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Last night was the last Monday night at the Maryland Battle Bunker, a sad thing to see indeed. The evening focused on trying to introduce the local community to alternative stores in the area so that they can keep in touch and keep their hobby going. This included local independent stores as well as GW stores. For those who missed the event, here are some of the nearby stores that represent an alternative hobby place to the Battle Bunker after it closes:

- Race-Wear in the Marley Station Mall. Phone: 410-590-2153. This store has just recently started carrying GW products and it sounds promising. The owner is friendly and he is definitely looking for all the hobbyists and enthusiasts he can get to help build a gaming community at his store, so please check this out.
- Games And Stuff. Phone: 410-863-7418. This friendly, reliable store has been around for a while and carries a huge range of gaming merchandise, GW and otherwise.
- GW Pasadena, MD.
- GW Columbia, MD.
- GW White Marsh, MD.
- GW Arundel Mills Mall, Hanover, MD.
- GW Jennifer Square, Annapolis, MD.
- GW Owings Mills, MD.

To all the wonderful people I've met and hobbied with at the Battle Bunker for the past few years, some of whom have become real friends, hopefully this isn't the end of our hobby community even if it is the end of what once was a really great hobby place, so I won't say goodbye, but rather just "thanks" and "see you around!"

There's also Dream Wizards over in Rockville.

BrassScorpion wrote:- GW Pasadena, MD.
- GW Columbia, MD.
- GW White Marsh, MD.
- GW Arundel Mills Mall, Hanover, MD.
- GW Jennifer Square, Annapolis, MD.
- GW Owings Mills, MD.

all those stores in such a small state? and gw decides to close most of the ones in the south leaving none within 400 miles of a small city like atlanta? interesting...

I'm convinced that GW is more concerned about cheap rent than actual revenue a store generates or could generate.

I think it was more about getting out of Glen Burnie than anything else. Though why they refuse to come into southern Montgomery County (3rd(?) wealthiest county in the USA) in the area between Connecticut Ave and Potomac is beyond me. Not that my living in the area biased me to wanting a good sized store here or anything like that.

Dream Wizards is an okay place to play if you don't mind piss poor stocking and a complete lack of terrain other than small, random hills and odd sized, beat to hell "buildings". Fortunately the other guys who play there make up for a lot of that deficiency.

all those stores in such a small state?

Maryland is very population dense and GW started its US business here, so there's a huge customer base densely packed into and around two major cities. States with much lower people per square mile generally don't generate the kind of sales in a niche business like GW's to sustain a store and southern states in general have much lower population densities.

There's also Dream Wizards over in Rockville.

It's across town from all the other stores mentioned here, but if you live west of the communities mentioned above Dream Wizards is certainly a good option. They carry a huge range of gaming merchandise. When I lived about 20 minutes closer to that side of town years ago I did most of my game and miniature purchasing at Dream Wizards. I even did some model painting for the store many years ago. There was a time when Dream Wizards was the only decent fantasy game store in the state. I remember driving an hour to get there ages ago just to buy supplements for Traveller because it was the only store for miles around that carried them. I have heard from friends and I see it verified by one comment above that the store has slipped somewhat of late, but you might want to check it out for yourself. Perhaps some new customers might drive the store to freshen up and make improvements.

As far as GW not going into Montgomery County, give them some credit for not trying to squash well established independent stores. Dream Wizards has been a major seller of GW products for nearly 20 years and GW has been very sensitive not to move in down the street from them and ruin their business.

There is also the Westminster, Maryland store. Se my "Bizarre Bazaar post.

Nice post, BrassScorpion. I missed the Monday night, wish I'd been there to kind of see the "send off". I feel bad mostly for the staff, who were all cut

We have a pretty active fantasy community picking up steam at the Columbia store, with 18 of us doing an escalation league starting in October . We'll carry on... and hopefully the Bunker will be back in the area next year.

WTF... I just learned that the Battle Bunker exists, and now it's shutting down this weekend? And I won't even be in town to make a last-minute pilgrimage!

warboss wrote:all those stores in such a small state? and gw decides to close most of the ones in the south leaving none within 400 miles of a small city like atlanta? interesting...

It's a small state, but it's a very "dense" state in many ways. I can drive an hour and go from cow-country to oceanside, passing near a major city or two. (OK, slight exaggeration... It might take two hours, or five if I hit traffic. :( )

As has been said in other threads about the Baltimore (actually Glen Burnie) Bunker that closed, there's a big difference between 'Baltimore' and 'DC' locals... And DC is such a tiny big city by standards (It's something like an 8th of size of NYC) but the 'DC metro' chunk of Maryland and Virginia around it is a zone that is subtly different from the rest of the state.

But, yeah. that's more stores than I expected.

So, GW invited non-GW stores into the Battle Bunker to let people know they're there?

Especially considerig the # of GW stores in the are, I'm quite impressed by that.

Eric

I know Dream Wizards has mini gaming on Thursdays, but I never seem to be able to game on weeknights so I really haven't played at DW in a long while. Back when Warhammer owned the weekends, I was able to play but now it is all card games on weekends it seems. It sounds like the same hills and buildings I was playing on 12 years ago are still in use there!!!

RiTides wrote:We have a pretty active fantasy community picking up steam at the Columbia store, with 18 of us doing an escalation league starting in October . We'll carry on... and hopefully the Bunker will be back in the area next year.

I have never been to the Columbia store, Hell, I didn't even know there was one. And I drive right by rt29/rt32 intersection on my way to the battle bunker every time I played there.

How is it there? I have thought about picking up 8th edition with my Orcs and Gobbos again and it is good to hear of a fantasy 'group' near by because my plan was to just go to the local GW and have a redshirt teach me

I heard a bulk of the Bunker terrain tables got relocated to another Glen Burnie store, but I am not familiar enough with the groups up there to know 'where'. I always expect I will attend a random tourney and go "wow, I remember these tables!"

MagickalMemories wrote:So, GW invited non-GW stores into the Battle Bunker to let people know they're there?

Especially considerig the # of GW stores in the are, I'm quite impressed by that.

Eric

Yep, every once in a while, they get it right. When the Potomac Mills store closed, they had a poster up of ohter non-GW stores in the area.

nkelsch wrote:I heard a bulk of the Bunker terrain tables got relocated to another Glen Burnie store, but I am not familiar enough with the groups up there to know 'where'. I always expect I will attend a random tourney and go "wow, I remember these tables!"

We're getting a lot of that type of comment now. GW gave us a few of the old tables they were going to recycle, and we put them down in the bunker at the mall. The Gargant we did for Games Day is down there, along with the big Kill Kruzer. The poor Red Oktober got orphaned with the closing of the bunker, and we had space at home, and a big truck, so Kapt. Rotsaruck lost the battle, but stole a Kruzer.)

Quite a few people walk in, and stop to stare, seeing the Kruzer, or the old GW tables. Recognizing them from somewhere else, and wondering how they got here.)

We're slowly fixing it all up and hammering out the dents from the move. If you play BFG at Dakkacon, bewar of the orks!)

Looking forward to seeing it in person next weekend, mikhaila and I might have some BFG for DakkaCon, I'm going to bring at least one different / specialist game force, but am choosing between that, blood bowl, and some naval game Jin seems to have discovered...

nkelsch wrote:I have never been to the Columbia store, Hell, I didn't even know there was one. And I drive right by rt29/rt32 intersection on my way to the battle bunker every time I played there.

How is it there? I have thought about picking up 8th edition with my Orcs and Gobbos again and it is good to hear of a fantasy 'group' near by because my plan was to just go to the local GW and have a redshirt teach me

It's good! Especially now that the kids have gone back to school . Tuesday is "fantasy night", and you can usually get a pick-up game then if there is an open table. They're trying to get a 4th table in, right now there's only 3. Hopefully it'll happen!

I'd certainly be up for a game anytime if you decide to start O&G and a lot of the guys there are friendly and wouldn't mind someone just learning the rules... as a lot of them are as well

Shoot me a PM if/when you get some gobbos and we can game! I've been really pleased by the Columbia store, as the staff are cool / not pushy as well. The only problem is the space, as the real estate is larger than Arundel, but it has one less table due to the original layout. Hopefully we can get one more in there soon, though!

Something they've ben putting on their facebook page

The Baltimore Battle Bunker Enough Plastic Sprues to cover a 4'X18' table 1foot deep....Enough metal bits to cover a 4'X4' table 2 inches deep, a massive table of Studio made Scenery for sale and yet another covered with classic books and codices...Its gonna be an interesting Saturday for sure.

There's also a GW store in Olney if you're interested in Monkey County gaming.

For those of you who attend Thursday night open gaming at Dream Wizards, how is it? I know the terrain is pretty terrible apparently, but how is the experience in terms of waiting for a table to open up or attendance? I've been doing most of my gaming at the Game Parlor in Chantilly on the weekends, but i'm getting sick of driving almost an hour to get there.

So in short, for us veteran gamers in the Baltimore area, there's Games and Stuff.....and that's it.

And rumors of that store closing keep popping up....

Good old dream wizards.. I went to that store all through my teenage years. Amusing to know they havent upgraded their terrain in like 15 years tho

Das_Ubermike wrote:There's also a GW store in Olney if you're interested in Monkey County gaming.

For those of you who attend Thursday night open gaming at Dream Wizards, how is it? I know the terrain is pretty terrible apparently, but how is the experience in terms of waiting for a table to open up or attendance? I've been doing most of my gaming at the Game Parlor in Chantilly on the weekends, but i'm getting sick of driving almost an hour to get there.

The terrain at 'Ard Boyz was just fine, imho, and most of it seemed decent just looking around, too? I don't regularly game there so maybe they run out fast, but I didn't notice a shortage of decent terrain.

The Columbia GW is heavy on 40k terrain, rather than fantasy, so I actually thought the selection was pretty good!!

I can't make it out there on weeknights, but I know of two guys who drive all the way from Towson for the Thursday gaming...! The place has a lot of charm, imho, which makes up for lack of stock. A really cool place to play, if you can come at the right time when warhammer players are there, rather than all the card guys! Also, a large warmachine group, I've seen people playing it every time I've gone there, on various days/times.

I'm kind of sad about that sale post, KK . Feels like it'll be a feeding frenzy. I once helped out with a private school closing down and selling everything, and it was like that :-/. I wish they'd hang onto the stuff, put it into storage, and pull it back out when they find a new location! And keep in touch with the staff and give them first dibs at jobs, rather than fully cutting ties... Ah, well. Good memories, BB, we'll miss you while you're gone!

Kirasu wrote:Good old dream wizards.. I went to that store all through my teenage years. Amusing to know they havent upgraded their terrain in like 15 years tho

Hey, I remember the old location, although not well. That place was a pit, and miserable to find. The new location, at last, is brightly lit and has parking.

The original Dream Wizards location was a bit of a pit, but I loved the store anyway and I'm still friends decades later with a couple of the people who worked there all those years ago. Also, the two restaurants above the store, India Grill and Ambrosia, were cheap and awesome! We used to go out of our way to eat in those restaurants as much as we went out of our way to go to Dream Wizards back then. For a while when we went out to Rockville more often we were going to the new locations of those restaurants they are so good even though it was a longer drive and they were no longer next to each other.

The new Dream Wizards location is brightly lit and when it was new it was clean and shiny. I've heard it badly needs a remodel now though.

As for the Battle Bunker reopening in a new location next year, while I have been reassured that this will happen I'm not optimistic about it. It is unfortunately too easy for them at this point to just let the whole thing go entirely, especially now that they've shifted so much focus and resources away from Maryland. I hope I'm wrong. It certainly is a shame to let the whole thing die. Just a couple years ago the Maryland Battle Bunker was the second highest grossing store in the GW retail chain worldwide. It's hard to believe they'd rather close it permanently than fix the problems that have caused it to slide over the past two years, but a lot has changed this past year since Tom Kirby took over GW US from Ernie Baker and as The Doors once said, "the future's uncertain and the end is always near".

It's a bit of a drive for casual gaming on a weeknight, but Scooter, me, and the guys in the local club all going to be working together as much as we can to run stuff up here on a monthly basis, and run down and support the tournaments IC is running in MD. It takes me about 90 minutes to get to the bunke from where we are at on the lower edge of PA.

I'm going to try to make it out for mikhaila's / the IC's events, too! Gotta keep the community together as there's a great, large base of gamers in this area that will be looking to play, even though the Bunker's gone for now.

Unfortunately that will be limited to weekends for me, though, since it's a bit too far to make it on a weeknight.

This post by GW about their Battle Bunkers just appeared on their website. Interesting timing putting this up just as they close what was until recently a major center of their marketing and hobby community efforts. Of course, there are only four stores on the list posted with this announcement:

Battle Bunkers are like regular Hobby Centers but much bigger. Battle Bunkers include dozens of gaming tables, large areas for painting and modeling and an expanded selection of products.

Each Battle Bunker features dozens of gaming tables complete with scenery, all at your disposal for open gaming. All Bunkers also have large painting and modeling bars where you can sit and work on your army.

The Battle Bunkers have a busy schedule of tournaments, campaigns, leagues and contests designed to help you get the most out of your hobby. These activities range in scale from small gatherings to huge regional events. Battle Bunkers also tend to be hang-outs for local gaming clubs. Whether you are looking to expand your hobby skills, meet new opponents or just get in a pick-up game, Games Workshop Battle Bunkers are an excellent spot for you and your friends.

Well, the Battle Bunker in Maryland has had its last day. Saturday, Sept. 18 was the final day of operation. Turnout was pretty good and it was an excellent opportunity to connect or reconnect with people before the place went dark.

It was also a good opportunity to get an entire army for $20 thanks to the sprue grab bag deals they were running.

Thanks to the manager and staff for one last really fun day at a place that for a few years was for me and my family the most fun place to go, anywhere, anytime, period. It is already missed and Monday nights will never be the same without it.