Opening Day at Knightly Gaming

A new shop for Lanarkshire

  Knightly Gaming announced a few weeks ago, they'd be opening their doors on Saturday 21st September. My colleague, Jason, set up a demo day for Flames of War; and being the Glasgow-based Ranger, I agreed to come down and run some demo games for them. Thankfully, my good friend Iain is a Spartan Vanguard and was also invited down to demo Dystopian Wars, one of their systems.

Knightly Gaming, 5 Saint Vincent Place, Lanark, South Lanarkshire ML11 7LA, UK

 An early start and a squished badger... we think

 The town of Lanark is well served by public transport; the rail station and bus station across the road from the shop. Driving from where we set from was a different thing altogether. Weaving country roads through the hilly fields and forested valley of Lanarkshire. The roads were the sort that allows you to appreciate the scenery and the wildlife. Alas, the majority of that wildlife ends up a little flat on the roads as careless drivers speed round the narrow routes.
 This proved to be all too true as we rounded a bend and caught something under-tyre. It was already deceased, but the feeling of unease remained as we passed over the furry mass.

 Putting that unsettling encounter behind us, we pulled into historic Lanark and looked around for the shop. It took two passes before noticing the gaming-related paraphernalia in the window of the shop. We arrived in good time and set ourselves up to await the opening.

The currently signless shop, but it is coming

 Doors opened at 10 sharp and the first few lucky customers traipsed in to be given a gift-bag of goodies. Jason and myself stood aside to allow the manager, Brett Knight, to meet, greet and serve his first customers. The very nice people at the 'Nearly Enough Dice' Podcast came down to record the opening of the new shop, and what jolly nice people they were too. I highly recommend giving their podcast a listen.

N.E.D. presenters Liz and Mike by far gave us the most entertaining of games, with Liz providing an enthusiastic playing style (Complete with evil laughing and taunts)

Demo-ing and the like

 With the initial excitement of purchases out of the way, the clientèle settled into browsing and enquiring into the set-up demo tables. A few familiar faces came round to greet us as we launched into our first game. 

The pretty demo table, ready for the players

  With the usual high quality Gale Force Nine: Battlefield in a Box terrain making the table look clean, crisp and professional. The demo was run in the usual shortened fashion: The Axis players getting two StuG IV's, a platoon of Grenadiers and a single PaK40, while the Allied player receives command of a platoon of American Paratroopers, with both support weapons and the platoon of Shermans with their Firefly.

The field close to the objective is 4.5'' away, meaning a platoon cannot take it from cover 

 The V1 flying bomb accessory was put in the middle of the table, and the very simple objective of having a platoon within 4'' of the centre of it while at the same time doing as much damage to your opponent as possible.
  An important lesson I've learned from the year's worth of demoing I've done is to not put any advantageous terrain pieces within range of the objective. This leads to players having to either go for it and seize the win or sit back in the safety of their positions and risk their opponent stealing the win. The picture above shows this, though in later games the fences were swapped to the other field to make it certain.

 It can go either way

 This statement is as true as any. While there, we managed to get in five games, and out of those five, three were in favour of the Allies, two were in favour of the Axis. It wasn't always by the same cause either. The Axis always won by capturing the objective or wiping out the Allies completely. (The allies cannot lose to Company Morale, as they only have two platoons) While the Allies either won by capturing the objective or forcing a company morale check on the Axis. One thing that never happened was the destruction of the PaK40 in the forest. The gun shield on it meant that the few shots that were sent it's way did little to no damage, even with failed saves.

Jason showing our happy chappies the ropes in his shiny new uniform

 Another thing I made sure of before the start of each game: The PaK40 has to be out of range of the Shermans and neither the Shermans nor the StuG's can see each other before the game starts. This once again makes it a little more balanced in the way that whoever gets first turn has to move to draw fire on their opponent, and also means that it's very unlikely that the player who goes second will be lacking one of their units. This proved true in the majority of cases, but sometimes a lucky shot could pick one off.

A rare sight as a StuG burns on turn 1

 Unfortunately, due to travel limitations, I was only able to stay until 4pm, while Knightly Gaming's opening hours will be until 8pm weekdays and 6pm on Weekends. Jason though took command for the remaining few hours, and I'm sure he continued the high quality demoing we conducted throughout the day.

The shop itself

 I have only positive things to say about Knightly Gaming itself. The shop is well positioned, as mentioned above, on good public transport routes and has the advantage of being supported by the Lanarkshire Gaming Group, based out of nearby Motherwell. The interior of the shop is nice and bright, with the location facing North-East, meaning no glare from the sun but all of the light.

The lovely large windows make for pleasant, light and airy gaming

 What about stock levels for the shop? Well, they're only just open so for most systems it's a matter of testing the water. The Flames of War section has only the essentials at the moment, but with scope to expand with books and other box sets promised.

The small selection, but with room to grow!

 So, that's it for now. Thanks to Brett and his lovely family for looking after myself and Jason during the demo day. Great company and I'm eager to see how this local shop grows.

A well-earned cup of tea to end the day (Upside down bowl to act as a coaster)

All fun and games on the day (And to prove I do exist beyond the camera)