moving. So, you you had already done this is a little crazy of you actually. So, let me let me let me set the stage for this. Right. You'd already done what so many people dream of doing.

Yeah. That is so It is so hard to make a game, especially a card game.

Mhm. And not only did you make it, not only did you release it, you got to the point where, you know, you're not like buying an island or anything crazy, but you could s you could keep doing this thing that you're doing.

Yeah. And in that moment, you just you said, "Hey, this is great and all."

Mhm. This is not us. Y So, and that led to the seemingly the competitive changes that happened earlier this year. You mentioned fun plus competitive, which we will cover in a second. also leading to this uh going fully indie piece. So what was it when you say it wasn't you? What does that mean?

I think you we were just making compromises and sacrificing things that didn't feel authentic and like when you're not actually just being authentically you then it was like this was started as a passion project and it turned slowly into like it's a really good game and we have a business and we're putting it out there and it's getting better. The art's getting better. The gameplay is getting better and we were pushing all the levers that we could to just make a better and better game and better game. But like at some points you're just not being yourself and that isn't sustainable for me for forever or us as a company and Ridge and people of just like we're just doing a thing. We're putting it out there and you're trying to check that box. You're trying to do all the things that everybody tells you you need to do to be successful. And by whatever standard you want to judge, maybe we were successful like we were doing a thing. Like some people would be happy if they had five sets and they were moving ahead. But for us that's not the only goal. You've got to be able to live with yourself and enjoy it and just be you. And actually, we we're an indie game. We're into the comic books. We're into the story. We're into the fun. We're into those things that I think we just shied too much away from early as a business. Like, we always were that. We always wanted to be that. We've been talking about it for a long time of like, how do we implement more of this stuff that we really want to do to be different and be oursel? And it was hard to put all those pieces together until it did. Until it happened. Until it happened.

Yeah. Well, so I asked you to frame how retailers would talk about you.

Yeah. How how if you're successful over the next 5, 10 years?

Yeah. How do you hope players describe Alpha Clash?

Yeah, it's a good question. And I guess at the end of the day, the most I could ever ask for somebody to say about us is that's the most fun I've ever had playing a trading card game. That's awesome. So, when you say fun for you, what is what does that mean? Right? Because these are all games. It's very subjective, right? Fun is just it can mean so many things. To me, it's all about the experience, about the people I'm with, the game I'm playing, how it interacts, how I feel when I'm doing it. And I hope that what we're doing and the passion behind it and the people behind it really comes through in the cards and that the actual experience is great of the game, but even more so the events, the people, how it made you feel and just how you felt doing it. That's what it's all about.

Yeah. Well, how do you so like you have in late May your essentially progenitors Gambit, which is like your national. So, how how is that different? What are you guys doing differently than say Magic Pro Tour or Flesh and Blood uh to focus on that fun element that you keep talking about?

Yeah, so I think multiple ways. One was the biggest thing we introduced event cards. So it's happened now um already with an event card in place. But at every event we have the plan is moving forward we'll have an event card which changes the game play the game design the deck building the meta essentially of the weekend and so especially here the progenitors gambit is very on theme on the nose the progenitors like to mingle in the affairs of the alphas and the people in the actual story well we get to set the stage the event card is the place it is the thing it's the challenge that we put out there for people. So like what's the event? Find a way to play. So like the event card in May, it'll either be we have a lot of somewhere in something. That's kind of part of this theme. So the one in United States is called somewhere in De Moines.

Okay. And so it's actually a card that everybody gets one. It's a relic. It starts in play for you. It's not part of your deck. You don't have to do anything. Basically has two abilities. It can either shut off the trigger enter effect of something somebody else plays, which trigger enters happen to be some of the most meaningful and powerful cards that I think a lot of people build around those as frontline options for their decks. Or you can interact with the portal on the other person's turn with this card. It's kind of a biodal. You've got a couple options with it. It completely changes how you evaluate cards. their inherent value, what they do. This card that was always a guaranteed hit when it came in, if it gets shut off on every turn, could be a dead space versus there's a lot of other decks that like the portal, they like to interact with, they like to do these things, they maybe don't care about triggers. It really changes the card pool. We've heard so much is one of the my favorite things I've heard from people is right now there's like 750 cards in the card pool through the first five sets. I've heard people say like, "I've never seen that card before." Like, well, there is some cards. It was there the whole time. But like, that card didn't mean anything and it didn't really do anything until this event. And now that card became more valuable and it's going to see gameplay in a different way. We just saw in Las Vegas with our last regional event at the Clash Ground, we saw uh six different contenders in the top eight. We saw that both uh decks that made the finals. Neither of those contenders had ever made a top eight before, ever in the last couple years.

Yeah. But those contenders got better in a new meta and people figured out how to build it, which I love.

Yeah, that that is fun to you. I think it's super cool. Flipping the game on its head every major event season. Basically, there will be people that like, I only want to play this contender. I want to play it every tournament. I want to play the exact same deck for the next five years, which they can. they can show up and sometimes it's going to be better and sometimes it's gonna be worse depending on the event card.

Yeah, I think it's really fun. I always consider myself a deck builder in every game that I've ever played. I like trying to find the thing. I like trying to find the sauce and it changes and if it's constantly evolving and I'm constantly having to re-evaluate things in deck build. I think that's really fun. The goal would be the people that love our game, they also think that's fun.

Yeah. So, you introduce that which is crazy. as a player, I'll tell you it's crazy. Uh, tell me about the bounties.

Yeah. So, we also introduced bounties. So, this is one thing, you know, I was really telling Ridge like, I really want to do this. We talked about it for a long time. Was this a debate? I don't know if it was as much of a debate as it was a discussion. He was on board with it, too. But when you start with a list of like, how do we be more fun and competitive? Not everything we thought of made the cut, you know? And so it's like what are the things that we can do that actually push this in the way that we want it to go.

Mhm. And bounties were one of those things where it's like all right so we're going to put out a bounty. There's these what we've chosen to do is for both the last two events these five contenders. We're going to put a bounty out there on this contender. It may or may not be meta viable. May or may not be anything that anybody would ever consider playing before. But hey, if you play that contender and you're the highest finishing placer with that contender, if there's 64 people and you're the only one that plays it and you play 64th, you claim the bounty. You were the highest. Hasn't been what's happened so far. We've had multiple people play them, but you get the special thing. You get the card, you get the trophy, you get the prize, full art promo, that that sort of thing. You also get a bonus cash prize. So, you could have people who maybe their objective is not to win the event. Maybe I'm a death player and I want to be the best death player and I want to win the bounty because I want to soul when you say that.

Yes. So that's that's kind of generically how the bounties work, but it has really shaken up the meta and what people show up with because we actually saw almost 40% of the players at Clash Las Vegas showed up with a bounty contender.

Wow. Of those five, they made up, you know, 35 40% almost half the field.

Yeah. So, do you think would you say it's more fun if you're playing an event and you get to play against a bunch of different contenders? Like I like it as your opponents.

Yeah. I like it. I think it's just way cooler. You know, the meta is not perfectly solved, I think, right now. And the event cards continually change that. I think that also it just changes the whole experience of versus like Genesis is the best contender. I'm gonna play 10 Genesis cards and then in the top eight I'm gonna see three Genesis cards. Like I don't want to be that game.

Yeah. Ideally, right? There might be an event card that pushes somebody further and half the field shows up with the same contender. Great. You're still going to see the bounties. You're still going to see the rogue decks. You're still going to see the other things, which I just think is really cool.

Yeah. And then you'll flip it on the its head the next time an event card. Something comes out. So you had the event in Vegas and then P as well because you guys are big in the Philippines.

Yeah. Which I love. You guys need Southeast Asia is booming right now for us. It's booming. But the you have hosted an event under these changes cuz before that would you say you were more traditional in terms of tournament release model structure uh just the vibe of what was going on. So, how did those events compare like from December's Clash or uh Clash Con?

Yeah. To March's Somewhere in Vegas event.

Yeah. Was it more fun? I think it was the gameplay was more fun, I would say, as an event. ClashCon was special.

Mhm. It was not only the first time we had done anything standalone, but it was just like there was only only 64 players, you know, which is we love that 64 people would travel the country just to show up and play a game on a weekend that we made at a table like really cool in December in Charlotte. But beyond that, it that was that was we cranked that lever of experience where like you could come, you could hear Ridge talk, you could get sneak peeks, you could do presentations, there was free meals, there was booths and people doing stuff and board game demos and all these things where we just want people to come together, celebration of Alpha Clash, have a great time. I think that part was better. Maybe a better comparison would be Vegas last year to Vegas this year.

Yeah. Do you think it was more fun given the conditions you created with these changes? It sure seemed like it. Yeah, being there. I mean, we flew out. We were in Vegas. We had prior engagements, so Ridge and I personally, we could only be there for 24 hours. So, just we flew in, we popped in, we saw some of the tournament, we had to head back to be somewhere else.

Yeah. But just to hear the room and see people and walk around and see, you know, of the 30 some players, there was, you know, 16 17 different contenders. Like, it's pretty cool. That's a pretty big spread for that size of an event.

Yeah. And just the matchups and seeing a dad there with both of his boys and they're both playing in the event and all these people showing up and people watching and all the local I don't I just was really fun.

Yeah. So this these big changes obviously impact the uh you guys seem to be hosting about four of these bigger events a year.

Y which is cool. I think as a smaller indie game having these tentpole moments to go and be together as a community and play is really nice. Uh but then let's let's loop this back around to the champion stores, right?

Yep. So, how how do you bring about these changes uh locally and is that tied at all to your decision to go fully indie to actually be able to execute that?

Yeah, it's definitely tied together and part of the ways it's tied together is through the organized play system.

Okay. So, we do have four levels of organized play anywhere from a store level awakening all the way up to tier 2 clash ground 3% gambit to pro tour worlds those sorts of things. Awakening would be kind of like uh store championship.

Store championship essentially. And so the way that we're integrating those now with champion stores, champion stores moving forward will be the only places that can host an awakening. And so you'd be able to host a couple of those per year throughout a season. We'll give you a time frame. You pick the dates. Then what we actually do, and this has been really well received by these stores because everybody likes custom stuff. They like stuff with their logo, those sorts of things. It's something we're super agile and as an indie it's something we can offer that other people can't offer generically speaking is total custom promo cards those sorts of things. So for an awakening people the top four players get their invite to go to the higher tournament. So those people at the store that want to play, they want to move on, they want to go to pro tour, they want to go to nationals, they can do that. It draws in people from other communities that want to win. They want to go do those things. But what we also do is we give them packs of cards their own somewhere in a game store, a local game store, those types of cards we create where actually we take their logo and we put it in the artwork of the card. And so, you know, this first season coming up this summer, one of them is a storefront and it actually has their logo on the storefront. And then for each store, we change the logo and it's our characters walking in the store. And then the other one is actually our characters in the store playing games with our product on the shelf. And then they have a poster on the wall with their logo on it and we change out for each store. So, you get a completely custom experience.

Yeah. The goal would be not only is it an event, right? You want to have events, you want to do those things, but we want to give people a reason from any game in your store to try our game and to build a community and have give them something to just rally around.

Yeah. And if you have these promos and you have these 10 players from XGame over here and they love your store and they actually support what you're doing, hey guys, why don't you try this out? Here's a demo deck we got from Alpha Clash playing this event. Do you want this promo card with our logo and support us? And we know that once people get in the game and they try it and they have fun and they do these events, if they like those kinds of things and they like the stores that like those kinds of things, they're in.

Yeah. And that's what it's all about. So earlier you said, you know, you hope the retailers would say that you really care.

Yeah. So this is an example to me and you also talked about being Indian, being small and being agile.

Yeah. So, one of the advantages of that seems to be you can do customized promo cards for your partner stores partially because you are small and because there aren't thousands of stores that are doing it and really demonstrate that level of uh just tailoring experience. It's it's very different than trying to do something for 2,000 stores, right?

Yeah. So, is this is this sort of thing that you're envisioning with these custom promos and whatnot? Sounds like from your earlier stories um that wouldn't really be feasible through distribution. So, likeap less than feasible, right? Because we would just be printing blank promo cards because we don't know what stores are carrying the product. So, it'd be like less than possible. It was hard to even just give any promo card or any banner or any poster or just like even the same one to all of them. Please send these 200 stores this thing.

Mhm. We just don't know who they are. So like any custom experience at all was not possible. All the way down to a reorder wasn't possible because once the once the manufacturer order or once the distributor order product sold it out, if they don't reorder from us, those stores can't even get more product. And so it can really kill things there. And it's you're you're just not supported to Yeah. any level. And certainly the customization at that point becomes nil. Just you can't even do anything about it.

Yeah. So going fully indie Champion store program when you're talking about this what's the what what's the vision right in terms of how many stores would be a success for you? Right. And are you picturing like, you know, there's dozens or 50 or 100 or 200 stores around the country, and we'll talk about America specifically, um, that are these sort of hubs for Alpha Clash. Is that is that the goal here?

Yeah, certainly with the Champion Storm model, the idea would be in a small town, smaller town, smaller city, you are the hub. You're the hub for the city. Tulsa, right? you know, for the big really big play, you know, billions, you know, like we have two in Las Vegas already or places that it's sustainable to have two where they can each have their own communities. Then when they host a special event, those people cross over. Those events are bigger, but they can have their own game plays. That makes sense. In those cities, generally speaking, we try to have one per city as we can. a flagship store in each major city or in each each relative city. That is the Alpha Clash spot. That's the goal. And you guys will feature that and you'll promote their events and have them, you know, list on the website.

Yeah. Website, share them on social media. One thing we've even just tried to make more effort to do lately is like someone tags us, share it. Like we see it, it's actually us in the social media account. We see the notifications. Click share. like, "Hey guys, this store in Michigan is doing this thing. Go to that." You know, this coming weekend, we have events in Florida, in New Mexico, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania. It's like, I'm going to share those on social media. Like, they tag us. I'm going to share it because we want people to go to those. And we want those people to know like, "We see you. We care. You post pictures of your players. Like, we want to share it out to thousands of people that follow us on social media as much as we can." So, socials, website, we'll even do some special things in the future where I might do some interviews, do some articles, do kind of a highlight in a feature of a store and really just do special things that like how can we show them off? How do we drive people there and let people more people know like, hey, in Tulsa, this is the place, go there.

Yeah. So, and when you say special, it sounds like there's things you want to do for the local communities and for players and for stores that wouldn't be possible in kind of the bigger apparatus. Y and or even just you being bigger, right?

You, it would be a lot harder to pull this off if you have 2,000 different stores.

Yeah. Very much so.

Yeah. You know, and I, I don't know how many game stores are in America, but let's say there's—I think it's like 4,000, right? It's like, well, there aren't 5,000 stores that want to carry indie games. There aren't 5,000 stores that care about every game. There aren't even some that might value something like this that might not be for them. It might be I put in my one order with distribution, they send me a bundle deal; that's my thing, right? But there's hundreds of stores out there that might be interested.

Yeah. Right. And so it's not about throwing the widest net, getting in all these stores, selling one box here, two boxes here, throwing it in a bundle where we can just say we're in 5,000 stores. We made it. When all those boxes are posted half price, they don't have communities. Yeah, people that we're selling boxes, but that doesn't—What is—What goal does that accomplish? You're just—you're just moving boxes at that point. Kind of got away from the whole reason we got into this—to start the game and share the game with people we love and build communities and support stores—kind of doesn't accomplish that goal. It almost just goes right against it.

Yeah. Right. So like, I would rather be in a hundred stores that really care than a thousand stores that they don't really care. They're buying a box. So it changes the goalpost of like what that actually looks like.

Yeah. So, you're—you're out right now with this announcement and the talks you've been having because you already had stores that were these kind of stores before you did this. You're looking for—I don't know—the hundred stores, right, that will really care about Alpha Clash that in return you get to really care about.

Yeah. And you get to feature them on the website and you get to make sure they have access to product and you get to make sure that they're not having to compete with deep discount online retail. And one thing you mentioned earlier was an exchange program. So what?

Yeah, we're actually really excited about that. It's a way to work for the American Champion stores. Basically, what's one of the other things you hear from stores? I was burnt by XYZ game. I bought that. Maybe my distributor made me carry it, or I just thought it was a good idea and I wanted it. I bought into it. It sat on my shelf. It didn't sell. Or, hey, I bought a case of it. I sold half of it. I can't get rid of the other half. Well, what are their options at that point? They can post it online, sell it for what they got it for or less, or less—deep discount it, try to get it off the shelf, or let it collect dust. Like those were kind of your options.

And so what we actually did with this Champion store program is we implemented this exchange service where, let's say store here Covenant orders a case of the new set, which currently is 12 boxes. Let's say you sell nine of those by the time the next set comes out. Well, what we would rather have—the healthiest thing for you, for the entire player base, for all the other stores, and for us—is for those to not get dumped into the market at bottom prices. We'll actually let you send those back to us. We will credit you towards the purchase of the next set. We'll actually let you roll your investment forward where it's super risk-adverse for somebody to get into the game.

Sure. At this level when you know you can roll it forward. God forbid it takes somebody three sets to move through a case as they build a community. Well, now it's a lot less scary to build a community when you don't have to push all that product out on day one. You have time to build a community that cares about the game, and you have time to get more people into it, and you can roll it into the next thing. Couple that with now you don't have everybody cutting your legs out on price point. You don't even have to drop it; you can hold it. You're not incentivized to throw it out for less knowing that in three months later when the new set comes out and your people want new product, you could exchange it for the new thing, right? So the goal is to be less scary, less risk, better investment for the store, for the players. But for us, you—you might like, well, how does that—how do you do that? Like, why would that make sense for you as a publisher to do that? That's got to—you make that sale, and then you take it back.

Well, it's like we do events; we do promotional things. We're onboarding new stores every day who want product from the last few sets. We might use it for a convention or for prizing or for those kinds of things where it's a marketing tool and a marketing expense for us. And there are people that get onboarded and want that product. So, it's not dead product, but we can take it—

Yeah. Out of the market and just control that valve a little bit to make sure those other people aren't getting it that are going to hurt you.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like there's a confidence there, which is like we know if you get our product and support it, it'll be successful for you. And if—even if it's not—we'll help you uh, derisk that to a certain degree. And that's also a net positive for the entire ecosystem because you don't have, you know, hundreds of stores stuck with boxes that they're dumping online, and on and on the cycle goes, right? And so there's a—there's a lot of factors. Uh, there's a lot of downstream things that come off of that. And—and so you don't think that distribution would have been interested in facilitating that return program for you?

I don't know that that would have been high on the list—high on the priority list right now.

Yeah, I know it's a lot. It would be a lot. I mean, if you were out selling x thousand amount of boxes and 10% of them are getting returned and you have to bring them back in, warehouse them—they don't want to warehouse them, ship them back. Now, we've got to do the double ship thing, and how do we get them to do things, and who's tracking the credits, and how's that even—

Yeah. But I think that's a really unique thing you can do when you are fully indie, right? When you just own the system.

Yeah. Yeah. And you have partners and things that are helping you—like you—that becomes an option. It was off the table before. Now it's an option for us. Better for us, better for the store.

Yeah. Fits the whole thing we're trying to do.

Yeah. So, if there are players out there listening to this who want to play—uh, the—I'll put it in Alpha Clash terms—want to play the most fun card game that you guys can cook up.

That's right. And who want their store to be one of these champion stores or their stores listening to be one of the champion stores? Um, what do you—what's your recommendation for them?

Yeah, I—we're super accessible—like directly—like if you just get in our—something as simple as our Discord, you can just talk to Ridge and I—we'll—we'll message you back, right? We're super accessible. Support@alfaclashtcg.com. There's a few of us in there; it's going to get handled. You're gonna—it's actually going to hear back from one of us or someone on our team or through the Champion store page on our website. Even if it's, "Hey, I want my store to carry it. Here's the contact for my store. Go ahead and fill it out." Like, we will contact your store. What we have found so far with the dozens of stores we've already met with and all the yeses we're getting—and as we get ready to—been kind of been waiting for this announcement to come out to like really get this going—but an introduction is everything. I mean, it goes a long way. What stores want to know when they carry product? Is anybody going to care about it? Do we have somebody here that's going to want to play it? Okay, check the box. I have somebody that cares about it. These two people in my store have been talking about Alpha Clash; I know that if I buy some, they're going to buy it. They're going to come in. They're going to play. It's enough for them to take the call. Then once we get them on the call, that's where we've got to win them over. What usually—what happens—we line out this program, and sometimes it might even be a little—you know—I don't want to be on this call—and you can see it starts softening it up and start softening it up, and they start hearing about these things—it's like, well, that actually solves a problem I'm having—that solves a problem I'm having—and if they like that—that's our kind of store.

Yeah. So, it seems like when you're talking to—to stores and you're outlining, here are the changes that we're making and here's what we're capable of doing because this is how it's going to work—cuz it—the trade-off for the store is that they can't just lump these things into orders from their standard distributors. And that has knock-on effects because they get free shipping with distributors of certain volumes. The more volume they order from distribution, the more they get of all the other products that they're buying. So, if you're going to allocate it on like Magic, a lot of times the way to get more Magic is to buy more total volume from a single distributor, and they reward that.

Absolutely. So there's a cost to them ordering directly beyond the inconvenience of some other system, right? Um, but you start listing the upsides, and they start getting excited. It sounds like there are certainly downsides, right? I mean, there's inherently like—I wish there was none to anything and it was only positives. There will be things you miss out on, right?

Right? And it may seem like you're missing out on sales. You're missing out on marketing. You're missing out on these things that may seem like that at face value, but may or may not be happening or helping you if they are happening versus when we're able to support these stores in this way, it totally changes not only their experience, but yes, it's one more step that they have to order directly from us or through a solution that we have where they can go to a site and put it in order and things—the shipping. We have free shipping on volume orders and things like that as well. So, if that's a concern, we're able to—that's—that's one question we're able to tackle right on the call, right? It's like, I get free shipping when I order these other things. Like, okay, done. Free shipping for us, don't they?

We—Yeah. So, you can kind of check that box as well. But, yeah, the—the goal is that they hear those things, and sending in the extra order far outweighs what they're getting in return, you know.

Well, it—it almost seems like the goal is instead of Alpha Clash just being another game on their order list, Alpha Clash is one of their primary games.

Yeah. And for stores that are interested in having a primary game from a publisher who cares about not just the game, but also them and isn't going to treat them like a spreadsheet—you know—number on a spreadsheet or whatever. Um, because you're doing so much. You have an exchange program. You have customized promos. You have—you're the featured store in your area. We're only serving stores directly. So, we're trying to cut down on deep discount online sales, and we're going to all these things that are happening. Um, which is really cool. It's like a super novel approach.

Yeah. And I hear it. I hear the feedback. It's like, well, how are they going to do it with 2,000 stores? Like, well, we don't have 2,000 stores. And at the point we have 2,000 stores, we'll have more help. We'll make sure that we—we tackle that. But that's not the goal. The goal is to support the ones—well—that we do have. We're just going to be authentically ourselves. We're all in on this. We believe in this. The feedback we're getting from the stores we're talking to is they like it, right? And the ones that don't like it, that's okay, right? Like, that's okay. There are going to be stores that do like it. Is it a big risk in some ways because you're not going to move along at the status quo potentially—like there's—it's either going to be way better, it's going to be the same, or it's going to be worse. It's going to fall somewhere in the—in that range. For us, we're willing to take that risk.

Yeah. To do what we want to do and to really just go support people in a meaningful way.

Yeah. Well, and much earlier you said—basically—expectations or promises that were not met. So, I think that that's the other—yes, there's a risk happening here, but do you have specific things that you feel like are assumed that you get by going the traditional route that you really just weren't seeing?

For sure. What are the big—what's the biggest of those or what are—

I think—I think that when you get into distribution, right, it's like you talk about trying to check the box, do the model, do the thing. That's obviously—look at these other games are having success where it's like, well, you—they must be soliciting the heck out of those games. They must be going to distribution, pitching it to the stores and promoting—they must be selling it on your behalf. It's like that doesn't really happen, right? It's—most of the time—does more happen like the bundle. It more happens in the bundle or it just doesn't happen. So here's some very specific examples of things that have happened.

Yeah. Where we've talked to stores recently and they say, "I didn't even know you had a new set come out." It's like, "Well, what distributor do you use?" Okay. Well, we're with that distributor. Did—did you ever hear from them? No. I didn't—never saw an order sheet. Never got an email. Never even knew you had a product coming out. Meantime, I assume you're sending all that information to distribution. They're supposed to be soliciting.

Oh, yeah. And they're just not. We write up stuff. You send them all the materials. You send them everything for that to go out. Stores would tell us frequently—I've never been solicited to. I didn't even know about it, you know. And ones that were getting onboarded—like I would have been interested. I didn't know about it, you know? So, like—like getting onboarded a champion program.

Yeah. But saying they never heard about it from one of these—about it before. So, like, that's a very real thing that a lot of games outside of probably the major games are experiencing where you get into this thing thinking, hey, we're a distributor. We're going to buy that product from you to sell to these stores, but there's no communication back and forth. They're not marketing it. They're not selling it—not even really reaching out to them. One of the other very real ones is just—we talked about like order deadlines or placing pre-orders or any of those things where last time—our most recent set that came out—a couple of our distributors did not place an order at all until weeks after our deadline had closed on placing pre-orders, which leaves us wildly just kind of wandering aimlessly. And you're doing your best to target it perfectly of like how do we have enough product to service the stores but not sell out—who's carrying it—where do I need to ship it—how much can go to this country or bring it here—how much to print—where to send it—right—it's all on the ocean by the time you're—it's maybe even at port in the US before you have confirmed information—

Yeah—sometimes—and then you're just having to spend—I assume you spend a lot of time managing—time and money—time and money—which are finite things for everybody but especially in an indie studio—everything matters.

Yeah. You know, I have a list of 30 things that have to happen to make sure that that product comes out in December, 9 months from now, and I'm working on it this week, and I've got to worry about this other thing. So, while there may be fear, it almost sounds like there's really no risk. Like, it was already not really doing anything for you anyway, so why not do something crazy? Serving us at all in the way that most people would probably assume and the way that we assumed that it would happen going into it. Whether it's sales, whether it's marketing, whether it's eyeballs, you would think so many more people will know about you. So many more people will care. Hey, you will see—you'll be legit. If you're just with this distributor, you'll be legit to the store. Well, it's not the reality for—at least it wasn't for us. I won't speak for everybody else, but what we hear from other people, that's the reality for a lot of people as well. And so it was the thing we thought we needed to do, and you know—we've—we talked about it frequently—like—you ever—you ever have a goal that you like chase down with everything, and then it happens, and you reach it, and you're like—well, that wasn't—that wasn't what I thought it was going to be—and that's been our experience.

Yeah. So you kind of got there.

Yeah. Kind of. We were in it.

Yeah. We were in it. It didn't happen the way that you wanted to do.

Yeah. So for—if you could go back and tell Garrett of 2021 any one piece of advice at this point, what would—what advice would you give yourself?

Oh, boy. Um, I think it would just be to trust your gut. That would be the number one thing. And I think that we had a gut instinct of things we wanted to accomplish, and you saw it early with—we came out with a graphic novel first. We had some ideas for the card game. We wanted it to be fun. And you get in an industry—which we're more industry outsiders and people of different fields and high achievers of other things that have this maybe a strange amalgamation of a team that isn't like industry standard.

Mhm. And come together to put this thing out. And it's like, who knows what would have happened, but at the very least, I would have just trusted our gut from the beginning of—like—just go do that thing. Don't try to fit the mold. Don't try to check the box. Don't try to be something you're not because everybody around you in industry is telling you you have to fit this thing because we're inherently like disruptors as people. And then you get into an industry and you're like trying to swim in the same stream. That's the way that it's done. Like—you know—people frequently tell us—whether it's this or other stuff or the event cards—like—you can't do that.

Yeah. What do you mean I can't do that? What do you mean I can't do that? Like—yeah—we can. Randy—we're small. We can do whatever we want.

Yeah. So—and we'll find the people that like it. That's the goal. And the goal is that it's just a better experience.

Yeah. In the end. And that more people will like it than not.

Well, and do you think if you trust your gut and you do what you want to do, um, you know, earlier you were talking about this may not be for every store.

Yeah. Or this may not be for every player. So, are you—are—is there any hesitation or fear around the idea that—uh, you know, you're going to do these things that some people love and some people really don't love?

Yeah. What's—what's your perspective on that dynamic?

That's okay. That's how I feel about it. That's how I feel about it. That's great. It's okay, right? I mean, like, do you think it's necessary in order to do something—pe—some people truly love? Do I think it's necessary to do something that some people love? Like, well, no. Do you think it's necessary to—in order to create something or an experience that people really love—that other people are going to hate it? Oh, I think that that is a sweet spot for us. Like, rather than always just playing in the middle, if you're doing something that a group of people love and a group of people hate, the people who really love it are probably going to be even more into it. The people who don't like it, there are some other really good card games. Like, I like playing card games. There are other games that are good games. There's other—if you want this experience at a tournament and you don't want this experience and we're this one—like—there—this other one is out there, and that's totally okay—cuz these are the people—you know—it's easy to say we want to be for everyone—cuz like—that would be awesome—every single person loves everything you're doing—it's just not—it's not the reality that we live in—and we're going to serve up something that we think is cool—we think is fun—we think is good—and we hope other people like it too.

Yeah. Yeah. And there will be people that like it. It's just a matter of how many people like it.

Yeah, that's the goal. So my final question for you, if someone's out there listening to this and they aspire to one day make a card game, what piece of advice or recommendation or thought would you want to leave them with?

Yeah, I would never tell somebody not to chase your dreams. You know, I think as we got into this, there were a lot of people that we heard over and over—like—not going to happen. You're not going to make it. You know, like—this will never make it past Kickstarter. Well, they'll never make it past set one. You'll never make it past two, three, four, five, whatever that is. You hear it over and over—just people telling you you can't do it. Our attitude has always been, "Why not? Why not me? Why not us?" And there's other people out there who feel the same way. I think also it's easy to think you can do it. It's easy to think you're the next one. You're the big one, and you underestimate how hard it is. It's actually really hard. It's really hard to do it. Not just to make a good game. Like kudos to Ridge. Like, I think the game is really good, but all the other things that come with it, whether that's manufacturing or shipments or whatever—retailers, promos, events, shipping, logistics, salaries, events, you name it—like—actually running a company and starting a game are significantly different things that may or may not have matching skill sets. And if somebody wants to do it, that's great. Like—go for your—go for your dreams, go for your goals. But it's really hard. It takes more than you think. It's going to be harder than you think. Takes more money than you think. Takes more strain, more stress, anything than you want to turn your hobby and your passion into a business.

Yeah. What if it has been so difficult? I—a bonus question. What do you think keeps you going and the team?

Yeah. Like—I—I have context—cuz we work with a ton of indie card game publishers for a long time, and I know how difficult it is. So why—why do you guys keep going?

Yeah. I—we believe in it. At the end of the day, it's as simple as that. We believe in it. We believe in the product. We believe in what we're doing. We believe in each other as a team. We frequently go back to—like—it's never going to be an issue of work ethic. It's never going to be an issue of try. Like—I refuse to be outworked. Our team, we're going to do whatever we can to be successful. Want to die before it's not successful. Like—I—we've said it before, but like—actually—that's how we think, right? But at the end of the day, we just believe in it. And we think that if enough people get in front of the game and enough people get in front of us that they'll believe in it, too. And that's what keeps us going.

Awesome. Well, Garrett, thank you so much for being on here. Thank you for taking a chance. And I'm so excited about your new direction. And I think it could be a very new path forward for indie card games. So, we'll check in with you in a year or two and see how all this turned out.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you everybody for listening.

Thank you.

[Music] [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music]