Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello Dakka Dakka! Good morning!

I was wondering, does your gaming club or local game store have loaner armies for 40K and Fantasy Battles? You know, for newcomers to borrow to learn the game at your club or the store, or for veterans to try out to see if they want to collect that new army they've been thinking of?

Do you think 'loaner' armies would help or hurt sales at your local store?

Thanks for your thoughts about this
---- Frankie

Yep..

Of my 3 local stores..

one does NOT.. but enough people show up on 40k nights with spare models, anyone wanting to try can generally beg/borrow one in bare plastic.

Another one has a semi-painted Eldar and a Ultra SM army in the case that the owner was selling (his own) but until they sell, he lets new players use them.. and he, and the 3rd store also have spare AOBR Ork and Marine armies to loan ..

Nope. I can't say I've ever heard of such a thing. If the store has 'loner armies' then what's your incentive to buy one of your own?

Yes, but they are fairly small so they probably help sales, you know...the first hit is free.

In my club new folks always have an loaner army to play with. most of us all have several armies if someone new wants to learn the game the guy that runs the club will always bring an extra army and teach the em how to use it. Though it's only loaned for the game, not to keep it's usually like...

new guy: Hey I'm new and I wanna learn how to play dwarves
old guy: Cool, I'll bring my dwarf army and teach you how to play it.

My FLGS's don't have any loaner armies to my knowledge.

However, the club that I game at occasionally is in a basement where the owner and some of the members have just about every army for 40k or WFB that one could want. May of the armies haven't been updated for an edition or two, but it's the ideal place to go if you want to sample an army.

we have a couple of armies available to new players to learn the rules and see what they like. They aren't "loaner" armies in the sense that anyone can loan them though, they are just for new people to see the game.

Yep. Only got Orks though. We just call em "Storks"

I didn't think any stores actually did this! My store does not, although if somebody wants to play and doesn't have their own minis I can bring a second army for them.

Mine did, but it was really just the owners (and his brothers) armies. He stopped letting people use them, which I think hurt sales. My 14 year old brother (ie, no job) was using his DE, and buying stuff when he could. I used the SM army there a few times befoer I bought mine.

When he let my brother use his army, I had spent about a grand there (in 8 months). When he got rid of that option, I built a table at home, found a guy online, and havent spent a dime there.

AOBR set used for intro games

that is what my GW shop used as a loaner army

My GW lets people borrow the occasional rare/expensive unit for games if the player has none available to him, for example they'd loan the player a Dragon Ogre Shaggoth or Abaddon the Despoiler with a few Obliterators (seen both of those happen). But they don't loan complete armies, we're expected to supply the majority of our force.

Really, I find this system works. You get to try out a new unit before committing, or if an event is more points than you own, then they bring you up to the points needed, thus making it funner (<--- is funner even a word?) for both sides.

Also, I think they do it to show off their display units, it's boring to have awesome models on display that never take part in battles.

In a word, no. Granted, they don't really demo products, at all. They'll occasionally have a rep from [Game Company X] come and demo their new thing for the day, but other than that it's just one guy at a time, always behind the counter. He'll ring up your purchases, he'll answer questions, but he has to keep an eye on the store, meaning you'd have to find a helpful player at the tables willing to show you the ropes and packing enough models to do so.

I think this would be cool, but haven't ever seen it myself.

I have over 20 fully painted armies at my shop, but I rarely, if ever, loan them out, and we never refer to them as loaner armies. I will occaisionally allow someone to borrow one, or sometimes just the odd model.

I used to loan them out more, but frankly, my generosity got abused all to hell. Dropped models, broken bitz, missing bitz, and rarely did anyone actually fix a model they broke. You might hear "Oh, and I dropped your hellcannon and it broke, thought you'd want to know". I've got units that started as a full 20, and are now at 17, techmarines with no servitors, tanks with no sponsons. Sometimes I think some of the people borrowing stuff had the idea that since it wasn't theres, it didn't matter. It also took a lot of time taking units in and out of the cases, finding movement trays, and then putting everything back so it looked like a display again, and not a jumble of models.

The more I loaned out models, the more people expected to come in and just rape the cases for whatever they wanted to play with. My armies became their armies. And frankly, if the store has two landraiders, why buy one? Guys even got into arguements as to who got to use what each weekend.

Sales did not go up. I absolutely know it hurt sales from some people, as they only bought the units for their army after they couldn't loan them out each week. Worst of all, I ceased to enjoy my armies. Why paint and model stuff to see it abused and broken?

So I quit loaning out the armies.

It may sound like a good idea. It will probably get added to the list of "What my perfect game store would have." but it's not really helpful for a store.

For a Club, it's awesome. I've got tables at home, and a group that comes over on weekends. After breaking down a wall and stealing another room for gaming, we put up a huge number of shelves circling the room and 36" high, with a wide counter on top. We're slowly filling them up with armies as we paint up our backlog of armies. Players can borrow an army for the night, and we get more games in until 3am. But all those people care about the armies, fix them up, and have a vested interest in not trashing them. Not so at the store where the models get passed around to anyone like a 2 dollar whore at a frat party.

My LGS has, space marines, blue tyranids, stuff like that.

The store I go to does, however he is getting more and more picky about who he loans them out to as peices go missing.

mikhaila wrote:
I used to loan them out more, but frankly, my generosity got abused all to hell. Dropped models, broken bitz, missing bitz, and rarely did anyone actually fix a model they broke. You might hear "Oh, and I dropped your hellcannon and it broke, thought you'd want to know". I've got units that started as a full 20, and are now at 17, techmarines with no servitors, tanks with no sponsons. Sometimes I think some of the people borrowing stuff had the idea that since it wasn't theres, it didn't matter. It also took a lot of time taking units in and out of the cases, finding movement trays, and then putting everything back so it looked like a display again, and not a jumble of models.

The more I loaned out models, the more people expected to come in and just rape the cases for whatever they wanted to play with. My armies became their armies. And frankly, if the store has two landraiders, why buy one? Guys even got into arguements as to who got to use what each weekend.

Sales did not go up. I absolutely know it hurt sales from some people, as they only bought the units for their army after they couldn't loan them out each week. Worst of all, I ceased to enjoy my armies. Why paint and model stuff to see it abused and broken?

So I quit loaning out the armies.

Preaching to the choir, at the hobby store I worked at Biggest problem with loaning things out after a while some people would just expect it, for us it wasn't about the sales but how people treated the miniatures, stuff broken, stuff missing, etc... Our gaming area was down stairs from the retail space and even with a cctv you'd never be able to control what people were doing totally, in the end it came down to lack of respect for the store. We ended up getting rid of the store stuff down in the basement, but if anyone wanted to leave or donate an army for people to use we had that going on which was cool as the store had a gaming club that was pretty friendly that was run by people not employed by the store (pretty cool group too, used to have a mailing list for upcoming events and a 8 - 10 page newsletter that came out monthly), but it was a leave at your own risk type deal. In the end When a new game or edition came out, the store would buy a copy have someone paint the mini's and we kept it upstairs on the demo table, then when the mini's were no longer needed they would get donated to the game club and then they would either keep them in the club lockers, give them away to people or sell them to raise money to buy tables or terrain.

Out of the three that I've used, one does regularly and one does a bit more rarely.

The third I've never seen it happen (aside from 'borrowing' from the starters).