LAST 5 minutes - £404 away from final stretch goal - Go!

eclectic games is one of the leading board game retailers in the UK, winner of the prestigious 'Retailer of the Year' award in the 2014 Reading Retail Awards, and a huge supporter of in-store events of all types.

We’ve outgrown our current space, found new and bigger premises even closer to the centre of Reading, signed the lease on them, and are going to be refitting them to be the best games shop in the UK.

Which is where you come in...

Having successfully funded us in 42.5 hours, the deluxe furniture is a reality. The order has gone in to IKEA for the tables (slightly revised from our original plan), and the supplier for the chairs. You now get to play with Stretch Goals - how many can you unlock?

Stretch Goals - Now working on £12500...

£5500 - Achieved!

With a resounding "thank you!" to everyone who has got us here, we’re unlocking a second bundle of digital content for all backers who have pledged £5 or more.

We’re starting with Covenant from Matt Machell. “An apocalypse that never arrived. An ancient secret society in turmoil. Your loyalties are divided. Your beliefs are in doubt. Do you stand with a shattered sect, or let it fall into chaos? Covenant is a story game of failing conspiracies. Create your own stories of what happens when you put your faith in the end of the world, but it doesn't happen.”





£6000 - Achieved!

Bringing our large games room firmly into the 21st Century, we will install screens and infrastructure to display round times, pairings, standings and announcements for our tournament events. There will also be a second item in the ‘all backers’ digital bundle. Nick Robinson (of Cubicle 7 fame and all-round nice chap) will be writing us three exclusive encounters using the floorplans of the new shop. Titled 'Selling Porkies' it features a pie shop - we think he's looking forward to the Sweeneys pies at our Launch Party!





£6500 - Achieved!

Extending the digital signage and screens to the Games Lounge to replicate the info from the main room in the breakout area. This also opens the possibility of showing a ‘Feature Match’ or similar without everyone crowding round a table… Third item for ‘all backers’ digital bundle will be three short Sci-fi stories from Dr Simon Fern (long-time customer and all round barking mad genius).





£7000 - Achieved!

Secret Event Saturday – We will host the UK launch of the next Ticket To Ride expansion, UK and Pennsylvania. (Reading is the only destination on both sides of the board!) Pending any scheduling conflicts, we are hoping to have Adrien Martinot from Days of Wonder and Julien Delval, the illustrator of all the Ticket to Ride games with us for the day. Full details of times, dates and other things will be made available as they are finalised. The novella 'Saving Stone' from Jonny Nexus will be available in the ‘all backers’ digital bundle on release.





£7500 - Achieved!

Digital screens for the small games room, replicating the set up in the large room. We will be able to show tournament information in the Lounge from both the small room and the large one. Backers digital bundle will include 'Afterlives' by veteran designer James Wallis





£8000 - Achieved!

The fantastic 'Night's Black Agents' pdf from Pelgrane Press and the 2nd edition of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen goes in the backer bundle for everyone who has pledged £5 or more.





£8500 - Achieved!

Z-Man Birthday Party - If we unlock this goal, Zev Schlasinger has promised to fly over from the USA and spend the weekend of the 12th and 13th of March with us, to help us celebrate eclectic games' 10th Birthday. The itinerary will look something like this, Friday night Casual Boardgaming with Zev, Saturday, Z-Man demo day, Sunday, more casual gaming and hanging out. This is mind-blowingly amazing, and we really, really want to see this happen!

Check out the link below if you don't know who Zev is...





£9000 - Achieved!

PA system for the games rooms - We love the idea of making our judges lives easier and not having to shout. So the next £500 of stretch goal is to get a local PA system set up in the games rooms for announcements. This will also allow us to run simultaneous games of Space Alert, or Escape, or other soundtrack driven experiences. IF we were to run a LARP event across the whole three rooms, we can have sound effects, announcements, simultaneous time freezes... And it improves our facilities for hosting events such as Judge Conferences, seminars and workshops.









£10000 - Achieved!

Added Matt Leacock - Break the 10k mark, and not only will we have funded 200%, we will fly Matt Leacock, (Pandemic Legacy, Thunderbirds, Roll through the Ages) over from the USA for a weekend of events at the shop. Pending scheduling conflicts, we will try to make this our birthday weekend, as with Zev.





£11000 - Achieved!

Lockers - Swimming pools have them, offices have them, places to store your stuff that you want to leave on the premises, that have a key and are lockable, and can be rented for a period of time. This means the GM can leave all the heavy splat books safe and not have to lug them around, or minis gamers can leave a small force occupying the place, or you can stick your trade binders safely out the way while playing in a tournament.









£12500

Upgraded customer wifi - The new store will have free customer wifi. It probably won't allow you to stream HD movies from Netflix, but checking Facebook, email, Twitter, basic looking up webpages will all be possible. If we hit this goal, we'll upgrade the available bandwidth for the customer wifi, to speed things up somewhat.





£15000

Upgraded Air Conditioning - At this point, you will have put enough into the budget for us to upgrade the air conditioning system in the store. Currently, the first floor is air-conditioned, with a unit that services the whole floor. If we hit this stretch goal, we will be able to afford to install a separate unit for each games room. This will mean we can control the temperature independently in each games room as appropriate. No more freezing in winter or melting in summer!





Thank you!

This is what you've already made happen. Be proud of yourselves, you're amazing.

BJORKUDDEN table and example comfy banqueting chair

You and us, bigger and better...

eclectic games has always succeeded because of our customers and our community focus. While we had limited space on our shop floor and in our games room, we were constrained to be as prudent, efficient and cost effective as possible in the product ranges and events we supported. This led to a number of hard decisions; supporting this product range over that one, hosting one set of events as opposed to another. With twice as much shop floor, and moving from a cramped maximum capacity of 50 players to 120 across two games rooms and a casual gaming lounge, we can stock more ranges, run more events and support more of what our gaming community loves.

Plans of gaming space above new shop

We’re running this Kickstarter so that you can get involved, and put your name on a piece of eclectic games. The £5000 funding target is the money we need to spend to upgrade the games room furniture from ‘professional and comfortable’ to ‘luxurious’. By pledging to the Kickstarter,you are showing your support for our vision, and being tangibly recognised for that support, which has been key to our success over the years – from the early days of proving a games shop could survive and thrive, to winning Reading Retailer of the Year 2014 on the back of the customer testimonials and nominations the judges received.

Winners - Retailer of the Year 2014

Our extra gaming space will allow us to reach out to new communities that can enjoy and benefit from the gaming hobby, as well as continuing to provide the excellent gaming experience we currently offer our customers. We can provide the space and expertise to run after school clubs for school children; a regular social boardgames event for pensioners; workshops for new game designers to playtest and get feedback on their games, all alongside the full schedule of events we already have on our calendar for board games, card games, minis and roleplaying. We will continue to work with local artists, displaying their creations on a dedicated ‘Gallery Wall’ and with new British games designers launching their creations into the market.

But I can't choose! Help!

Most of our pledge levels do not involve physical shipping of items so it is relatively straightforward for us to add pledge levels together. For multiple rewards, pick the highest one, and increase your pledge amount by the total cost of the other rewards you want. Remember to include any shipping! Then, email eclectic.games@gmail.com with the breakdown of which rewards you have selected. (Please see the FAQ for worked examples). We will confirm your selections and adjust the remaining totals of limited rewards. Launch Party tickets are limited to one per Kickstarter Account.