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there is one store that doesnt stock wargames but has War game tournements.

I live about an hour away from West Palm Beach but I drove there to check out an LGS and had a very disappointing time. The store itself was very nice and large. It features comics and other SciFi collectibles but also has a large section for gaming along with another whole storefront that they use just as a gaming room with tables set up for events of different kinds. When I first saw the store I was excited to come there and play but then I made the mistake of approaching the manager/owner to ask about upcoming events and gameplay at the store and boy was that a mistake. The conversation started out innocent enough and he showed me the events calendar, which had no 40k or Star wars Armada, the two games I was looking for. When I asked him about it, and if there was maybe a day that players would come in for pickup games, he began a rant about how if I wanted to play I just had to come in and play, which was fine, except if there was no one else there who was I supposed to play with. He was complaining that a new GW store in town had taken many of the gamers and I suggested that scheduling an event rather than just waiting for people to walk in the door might be a better way to bring them back. I told him I would certainly drive up for an event but it wouldn't be worth it to make the trip when there was no guarantee of anyone even being there to play. After this he began to use the term "you people" a lot (referring to 40k gamers) and basically started just fuming frustration at me. Whats weird was that he was talking to me as if I were one of the gamers that had left like it was my fault there was no gaming in the store. He knew I had never been there because I told him but he just didn't seem in his right mind and it was ver odd. It was very weird and not welcoming at all. Needless to say I have not returned.

cranect wrote:
Both the stores in the Pittsburgh area are great. Occasionally you meet someone who is a little sour towards someone but I can always get a game with orks.

If you're talking about Legions, then you're absolutely right. If I had lived closer to it growing up, I'd be in there all the time.

Now that I've moved, I've found Games & Stuff, just outside of Baltimore, to be a fantastic place. Great location, friendly staff, fantastic selection (they have a GW Smaug kit for sale! When I asked an employee how they got one in, she said "because we're awesome." ). Haven't done much gaming there yet, so I can't speak to the crowd, but they're excellent otherwise.

legions is awesome. theres a new one called drawbridge games that my 2nd grade teacher opened!

I've got four within a half-hour drive of me.

One used to be the place for GW in the area, but now it's a comic/card shop. Very nice crew, always happy to talk.

Another is a comic/card shop that also dabbles in board games and, up until recently, GW products. I don't go there often.

The third is GW-centric with some PP stuff, although the PP scene doesn't get much action. They've also got some Xwing and related systems stuff. Also the only place in the area that stocks WWX. A good group of guys.

The last place is probably my favorite. Board/Card games, where the PP scene is at, also a big supporter of RPGs and Xwing. Used to be the place for the FoW scene as well. Big, airy space, lots of sunlight. Awesome crew working there, always receptive to people coming in and setting up games. Very anti-GW, because of past problems dealing with GW reps.

Yep legions is great and I like it at drawbridge games a lot. One of the biggest things there is its only a 15 minute drive instead of an hour or more that it takes me to get to legions.

They used to be. But, all the ones around here have stopped looking favorably to competitive play.

My LGS is awesome, it's well kept, clean, and the employees and players are all very nice. The only downside is that it's largely focused on board games and card games without much space for miniature gaming. There's a few games played there warmahordes, xwing, wild west exodus but the turn out is pretty small as they can only handle about 4 small tables for mini games. (4x6 size at most)

They carry a very light amount of miniatures stock and anything GW isn't allowed, which is a good thing or bad depending on your preference for GW. Long story short they are owned by employees of a previous store that was forced out of business when GW opened their bunker across town and intentionally stole their customer base. IMO it's nice to see a LGS doing well without suffering at the lash of GW.

I love my LGSs. I only had a problem at the one 20 miles away from my house once. I was driving by and all the lights were on and someone inside so I decided to stop by. I walk in and the guy working there gets all pissed and said that they closed to two hours ago. After he said that a female employee, that I did not even know was there, stood up from under the counter... I wonder what they were doing.

Anyway this only made me mad because I used to be a supervisor at a restaurant and if we were still there two hours after close with the doors unlocked and the lights on I would have some explaining to do. I have no idea why it took more than an hour to close...

 Ruberu wrote:
After he said that a female employee, that I did not even know was there

A female game store employee? Riiiight I suppose they are also staffed by elves and unicorns.

 stanman wrote:

 Ruberu wrote:
After he said that a female employee, that I did not even know was there

A female game store employee? Riiiight I suppose they are also staffed by elves and unicorns.

They actually have had like 4 or 5 at various times. Not even joking.

Normally a good place but sometimes there can be tension with the owner... They did just open a second location that seems nice, even if its a smaller store. When I was younger the people that ran the other store in omaha kept accusing me of putting stuff in my pockets/stealing, stopped going there for a long time..

Not impossible, just very rare from what I've encountered. The only women I typically see in a game store are disinterested wives of the owner or customers. There's the occasional girlfriends or female gamers that shop in the stores, but employees are a very rare breed as most women have to be dragged in unwilling and wouldn't opt to work in such a place if they could avoid it.

 stanman wrote:
Not impossible, just very rare from what I've encountered. The only women I typically see in a game store are disinterested wives of the owner or customers. There's the occasional girlfriends or female gamers that shop in the stores, but employees are a very rare breed as most women have to be dragged in unwilling and wouldn't opt to work in such a place if they could avoid it.

Ha! I laughed out loud at the dragged in unwilling part, reminded me of an embarrassing moment. But no, I wasn't saying that women don't work at game stores, or that they don't having any at this location. I didn't know she was there as in I didn't see her at first because she was on her knees behind the desk next to grumpy's pelvic region.

Nuke is right. This location has had 4 or 5 working there. All of them have been really friendly.

The big game store in Tacoma where I used to go was great, everyone was nice. Only downfall was the lack of AC in the summer.

The big game store in Bremerton where I used to occasionally go was also very nice, but it could have used some more parking. They even had a small latte stand, and the game area was behind a gate and little wall to keep out the riff raff.

Mine wasn't. They lied about when they were getting stuff in, when they did get it in, they didn't call like they offered to, and when I asked about ordering stuff, it was as if I was bothering them.

No problem - stopped shopping there and just switched to online vendors who were cheaper anyway. I only went to the LGS because it was close to me and I didn't have to wait for the stuff in the mail. I was willing to forgo the discounts for convenience, but then stopped out of principle when they just kept pissing me off.

They closed last year. All because of garbage service and attitude, that's why my friends and I stopped going there. Now the only place in my town I bother going to for hobby stuff are generic arts n' crafts stores for supplies.

 Guildsman wrote:

cranect wrote:
Both the stores in the Pittsburgh area are great. Occasionally you meet someone who is a little sour towards someone but I can always get a game with orks.

If you're talking about Legions, then you're absolutely right. If I had lived closer to it growing up, I'd be in there all the time.

Now that I've moved, I've found Games & Stuff, just outside of Baltimore, to be a fantastic place. Great location, friendly staff, fantastic selection (they have a GW Smaug kit for sale! When I asked an employee how they got one in, she said "because we're awesome." ). Haven't done much gaming there yet, so I can't speak to the crowd, but they're excellent otherwise.

I no longer live in MD but Games & Stuff is indeed awesome. They have hit, IMHO, upon the perfect business and hobbyist model.
They're geeky enough to talk shop with the geekiest geek while understanding sales, marketing and not boring customers with 'lemme tell you about my cleric' or bringing politics/religion into a game store.
They also carry a wide variety of stock and understand the concept of sales to clear out items that just aren't moving. Add in the fact that they keep the store clean and well lit on top of a massive gaming space used for both organized play and pick-up games and you start to get the picture.

My LGS is closed because GW sucks :(

I waited 20 minutes to be served, last time at my LGS, cos the customer in front was talking about his previous armies.
In fairness the guy had just dropped almost £400 on two new GW armies (and that was at a good discount) so maybe a certain amount of conversation was expected from the sales guy.
I'd rather go there though, even though it's 7 miles away, because my local GW store thinks I'm a purse on legs who knows bobbins about anything. I find that if I don't go there more than once a week the staff forget who I am and revert to 'pushy sales' mode.

My FLGS is great, clean, well lit, plenty of tables. Large collection of board games to fool around with. Hefty helping of terrain for the tables. Plus mats for X-wing.
The owner is always pleasant (at least I have never seen him be mean to anyone). He also keeps a number of army's for people to use from a couple of different games. So he can do demo's or just let people borrow them. The regulars are pretty awesome as well.

We had two in the area, the wizards wall and dogs of war. The wizards wall was a giant pile of crap run by idiots who didn't know how to make their customers happy, which eventually caused its closure some months back, while dogs of war has prospered because they have clean game space for hobbyists to relax and have fun while treating their customers with respect.

The store I go to is amazing, wonderful atmosphere, always feel welcome, a remarkably low TFG level. Its about 120 miles away, but worth the round trip say once a month for a few games, catch up and making my credit card cry.

My local store is somewhat different, just doesn't feel welcoming, the gaming area is antiseptic clean, which is fine, but feels like the cafe it used to be, the shop part is very narrow, very dark, and never has what I wanted in stock - yes he can order it... but I can do that from home, for less, not critical but combined with the general atmosphere.. shudder.

any time I get is a good time

 jonolikespie wrote:
I used to have a loud, obnoxious, control freak running the model wargaming scene in my local FLGS (he wasn't actually part of the store, just brought his club into it). He liked to refer to it as 'his' club and remind people of that. He was fairly hostile towards games he himself didn't play and very much encouraged the competitive style of play (which I really wouldn't have minded if it were with games that worked competitively but he considered non-GW heresy).
He also had this habit of aiming far too big, setting up prize support for a 40 man tourney then begging people to pay ASAP because he was out of pocket and later being bitter about losing money because only 25 people showed up (just like the time before and the time before that, none of us could figure out why he made spots for 40).

In the end he decided to take his ball and go home when something happened at the store. I was no longer going to the club so I can't say for sure but the store's story was he was a control freak that they didn't really want there anyway, his story was they wanted to tell him how to run his tourneys even when he ran them outside of their store, and the remaining Magic crowd's side of the story was he was pissed that his group weren't given priority over Magic and allowed to annex some of their tables.

So he went and started his own 'store' with blackjack and hookers, except I believe it is in an out of the way office space in a warehouse district and only open 5pm-10pm wed-sat. It has a bunch of tables but last time I was at my local GW (were the entire 40k scene now seems to be) he was actually calling the store, apparently paranoid, thinking all 'his' gamers were buying up another space and more tables to set up the club again without him.

The whole thing amuses me greatly.

Sounds interesting. What city are you in again?

My "local" FLGS pretty much just appeared one day out of the blue. The owner started off friendly, but was very passive-aggressive, spent a lot of time bitching about "gamers" (why open a game store, then?) and had a huge sense of entitlement. In that he thought he was entitled to all of the sales of the people who came through or visited his store, even casually. From a friendly start, he gradually became a huge douchebag over time. Or perhaps, his douchiness was just revealed.

Later on, I moved, and then he moved. He's still the closest, but at this point, I'll gladly travel further and pay more then give patronage to his shop. Of course I can just order stuff from the internet for less and have it delivered to my work, so I do that instead.


edit - typos

One think I like about my local game store is the owner is never pushy and always tries to include people. With what I already have I had no real intention of picking up another game. However there is a campaign for Bushido coming up and I decided to pick up stuff and get involved with it because I like the people there and I never felt forced or pressured. If he was trying to pressure me into purchasing things I almost certainly wouldn't have picked it up. He also makes no attempt to tell me I should purchase only from him like I have heard some other owners attempt which in fact leads me to want to order through him more. I can get things cheaper online but I would rather pay where I play when possible.

edit: nevermind

I've got 3 stores in my area - a GW, a comic book chain and an independent.

The GW is great, always has friendly staff willing to talk with you. They come over and help you, which is great when you are in a rush and have a fairly large range as they are a decent size.

The comic shop is great, brilliant atmosphere, friendly guys, if it's a board game, card game or DiceMasters I'll buy here.

The independent... Sullen staff, staff sometimes too busy playing games to serve you, rudeness and favouritism when it comes to customers. Oh and selling above RRP. I only go there when I absolutely have to.

Not really. My LGS was always kinda unpleasant. Better than a lot of shops, but really the staff have always been jerks. And they keep hiring the worst jerks from among the regulars when they have an opening.

My FLGS is awesome.

The owner is great, his employees are friendly, the shops is always clean, and they do everything within reason to make sure everyone has space to play what they want to play (obviously this isn't always possible with large events, but they will still try). There is no table fee and I've never been charged to play in any X-Wing tournaments, including Store Championships.

privateer4hire wrote:
I no longer live in MD but Games & Stuff is indeed awesome. They have hit, IMHO, upon the perfect business and hobbyist model.
They're geeky enough to talk shop with the geekiest geek while understanding sales, marketing and not boring customers with 'lemme tell you about my cleric' or bringing politics/religion into a game store.
They also carry a wide variety of stock and understand the concept of sales to clear out items that just aren't moving. Add in the fact that they keep the store clean and well lit on top of a massive gaming space used for both organized play and pick-up games and you start to get the picture.

Sounds like my locale store

The owner is great and is always running different events for different game systems. I find the customers to be cool people too. I think that the store has the lowest TFG ratio in the province sometimes.

The store has a real "community" vibe and is a fantastic place to play.

Two weeks ago I left my maelstrom mission card deck at the game store. When I showed up last night, I mentioned it to one of the players and he said. "Oh , yeah. ___ was asking us if anyone was missing a deck. He said to ask around." 20 minutes later, __ shows up. "Oh hey, are these yours?"

Boom. Nice guys, I've found. I've only been there 3 times, but they're good people.