Game Spotlights

Published: July 8, 2021

Jess C.

Meet our Staff – Nikki & Gus’ Favorite Games

Meet Nikki & Gus


If you’ve ever met a game store employee, you know we are a bunch of nerds. Nerds who love games. Nerds who literally LIVE games. The kind of nerd who would love to tell you about games more than anything else. So when people ask us, “What do you recommend?” we have plenty of suggestions and staff picks for our website collection. (And we’re fun at parties.)

But not every game is perfect for every gamer. For every one person a game is perfect for, its not quite right for someone else.  With so much variety in table top games, having a game store employee to talk to about your preferences is a great place to start. With a little input from you, our professional nerds can help you find games to try that we think will be a good fit.

Lets be honest, though. We all have our favorites.

Today, we’d like to introduce you to a couple of our team members, find out about their all-time most favorite and most played titles, and why they love them. Meet our Staff – Nikki & Gus!

 

Nikki H. (She/her) Department: Administrative

Nikki H.

One of our office MVPs since early 2018, Nikki might be wearing elf-ears here for one of our store events, but we can assure you she is one of our resident Dice Goblins. (Take a look at those sweet d4 earrings!)

As our Distribution Specialist, Nikki takes care of a plethora of varied duties ranging from paying invoices, reconciling our trade-in payments, coordinating with our vendors and distributors by email, general office administration, and even some general customer service. Plus, she helps us (and customers!) identify dice. You can see some of her expertise at work in this article about unusual dice.

A bit more about Nikki:

“I love dice (a lot), anime, sushi, music, my cat (Merlin), my significant other, and spending time with my family. I spend my time outside the castle playing video games, RPGs, reading books/manga, learning new instruments, going to rock concerts, and exploring nature.  I’ve been with Noble Knight for over 3 years and I wear many different hats here, but absolutely adore my co-workers and our customers. I love working in an environment that helps me be true to the person I am with no restraints or judgements!”

 

Nikki’s Staff Picks include…

“Not only is this game easy enough to teach to others on the first go around, it’s art style is both dark and adorable at the same time. It’s an aesthetically pleasing, mind puzzling game with a maze-like structure, where one rotation or flip of a tile can change the whole game.”

 

“This game is great for any anime-loving group with a large imagination. Use word cards to create an anime title and pitch it to your teammates, make it as absurd or extravagant as your heart desires. Part of the fun of this game is hearing everyone’s wacky ideas, and everyone gets to be the judge of who wins!”

 

“Alright, alright, I know it’s not an actual game, but not everyone who works here is knee deep in board games. I mean, just look at this chonker! He’s so glorious!”

 

 


 

Gus L. (He/him): IT Manager

Gus L. - a valued member of the Noble Knight staff
Gus L.

What would we do without Gus? It takes a lot to keep our gigantic (and somewhat arcane) database and international website melded together and functioning smoothly as a fully operational battle station. It’s probably even harder to not commit acts of violence against us, as we constantly barrage him with requests and whims and problems to solve. If it means touching The Sacred Code by which our website exists, Gus is the wizard to turn to. And somehow, he magically makes it work.

More about Gus:

“Born and raised in Wisconsin, I love the snow and the cold, and everything about winter. I hate any temperature above 72.  I’ve been playing D&D since the early 80s and Magic the Gathering since the mid-90s. I’ve been in IT since the late 90s and with Noble Knight since early 2017.”

What he hasn’t told you is that he is also an award winning miniature painter, D&D and Magic collector, has a long history in the friendly local game store and tabletop gaming business, and even teaches classes at a tech school for the sheer joy of it. He’s also very fond of Otyughs. (Don’t ask.)

 

Gus’ Staff Picks include…

Warlord 2nd Edition
“I love this game, because I wrote it!  I made a tabletop miniatures game exactly the way I wanted it to be. Simple and fast playing yet complex enough to not get boring.”

Note from NKG – What the… this is the first time the author of this article is hearing about Gus writing a tabletop game. Add that to the accolades above… ‘Game Author’ and ‘Humble.’

 

Basic D&D

“I love this for the pure nostalgia and the light ruleset. No digging through a stack of rulebooks trying to find how a character can do something – the DM simply decides how it happens.”

Note from NKG – Read more about Basic D&D in our D&D Editions Guide

 

Horrified
“This game is the smartest game ever designed. Not only does it have an awesome ‘Universal Monsters’ theme, but it is designed in such a way that the game is balanced regardless of the number of players or the number of monsters you fight. Plus it is co-operative, making it perfect for non-gamers, too.”

 

 

Splendor
“Super simple to teach, with a variety of available strategy options. Enough luck that new players can still win. Feels like a completely different game depending on the number of players.”

Note from NKG – Splendor is a modern classic must-have. If you haven’t added it to your collection yet, its a beautiful and fast-paced game that continues to be one of our evergreen best sellers.

 

We hope you’ve enjoyed meeting staff stars Gus, Nikki, and some of their favorite games!  Visit our Staff Picks Collection to see these and more hand selected favorites for sale.

Meet more of our staff