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So, I just found out today that the Warhammer guy at our FLGS got fired from the store and has been replaced by someone who knows nothing about the game. Now, the knee-jerk reaction is for us to stop going to the store as this was our go-to guy and he'd really put a lot of work into running some tournaments and league for us. Unfortunately, it's the best place in the area to play simply from a size standpoint. And it's not like the store management is hostile to us or anything. But by replacing our old Warhammer guy with someone who knows nothing about the game, they're not really showing an interest in actively currying our favor.

Here's my question - how do I go about starting a GW-sponsored club that uses the store and gets prize support even though they don't have any staff that know anything about the game?

I doubt GW sponsors much anything haha.

You have to really talk to the store owner IMO - and get hired to run warhammer events.

Outline it to him - that you will generate some cash flow via tournaments and stuff - and they you know the gig.

Or point him to someone who does.

Tell him that you dont need an hourly wage (unless you want one) just some payout in compensation back for your time for succesful events.

Talk to the shop owner, here are some initial ideas.

Tournaments:
-GW shops have policies where they may not be able to charge for events. Have each participant commit to putting $10 on a gift card. Basically they are commitment to spend at least $10 on the day. Most shops will offer some sort of prize support. Sometimes older items, sometimes they will call back to coporate and get an ok to give out a box or 2.

Special events:
-In todays 1 employee mantra, the employees of GW are pretty darn strained. If you've got 10 guys commit to running some of the events for them. Basically your volunteering for the day to run apolocylpse events, small demo's etc. They will appreciate it alot.

Painting/ conversation demo's:
-Employee's are supposed to do them, god knows where they will have time so offer to help. Offer to run a hobby day where the focus is painting/ converting with a real how to.

Death By Monkeys wrote:
Here's my question - how do I go about starting a GW-sponsored club that uses the store and gets prize support even though they don't have any staff that know anything about the game?

There really isn't any such thing. The prize support for stores goes through Trade Sales to the store, and is based on the stock level and business that the store does with GW. A stockist gets 150 per quarter, a partner store gets 150 per month. Plus GW will support certain events, like the upcoming lauch of WFB 8th edition.

My advice is to talk to the owner, tell him you'd like to run events at the store, ask his advice and thoughts, ask if he knows about the support from GW, and how you can work with him to run the events.

OT: It sucks not having someone who actually knows what they're talking about in your LGS. Walked into mine one day (something I try to avoid, but since they closed my local GW, a 5 minute walk beats a 20 minute drive), and when the guy working asked me what "faction" I play, I turned around and left.

Death By Monkeys wrote:So, I just found out today that the Warhammer guy at our FLGS got fired from the store and has been replaced by someone who knows nothing about the game. Now, the knee-jerk reaction is for us to stop going to the store as this was our go-to guy and he'd really put a lot of work into running some tournaments and league for us. Unfortunately, it's the best place in the area to play simply from a size standpoint. And it's not like the store management is hostile to us or anything. But by replacing our old Warhammer guy with someone who knows nothing about the game, they're not really showing an interest in actively currying our favor.

Here's my question - how do I go about starting a GW-sponsored club that uses the store and gets prize support even though they don't have any staff that know anything about the game?

Ok, a couple of things...

First, your just basicly starting a wargaming club. NO no sponsership from GW, you don't want those assclowns in your buisness anyway. A prize support package can go one or three ways.

1. You use the tourney. You charge a flat fee to play in it, and use that money to buy the prise support. Things like a Regiment box, a unit box, and dice or stuff like that works.

2. "Donations". Donations is a doubious way to do buisness, and being as nonspecific as possible, people ususally don't react well to getting braced for funding when they really don't know where the money's going. Along with that stuff, if you don't know the one that is askking for a donation, you ususally have a bad reaction to throwing down the kings coin, just for the heck of it, unles you outright tell them why you want the money.

3. The store, and advertising. You see if the store will put up the $$ or the prizes for the tournament. Along with that you go down to your local pizza or burger joint that you ususally get your snacks from between gaming. and ask thenm if they want to use the tourney for some advertising, and make some arrangements to get the food and snacks for the tournament from this or that particular place, with the sole understanding that they will foot up whatever you ask for to accomplish your goal.
Sell it as a tax writeoff, or an advertising hook and sometimes they go for it. "Whats in it for me..." kinda line of thinking.

If you have at least three or four players that arn't douchebags, you shouldn't have an issue getting together with them and hashing out a basic, no frills gaming club.
The no BS issue that I need to throw in there is it is a collective. You really don't need to get down and dirty and dictate, until you start getting more then six or eight players, or the charachter dynamic starts kicking in after you get to know each other.

The way we started ours was simple. we got three or four solid players and we started gaming. THEN we needed some scenery, so we started hashing out a night ususally Wensday, to go over to one of the guys house and kick out a few scenery pieces.
THEN, because we felt like it, we started the campaign thing with a platoon or a squad of guys, and played some basic skermish games, to make sure everyone was tracking the rules and that BS "Well, thats how I always did it before " moments went away.
Then the small 1000 pt games, with the scenarios interlocking into a strategy. One off the top of my head for 40K was <"Fight for the comms center".

Then came, "Fight for Hell highway" then came fight for whatever the city was that we were fighting over.

Then the map came out, and we started playing over the map. I think it was one of those old military maps, or one of the Rand McNally ones from one of those ancient worlds books.

After awhile, the record keeping kinda got in the way, but it is a simple fix by Keeping it Simple, and not getting too indepth on the objectives.

Give the objective areas, or whatever your fighting over some sort of benifit, but don't go overboard, or make any one a bee all end all showstopper, so that you end up with something like joe's doomsday device that will wipe out the plent, or some sort of off the wall bs like that.

make them things like, a random minefield for the duration of the game, or random ally unit, or +3 orbital bombardments that throw D3 template weapon barrages around for the game. Something that everyone agrees on and has to do with the battle.

Thats how we did it back when I had a serious game club.

It really wasn't something all indepth, it was just a bunch of guys who ended up hanging out and BSing about games and playing interlocked games together.
That group ended up getting up to about ten to fifteen guys right before I left, and as new guys come and old guys go, you all get other people to play who are in the right kind of people frame. THEN you all get together, talk it out and either bring in a new guy, or you vote, NO because he or she isn't one of your kinda players.

That distinction goes to TFG types, and people that arn't serious to playing your groups kind of gameing. ( I can't really be specific, because every group has thier own synergey, and yours is YOURS.)

Hope that helps.

Well, I think such a perosn should be given a chance. Who knows, maybe they are expected to spin up on the games and start learning.

hungryp wrote:OT: It sucks not having someone who actually knows what they're talking about in your LGS. Walked into mine one day (something I try to avoid, but since they closed my local GW, a 5 minute walk beats a 20 minute drive), and when the guy working asked me what "faction" I play, I turned around and left.

That made no sense.

Faction, or race, or army, or big mob of killers, is the same thing.

You seem like the kind of guy who would shoot me if I pointed a candy cane at you.

GW used to offer an advice pack for how to set up and run a club. You should contact their customer service.

Karon wrote:Faction, or race, or army, or big mob of killers, is the same thing.

Actually, the term faction is generally used to refer to a politically motivated group rather than a military organization, and as we all know, in the grimdark there is only war.

Personally, I have never heard someone refer to a Warhammer army as a faction, and knowing that this guy was trying to start a conversation with me that he couldn't possibly have anything to contribute to just set me off that day.

Karon wrote:You seem like the kind of guy who would shoot me if I pointed a candy cane at you.

Now who's not making sense?

I guess it would depend though. Is it a fresh candy cane, or did you suck on it for a while until the end was all pointy and sticky?

Death By Monkeys wrote:So, I just found out today that the Warhammer guy at our FLGS got fired from the store and has been replaced by someone who knows nothing about the game. Now, the knee-jerk reaction is for us to stop going to the store as this was our go-to guy and he'd really put a lot of work into running some tournaments and league for us. Unfortunately, it's the best place in the area to play simply from a size standpoint. And it's not like the store management is hostile to us or anything. But by replacing our old Warhammer guy with someone who knows nothing about the game, they're not really showing an interest in actively currying our favor.

Here's my question - how do I go about starting a GW-sponsored club that uses the store and gets prize support even though they don't have any staff that know anything about the game?

The British GW site has tips for setting up a gaming club on it, shame the American one doesn't.

Here is the link.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=&categoryId=700001§ion=community&aId=9900021a

Warmachine, Malifaux, and several others use the term faction a lot. So the guy said "faction" when you think he should have said "army". This matters enough to leave a gaming store?

I usually use faction rather than race or army because;

Race is an outmoded and inaccurate term -- most of the 40K codex groupings are separate species.

Yet some aren't, for instance all the Imperial codexes are the same species. They are truly separate factions within the Imperium.

An army is your collected force for the tabletop.

I use fraction becuase I'm an old medievil total war addict and IIRC the different countries were called fractions.

Didnt GW have the Chaplain program for a while at least? It sounded way OTT but there might be some useful stuff in there if you could get a look at it.

hungryp: if thats standard for you, I'm glad i wont ever have to turn you down for a game.

wizard12 wrote:I use fraction becuase I'm an old medievil total war addict and IIRC the different countries were called fractions.

Fraction?

You mean Faction

OT - I think the implication is that the new store guy didn't know the difference between Warhammer and Warmachine...

I think that you are correct ArbitorIan. I also think that given the faction question to turn around and walk out in response is an inexcusably silly idea that deserves to have scorn heaped upon it.

Seriously, I am making a point of it here for all the younger players who might look at that and deem it good behavior. Its behavior lik ehat that gets gamers in general some of their less-endearing monikers.

ArbitorIan wrote:

wizard12 wrote:I use fraction becuase I'm an old medievil total war addict and IIRC the different countries were called fractions.

Fraction?

You mean Faction

OT - I think the implication is that the new store guy didn't know the difference between Warhammer and Warmachine...

Problem is, he'll never know, since he walked out based upon the horrible insult that was heaped upon him.

grizgrin wrote:I think that you are correct ArbitorIan. I also think that given the faction question to turn around and walk out in response is an inexcusably silly idea that deserves to have scorn heaped upon it.

Seriously, I am making a point of it here for all the younger players who might look at that and deem it good behavior. Its behavior lik ehat that gets gamers in general some of their less-endearing monikers.

QFT

Don't get bent on account of terms. Basicly all you have done is to become a 40K/GW snob, instead of getting down to the brass tacks, which is to play friggin games and have a good time.

Faction, fraction, army, race.... no one cares, as long as the games are fast and furious and you are having a good time.

You honestly do not have enough time to waste on symantics.

Play the game that you want to play, and even if some poor office monkey isn't doing it YOUR way, cut the cat some slack and go about your business. You don't need to be the one to play thought police.