BrookM wrote:
The Leman Russ kits and the Baneblade come to mind, along with the vanilla Land Raider and Predator kits.

The Baneblade and some of its variants in particular, which is nowadays a plastic only things.

Terminators, Rhinos, Whirlwinds, Vindicators, Scouts and Dreadnoughts too. With some head swaps you can use the GW cadians or catachans for the militia list along with Ogyrn.

You can also use the plastic tactical boxes if you are doing very late Horus Heresy battles.

 JamesY wrote:
I am not the one banning people so cool your jets.

No jets need cooling.... I thought it was obvious when I said "you" I was referring in general to your comments rather than you personally.

Anyway, I still think this hypothetical gamer who only buys FW to the exclusion of other GW products is not a significant portion of the community. How many people who own FW models don't also own an army for other systems and/or their FW army contains a large contingent of regular GW models? There might be a few, but I'd think it'd be a pretty small number.

I tend to think if someone is buying FW they are likely to be a big spender and would be the last people who want to make unhappy. Of course they could be buying their stuff off recasters, but then people playing regular GW might be buying their stuff off ebay and not passing any profits on to the store either.

I definitely think it's a bad idea to encourage people to start groups outside of the store. GW stores aren't competitive when it comes to pricing, if you encourage people to start playing away from the store you're liable to encourage them to start buying from one of the many cheaper sources of GW models (or even GW alternatives).

@Skink GW sells boards and terrain they want you to play outside the store and have always been encouraging of this.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

I agree with you that it shouldn't make a difference, but that's the way GW runs their stuff right now. It makes a difference to the manager, and from what has been said GW will let their managers run the shops as they please unless something directly conflicts with a set policy.

The policy is basically 'go forth and make profit by means you see fit'. It isn't 'ban some things we make that you personally haven't sold'.

And how do you expect them to make profit from things they can't sell?

How do they sell items to people who no longer return to the store due to being told which GW products they can and cannot use.

This is staggeringly idiotic and the fact there are people defending it is astounding.

When the next 'bright ideas' store manager starts demanding that people can only bring GW models in that they have receipts for from that store, are the same people going to come forward and defend it?!? Because it's the Exact same thing, it's company product not bought at that company store.

These aren't franchises, these are sales venues for the company. Commission isn't wage. Driving people out of your store, providing barriers to selling more stock and producing ill will and negativity aren't good ideas to help you turn over stock, they're a short road to a closed store.

I've worked in customer service for years, the customer certainly isn't always right, but you don't dictate to them like this, it's absolutely bonkers.

It funny how people don't get "play what they sell" and still using the falsehood of 40k and AoS model form other sources argument. When it has nothing to do with playing a game with only models the store can not sell.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

I agree with you that it shouldn't make a difference, but that's the way GW runs their stuff right now. It makes a difference to the manager, and from what has been said GW will let their managers run the shops as they please unless something directly conflicts with a set policy.

The policy is basically 'go forth and make profit by means you see fit'. It isn't 'ban some things we make that you personally haven't sold'.

And how do you expect them to make profit from things they can't sell?

How do they sell items to people who no longer return to the store due to being told which GW products they can and cannot use.

How do they sell items to people who might have no intention of buying anything to begin with?

This is staggeringly idiotic and the fact there are people defending it is astounding.

No, what's astounding is that it is almost always the same people who come in to these "X disallowed in my GW store" to decry it and whine about how it's stupid/unconsumer friendly/<insert trending word of the week> constantly make a point about the fact that they don't buy/play anything GW anymore--and that they never played/set foot in a GW store before or had one bad experience in one and have written off ALL the stores because of it.

When the next 'bright ideas' store manager starts demanding that people can only bring GW models in that they have receipts for from that store, are the same people going to come forward and defend it?!? Because it's the Exact same thing, it's company product not bought at that company store.

No, you're right. It is exactly the same thing.

Except a store manager very likely will never do that. Know why?

Because if someone comes in for their first time and sees someone playing an army that they can sell off the shelf, they don't have to explain why Soandso is using something that the person cannot just buy today from the manager.

These aren't franchises, these are sales venues for the company.

These are sales venues for a specific part of the company. I don't like it, you don't like it, and I sincerely doubt that the managers like it either.
Good managers aren't just managing the shop--they're part of the local gaming community. It's no different than any independent shop, just one of them has a corporate tag attached to it.

Commission isn't wage. Driving people out of your store, providing barriers to selling more stock and producing ill will and negativity aren't good ideas to help you turn over stock, they're a short road to a closed store.

Commission isn't wage, you're right. But wage with sales figures affecting your pay might as well be commission.

You're not a person who plays/shops/whatevers at Bottle's store. Nor am I. I can't tell you why the manager did this, but from what Bottle posted most recently?
It seems like it did not really affect the players at the shop too much.

Noir wrote:
@Skink GW sells boards and terrain they want you to play outside the store and have always been encouraging of this.

Of course, helping people who want to play outside of the store is all part of reaching a larger community, but not to the exclusion of playing in store. Being tied to playing games in an actual GW store is what stops many people from doing things like using 3rd party models.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Noir wrote:
@Skink GW sells boards and terrain they want you to play outside the store and have always been encouraging of this.

Of course, helping people who want to play outside of the store is all part of reaching a larger community, but not to the exclusion of playing in store. Being tied to playing games in an actual GW store is what stops many people from doing things like using 3rd party models.

Of course, the opposite also remains true - not playing in a GW store because by playing elsewhere you can use 3rd party models.

I very much doubt that I would ever have been GW's ideal market - I buy what I want, from whom I want, and really don't give a piece of fudge if the model is 'official' or not - and that is a habit going back to before D&D was a twinkle in the eye of Gygax.

The Auld Grump

So what's the count on stores that do this up to?

2 including OPs?

The store I worked in doesn't allow FW. When I was there you couldn't play 30k, but you could use a few FW minis in 40k and fantasy. The current manager won't allow you to paint FW in store, and even asked my mate if he'd leave his kr case outside. As in on the street.

On a similar topic, and one reason I am quite vocal about this, when I started working there, I had 3 of the regular gamers very smugly inform me that they hadn't bought a single thing in over five years. Every week they would come in and try to dominate the two gaming tables. When 7th ed was released, one of them was even trying to tell people who were queuing to buy the book to buy it at element games because it was cheaper, whilst eating free cake and drinking free coke we'd bought in to celebrate. All three flatly refused to buy the new rules, and would try to play 6th or borrow a copy. When I left we'd gotten rid of all of them, and the gaming nights were much more pleasant, much busier, and people who were buying armies were guaranteed games, which often didn't happen before. I'm not saying that you should have to buy something on every visit to use the hobby facilities, but if you only use the store as a venue to game, but not to shop, I think the manager has a right to eventually say 'that's enough.'

Seriously, what else can we expect from a company that does no market research, no polling, etc?

 carldooley wrote:
Seriously, what else can we expect from a company that does no market research, no polling, etc?

I would suggest you actually read what has been said in this thread.

It's very much a case by case basis. It's not a company policy to not allow FW products in their stores.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's very much a case by case basis. It's not a company policy to not allow FW products in their stores.

A good summary of the thread, to be sure.

We've laughed, we've cried, we've survived the karaoke bar, and we're back where we began. Let's give it a break and if this needs further discussion (remembering that it's not a company wide policy, but an individual store being discussed) we can have a new thread to do so after a bit.