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Orc's Nest is a small games shop that opened in central London in 1987 and is still going strong today.

http://www.orcsnest.com

I think most London based gamers have probably been in there once in their life to experience the tatty, crowded conditions and surly attitude of the proprietor. However there has been a small revolution! The shop has been tidied up and re-organised. Although still tiny, so you have to navigate carefully around the other nerds, it is easy to find whatever you might be looking for in the different sections. Even better, a polite young lady has been taken on to operate the till. She knows her games, too, and is full of useful information.

The ground floor has board games, X-Wing etc and hobby supplies, as well as a big Pathfinder and D&D section. On the mezzanine you will find tabletop wargame rules, boxed map style wargames, and more RPGs, plus a rack of resin RPG character figures, and more board game items. (When I say board games I include general hobby games like Dixit and Munchkin that actually use cards or other mechanisms than board.)

The great thing about Orc's Nest is that is it still there -- an awful lot of games shops have closed in the past 30 years -- and they have a surprising range of stuff. This makes it a good venue for browsing and finding things you might not come across without diligent searching on the internet, or just luck. It opened my eyes to see the huge variety of RPGs currently available, and I discovered the Osprey Fighting Sail rules, which I had never heard of.

The downside is that everything is resolutely sold at recommended retail price. This means for example that Osprey's A Fistful of Kung Fu, currently available for £5.20 plus £2.80 postage from Amazon, costs the full £11.99. In other words 50% more to buy in the shop. The temptation is to use the shop for research and actually buy off the internet, which is the danger all specialist retailers face these days.

I impulse purchased Fighting Sail, Longstreet (ACW rules), and a card game called Hanabi anyway, partly for the fun of buying, and also to help the shop stay in business. It's nice sometimes to just pick something up and have it straight away.

The cashier said a lot of their trade is to tourists, which is not surprising given the location a few minutes walk from Leicester Square.

Forbidden Planet is close by, and there is a very good comics shop called Orbital Comics also close so you exercise all your nerd muscles in one morning.

Was in there on Fri and surprised that it was a lot better than when I used to go there 8-9 years ago. Can go upstairs now without the wall of heat and smell!

nice...
i remember when these guys started, and advertised in WD mag...
i always thought Orc's Nest was a great name for a game shop, and their logo was fun...
hard to believe it has been almost 30 years...

cheers
jah

That's cool news. I was flicking through some really old WD's the other week and was marvelling at the different phone number format and the lack of any interweb connect info. Did wonder how may of the shops advertising in WD were still around

Not many of them. I used to work in Games World in King Street in Hammersmith in the early 80s. We were around the corner from the original Games Workshop in Dalling Road.

Both shops closed years ago now. There is a fairly new Warhammer (GW) nearby, down towards Chiswick High Road, but it is much smaller.

Dark Sphere in Waterloo is the only new FLGS I know of in London.

I'm actually surprised it managed to stick around for so long if it was tatty and run by a surly prick before coming under new management.

But then again, if they scratch an itch nobody else can help with..

I moved away from london...now going back...morning walk..orcs nest, forbidden planet (not my favourite) and home with a new boardgame.
Impulse buy all the time there. Love it.

I'll have to drop by. They'll find it hard to compete with Dark Sphere's new setup though, they have so much gaming space, and Orc's Nest (from what I recall) was a bit pokey.

Orc's Nest is extremely pokey, that is part of its charm. There isn't room for any tables inside. It is purely a shop, not a demo or club area.

Really? I could have sworn I saw two tables last time I was there (some years ago). Perhaps I'm fabricating memories.

Regardless, the lack of gaming space is usually what would take it from 'buy in store' to 'buy on the internet' for me. If all it is is a row of shelves, I feel I might as well buy from a virtual row and save the moolah. I'm glad to hear that they're doing well though.

I just looked at the Store Finder in disbelief.
Surely Orc's Nest isn't the only non-GW in London...
There's just Dark Sphere and them. Where did everyone go?

So, if Orc's Nest wants to charge RRP, they can, there's nowhere else to get it from.

I have been in there over the years, but didn't think that much of it. It's a nice enough place, once you find it, and they have quite a lot of stuff in there each time.

Went in for the first time in 20+ years when I was back in London a couple of months ago.....awesome that it's still going! And yes great logo.

 Ketara wrote:
Really? I could have sworn I saw two tables last time I was there (some years ago). Perhaps I'm fabricating memories.

You must be, there isn't even room to unfold a travel chess set in there.

I'm honestly surprised they can stay in business. It's basically a tiny room of vintage garbage-tier minis and RPGs that obviously aren't moving.

So, anyone have any insight on what the secret is?

They must outright own everything. The store front, the merchandise, the equipment. The margin on games isn't that great so the only way they can survive must be incredibly low overheads.

That is one of the advantages of a long-running store, you usually have reduced your overhead operating expenses to just the essentials at that point.

I think for a start they must have deep insight into what sells, from nearly 30 years of experience.

Second they probably get a lot of passing trade from tourists. Millions of people go past their shop every year.

Third, sometimes people just impulse buy. I spent about £50 more or less on a whim. I haven't spent any money in a games shop since 2011 (a GW it was, too.) If enough people do that, there you are.

Last!y, if Amazon make a profit selling a book for £5.20, Ork's Nest probably make a decent profit selling it for £11.99

Amazon routinely loses, or makes close to zero, money on some items, and manufacturers routinely use them to dump excess stock. Orcs nest probably got 40% off of that game and payed around 7 for it. Osprey has too many left over and lets Amazon have a thousand for 3-4.

The way games shops can survive is by being in a different niche. You do remember Darwin's finches don't you? If two species occupy the same niche, the better one survives and the lesser goes extinct. But species in similar but distinct niches can survive side by side.

An online store going head to head with Amazon is in a nasty fight. That's why Amazon doesn't mind losing money year after year and they can keep selling stock and growing. Investors know that at some point this juggernaut will be the only one around with huge market share and hopefully be extremely profitable.

Orcs nest is in a different niche. All things equal, Amazon wins. But while Orcs Nest charges more, you have that product right in front of you. That's something amazon doesn't offer. You can grab that game and run right home with it. Grab a handful of dice. Browse things on shelves vs doing searches. Maybe see things you won't see on the internet because you didn't know they exist. Talk to other gamers or staff about games.

Different niche.

The store than carries hardly anything and says they will "special order it"? Yeah, they are doomed. It's not right in front of you. Now it's less convenient. You have to come back for it, wait, it's more expensive than amazon, doesn't come right to your door. Having a good and interesting Inventory of games is essential to a Brick and Mortar store.

They sell a lot of things that Dark Sphere does not, Realer miniatures and a wider range of various ancients, RPG books and supplies, magazines and lots of proper boardgames. The young lady that has been there for a couple of years is friendly so it's a decent place to visit.

I'm with michaila...I like online.
I love browsing and buying random (at least once a month) taking my gf (who loves boardgames)....and yes it sometimes passes my mind I can look in store and buy at home but I like my little shops and don't mind paying a bit more because I can afford it to keep it going.
It's not charity. It's taking home a product at random that day and playing. It's also having a fun little place to explore.

It's in Central London between Covent Garden and Shaftesbury Avenue, so whenever we're down there I slip away from the family for an hour or so to do my "geek stuff".

There's a neat little round of geeky shops - GW in Covent Garden Market itself, the London Graphics Centre for specialist painting supplies, Orc's Nest and finally Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue, all within about a fifteen minute walk. British Museum is close too, if you want a longer escape.

Playin' Games used to be right in front of the museum gates, and Modelzone was on High Holborn as well, but both are now gone.

Very pleased that Number One Daughter now joins me on the trip to Forbidden Planet!

Was at Foundry recently and they told us that they often get foreign visitors coming all the way to Nottingham to see the shop and casting rooms (probably do Warhammer World as well). People are even coming now they've moved out to the countryside. One lad was visiting London from New Zealand and had come all the way out to East Stoke. They picked him up at the station and phoned his mum to tell her that he had arrived safely!

Ah, I was in that area last summer and missed that store! Hit the museum, grabbed Radagast the Brown at the Covent Garden GW but I would have loved to have seen this shop.