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So, everyone loves their FLGS, and sings their praises. However, this is slightly different.

Tell us your game store horror stories. Essentially why a LGS is just plain bad. Try to keep it civil dakka!

I'll go first. Last place I went to play before finding my current FLGS was a really decrepit church hall. It was cold, damp and just stunk of piss due to dodgy plumbing.
To top it all, the people were just awful. Very condescending to new people and extremely anal about rules and generally sucking the fun out. Didn't help that they HATED GW with a passion so didn't even play their games.

Needless to say, 3 hours I'll never get back...

This particular store would, twice a year, have RPG weekends where people could sleep in the store, bring in food, etc.
These individuals would make food in crock pots which would then sit in the store for WEEKS after the event, slowly being taken over by mold.
I left some of the old GW cardboard terrain in the store (for the 40K league) and the Mage Knight kids ripped it apart.
When we had our league finals we used to go in and clean the place up so it would at least be semi-presentable.
Luckily, this store is no longer open.

Bridgetowne Hobbies. Basically, they ran the store like it was the 90's, except it was the teens. Stinky, cliquish, nerd oneupmanship, condescending, terrible event support, vaguely misogynistic.

Nothing very spectacular, but just backwards and irritating. Glad that place shut down.

There used to be a store in my home town that wasn't really that bad per se but still rather crappy. The sortiment they had was just... really bad, like they did not manage to restock their Space Marine stuff for 2 (!) months. And that wasn't even due to the store running bad, it was usually full of a couple people!

But what made it worse for me was their playing room: The table was really awesome, but they just did not feel like cleaning it at all. Once, I even brought out the trash since it was taken over by maggots and other stuff (no Nurgle player, so I am not to keen on that). And to top it all of: The owners/people who worked there did not care in the slightest. They were a couple, both about 40 years, he was most of the time playing Starcraft on the store PC while she usually was doing other stuff. Most of the time they ignored their customers.

What made it really aggravating was that this particular store opened right next to another store offering GW stuff which was REALLY nice but small as hell. It did not take long until that store went bankrupt and closed down (REAL shame).

I have three I won't shop at. One used to lie to the customers (often friends of mine), take their money and not get in their orders; one was owned by a rich brat who was condescending to anyone who didn't play Magic or Warhammer (I asked about trying to cultivate Kings of War and got blown off for "games that actually sell"), and a third where I asked for on OOP product, owner told me he'd see what he could do to get it for me, found it cheap and threw it on the shelf for close to 4x retail without even calling. Nothing HUGE...just jerk owners. But as someone who could easily drop a grand on a single order if I felt like it...that's money that would sooner go to any other store I wandered into or miniature market.

A bit of history - there was only one game store in my area, like within an hours drive in any direction on the Interstate. This shop WAS nice and friendly, and they supported their games and customers, and I never once felt that I was not welcome or in any way uncomfortable. Since then, various things have happened:

1 - This was about 7 years ago, when we just entered wargaming in my home. My brother and I special ordered several 40K kits (two Space Marine Vindicators a Cadian IG Battleforce) through them (rather than ordering them from GW, support your FLGS and all that). After a month, we never heard anything from them. We go back in looking for something else, and we see them on the shelves alongside all the other products. And then, upon returning home to begin working on the kits, I noticed the price stickers on them were about 10% higher than MSRP. We ended up paying about $20 USD more on those models than if we had ordered them through GW.

2 - Later, after this game store moved a couple years later, I try to special order another item through them (just a character blister pack). After making the order I was in later browsing the shelves, looking for something to add to my army, and there is the model I ordered on the shelf. I purchased it without saying anything at the register (because I am non-confrontational over trivial matters, they were getting my business anyways). Then, a couple weeks after this, they call me to inform me that my character blister had arrived. I went ahead and purchased it (a second one was on my list anyways) and still didn't say anything (again, non-confrontational). At least this time I didn't get over charged for it.

Sometime right after this, the second store opened up in this same town, and started taking some of the business from the first store I assume that this lead the first store to downsizing their new location from 3 rented business spaces in the shopping center to two, resulting in the loss of about 35% of the store's gaming space.

3 - Apply to taste for this one, as it is my speculation on 3rd or 4th person narration of something that happened about 3 to 4 years ago, but drama erupted in the game store. What I do know is that one of the local "big dogs" of tabletop gaming in the area was LIFETIME BANNED from this store. I don't know the details, but I heard it had something to do with the banned fellow becoming "too involved" in planning local events (tournaments, map campaigns, etc) and trying to host them at the store. At this point, this fellow took his business, and that of his friends and gaming club members and their events to the second store.

4 - Around this same time, GW was cracking down on retailers and making things difficult for everyone. As a result, the first store began to exhibit anti-GW tendencies, mostly in the form of not stocking anything beyond a couple copies of the newest kits, and no longer having any GW events or open play nights on their schdule, at all.

5 - At the height of 40K 6th Edition, I was ready to try a different wargame after 5 years of 40K. The first store continued to hold Warmahordes events, and even had a Press Ganger on the payroll as an employee. I later learned was a big no-no, but that fact got ignored because a former local Warmahordes player is now employed at Privateer Press, and this store seemed to get away with some other things by PP in that regard.

6 - As I am checking out at the first store, I am purchasing a couple of the newer plastic GW Wulfen kits to add to my Space Wolves. As I am checking out, the employee checking me out (and also the former Press Ganger mentioned above) criticizes my purchase as I am trying to make a sale at his store. I don't remember exactly what he said (this was a while back now, right after the Wulfen kit came out) but it was something like "You're buying that? Why? GW will never get any of my money again!"

Since then, I made one last visit to grab paints to use up what customer credit I had, and have not set foot inside since, not ot play, grab paints, nothing. The second store is much more friendly, the manager and employees are genuinely appreciative of my business, and they are always willing to help folks with any game system. But that first store? It's now just full of bitter old Warmahordes fanboys, anti-GW crusaders, and is the store in the area for Flames of War and Kings of War (again, anti-GW sentiments).

St. Louis has a plethora of game stores. Some good, some bad, some large and some small. I joined a friend's Blood Bowl league at one of the smaller ones.

Strangely, this store offered minimal game for sale (it was primarily a comic shop), and NO GW products. But since I was just using it for this league and bought what I wanted elsewhere this was no big deal.

The store was at street level, and the game room was in the basement. Unfinished, dark, but at least it had decent table space and plenty of chairs. Fortunately it wasn't musty either, and it stayed cool even through St. Louis summers which is no small consideration.

However.

Me, my wife, and two other players were getting our league games in against each other downstairs. Games finished, we went up to leave... and found the store had closed on us. Lights out, doors locked, no one home. Fortunately I remembered the name of the owner so I could look up their number in the rolodex and call them to let us out.

Needless to say they were not pleased that their employee had left without telling us...

The worst stores I've been in were rarely because of the size or cleanliness, it was the players.

One store the owner was great, they carried some really hard to find stuff and catered to a lot of fringe games (this was where I found the Renegade Legion boxed set), but the gaming crew there were exceptionally cliquish and treated everybody who wasn't in their group like they were dirt. I still bought stuff there but I started playing somewhere else and never looked back.

The was another store I visited because it was near my job, that carried a few older kits that are now harder to find where the owner/employee completely ignored anybody he didn't know. I probably could have walked out with an armful of merchandise and he wouldn't have stopped his phone call.

Not a great deal of non-GW store, because I'm in the U.K. where GW pretty much have it all sewn up tighter than a duck's arse.

We did used to have a LGS in the next town over, but you're talking easily over 20 years ago. It was pretty short lived, even though my now local GW hadn't opened at that point, if memory serves.

See, the problem was the owner just didn't seem to be that good at running a business. Any time I'd drop by to pick stuff up (which involved a 3 mile round trip, walking), he'd be hunched at the back table playing the same guys at Magic, ignoring the rest of his customers.

Mind you, having been a GW Till Monkey for three separate stints, I guess there may well be horror stories about myself out there. For the sake of the majority of my customers, I didn't suffer fools gladly. Don't mind and didn't mind people having a laugh and good natured trash talk. But when it becomes bullying, homophobic, sexist or what have you.....guess who's going home?

We had this place in Fresno that was infamous for it's disorganization. It was a Comic/RPG/Boardgame shop with an additional Magic Business ran by a guy that lived in the back. There weren't tables (as far as I could tell), just huge stacks of stuff that had randomly accumulated. I once moved aside some 2000 A.D. comics, shifted aside a 12inch stack of 60s porn magazines, and found a copy of the rare 2750 Technical Readout for Battletech. I still remember shifting stacks of things in order to reach the guy in the back.

It operated for years until they got inspected and the inspector found the guy living in the back. I guess once upon a time it had been a neat orderly place, but the guy's partner left to found his own store and he didn't cleanup up after that for decades.

Two jump to mind... When I was growing up, I lived in the middle of no where.. That means most of the time to go to a game store you needed to drive at least an hour..
But every once in a while someone would try their hand at opening a store.. Usually not successful because most had no business sense..

The first one seemed to be owned by person that just wanted to get magic cards cheap back when "card crack" was crazy and about the time heroclix was coming out.
The guy had a small podium with a register on it and everything was still in shipping boxes behind him and you would have to ask what he had..
Never had lights (sometimes at night) on or any kind of heat and air conditioning. Then a few tables in the back with chairs.. That was the shop...
He would throw rants at people for what ever he was mad about that day and would get in fights with his wife on the phone..
I got yelled at for trying to trade a single heroclix with a guy, no warning, no signs.. just yelling... never went back and many was like me..
But many people just went there to get boosters and leave... because that was the only choice to get their stuff locally.
To everyone surprise the shop all of a sudden he moved into the mall, had giant displays and hired a full time employee; The worker was a good guy
and really helped the image of the store and rarely would you see the owner..
Found out the owner never paid the worker and the employee ended up taking over the store as back payment..
Only to find out the owner hadn't paid any bills for a very long time per the employee.
The employee just liquidated everything and closed the store.. but he said he still came out a lose to him..

Next one was a guy that opened a used book store.. but liked games and comics so I would ask him to order stuff in.. he would start to carry anything if enough people
asked for it... He would trade things and give you good deals on everything... Nice guy and had a nice family.. He was always looking for the next "hot" thing and
would bring in besides romance novels, he had martial arts weapons, pogs, comics, games..jewelry what ever he thought he could sale and make a good profit on...
Then I moved out of the area, but tried to visit his shop when I returned to town.. The store had moved to a larger location at the edge of town and I found it closed.
Just happen to run into a old buddy and asked why it closed.. Ended up he was selling "drug paraphernalia" out of his shop and was busted by the police...
I guess he thought it had a high profit margin and people were asking for it.

 Genoside07 wrote:
Two jump to mind... When I was growing up, I lived in the middle of no where.. That means most of the time to go to a game store you needed to drive at least an hour..
But every once in a while someone would try their hand at opening a store.. Usually not successful because most had no business sense..

The first one seemed to be owned by person that just wanted to get magic cards cheap back when "card crack" was crazy and about the time heroclix was coming out.
The guy had a small podium with a register on it and everything was still in shipping boxes behind him and you would have to ask what he had..
Never had lights (sometimes at night) on or any kind of heat and air conditioning. Then a few tables in the back with chairs.. That was the shop...
He would throw rants at people for what ever he was mad about that day and would get in fights with his wife on the phone..
I got yelled at for trying to trade a single heroclix with a guy, no warning, no signs.. just yelling... never went back and many was like me..
But many people just went there to get boosters and leave... because that was the only choice to get their stuff locally.
To everyone surprise the shop all of a sudden he moved into the mall, had giant displays and hired a full time employee; The worker was a good guy
and really helped the image of the store and rarely would you see the owner..
Found out the owner never paid the worker and the employee ended up taking over the store as back payment..
Only to find out the owner hadn't paid any bills for a very long time per the employee.
The employee just liquidated everything and closed the store.. but he said he still came out a lose to him..

Next one was a guy that opened a used book store.. but liked games and comics so I would ask him to order stuff in.. he would start to carry anything if enough people
asked for it... He would trade things and give you good deals on everything... Nice guy and had a nice family.. He was always looking for the next "hot" thing and
would bring in besides romance novels, he had martial arts weapons, pogs, comics, games..jewelry what ever he thought he could sale and make a good profit on...
Then I moved out of the area, but tried to visit his shop when I returned to town.. The store had moved to a larger location at the edge of town and I found it closed.
Just happen to run into a old buddy and asked why it closed.. Ended up he was selling "drug paraphernalia" out of his shop and was busted by the police...
I guess he thought it had a high profit margin and people were asking for it.

"High" Profit margin.

I think I mentioned this one in another thread a while back, but the one that rubbed me the worst was a place called Titan Games.

It originally started out as Heavy Support Games and gave decent discounts on Warhammer models. They also had a cheap bin of used warhammer models that you could buy, as well as a 75% trade in for store credit for MTG cards (which was a huge thing back then since at most you got was 50% here). He also openly did split box purchases, so he would break down Battle Forces, Megaforces, Army box, and so forth and offer massive discounts on the individual pieces. He made a profit than if he just sold the battle force, but obviously it made our lives easier since we didn't have to find someone to split the contents or live with the stuff we didn't need.

But the good times weren't to last. Turns out he had some financial troubles and had to move to a more remote, cheaper location. He also rebranded the store as "Titan Games" for some reason (Maybe because GW thought they owned the term "heavy support"? I have no idea). Still sold the same stuff so I didn't complain, and still made frequent bi-monthly trips out there with my friends. Note that we didn't spend just one or two bucks; we would often take out a hundred or two before we go and spend it all there, either on mtg or warhammer stuff.

But one day I walked in and started browsing the used models bin. One of the clerks there, whom I have not seen before (which is rare, since I've been there enough that another clerk could recognize me on the street now), came up to me and politely told me that I wasn't allowed to buy from there. It was for "members only". Fair enough, so I went over to the regular 40k stuff and picked something out. When he ringed it up, it came up to be the same price as GW's website. I asked why since the label clearly had it marked down by 20%. He says that's for "members only".

So I bite, and ask what it would take to be a member. Apparently my 4 or so years of customer loyalty meant all of jack, since you needed to pay a monthly fee. It was something like 60 bucks or something, with a "discount" that if you bought a year's membership you got it for 400. I asked what the membership got me. He says on top of the discount, I get access to the used bin, and permission to play in the store and permission to enter their tournaments (and still had to pay the entrance fee). Since I don't frequent the store enough to actually play there, I did the mental math. To just break even I'd have to buy somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1600 dollars worth of 40k merchandise. For used stuff, I'd either have to buy a Titan or two whole armies just to come close to what I would pay if I just answered local ads.

So I told him I've changed my mind (since, at those prices, ordering from GW is a no brainer, as he didn't even have the full stock) and left the store. Later when I looked up his store, I read that someone else had been there and tried to pay with cash. Instead of change, they gave him store credit. They apparently told him that if he didn't have exact change, he's only getting store credit. Apparently the police was called, I have no idea how it resolved, but I had no intention of going back there. It did a 180 almost overnight.

Just recently I thought about the place again and decided to see if the situation has improved. Looked it up on google and....turns out they've closed down. Not sure if he moved to an even shadier area (the first place has an honest to god triple X adult store right across the street, the second one not much better since it was in a literal alley way), but honestly not going to bother to check. And that clerk that knew me? He got a job at another store and told me that the old boss was either absent all the time (he would either join the very MTG events he was suppose to be hosting, or run off to the nearby gym next door to work out during store hours), or was a slave driver and penny pincher.

All in all, I was never mistreated at the store. I'm more sad that, almost overnight, the place turned from a nice friendly discount shop to essentially a members-only gaming club that snubbed anyone who isn't willing to pony up the cash. And given by what happened, it sounds like it was because the owner's financial troubles didn't go away and he sort of hit the panick button and indirectly destroyed what little good will was left.

There was a place that wasn't that bad of a place, but it was run by someone who just had no business sense. He'd order things for people, not take payments upfront for the stuff that he ordered, and then if he actually did order it, had no way to make people actually pay for it. Combine that with the fact that he tried to sell under GW price, but never actually had any regular stock either, so he wasn't making any money that way either. I once told him that he probably should take payment upfront for things as much as the stuff that never gets bought that he clearly ordered for someone just sat on the shelf. Yeah, that 14 year old kid who said he wanted those 6 metal ogryn? He's not actually dumping the $150 on them, buddy, but guess what? You did.

He'd let people trade in armies and then try to sell them back off, used. The problem is that (and I don't know how much he was paying for them) they were all always super badly put together, and so he couldn't move them once he did buy them. Like, space marines with shoulder pads put on them backwards and what looked like house paint on them.

I suspect that he was overly generous to them though, as he once asked me if I'd be willing to go through some, like, 2000 points of IG someone brought in that was in various parts (and in pretty rough shape), and try to make some sense out of what the kits were. As I went through it, I found that the guy had nine sanctioned psykers in there, so I asked him what he'd want for them, and he just gave them to me since I'd bothered to spend about 10 minutes going through the stuff. Which, was awesome for me, but not for the store.

Thankfully I've never had any horror stories so far. I usually just stop going to places cause I found a better deal elsewhere.

The most annoying stuff I ever had to deal with was gaming club owners who tried borrowing cash from me in lieu of advanced payment of membership fees to use the club. It was like a year or two in advance worth of fees. First time I lent them cause we were friends and basically things worked out cause the club was still around by the time my advance fees expired, but then they tried to borrow a 2nd time by getting someone else to ask me instead.

By then the club had already shrunk too much cause a lot of the older dudes left due to some internal politics and a lot of younger dudes joined who basically just wanted to rpg and play vanguard all the time. So I noped out of there

There is a store not too far from me know, been there a few times but avoid the place generally.

Its not a house of horror like some here, just feels weird, decent location but half the place is antiseptic clean (no bad thing itself, but it smells of antiseptic), the shop half is cramped and dark.

Its just not terribly inviting

Is there anywhere that is known for their gaming community? (like a city or something)

In my past experience there wasn't complete gaming community that was bad.. just individuals that were either WAAC or something weird about their personality.

But here is a few I have encountered over the years...

Back in the days when 40k EPIC was big, there was a Doctor (he said he was) and his teenage son that would spout out rules on units that no one regularly used..
Only to find out after the game they were playing them way wrong to the point of cheating.. After a few times of this everyone would just avoid them
(change start times unannounced) or plan games during the week.
Sad thing was you would think a Doctor would act better than that .. no so petty.. But everyone is different.

The other would be a local gaming group (with matching shirts and all) that ran tournaments for the FLGS, great shop but they would try their hardest to insure
their group members would win the tournament games because of nice prizes, people stopped playing 40k for a while or just not attend tournaments when they were involved..

So with anything bad... just avoid it... enough people do that .. it will go away.. you hope

When I was stationed in Colorado Springs, there were basically 2 gaming shops.

The first, had FoW, warmahordes, DnD, MTG, Warhammer, etc. etc. I mean, pretty much any game you could want, they either carried, or could direct order. The shop itself was well lit, well ventilated, and had plenty of space. The gaming tables for TT games (magic was done in the front room, as I understand it) were in the back room. Now. . . this location was "unique" in that the back room, was actually a converted repair garage. All the lifts and pits were taken care of, but the garage doors were still there. Guy had something like 12 or 16 6x4 tables that could be configured into one giant table for apoc games and the like. The terrain wasn't much to look at, but it functioned and was clearly durable enough.

The other shop. . . . was pretty much the opposite. It was dark, smelled bad (probably from the owner and one employee I ever saw), had little ventilation, the one thing he had ample stock of, was Reaper minis, and I swear he had to have every single one in print at the time. They wrapped from the board games, around 3 walls (they started in the corner, went around the backside of a wall, wrapped around the front, and finished on another wall right next to the 40k stuff)

The one table in there looked great. . . but was hardly functional, unless you were playing a historical siege game (the table was a full on castle. . . but everything was fixed hard in place, and there was basically no way to reach into the castle's courtyard)

The owner. . .Well, this dude was the embodiment of the "stereotype" of gamers: he was huge, sweaty, smelled of unwashed flesh (as opposed to just the smell of fresh sweat) and if you got a word out of him, it was usually complaining. I went in there 3 times. On those occasions, once, he didn't look up from his computer, playing Diablo 2. Once, he yelled at his overly timid employee (who was wearing moccasins), and the final time, he basically bitched at the wife about wanting to hook his computer power supply up to a treadmill, so that he could "lose weight" and play diablo 2. Meanwhile, I got another dude with some major issues showing me literally every magnet on every terminator that he'd built (I can't say much about this guy, he was just another hobbyist, and it was clear he had some form of handicapping issues, so I was polite)

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Meanwhile, I got another dude with some major issues showing me literally every magnet on every terminator that he'd built

Didn't saw this one coming.

When these kinds of posts pop up, i'm always thankful I've never had any kind of bad FLGS experience. Maybe the Philly area just has more competent game shop owners

Personally my favorite is Showcase Comics & Games. Now that I just moved (again) I'm way too far away though :( There's a newer place nearby that I want to check out, but they seem more geared toward paying to play video games there, with a couple of tabletop nights mixed in, and I think that's usually for MTG. But I'll stop in and check em out sooner or later.

armypainter wrote:
Is there anywhere that is known for their gaming community? (like a city or something)

St. Louis may not be widely known for it's gaming community, but it's a far better gaming town than most other places I've been.

 Necros wrote:
When these kinds of posts pop up, i'm always thankful I've never had any kind of bad FLGS experience. Maybe the Philly area just has more competent game shop owners

Personally my favorite is Showcase Comics & Games. Now that I just moved (again) I'm way too far away though :( There's a newer place nearby that I want to check out, but they seem more geared toward paying to play video games there, with a couple of tabletop nights mixed in, and I think that's usually for MTG. But I'll stop in and check em out sooner or later.

Showcase, Stomping Grounds, Redcaps, 7th Dimension, and probably others that I'm missing - Philly area gamers are kinda spoiled when it comes to gaming.

Sadly the worst store I've ever frequented is the one I play at regularly. If it wasn't for the group of Guys I game with the place would be a write off.

The Primary owner is just a total tool who thinks customers are there to stroke his ego. He says things like " I want this place to be more of a hang out than a store." but then drives off anybody who isn't there specifically to hang out with him.

He's tried to drive my group out over the years, but we just show up on days he's not there to place. But he's always causing some sort of drama.

 Vulcan wrote:

St. Louis may not be widely known for it's gaming community, but it's a far better gaming town than most other places I've been.

I've never compared STL to anywhere before, but the gaming scene is big enough that it's getting to the point where I'm not longer surprised when I learn of yet another event/community lurking around here somewhere I didn't know about beforehand, particularly when you consider the saturation of gaming stores in the metro area. We definitely got us some nerds 'round these here parts.

armypainter wrote:
Is there anywhere that is known for their gaming community? (like a city or something)

Bellevue, WA. It seems to be a in perfect geo-location given the nearness of game companies, lack of alternate sports and weather that encourages indoor sports. It's surprising how many game podcasts, companies, stores and tournaments are within a few miles of there

Just north in Canada is another hotspot and some hardcore gamers can be found in both metas.

The store we played in for years was rough. The owner primarily wanted to run a business but wasn't terribly interested in risking capital to invest in it. The store closed way too early and fighting to keep the store open later was met with hostilities about how much money came in that night. I actually had to stop getting new releases on the release day so that I could spend the money on the game of the game night. We mostly were allowed to exist because one of the employees played and game night was when he worked.

In a lot of ways I felt bad as our community wasn't really pulling their weight either. People largely bought online for better deals and its not like minis games are that profitable in the first place. Ultimately, the place got trashier. Boxes of Magic cards piled up and the shelves got stocked with second hand oddities. I'm actually not entire sure the store ever had a real relationship with a vendor and our community withered as nothing about the place brought in new players.

Eventually a great new shop opened up and we migrated over and that was kind of the end of the other one. I hate to speak ill of the place as truthfully we played there for years. It would have been great had it been better, but had it not been our group would have probably never been either, so in the end its a place I remember fondly, even if it was just better than nothing.

 LunarSol wrote:
The store we played in for years was rough. The owner primarily wanted to run a business but wasn't terribly interested in risking capital to invest in it. The store closed way too early and fighting to keep the store open later was met with hostilities about how much money came in that night. I actually had to stop getting new releases on the release day so that I could spend the money on the game of the game night. We mostly were allowed to exist because one of the employees played and game night was when he worked.

In a lot of ways I felt bad as our community wasn't really pulling their weight either. People largely bought online for better deals and its not like minis games are that profitable in the first place. Ultimately, the place got trashier. Boxes of Magic cards piled up and the shelves got stocked with second hand oddities. I'm actually not entire sure the store ever had a real relationship with a vendor and our community withered as nothing about the place brought in new players.

Eventually a great new shop opened up and we migrated over and that was kind of the end of the other one. I hate to speak ill of the place as truthfully we played there for years. It would have been great had it been better, but had it not been our group would have probably never been either, so in the end its a place I remember fondly, even if it was just better than nothing.

This is eerie, that sounds EXACTLY like one of the current LGSs in our city, it exists despite itself (possibly due to location, the other store is in a unit on an industrial estate outside the city, so gets no foot traffic) and apparently MTG is the only thing sustaining it.

Hardly any new releases bought in unless specifically asked. You're a B&M store, being able to get something straight off the shelf is part of the reason for your existence. Saying you can "order it in" defeats the entire point (not even going into the fact I can probably get it cheaper online). I'm not even talking about oddball stuff, I'm talking the meat and potatoes units for armies.

I've stopped going there out of sheer apathy and months of not being able to get a game of anything. The botched release of 8th ed., where no events were ran, nothing happening on the game night, so I'm sitting there waiting to get my first game of 40k in literally years and feth all happens. The other store ordered 40ish boxes of Dark Imperium in and sold them all. So, yeah...

 daedalus wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

St. Louis may not be widely known for it's gaming community, but it's a far better gaming town than most other places I've been.

I've never compared STL to anywhere before, but the gaming scene is big enough that it's getting to the point where I'm not longer surprised when I learn of yet another event/community lurking around here somewhere I didn't know about beforehand, particularly when you consider the saturation of gaming stores in the metro area. We definitely got us some nerds 'round these here parts.

Go a couple of hours west along I-70 and you'll come to my own hometown of Columbia, MO. It's got a pretty sizeable 40k community for a town that size (admittedly some of the gamers live in smaller towns nearby), and 2 game stores. Having 2 game stores that can both stay in business is, from my understanding, pretty unusual for a town this size. Mostly it's bigger cities that have multiple places to play. We've got monthly ITC tournaments that lately have been having over 20 players in them (the latest one had some St. Louis players in it), plus a few smaller casual 40k events, and one store has regular events for all kinds of non-GW games, like X-wing, Kings of War, WarmaHordes, and others.

Sadly I'm pretty sure one of the stores is the one mentioned by a poster earlier in this thread, although I've never had a problem there. I've never had a problem at any game store I've visited, but maybe the fact that I rarely travel has helped me there. Our local 40k community pretty much always plays at the smaller store in town as they support 40k more, and we've got a diverse range of armies and levels of competitiveness. In short, my hometown is a good place to be a 40k player!

We have 2 in my town one sells gw and xwing at retail no gaming area or new releases and is in the town centre.

The other is just out of town in a post office sells gw with no gaming area and is staffed buy the cast of labyrinths one guy who ignores you when you come in and just sits there furiously dry brushing and a old lady in her 90s who if you try and buy anything will refuse to sell it as she "doesn't know the price or can't work that bit
of the till " dispite the product having price stickers on

I now make the 2hr round trip to another store