A couple of years ago, I discovered the world of miniature wargaming. I found it intriguing, but the initial cost and time commitment (needing to spend a few hours in one go out of the house) were a bit much for me at that time.
That led me into game design and solo wargaming. I read Donald Featherstone's solo wargaming guide, which was packed full of great ideas for playing through wargames on your own. I also began working on my own solo wargame, which initially stemmed from a desire to play a Team Yankee campaign solo but eventually evolved into its own entity. I hope to write more about that game in the future as I make progress on it!
At the same time, I started playing DVG games. Israeli Air Force Leader was my first and remains my favorite solo board wargame, though I've enjoyed many more since then. The idea for building Strategist's Den came to me while I was getting into Warfighter. Not many traditional retail outlets carry it, so I scoured Facebook, eBay, and a few other sites trying to price out base games and expansions. One of the major frustrations I encountered was the high and sometimes unpredictable shipping costs, which led me to shop around more than once after thinking I was ready to buy.
I set out to accomplish two main things with SDG:
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Make it easy to buy games with affordable and predictable shipping costs, and
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Gather solo games in one place, so players don't have to search through pages of traditional wargames designed for 2+ players.
As I've been getting started, much of my effort has been devoted to backend tasks like getting the website up and running, handling tax paperwork, and setting up relationships with suppliers. Now that many of those things are in place, I'm focusing on smaller, incremental improvements and identifying the games to keep in stock.
Stocking inventory has probably been the biggest challenge so far. It's expensive to build up inventory when you're just starting out, so I tried to begin with a selection of games that I believed would appeal to a broad variety of solo gamers. As I've sold through my inventory, I'm reinvesting 100% of the sales into expanding the stock that I carry. Recently, I've added White Dog Games to the catalog, and we have quite a few new titles from Legion and Worthington on the way. Some of these games are rather difficult to obtain from distributors, so I'm working on placing orders early and establishing relationships to ensure that I have the games available that the players want.
As always, I welcome your feedback. I'm doing this with the hope of making solo wargaming more accessible to a wider range of players and providing more gaming opportunities to those of us who have already discovered this fantastic hobby.