MONTAGUE — You could walk past Valkyrie Wargaming on Dowling Street a thousand times and never know what’s inside, despite the fact the store has existed for nearly a decade. There’s no outward indication that inside the doors lies, for some, a whole different world to explore.
A few dozen people will be exploring that world this weekend when the store hosts its 10th annual Wild Hunt tournament for Warhammer 40,000 gamers. This year, for the first time, the event will span an entire weekend, with five three-hour gaming sessions spread through Saturday and Sunday. Tickets to play are $70 and include lunch both days; one-day tournaments Valkyrie hosts cost $30 to enter.
The expanded event is at least in part a result of the store’s physical expansion. Last December the store took over the real estate previously occupied by its next-door neighbor, the Montague Antique and Collectibles Mall. Store owner Anna Hakken, her wife Marie, her team, and even several customers joined together over a six-month period to get the new space ready for gamers - and to host Warhammer tournaments. The December reopening was by design, as the store stages an annual New Year’s Day tournament that many of its regulars were invested in it being ready to host.
Warhammer is a simulation war game originally made in 1987 (and still regularly updated) by a British company, Games Workshop, but increasingly popular in the U.S. and, Hakken said, especially in West Michigan. She describes it with a chuckle as “chess with guns” because different game pieces move in different ways. Players are allotted a certain amount of points to use to assemble their army - most games set the limit at 2,000 - and choose how to deploy them. Any of several layout templates are used to set up the battlefield, and there’s often room for creativity. One Wednesday night game, with longtime friends Aaron Butler and Ben Isenhof, featured two very different armies, with Butler fielding a highly specialized group while Isenhof aimed to wear him down with manpower.
“The whole shtick from my army is that I have to out-attrition him,” Butler said. “I have to kill enough (of his guys) before he can kill me and remove me. Every dead guy for me hurts more than every dead guy for him.”
Creativity within the game extends to the design of the game pieces themselves; Valkyrie and other stores like it sell paints and materials players can use to outfit their armies in different colors. (In fact, some customers don’t even play the game, preferring to spend time painting and designing the figurines as a hobby.)
The rise of 3-D printing has provided for even more ways to customize the look of an army, so much so that for the sake of clarity, Hakken enforces a “70 percent” rule for gameplay, which doesn’t limit creativity but ensures players are purchasing at least most of their game pieces from legitimate sources and not just 3-D printing themselves an unrecognizable platoon that could confuse opponents.
So popular is the game that it accounts for the bulk of Valkyrie’s business now, and over the last few years, hosting gamers for informal sessions as well as larger tournaments has become a focus. Hakken said she noticed the increased desire to get together for games as society emerged from COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021.
“When we reopened, we really wanted to focus more on getting people back together, so we started focusing more on running leagues and tournaments and things like that after quarantine ended,” Hakken said. “There was enough popularity from that, we were just like, ‘We think we could go bigger than just 12-16 person things.’”
Valkyrie now has its own traveling Warhammer team, complete with jerseys “kind of like a bowling league,” Hakken said. The team competes in major tournaments throughout the extended area, even sometimes traveling to Detroit, Chicago or the like. Part of the reason for this weekend’s tournament is so Valkyrie regulars can experience a high-level tournament without having to make a longer trip than usual.
Butler, a charter member of the team, is from Newaygo, and Isenhof is from Greenville; players coming from a decent distance is a regular occurrence.
“I think we’re up to 15 or 16 members now at this point, or maybe a little more,” Butler said. “It’s a great time. I’m really happy they got the new place set up and I’m really looking forward to this weekend.”
Valkyrie enjoys a positive relationship with similar stores in West Michigan - Griffin’s Rest in Muskegon and Cobblestone Crafts & Hobbies in Holland. The three collaborate to make sure they aren’t hosting Warhammer events at the same time and even send players to each other’s tournaments if an extra is needed.
The sense of community is paramount for Warhammer players and certainly for Hakken, who places a huge emphasis on sportsmanship in the course of gameplay.
“One of the things I say to my guys is, if you’re winning, your responsibility is now your opponent’s fun,” Hakken said. “You don’t want them to have a bad time because you’re winning. But also, if they’re beating you, either you gave it to them or they earned it, neither of which is their fault, so you also have to worry about how much fun they’re having when they’re beating you.
“I want everybody to just enjoy it. Have a great time. Laugh. At the end of the day, we’re all adults playing with toy soldiers.”
Hakken adds to the experience by handmaking wolf-themed trophies for the top performing players in hosted tournaments; this weekend will also see awards given for creativity in army design. For her, the experience is the point.
The store, which on non-tournament days is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings and all day Saturdays, is a labor of love; Anna and Marie both have day jobs, so as Anna puts it, Valkyrie “is not a retirement plan.” It’s an opportunity to, as late grandfather Glen Lipka and mom Patti Ream taught her from their time operating the Lipka pharmacy and later soda fountain, build a business through community.
“As much as I love when somebody comes in and drops $600 or $1,000 on a whole bunch of stuff - that’s awesome - when I sit here and actually get joy out of this business, it’s when there’s 30 people here, all laughing, having a good time and smack talking each other and cheering, because maybe half of the games are done, so everybody’s gathered around the games that are still playing,” Hakken said. “If somebody throws the dice and it’s like a crazy good or a crazy bad roll and everybody’s like ‘Whoa!’ That’s where I sit here and grin ear to ear. Providing those experiences for people is what’s important.”
