Nate, Priya, and the Building They Could Not Pass Up
Cards, Meet Cannon
Nate Calloway and Priya Raghavan opened in March 2016, and the name is a literal description: Priya is the Cards, Nate is the Cannon. Priya taught eighth grade science and has been playing Magic since the Odyssey set. Nate spent eight years as a 13B artilleryman before leaving the Army and painting miniatures full-time. The store is what you get when those two people build something together, and the interests that shaped it are exactly what you would expect from that combination.
The building is the old Calder Springs National Guard armory, built in 1927. Load-bearing brick, 4,200 square feet, and Nate will tell you it is "terrible in August, wonderful the rest of the year." That is an accurate description of a structure with original exhaust fans and walls that do not negotiate with heat.
Out front is a decommissioned 105mm howitzer. The town included it when they sold the property. It was free, and Nate has talked himself into believing it is the best marketing spend the store ever made. The logic is hard to argue with: people stop, take pictures, ask what it is, and then come inside because they are already standing there.
Inside, retail takes up the front 1,400 square feet: board games on the left wall, TCG singles and sealed product behind glass at the counter, Games Workshop and other miniatures lines plus paint racks along the right. The back half is event space, eighteen tables, seats around 72. Behind that is the Gun Deck, a 900-square-foot dedicated miniatures room with eight 4x6 tables. The name is a warship reference and it is meant to be funny. Gwen has been building the terrain library back there since opening day, and the promise from 2016 still holds: nobody has to bring terrain.
Mari: General Manager since 2017. She runs the floor, the schedule, and the ordering, and she built the Lorcana community from scratch into the store's second-biggest TCG night.
Desmond: Level 2 judge and TCG lead. He handles singles buying and is the person you want when you walk in with a shoebox of cards. Unfailingly honest about what that shoebox is worth.
Gwen: Gun Deck manager with twenty-six years in the hobby starting with Rogue Trader. She runs Primer Night, manages the terrain library, and built roughly half of what is on those tables.
Toby: Board game program lead. He has demoed something like 400 titles, runs the lending library, and can read a family walking in the door in about six seconds.
Ellery: Events and community, part-time but everywhere. She runs the Discord day to day, built the Gun Crew mod structure, keeps the Bounty List updated, and is the store's best Kill Team player.
Ruth: Priya's mother. Not on payroll. Runs the snack counter most Saturdays, tells teenagers to stand up straight, and has been asked for by name.
The Neighborhood
Third and Ellsworth sits on the eastern edge of what locals call Old Town, six blocks of 1920s brick that survived because Calder Springs was too broke to tear anything down in the seventies. Ellsworth is the main drag. Third is the cross street, running north two blocks until it dead-ends into a former rail spur that is now a bike path.
Directly across Ellsworth is Ferro's, a third-generation Italian restaurant. The FNM top-8 ends up there around eleven most Fridays. Mario Ferro Jr. sells pizza by the sheet at cost on tournament Saturdays. His nephew plays Age of Sigmar, which explains the arrangement.
Next door to the south is Bracket Coffee, where a meaningful percentage of regulars also carry a punch card. Kitty-corner is Silver Creek Books, a large used bookshop run by Adele. She sends anyone who comes in asking about D&D across the street. Cards and Cannon returns the favor for the RPG-curious.
The store lot has twenty-two dedicated parking spots off Third. The municipal lot behind Ferro's is another option. Old Town parking on weekends is otherwise a knife fight, and "we have a lot" is part of the actual pitch.
Charity is part of the calendar. Two events run every year, and both are on the schedule because the store is here and the town is here and those two facts imply some obligations.
November is Extra Life. The store runs a marathon event annually as part of the national fundraiser. It is long, it is loud, and it is worth it.
In the spring, there is a 40K tournament with proceeds going to the Calder Springs food bank. Last year that tournament cleared $6,200. The game community here is consistent enough and the food bank need is real enough that this one has become a fixture.