Want to play? Games & Gizmos is the place to be

REDMOND

It's Monday night at Games & Gizmos in downtown Redmond and time for a little miniature warfare, Warhammer 40K-style.

More than a dozen people - mostly boys and young men - have deployed armies from the year 40,000 on three long tables at the rear of the store, and now they're rolling dice, measuring strike distances and consulting rule books to determine who's killed whom.

At one table, the four youngest players - Jake Jacobson, 15; Josh Baxter, 16; Josiah Baxter, 11; and Emerson MacGregor, 10 - are into an intense game of strategy and luck. Their pieces, like all Warhammer 40K pieces, are highly detailed plastic and metal miniatures of combatants with names such as Terminator, Striking Scorpion and Howling Banshee.

"It's like super-complicated chess with a lot more personality," says Jacobson, who says he plays just about every day.

Roaming the tables and offering advice is "ranger" Sean Zern, a store employee who makes sure the rules are followed and behavior remains sportsmanlike.

While this evening the game being played is Warhammer 40K, other days and evenings the store hosts other games. On Sunday afternoons this month, for example, children and their parents are invited to play Pokemon.

Games & Gizmos lets players use its tables for free and supplies rock formations and other elements of terrain, but the ready-to-assemble-and-paint miniatures must be purchased, and a decent-size army can run to several hundred dollars and beyond.

It's all part of a business strategy that seems to be paying off.

"We see that our customers need or enjoy the interaction with other like-minded individuals," said Michael Kelly, vice president of merchandising and marketing for Rubicon Games, the store's Seattle-based parent company.

At least 100 people participate in structured events at the Redmond store in the course of a week, said Kelly, with more dropping in for impromptu games.

The store also features a bank of 12 computers connected to the Internet where, for $6 an hour, youths and adults can play computer games such as Age of Empires, Half-Life and Unreal Tournament.

There are three Games & Gizmos stores: the original store in Bellevue, which opened 10 years ago; one on Capitol Hill in Seattle; and the Redmond store, which opened in 1998 and is by far the largest of the three at a little more than 3,000 square feet.

Kelly says Rubicon hopes to open two more Redmond-sized stores on the Eastside by the end of the year and ultimately expand across the country.

The company's also in the process of turning its Web site - www.gamesandgizmos.com - into a "world-class" interactive Web site, with game demonstrations and chat rooms where players can talk strategy.

Along with the paraphernalia for Warhammer 40K and other games with a hobbyist element, Games & Gizmos sells a full range of classic and new games along with such "gizmos" as Slinkies, "Star Wars" action figures and puzzles.

But this evening at least, the gaming tables are where the action is.

Kelly notes that only certain games are played in the store - at the moment, primarily Warhammer, Mordheim, Clan War and Pokemon. The store sells a lot of paraphernalia for Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, and there's even a table set aside for role-playing games at the front of the Redmond store, but it's rarely used for its intended purpose.

That may have to do with the space requirements of games such as Warhammer 40K.

As customer Crystal Martin says, it's tough finding a table large enough for an army at home - one that won't be wanted for something else before the game is over.

On Monday night Martin was the sole woman gaming, playing Clan War where the combatants are medieval samurai. Her foe was her fiance, Greg Melhuish.

Tony Williams looked on. He had brought his Clan War army, packed in a plastic case with foam dividers with cut-out spaces for each figure, but he'd arrived too late to join a game.

Williams is big on Clan War and big on gaming. He likes the way people of all ages can participate.

"That's one great thing about gaming," he adds. "An adult can be a kid, and a kid can be an adult."

Shop Talk appears on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month.

Barbara Brachtl's phone message number is 425-453-2130. Her e-mail address is bjbrachtl@cs.com