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Yesterday I decided to head over to my local games workshop to grab a couple new figures to paint up, I haven't really been to a games workshop in a couple years but I'm still attached to the quality of their miniatures and really enjoy painting them (even thinking about starting a new army to play) I was rather disappointed with what they had in stock and even the way the store was set up very differently from when I was last there. The first problem I had was that there was no more tables to play the game on any more and whatever surface was used for displaying product, this kind of bothered me because I wanted to start up a 40k and a soon to be 9th edition fantasy army and I'm not sure where I can now find a pick up game since my main FLGS is 100% warmahordes/xwing. Another issue I had when walking around was the lack of what they had in stock, it seemed they had everything for space marines and such, they even had an entire dedicated wall of products but when looking at the others it seemed they were kind of squished all together on another wall in the store with the fantasy and hobbit miniatures. Anyway I specifically went into the games workshop because I was certain they had almost everything (my local FLGS has a very limited supply of GW products) I was looking for a broadside battlesuit, terrorgheist, ravener brood, killa kans, and helblaster volley gun. to my surprise they only had the terrorgheist in stock and I walked out with just the terrorgheist and a unit of fire warriors. also the GW employee just kept telling me if I wanted anything they didn't have I can order it and have it delivered which is a nice feature but I still enjoy getting home and starting a new project immediately

I do understand that space marines are games workshops biggest seller but its a little ridiculous to push everything else to the side, space marines are very boring to paint and I can only imagine how boring it would be if every game was against another space marine army.

I think this was just local policy.

I were in GW store in late february last time in Altrinchem Manchester, and Tau and Eldar boxes had dedicated shelves to them, an there were tables for gaming as well.

my local GW store has tables and carries, for the most part, at LEAST "one of everything" save some finecast figures

I know where youre coming from, OP.

My own FLGS moved from a larger store to a smaller one since 2 years or so, where they have a lot less tables and less shelf space.

Biggest change for me (I used to visit GW often as a teen since I was too stupid to realize you can save lots of money by discount retailers online) was that most of their blister packs were gone.

This obviously is a result of them transitioning from metal to finecast, but their policy of finecast being gw-direct only apparently also means that it isnt available even in their own stores (I was looking for phoenix lords).

I am guessing the hobby has died down over the past 10 years instead of flared up and fewer and fewer people come to spend an afternoon at their local GW so sales have dropped and as a result GW has cut costs.

My GW has 3 tables, only 1 is used for display. If the 2 gaming tables are in use and 2 more people come in to play, the display table is quickly cleared off and terrain setup for a game. They constantly run leagues, tournaments, game nights, etc. The stock is pretty good, the only stuff I've had to special order is finecast characters (tigurius, terminator rune priest, etc). My biggest issue with the store is they've been without a manager for over 7 weeks so the part time guy has been running the store. He's an electrical engineer at a nuclear plant so Wed-Fri the store is only open 5-8 until we get a permanent manager. Myself and 3 other people from our regular group have all applied, made it to the second interview and then we were all told we didn't get the job. I have 4 years of retail management experience and over 15 years of GW hobby experience. One of the other applicants is currently the manager of a sporting goods store 20x the size of a GW with 40-50 staff and has 10 years experience with 40k and WFB. I guess neither of us is qualified to run a 1 man store selling space marines. /s


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Btw we all applied last time the position was open and the same thing happened. They went out and hired a guy that was working at Carmax selling used cars who had zero experience with the hobby. He didn't last 90 days before he was fired for violating countless GW policies (that all of us have known about for a couple years, so wouldn't have been an issue at all). He was selling new releases Wednesday when they came in, charging entry fees for events, posted a pic of a minor without the parent in the pic on facebook, etc.

The local store here is small, but there are still three tables set up. One is for product display and also has the Dark Vengeance stuff on it for demo games, one is usually bare for whatever people need it for, and the one at the back is for pick-up games. There's also a painting station at the front and another at the side opposite the cash.

The selection has been pretty consistently good, definitely more towards the newer kits and less of the finecast stuff, but there are still finecast "blisters" packs and finecast boxes (I bought a finecast Ghazghkull the other week, actually). Not to mention they've got a lot of the bundle boxes in stock so you can save quite a bit of money by buying large numbers of units at once.

Where was the store you went to? I'm mostly familiar with the ones in Ottawa and Burlington, and I've never had an issue with their selection or layout.