The Games Vault
Located in Daventry, Northamptonshire this retail outlet has a club as part of its offering. It covers a wide range of gaming types from Roleplaying and Tabletop games through to Board Games and painting and modelling workshops. A more comprehensive description of the club activities can be found on the main shop website detailed below.
It caters for a wide range of ages and celebrated its first year of operation in November 2008.
Go here to see its website: www.thegamesvault.co.uk
Latest event pics.....
On the 20th of December we ran our first FoW open day at The Games Vault!!!
However..... the digital camera broke on the day and the video hasn't been edited for laughs yet!!!!
The purpose of the day was to promote FoW to people in our locality that had not heard of it to try and generate interest locally. Bear in mind that our local retailer has only been stocking the product for 3 months and we are trying to generate traffic through the store and engender interest at the same time. The store itself has only been open for 12 months!
So the plan was to have a demo running all day that people could feel part of, even if they were only popping in for 10 minutes or so.
The shop has 3 gaming rooms above. Posters were adorning the walls from the period, lighting was made red and green with break up gobos for camo and I was wearing an SS uniform for the first briefing and then a British Col battledress from the period for the remainder of the day. More on this later. Two of the gaming rooms had the boards split between the front (beach/town) boards and the rear (fields and slight hills) boards for the first 1.5 hours then the boards were brought together.
The day was run as follows:
0930 German Briefing followed by deployment under strict parameters.
1000 Allied briefing followed by deployment again under strict parameters.
The Powerpoint used for the briefings can be downloaded here - it was designed in a slightly comical way in order to entertain the public as explained later.
The gist of it was that jerry was caught napping with most of his tank crew at a special function at the local brothel organised by the local Madame (who it transpires is French resistance!).
The game got underway in the separate rooms with only two-way radios for communications between the local commanders. There were 4 players on each side....but the British Paras had to hold out until joined by the player playing the American Paras (as his son had to go for a check up at the local hospital before he could join us....all ok phew!).
To explain the dressing up a little more - it is not a particular fetish of mine - but I then accosted random members of the public in the street and offered them 'Ration Vouchers' which entitled them to a few cup of char and a rich tea biscuit. They were then given the same briefing as the players and also talked through our support on the day for the British Legion poppy appeal. Whilst on that subject I am very proud to say that I had our local Chairman and his deputy, both WW2 veterans, the former a Royal Marine who brought his D-Day landings certificate in with him and a Bomber Command crew member. They were able to share their experiences with us and that was worth all of the tea in China!! We raised some good funds on the day for the appeal as well.
The pictures I have for now come from one of the British players (thanks John) mobile phone - but as soon as I have the video I will post the link on here. Meanwhile armed with a new battery I have taken some shots today showing the board layouts from the day...which you can see here....cheers for reading Nobby
VIDEOS FROM THE DAY NOW ADDED HERE!
