Valkyrie Wargaming Club Expansion

My name is Anna Hakken. I am the owner of the Valkyrie Wargaming Club in Montague, MI.

We have spent the last eight years supporting and growing the tabletop gaming hobby in West Michigan. From holding 24-hour table-top roleplaying events for charity to hosting competitive Warhammer 40,000 tournaments, we have always placed more emphasis on giving local players a safe and welcoming environment to enjoy their hobbies than we have on retail sales.

This business has been a labor of love for my partner and I, and any profits that we have made we have always tried to reinvest in the business so that we can continue to develop what we have to offer West Michigan's amazing community of gamers.

This is why, when we had the opportunity to expand into a new location with a significant increase in square footage, we jumped at the opportunity to add more gaming area to the club. We were not interested in expanding retail operations... We wanted to grow the size of the events that we can offer. We wanted to return to holding an Extra-Life mini-convention every year, as we did prior to quarantine. We wanted to grow our Warhammer 40,000 tournaments from small one-day skirmishes to larger, two-day events.

To that end, we secured this space and construction began on structural needs. We negotiated an extremely good deal with our landlord which will keep overhead low despite a significant increase in square footage. We had saved up several thousand dollars to prepare for the impending move, the need for some cosmetic renovation after construction completes, and to fill the space with tables, chairs, and all the supporting materials necessary to hit the ground running.

Unfortunately, in the beginning of 2023, a string of extremely expensive personal crises hit our family, and those funds were depleted rapidly. The savings we had prepared to invest in the expansion of the club were gone, just as we neared the time we would take over the space for finishing touches.

We thought with the 10th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 about to launch that we might have enough sales to recoup some of these funds, and we pushed back moving to the new location until summer, in the hopes we could recover from these crises.

Through more frustrating circumstances, both personal and within the gaming industry, the hopes of recovering our savings to invest in the move did not bear necessary fruit.

We still have the opportunity for this great event space. We still have the drive and desire to bring larger wargaming and other table-top events to West Michigan.

We still have the means to continue operations, even once in the new location. What we lack is the funding to complete the project and make the move.

We do not want to miss out on making this a reality for everyone in the local gaming community.

As such we are reaching out to the community – both local gamers, and the friends that we have made in the greater region – to ask for some assistance.

Funds will be used for such expenses as:

In the event that we are blessed with assistance that exceeds this need, any remaining funds would be used to further develop the experience that we offer for our guests, such as:

What we need is assistance to finish a project that was stalled by life coming off the rails, for a bit. We need your help to get us over the finish line.