Meepleville Cafe in Las Vegas

This profile on Meepleville Cafe is part of an ongoing series about Friendly Local Game Stores I’ve visited. Read other profiles here.

When I went to Las Vegas for Dice Tower West last month, I knew I had to visit to Meepleville Cafe, which amazingly has a giant meeple cutout inside the cafe!

Situated a few miles off the famed Las Vegas Strip, Meepleville Cafe was the brainchild of Timm Metivier, a professional entertainer who had lived in England before moving to Las Vegas in 2006.

A lifelong board gamer and self-described “typical dry euro guy,” Meltivier opened Meepleville Cafe in 2016.

“I’ve loved board games all my life. Once I saw Snakes and Lattes open, I knew I wanted to do it,” he said. “I saved up and got everything together, and decided to open up a board-game cafe here.”

Meepleville Cafe is just over 4,000 square feet of gaming bliss, with a couple different partitioned spaces and rooms to choose from. With over 2,000 games in its library, there’s a game for everyone.

Cafe visitors pay a cover charge to play games, with the average cover charge $7. Certain days have different cover specials, such as $3 Mondays or $10 group Tuesdays (up to five people), and there’s a whole calendar for special events such as game tournaments.

Meltivier enjoys proselytizing about games and getting people together in a nice, clean, safe environment and enjoy each other’s company, “to put away their phones and look each other in the eyes.”

“I had a family come in today. Three generations – a grandmother, mother and son – sitting down and playing a game today,” Meltivier said. “I like being able to facilitate that.”

The cafe also has a large selection of board games for sale, from standards to heavy euros. There’s even a section labeled $20 and below to highlight more affordable choices. Meltivier takes pride in staffing his cafe with board-game enthusiasts who can provide great customer service.

“I love the fact that I myself to go all the conventions. My staff is all board game,” he said. “We are able to really, really help customers. That’s all we do.”

For the past few years, Meltivier and Dave Millette had been running Meeple Con, the local Las Vegas board game convention, until this past year when they partnered with Tom Vasel and the Dice Tower to turn Meeple Con into Dice Tower West. The convention doubled in size, and they were able to move to a larger and newer venue.

“Tom gave us the marketing we couldn’t have gotten, and we gave him the logistics, the boots on the ground and organization of getting the convention done,” Meltivier said. “It’s the perfect relationship. We have good synergy between all of us.”

So, what’s next for Meepleville?

Meltivier said eventually he’d like to open a location in Henderson, a city southeast of Las Vegas, but mostly, he wants to continue making Meepleville Cafe the best it can be.

“It’s a great community here. I love the fact that we’re able to turn people on to games and have a place to enjoy that,” he said.

Information

Meepleville Cafe is located at 4704 W Sahara Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89102. It’s open seven days a week. You can find more information on its website: meepleville.com.