It’s Friday evening, sweat rolls down your forehead as you look down at a set of brightly colored cards in your hand. Your opponent sets a card down in front of you as you lift one of your own out of your hand and onto the table, an Amoonguss. The world around you moves at the pace of a snail as your heart races. It’s the Pokemon tournament at The Game Vault. 

The Game Vault opened its doors to the public with a soft opening on March 1, to introduce board game lovers in Powell to the downtown business. A month later, on April 1, the store officially opened.

The Game Vault is set in the old bank building in Powell’s downtown strip, utilizing the old vault as a room for customers to play video games without interruptions.

“We do heavy into the Pokemon, that’s kinda our gateway into the shop at this point — Fridays are Pokemon league night,” owner John Bontadelli said. “Mondays are Magic the Gathering — and Saturday we do Warhammer so we have lots of players coming down and learning to play those games, enjoying them. The rest of the time is basically open play.” 

The weekly Pokemon tournaments have particularly been a success for the business with the number of customers growing substantially over the past two months.

Bontadelli said in recent weeks that he’s had to purchase more tables and chairs to fill the store with seeing the popularity of Friday nights. When 18 people were expected to show up for May’s tournament, Bontadelli provided seats for 21 people, and that still wasn’t enough. 

“Our last tournament we had 24 players, I actually had to go out and buy more tables and chairs I wasn’t expecting that many players, I thought we were gonna have about 18, so planned on 21 and got 24, which is awesome for our first month,” Bontadelli said. “So this month, we’re set for 30 and we have up to 36 so we can go up to 36 as far as tables and chairs and stuff.” 

It isn’t just card games that The Game Vault offers to customers. The store also sells products from board games, trading cards and miniatures. 

Bontadelli said he has a friendship with the owners of Broken Sword Games, a fellow board game store found in Powell. The two owners of Broken Sword, Kurt Bullinger and Justin Vanderpool, opened their store only a few weeks before The Game Vault. 

“Those guys are great, I’ve been over there, played games with them a lot,” Bontadelli said. “They’re a great couple of guys that are running that store. What’s wrong with a little friendly game of competition, you know what I mean?” 

Bontadelli opened the store after moving to Powell from northern California with his wife and two kids, wanting to live closer to family. After moving to Powell, he saw the lack of game stores in town as an opportunity due to his experiences in similar places back in California.

“I’ve always spent time in game stores like this, my kids grew up under the tables of game stores like this,” he said. “My garage looked like a game store like this as well as the office and (a) few other places.”

Bontadelli, a former mechanic, has said he is thankful to everyone who has stopped by his store, for making his dream able to become a reality.

“It almost feels like an early retirement because it is something I do enjoy, doesn’t make a lot of money but it covers itself,” Bontadelli said. “It’s good to be in town and doing what this community really, I felt, needed. The idea was to do something I’ve been wanting to do for the past 20 years.”