When I realised this was going to be my 100th post (well, that is what the stat’s say) I tried to think about a thing to talk about. This may not seem like much of a milestone to some but given my infrequency this is like 1,000 in normal blogger posts.

I cried out on Twitter and to my rescue came Rob (@peppermint_cat) who suggested I talk about him. I decided to wait for the next life raft.

This was Gareth (@EdenBlade) who suggested I talk about Nano, Rob’s dog. Now, I am not suggesting we like Nano more than Rob but it is fair to say that the dog gets way more attention than the Nano delivery device that Rob seems to have become (this may be due to the fact that he never seems to play any more). Here are some pictures of Nano.

I decided not to make the whole post about Nano but thought I would share the cuteness. The conversation did help me decide on the topic for the blog though – my LGS.

It seems like a long time ago that a colleague at work told me that a game store was opening near to my lab but I still remember the feeling of excitement that I had a nerd home being built for me. My town has a GW but I tend to play a lot of different games and at the time played Confrontation, Warmachine/Hordes, Infinity and Flames of War. Technically, I should say collected as I only had a regular opponent for one of those games, FoW.

I cycled round to the location of the store during my lunch break and stared through the window at the, not yet constructed, interior like Charlie Bucket at a sweet shop and was met, to my horror, by stacks of boxes of 40k and WHFB figures.

I felt cheated, why open another store that sells GW, so I did the decent thing…I sent the owner a terse email. I don’t remember the exact content but I do remember voicing my disgust that an indie store would just be GW Lite not caring that that is probably where a lot of the money lies.

To my surprise I got a reply stating that they planned to sell other products, once established, and what sort of things did I play. My relationship with the store and staff started at that moment with Andy, the owner.

The story now jumps to a few months later and I find out that there is going to be a Summer Open Day, Andy asks if I am prepared to give a demonstration game of Flames of War to help promote the game that they have decided to stock. I jump at the chance to help give something back to both the store and the hobby in general and get building and painting. Bocage, barbed wire and hills are strewn around my painting area along with the brave souls of the 6th Airlanding Brigade who are set to face the might of the 12th SS. Here are some photos from that day.

One picture I loved so much. It seemed to capture the hopelessness of the British defense as the Tiger tanks came bursting through the trees but, if you look carefully, a brave soul with a PIAT hides in the trees to the right of the shot and he managed to take out one of the tanks single handedly. The photo ended up with a background of Normandy roughly photoshopped in, a sepia tint and some aging and it still, to this day, makes me smile when I look at it.

As far as I can recall the next open day I also did Flames of War, a 3000pt epic on a table created by a different Rob (@rob_norman) and Simon (@SJDKEY) and I wish I could find some photos of that as it did look amazing.

My relationship with the store and the staff has continued to grow and I now mostly demo Infinity on the open days providing a small taster of how the game plays in the hope of teaching people about the larger hobby outside one manufacturer. The store is now in a bigger unit with loads more tables and it feels good to be a part of the story of its success.