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Yup, absolutely no gaming of any kind. There were display boards, but you could only look at them, talk about dangling a carrot in front of you...

Also no conversion contest, make and take (its been scenery and things like that before). The only activity you could really do was sit and use the "How to Paint" iPad guide and paint a space marine using the official schemes, so pretty much what you can do in any GW store as a beginner.

Kilkrazy wrote:Salute only costs £10 and it's one of the more expensive enthusiast run shows on the calendar.

Salute should definitely be the choice for anyone who is a fan of wargaming, any discussion of GW Games Day aside it is a bloody great show.

Anyone reading this who was disappointed with GD this year, don't give up on gaming conventions, start planning for Salute next April!

TheAuldGrump wrote:
When I heard it a third time.... What the heck GW?!

As I said before, I don't think they have a choice. It would be interesting to see what staffing levels are like compared to 2-3 years ago, or whenever it was they reduced to 1-man shops. Now I'm going back many years to when shop staff used to help with the displays and big demos, but I can't imagine that would have changed.

Might also be an indication of an attempt to reduce costs.

All this talk of low staffing, I saw dozens of staff just standing around chatting throughout the day. They surely could have run some games throughout the day. Don't think it would have put them out too much.

I think he means about the prep-work involved. Traditionally, the GW store employees got together in the weeks leading up oto the event to paint up all the armies and build the boards that would be used for these things. If the majority of stores (and I don't know if that's true) have moved to a one man model then there's no ready pool of people in place to carry all that out.

I think if you want some idea of the effort involved, one of the Dakka user on here, Mikhaila, who owns a games store, has prepped a number of displays and participation games for US Games Days and in some of his threads he has gone into detail the effort involved in getting it done. There is no way a single man store can hope to run the store and paint up/assemble/scratch build the stuff necessary.

 redbristles wrote:
Also no conversion contest, make and take (its been scenery and things like that before). The only activity you could really do was sit and use the "How to Paint" iPad guide and paint a space marine using the official schemes, so pretty much what you can do in any GW store as a beginner.

Wow. I guess GW's plan is to make games day such a boring non-event that nobody cares when they cancel it next year?

Azza007 wrote:All this talk of low staffing, I saw dozens of staff just standing around chatting throughout the day. They surely could have run some games throughout the day. Don't think it would have put them out too much.

Riquende wrote:I think he means about the prep-work involved. Traditionally, the GW store employees got together in the weeks leading up oto the event to paint up all the armies and build the boards that would be used for these things. If the majority of stores (and I don't know if that's true) have moved to a one man model then there's no ready pool of people in place to carry all that out.

filbert wrote:I think if you want some idea of the effort involved, one of the Dakka user on here, Mikhaila, who owns a games store, has prepped a number of displays and participation games for US Games Days and in some of his threads he has gone into detail the effort involved in getting it done. There is no way a single man store can hope to run the store and paint up/assemble/scratch build the stuff necessary.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. If the one guy working in the store is painting his ass off just to get the month's new releases in the display cabinet, he sure as hell isn't going to have time painting hundreds of rank and file miniatures for a GD display.

Salute looks decent.

 Pacific wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Salute only costs £10 and it's one of the more expensive enthusiast run shows on the calendar.

Salute should definitely be the choice for anyone who is a fan of wargaming, any discussion of GW Games Day aside it is a bloody great show.

Anyone reading this who was disappointed with GD this year, don't give up on gaming conventions, start planning for Salute next April!

...
...

You might be surprised how large and well attended many of the shows are outside London too.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

You might be surprised how large and well attended many of the shows are outside London too.

That's a good point. There are numerous shows round the country most weekends from about April to November. Some in quite interesting locations, like military museums.

Well it was my ....5th or 6th GD.

I went to the last one at the NIA before it moved to the NEC, the first NEC event and the last 2 at the NEC\LG arena and the NIA this year...got all that..good

For the last fe events bar the first one at the NIA I have got in early with my local store manager as I have Cronh's disease and I can often need the toilet suddenly and being locked outside is bad times!

So usually I have been able to wander about, see the stands being set up, talk to the various folks (Jes Goodwin always good for a chuckle ) and see the display boards etc and get good pictures of them with no crowds.

I also was able to buy FW stuff and chat to the stand guys before the gen public got in.

Last year when the event changed to the LG arena I thought it was great, even though I still got in early, the area where everyone queud had toilets so that was good. It was the first time I had entered golden demon and found the cabinets well lit and spaced out and through the entire day was able to view the entries and get good photographs.

This year I knew going back to the NIA that the Golden demon was going to be downstairs in the 'dungeon' and it was, with poor lighting and what they didn't have last time the armies on parade, which took up a huge amount of space!

I also got really annoyed that when I handed over my squad entry (Eagle Warrior command with stained glass\ruins behind, wave if you saw ) the banner snapped off the pole, this was expected and was an easy fix, however I was told there was no repair table so I had to fix the thing on the floor while people were barging about near me, and I was in first. They used to have a table where you could set up your entry and place models etc, none of that, so while I was gluing the banner to the pole my thumb got a tiny spot of glue on it and lifted a 1mm square patch from the back of the banner, I instantly knew I was not winning anything that day.

So that put a bit of a downer on 2 months work.

Anyway I went upstairs, got to the FW stand sharp and the very well organised sales staff sorted me out with the various things I wanted and the BL stand had some surprising releases. I went to the FW seminar and had a good chat with Alan Bligh while he was not being bothered. He explained some cool ideas for upcoming HH books and the new models (Lorgar (which was there to see) and Horus WIP images )

The lack of participation games wasn't much of a surprise, due to GW's one man staff policy they don't have the staff to run them or create boards and displayts, which is a great shame.

FW has definitely become the main draw for games day, it had 2 large display and discussion areas and drew a large crowd all day. The limited numbers I think is from the fact that they sold less tickets, both as a cap, and that less people attended, but tbh I preferred the lack of feeling like I was in a meat cart at times.

Everyone was extremely friendly and I enjoyed myself however I preferred it last year at the NEC I feel they had just found the sweetspot for size, events and volume of traffic. The issue I believe was that the NEC basically doubled the asking price for the venue and GW just wasn't going to swallow it, or tickets would have been £50!

Overall it was what I expected and I got out of it what I put in, GD has always been about 2 hours of running about buying, seeing, chatting then about 4 hours of thinking what else to do before bus home.

However I feel if they just turned it into a 'whats coming up event' with info about future GW releases, the FW seminars actually tell you what's 3-6 months in advance, as oppose to the silence we get. The area dedicated to mail order\direct sales could have been done away with and some displays or such would have been good.

Ah well, I will go again as I enter Golden Demon but its a long way and a long day to find out at 1pm you haven't even got finalist....hmm

Euro Militaire is supposed to be good, but is even urther south....but then, everything is far south from Aberdeen.

There are several good shows in Scotland and northern England. Here is a useful list by Tring Wargames Society.

https://sites.google.com/site/tringwargames/wargames-shows

Naturally due to demographics there is more in the south and centre of Britain.

Targe in Kirrimuir (November 9th) is only about 90 minutes from Aberdeen. It's quite a small show but in reality has more hobby stuff than Games Day.

The big one up here is Claymore in Edinburgh in August though.

None of the shows up here seem to have painting/gaming competitions, though many of the bigger English shows do.

The only other thing your missing is ForgeWorld, who I believe only do Salute.

actually sounds alright, i might attend next year if i can cajole some friends to come with me.

xruslanx wrote:
actually sounds alright, i might attend next year if i can cajole some friends to come with me.

Games Day does? Can I ask where the appeal is?

Herzlos wrote:

xruslanx wrote:
actually sounds alright, i might attend next year if i can cajole some friends to come with me.

Games Day does? Can I ask where the appeal is?

mainly golden deamon and meeting some of the authors.

Ah fair enough. For Golden Demon I think it's your only option really, as there isn't really a Crystal Brush equivalent over here.

For meeting the authors; you'll get on much better going to the Black Library Open Day, or the Enter The Citadel events at Warhammer World. Fraction of the price, more time with authors, less queueing, better food.

I want go.Why?SO I can yell at the white dwarf team.The hobbit sbg exists.They need a reminder.

This year was my second Games Day,the first being 2010.To be honest both me and my mate were shocked at how crap it was.Thirty five quid thrown away imo.The golden demon and armies on parade was down in the bowels of the building and while a lot of minis got some good light a hell of a lot more didn't.That is not to say there werent any great minies to see as there were loads of fantastic paintjobs but not enough well lit cabinets in my humble opinion.When we came through the doors we were given a bag with a program,a pen and a Forge World catalogue.It was like hey here you are go spend.Now i am only judging by my previous Games day experience where we had a lifesize space marine and ork stomping around the place as well as a bigger more gamer friendly feel.I did hit Forge world and was pleased they had some good stuff on display even the odd unfinished piece.That was pretty much it to be honest,the computor games side was stuffed in an out of the way upstairs bit and to be honest after three hours we left feeling let down.I have probably sounded like a moany old fart from this but sadly that was our 2013 experience and i cant see us going again,which is a shame as we were looking forward to it.