New and Noteworthy

 

March 20th

First, we'd like to wish you a glorious and joyous spring on the occasion of the Vernal Equinox.

Secondly, I'd like to report that the sorting issue that appeared in the event list over the weekend has been resolved.

And lastly, I'd like to plug our forums again. There's more and more activity all the time and if you're interested in what's going on in gaming at the store (and effectively in Columbia as well) you might want to check it out if you haven't.

February 20th

Coming back June 13th, 2008

January 16th

My daughter is selling Girl Scout cookies this year. If anyone wants to purchase some, please contact Katie at Mission Control.

January 4th

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Coming back March 14th, 2008

 'Nuff said

January 3rd

Another of the older photo galleries has been converted to the new format. This time it's the very first work weekend (June of 2000) when we were working on getting the store ready to open. Hopefully soon we'll be able to start posting some of the newer photos that have not been posted previously.

October 17th

Our annual Valhalloween Party will be on Tuesday, October 30th starting at 6:00 p.m. We will have treats, games, and lots of fun. Don't miss out on this spooktacular event!

Then on Halloween night (Wednesday, October 31st), Valhalla's Gate will close early at 4:00 pm. We will re-open for business at 11:00 am Thursday, November 1st.

October 16th

WIZKIDS announces delay of Pirates of the Caribbean PocketModel Game

October 16, 2007 (SEATTLE) — WizKids Inc. announced today that the release of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean PocketModel Game will be delayed. WizKids does not expect a long delay, and the new release day will be announced soon.

Pirates fans will recognize their favorite constructible strategy game with a new look and name. The Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean PocketModel game brings to life players’ favorite ships and characters from all three Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Experience the adventure by building the Black Pearl and setting sail with Captain Jack Sparrow! The Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean PocketModel game is completely compatible with all previous WizKids Pirates CSG releases.

October 9th

Many folks have expressed concern about D&D minis stats being useless for skirmish play after the switch to 4th edition.  Thankfully, this is not true. Starting in early 2008, Wizards of the Coast will begin to offer DDM stat cards updated to the new rules as a free download to PDF files. The schedule so far is as follows:

October 3rd

The Recent Arrivals list has been updated to allow you to limit the list to just items in one three areas: category (like board game, ccg, role-playing game), company (the company who makes the game), or "game system" (like GURPS, Dungeons and Dragons, Warmachine, Magic: The Gathering). When you select an entry in one of the areas, the product list will be limited to just items matching your selection. To return to full list, just choose the blank (first) item in the list and all recent arrivals will be seen.

It's our hope that over time this list of product information will be increasingly useful for find out what's out for the games or categories you like best.

September 24

We've gotten caption functionality added to the gallery software and will be adding captions to pictures as we get the new galleries loaded up.

We picked up a whole load of new product (mostly board games) at the ACD open house earlier in the month. These items have now been added to the "Recent Arrivals" section of the website (look at September 18th).

September 19

We've finally deployed our new gallery software and have taken our old (temporary) gallery page down. The new galleries are much nicer to view and will allow us to post pictures in much less time. As of now we've only converted two of the old galleries but over the next several weeks we'll be moving the rest of them as well as posting a number of new galleries for recent events. Right now the pictures are caption-less but we intend to get captions added to the gallery software in short order.

The galleries are available from the "Photo Gallery" link in the left-hand navigation on each page.

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Ahoy, mateys and landlubbers alike-- Today be the official Talk Like a Pirate Day. So swab the deck and bespeckle your speech with pirate lingo or ye just may be forced to walk the plank. Stick to the code. And remember X Marks the Spot for pirate gold.

We'll be testin' them there piratical games this evenin'; if you happen ta be ashore, come join us.

September 18

Privateer Press Customer Support has let us know that "Some of the Rhulic Golds from our last batch have been given a little to much love from the Bodgers and have a chance of popping their lid and spraying paint all over the place. Please take the time to look over your rack and look for any gold paints that look as though their lid is bubbled up. If so please take them off the rack, put them in a baggy and mail Frontdesk@privateerpress.com."

If any of our customers have a similar problem, please be sure to contact PIP as well.

September 3

We've added a new section to the website: "Recent Arrivals." Here we will list new product as it is received in store. We won't be listing every little thing but we will be trying to get information put out for most items. It is our hope to update the page after every shipment but at a minimum we will be doing updates weekly. Soon we expect to be adding arrival date information and down the road we hope to be able to add additional features like limiting the list to a single category of interest (like roleplaying games, ccgs, or miniatures) and perhaps the ability to view information by game system (like D&D, Warmachine, Runequest,  Warhammer 40k and the like) or by company.

As with all updates to the website, we always appreciate feedback and suggestions for improvement (and our relatively new forums would be a perfect place for it).

August 28

The technical problems with the calendar have been resolved and it should be fully updated shortly.

August 24

We are experiencing technical difficulties with our webhost. This means our calendar cannot currently be updated. Our webhost has been contacted and we hope to have the issue resolved in the not to distant future. In the meantime, our event page is up to date. As soon as the technical issue is resolved, we will update the calendar so it matches our event listings. We apologize for any inconvenience.

July 31

Valhalla's Gate will be celebrating its seventh anniversary on Saturday, August 4th. Please join us at our annual birthday bash. We will be playing games, eating munchies, enjoying cake (after noon) and just having fun. You won't want to miss our sales & clearance table as well as the special sales we will be running all weekend. See you there!

July 19

The L5R CCG Samurai Edition Release has been delayed a week to July 27th. Our Samurai Edition Storyline Tournament will now be Tuesday, July 31st at 6:00 pm.
   

A note from John Zinser at Alderac Entertainment Group -- Whenever you work as hard on something as we have worked on Samurai Edition for L5R, it always drives you crazy when problems occur. We guess it would have been too much to ask for things to run smoothly, but as you can see, Murphy is on our shoulder and he knows that this product is great, but he wants us to have to work for it.

Let’s start with the most important issues:

July 2

Valhalla's Gate will be closed after all on Wednesday, July 4th. The VG family wants to enjoy cooking out and watching the fireworks just like everyone else in America.

June 1

The Battlefield Evolution Advanced Rulebook has finally arrived (and it looks great). Besides a full treatment of the quick start rules it contains rules for air power, supporting artillery, faction specific unit upgrades, structures, mines, emplacements, army lists and more. Perhaps even more exciting is that the rulebook contains a dozen scenarios as well as campaign rules (which a game like this is perfect for). We're doing demos tomorrow (June 2nd) at 1:00 pm so be sure to stop by if you're interested in checking this great game out.

May 18

Work on the site redesign is continuing at a good pace. The new "contact us" page is up with a form that will allow you to send a comment or question to us straight from the website. Your choice of "subject" for the message is used to route it to the correct recipient among our staff. We've also replaced our old MapQuest link with a new link to a much superior Google maps page. Finally, the events and calendar pages are up to date and fully filled out for the next six weeks or so. The final job still left to do is to clean up the design of the gallery pages.

So, what's next after that you ask? We have a couple of ideas for content we want to add to the site once all the updates to current content is done. A number of them we don't want to discuss because we don't exactly know what it's going to take to get them done. However, I can say that we expect to be adding a very nice (and regularly updated) list of newly arrived products (with details) fairly soon.

We've also been updating the look of the store over the last few weeks. We've brought in some new racks and done some rearranging to improve both look and convenience. If you haven't been in for a while you should stop by and check it out.

May 14

As anyone who's been to our site before has surely noticed, we've undergone a major redesign to our website. Currently though the visual design has changed to be more usable and "modern," the content is fairly similar to what was here before. However, some new features have been added and there will be more to come in the next several months.

The first new feature is that we now have official store forums. Even though we're still working on getting them configured exactly how we want them, they are up and running and ready to be used. We plan on the forums being used primarily to:

We've set up a basic structure for the forums to support expected needs and interests but we will also certainly be expanding and modifying them in response to feedback. To view the forums, please select the "Forums" link on the left-hand side of this page. Anyone can read the public forums but posting requires a brief registration first.

The second new feature that we've added to the site is a new calendar of events. We're still going to have the event listing that we've always had, but now we're also going to have a traditional "month-at-a-glance" sort of calendar to make seeing what's going on even easier. It will probably take a little while for us to get all the events added but we've already got a good start on it.

We certainly hope that everyone likes the new site design and the new features. We'd love to hear what you think so let us know (the new forums would be the perfect place too).

April 11

It's not too late to sign up for our 40K Rogue Trader Tourney on Saturday, April 28th. The fee is $10.00; the army size is 1500 points and standard force organization with no special characters.

Product Updates this week & Sneak Previews

April 5

Don't forget to join the Mid-Missouri Strategy Gamers at Valhalla's Gate on Saturday, April 14 at 11:00 a.m. This month's meeting will feature naval games like Axis and Allies War at Sea Miniatures, Avalon Hill's War at Sea, Great War at Sea, Trireme, Wooden Ships and Iron Men, Avalon Hill's Victory in the Pacific, and Ironclads.

Product Updates this week

April 4

We have updated the D&D Minis Tournament schedule on our event page. It now is listed under the regularly occurring events.

Come join this growing and enthusiastic group of players organized by Casey Clark, the local Wizard of the Coast organized play representative.

April 3

The Warmachine Call to Arms Winter League has finished with 20 players, all but two of whom played more than one game. Everyone who participated received a central patch and a winter season patch.

Congratulations to Pat Nolan for finishing at the top of our Winter League BattleLadder. Pat also was the most relentless player, playing 16 games in six weeks. To finish his sweep of the award pins, Pat collected the most bounties against his opponents.

Peter Pacheco was the best new player who rose to the highest spot on the ladder. Peter placed third in the league and won a new Cryx t-shirt.

Orville Clark, Pamela Mooney and Iain Davis won the best new player pins.

Congrats to all our winners and thanks to everyone who played. Our next league season begins Tuesday, April 23rd.

March 18th

Starting on April 2, 2007, Valhalla's Gate will be open on Monday evenings from 4:30 to 9:00 pm.

January 10th

We are in the process of changing web hosting services. There may be some outages or strange behaviors from the website today and tomorrow. As well, there may be some interruption of valhallasgate.com email addresses.