I finally got around to organizing and running a free demo game day to showcase a variety of miniature games with some of my gaming friends at my friendly local gaming store. I’ve participated in several of these sort of events, organized by Shades in the greater D.C. area at different stores ( http://minimayhem-theblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Demo%20Day ), but this is the first time I took on the mantle of leadership and rallied the troops, so to speak, to show off some games in my home town.
I started with a mission statement: my goal was to create an event open to the public and invite anyone to step up and try a game. Then I presented the store owners with a proposal, which was accepted, arranged for a date, and recruited some gamers to present their favorite games. Finally, with several players agreeing to bring in their own painted miniatures and allow members of the public to handle those figures and ask questions about the respective games, I created a poster and started promotion.
We had game masters to set up and run demo games for 6 different miniature games including Dystopian Wars, Warhammer 40K, Hell Dorado, X-Wing, Flames of War, and Relic Knights.
Setting up a table near the front of the store with a variety of examples of miniature wargaming, I included a basic setup for a game of BattleLore which served as a good introductory game to introduce basic concepts of wargaming to interested but inexperienced gamers.
One of the veteran gamers in my local wargaming community brought in his scratchbuilt table to demonstrate a game of Hell Dorado with 2 sets of beautiful miniatures he has painted over the course of the past year.
I had time to run a basic naval game of Dystopian Wars using 2 painted fleets of ship models.
As expected, X-Wing was the most popular game, and we set it up in the back corner so players would pass the other games on display. Some of the local Flames of War players brought in their tank models to show off.
We had plenty of walk-in costumers coming in to pick up comic books I invited to try a game, but most passed on the opportunity. All the same, having the games set up in the store at least triggered some interest and prompted some costumers to at least check out some of the painted miniatures.
Special thanks to our volunteers–we couldn’t have run so many different miniature games without our experienced game masters.
Fancy Wars 