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I have three guys I play against. My weekly opponent I game at his home. My biweekly opponent I game at his local comic shop. My monthly opponent I game at our FLGS. The nearest GW is in the Los Angeles direction, and I've never been to the store.

Locally we have a LGS with gaming space (GW does not count. The store is not big enough to swing a cat) and multiple clubs (that have a hired venue) and countless "clubs" made up of mates who play in garages.

Very few of the groups speak to each other. None are tournament players and don't care that there are others out there like them.

I have a bunch of like minded gamers I can play with and a club in a nearby town that has a venue and terrain/tables to use/play at.

I haven't played in a store in over a decade. I don't like the atmosphere generally (or gamer funk) but that could be because I've not actually played in a great store.

Most of my casual gaming is done at my house or a friend's house. I head out to the local bunker to run tournaments upon occasion.

We have a GW with some tables in a nearby (15-20 min drive) mall, but, unfortunately, the competition there leaves something to be desired, as does the age of most of the players. And it's in a mall, and us old farts like to have beer with our dice.

We've only got a few FLGSs here, one of which is very nice, and the other of which is a bit of a hole. No official GW store that I'm aware of. I usually play on my D&D table with makeshift terrain and a few friends, but there is a member of our gaming group with a fantastic setup and more terrain than most stores I've seen. That said, I do enjoy spending a few hours at the FLGS playing from time to time.

I do all my gaming currently in my house in a room currently entitled "The Geek Hole" which has a 6x4 table, an amount of terrain (need to get more now I'm back to games that don't just use hex sheets or a black table cloth). I have a group of 5-6 friends I regularly play with which usually gets me a regular game a week.

There are 2 LGS and 2 GW stores in my city though non of them have a decent gaming space for anything other than CCGs or small games. So never played a game in a store, nor do I see that being a valid option any time soon.

I used to be a member of a couple of clubs when I didn't have a table of my own and there were both positives and negatives to that. I could almost always guarantee an opponent assuming i'd mentioned the week before that I was brining and specific game in... but the quality of the opponent was certainly variable.

Never taken part in a tournament, I'm not a competitive gamer beyond the usual desire to win a game. I'm not bothered about being crowned the best in the city / county / country / world

I have 1 LGS in my area, and the 40K crowd there has never been very welcoming. So, most of my games are played at home with close friends or family.

Only games at home have been amongst my family (cousin and brother). I've been blessed with having very good FLGSs close by where I live. I do about 95% of my table top gaming there. (and I am currently finding out, Game Kastle in San Jose is a great place).

I am one of those lucky souls fortunate enough to have space to have my own dedicated gaming room in my house (at least until more children arrive!) so I game exclusively at home and haven't gamed or even been into a GW or FLGS for some years now.

That being said, I am definitely in the minority in this area; I think most players play either at GW or local clubs. There are a couple of long running and well established clubs that draw in members.

I (and my fellow Dorkz) mostly play at my friends place, he's got a large kitchen/dinning area that we take over to play once maybe twice a week! Enough Room for two full tables!
This is good, seeing that the nearest (2) FLGS are an hour away in Barrie, ON; and the closest GW is a further hour away in Toronto, ON!
Now we do get to these FLGS, but our various work schedules prevent any regular attendance... especially for tourney's!
So we make do and we have a blast every time!

I started out playing at home I played my first game at Get your game on in Ann Arbor Michigan with my friends Tau against blood angels. After that I wanted to build terrain then me and my firend played on my hockey table in the basement.

Local GW has 3-4 tables, always crowded so always have to book early. Dont have anything set up and home and unfortunantely none of my mates are interested in starting GW :(

Being in the military, and overseas, the language differences has driven me to play either in my own home or at my buddies' place.

I can handle a 4'X4' game, and my buddy can do 6x4 games. It helps some that most of use who play 40k, also play D&D (my wife got me into that one), so whenever we get 40k in during the afternoon, once the kids are in bed, the women folk join us and get some D&D in as well.

Here in Shanghai space is a huge issue. I have only played a single GW game in someone's apartment.

Originally only had one store to play at with only 2 6"x4" tables. Big bonus was that it was close to home, but it becomes so packed on the weekends unless you get there before the store opens gaming just isn't going to happen. Now a new place has just opened with space for 7 6"x4" tables. And it's even closer than the other store. Now wargaming isn't as popular here as it might be in some other countries and although I would like that to change I would very much like for this particular store to stay off the radar.

I've had 4 periods of gaming in my life time.

The first was a small store in Japan that was ran out of house. A US Service Member ran the store, with two tables for other players on the base. We had at any given time 10-20 players.

After I moved from there, I went to Traverse City, MI. Hobby Town USA tried a run up there, and did some GW stuff. I played a couple small games there, they had 1 table. The store bellied up after about 6 months.

Fast forward a few years, back in Japan (same base) but there is no local store like before. I met a group of guys who played in their dormitory. We started out with just a pool table, but chipped in some money and bought a couple of new tables, so the group we had (about 8 players) had 3 tables. After a couple guys lost interest/moved a core group of us, about 5, started playing at my house. I had a table of my own, and we put another one of our gaming tables in my house.

After moving from Japan to St. Louis I found my first real FLGS. Largest GW selection in the metro area, and has 5 tables always set up with room to set up as many as 5 more. I play there most of the time, but the Warhammer Fantasy group I play with sometimes plays at their houses. One of the guys has a basement with three tables in it.


Personally, I'm more a fan of the "at home" type of gaming. That meant I had people that I knew and trusted, and was friends with in my circle. At the FLGS, it's sometimes frequent that the only means of playing is with someone I'd rather not. I do like having the FLGS though, so I don't have to worry about mail ordering things that I want.

Iron Duke wrote:

I dont like it to carry my army in our FLGS because of the tiny little sticky hands of the kids

Ive been in places where thats all too common. The last LGS I played at (about 10 years ago) had a big problem with it. Luckily at the time I only played Battletech and they were GW players. Other than that all my gaming both mini and rpg has been at someones house.

Just recently I found a LGS near me. Older crowd when I was in there to check it out. Had 3 (maybe 4?) tables, but very little retail stock. More like someone renting a storefront to play, oh and they also have a couple small box sets, and can order stuff if you want. I think they actually had a larger food and drink selection than games products. I was hoping to have a LGS to throw some business to, but paying full retail, slaes tax, AND waiting a week or more for my stuff will keep that at a minimum. Good place to score paints though...maybe the occasional issue of WD.

Might look into a game now and then, but since I have a decent table (5x3) and a good pile of terrain most of my games (of all brands) will be played at home with my wife and older son.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

djones520 wrote:
Personally, I'm more a fan of the "at home" type of gaming. That meant I had people that I knew and trusted, and was friends with in my circle. At the FLGS, it's sometimes frequent that the only means of playing is with someone I'd rather not. I do like having the FLGS though, so I don't have to worry about mail ordering things that I want.

I agree completely. Also less likely to have bad sportsmanship and/or power gamers.

We have a FLGS that closes at 7pm nearby with a few tables. Another one an hour away, a few more tables. Neither have dedicated times for the game. Beyond that we have 1-2 peoples houses with 6x4 table setups for playing.

Having a place dedicated would be very nice, well that and dedicated times at our FLGS.

I built an 8' x 4' table suspended from the joists in my garage, but am still building terrain, so have only played a couple of games on it.

Most of my games have been at GW stores, but there's a new independent store much nearer that also benefits from a more mature crowd, so I plan to spend more time there in future.

No space in my place or in the places of the people I play Warmachine with.

I play (and press gang) at the store.

Some day, I hope to have my own space.

I tend to stay away from GW and the clubs in my area. I prefer to know my opponents.. lets be honest this is precious leisure time! Though I do like tournaments in terms of army variety.

I was lucky to find a group of like-minded players in my area. These are the guys I'm happy to have games with at home.

Its my experience that here in the UK there is minimal FLGS gaming as most independent stores can't afford the space to provide tables. Ironically, while retail space is more expensive than in the US, there is a plentiful supply of space for independent clubs to hire: scout halls, church halls, rooms in pubs, redundant warehouses, school buildings, libraries, community centres, council offices, etc. Pretty much every town and village will have somewhere that is available for a low hourly rate to gamers if they choose to get organised. This means there are many, many small private clubs around the place.

I'm fortunate in having a sympathetic wife and a large dining room big enough for two 6x4 tables and to store terrain and models: plenty of space to invite friends over for gaming nights. If that wasn't available then I have the choice of around 5 or 6 clubs within a half hour's drive to go to. Or I could go to the GW battle bunker in Newcastle.

As for the amount of gaming at home, I suspect at least in the UK, this is pretty much the most common option. Not for adults particularly, but for kids, who form the largest share of GW's customer base. Of course, many schools in the UK have wargaming clubs as well. There's even a UK schools league championship. I'm not sure if US schools do that.

The US and UK experiences are very different for adult, "organised" gaming, undeniably regarding clubs vs. stores (just look at who organises the publicised local tournaments - in the US it is nearly always stores, in the UK and Oz as far as I can see it is pretty much exclusively clubs (although we are seeing the emergence of one or two super-stores with large areas of event space, such as Maelstrom Games in Mansfield). However, given most of GW's sales seem to be to kids (i.e. under-18's) rather than adults with their own access to transport and such, I suspect that the home-gamer element is pretty much the same - in that the large amount of in-family or mates-only gaming going on in folks homes is the largest single source of gaming on both sides of the pond. The fact that these gamers are largely juveniles who probably don't post on dakka or elsewhere, and don't interact with "us" very often in RL doesn't mean they don't exist in large quantities.

I'd have to say that the gaming in my area is largely home based.
There is only a single GW store, and its kinda small, although they do have four or five nice tables. Its packed with kids on the weekends and chances of actually getting a table (or playing against a semi-civilized person) are slim.
There used to be a FLGS that had a seperate room set up for gaming of all kinds, but they started going under and were bought out. They now cater almost exclusively to cards - magic, pokemon, yu-gi-oh, etc etc.
Between those two reasons, my group has been driven into spare rooms and garages. Thankfully no basements, well, at least not yet.

Again in the UK - Dorset, there are 2 local GW's one gameing on a Tuesday and has 1 tables and is alwys busy, I do most of my gaming there. The other is smaller 3/4 tables gaming wednesday, closer to work go there from time to time. There's also at least two weekly clubs (monday and thursday) both have good attendances from what I know (only been to one) I'm also aware of a club that plays alternate weekends, but mine are too busy - oh and I normally play a game with friends at mine or anothers once a week

I currently only game with 1 other person on a table we built. The table sits in my basement. There is a small game store in the area, but it isnt too active, and the closest other place that has regular gaming nights is about an hours drive from my house. Seems like around here there are quite a few people who are into wargaming, but there isnt any place or person who is willing to get everyone together to get things organized.

O well...heres hoping someone steps up, cus with my work commitments, and a kid on the way, it aint gunna be me...

I agree....unless you have some friends you can convince to get into the game with you...its a rarity. It sure would be nice to play games at home, I would love the opportunity to build my own terrain and board. I think more people just go to a local store especially in my area. Its like pulling teeth here trying to find anyone willing to hang out and play. I have no idea why someone wouldnt prefer the comfort of their own home or a good buddies pad.