Farewell Fritz

Fritz Buchholtz passed away last week at the age of 73. He had the best game store in the city for a very long time in Napoleon’s. We had fantastic times there in the basement including many Blood Bowl tournaments, Mordheim, and one fateful Friday Night where we played Mega Supremacy…

While I did get down to the Dungeon in Lake Geneva once, Napoleon’s THE magical hobby shop to go to, even as an adult when it was right up the street from where I lived. A lot of people moved to that part of town just because Napoleon’s was there if you can believe that. I would tell stories of it to my FLA friends as we existed in the no-game-store wasteland of southern Florida.

I bought my first Warhammer book there (40K) and, it being summer, the pages promptly fell out of the binding and I tried to take it back. My dad even came with me and they said it had to go back to the manufacturer which was not the best answer. I still have the book on the shelf of course since what was I going to do at age 14? Mail it to England? I think I got all my Warhammer stuff there. My beaky marines, my WFRP books until I moved to Florida and the nearest game store was over 2 hours away….

I remember Fritz had the best smelling pipe smoke ever and he would come from the back office and talk to his friends about God knows what while we babbled about 40K or Blood Bowl. He would talk to us from time to time and give us advice on some subject none of which I remember.

One time when I was working at a local florist, they had me make a delivery to the North West side. I pretended to get lost on the way back and ended up at Napoleon’s (way East side) for a bit of a browsing session. I worked two jobs, so was never able to get down there except a rare weekend. Unfortunately for all involved, the delivery van wouldn’t start and I was obviously WAY the fuck off course. They had to drive all the way to the East side to get me and try to fix the van. I never did deliveries again.

So many gaming denizens I met and interacted with or simply observed in that place, including the very old school Advanced Squad Leader players who would sit in the back and read the source books as well as the real old school Napoleonics guys who played massive battles on the gigantic sand table in the basement.

There was the MTG guy that lived at home would talk to the clerk while buying boxes of MTG and probably to this day has 100K worth of MTG in his mom’s place. I don’t even know if he played, but he certainly loved collecting.

There was the social studies teacher that wandered in to play a game and got sucked in to what was probably the most disturbing game of Mega Supremacy imaginable, both from an olfactory perspective and how foul and backstabbish everyone was. We stunk up that basement with rump-gasps hours before it was opened up for a 40K tournament!

And of course the goddamn 40K crowd who’s competitive and tournament driven style of play shot the fucking magic out of that game for me forever.

Anyway, fond memories of an inspirational man.