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Around here everything is still in lockdown until the 20th of May at the very least. GW UK may start operations back up before then and send out all the mail orders they've been holding onto for a month now as of typing this, but I very much doubt it.

UK Based. My FLGS is telling me that GW will be partially re-opening next week. This will be limited to Mail order and re-stocking FLGS. So confident of this is the owner that they are now compiling a re-stock order for Monday and adding orders from shop regulars.

If anyone believes that you can't do this during lockdown then think again. Warlord Games (less than a mile away from GW HQ) has been running with a skeleton crew since Thursday last week fulfilling Mail orders and FLGS re-stocks. Albeit it's taking longer than usual to complete your orders, but they are casting and sending stuff out.

Plenty of hobby businesses have been operational throughout this lockdown, the only real (well, the most serious) impediment to trade being the lack of GW product restocking.

Lets not forget many supermarkets have operated safely and they have to deal with the public passing through every day so its far more at-risk.

In theory if GW can keep staff at safe distances; use masks and other appropriate PPE; washdown surfaces and regular areas; stagger breaks and other normally social periods and keep tabs on their staff so that if any do get infected they can put into isolation those who have also come into contact with that staff member; then in theory they could start to re-activate portions of their company.

Far as I know retail on the highstreet will be closed; but GW could start production and shipping and distribution to 3rd party stores and online.



As noted several other companies have already re-activated along similar lines and some have not even closed. I know many of the one or two-person companies have not changed at all (esp since their "factories" are often at home anyway).



I would hope that GW remains fair to staff and those who choose to remain in isolation are permitted to do so without punishment - which seems to be a given during these times.

Store Managers tend to have a decent amount of leeway.

So I can see ‘table by the door, and I’ll grab what you need’ being perfectly acceptable. I mean, as long as those wanting to buy can buy? What’s the odds to HQ?

Mind you, I feel a bit of an arse at the moment as just before this all properly hit, i cleared out my local GW of Ossiarch kits. Not sure they got restocked!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Mind you, I feel a bit of an arse at the moment as just before this all properly hit, i cleared out my local GW of Ossiarch kits. Not sure they got restocked!

I was checking kits for my armies today on a few of the big online stores (Eldar, Ossiarchs, Daughters of Khaine). Almost nothing in stock at all. A few kits here and there for each one, but almost all was gone.

That said don't feel like an arse - get those kits built! They are made to be built and enjoyed. Besides I know that given time GW will return to full production and the kits will flood back to the shelves and appear in stock once again. Heck with the number of people clearing backlogs of models (myself slowly included as well); GW might well see some big boom sales; esp from some who might find renewed energy once their "pile of shame" is a little smaller!

 Overread wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Mind you, I feel a bit of an arse at the moment as just before this all properly hit, i cleared out my local GW of Ossiarch kits. Not sure they got restocked!

I was checking kits for my armies today on a few of the big online stores (Eldar, Ossiarchs, Daughters of Khaine). Almost nothing in stock at all. A few kits here and there for each one, but almost all was gone.

That said don't feel like an arse - get those kits built! They are made to be built and enjoyed. Besides I know that given time GW will return to full production and the kits will flood back to the shelves and appear in stock once again. Heck with the number of people clearing backlogs of models (myself slowly included as well); GW might well see some big boom sales; esp from some who might find renewed energy once their "pile of shame" is a little smaller!

When the lockdown started I ordered a fair amount of stuff from my FLGS because I figured I should support them in these difficult times, even though my shame pile is pretty huge. A bit like Mad Doc, felt like a bit of an arse for buying stuff that others might have wanted given I've got so many other things to work on. I imagine shops didn't really need much help clearing out the stock that they already had (as the fact that most stuff is now out of stock shows), and that the best way to support the local store would be to place a big order once GW are up and running again. So I'll probably do that too. But once GW starts shipping again I imagine that production will be reduced due to distancing measures and there will be a lot of demand from people who've run out of kits to do in the meantime, so maybe even then I should hold off for a while to let those folks get some new kits in.

 Overread wrote:

terry wrote:
the warhammer store here is opening, but with a max of 2 customers and all goverment regulations are being uphold

Is that a GW store and are you in the UK? (your profile flag says you are). Only I was under the impression nothing in the UK was opening up for GW.

its an official GW store, but the flag is wrong. I'm from the Netherlands

The UK needs to start doing this. businesses need to find workarounds and start to get rolling again. the government cant pay people to stay at home indefinitely. theres no reason we cant take a targeted approach to businesses, rather than this blanket lockdown strategy

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
The UK needs to start doing this. businesses need to find workarounds and start to get rolling again. the government cant pay people to stay at home indefinitely. theres no reason we cant take a targeted approach to businesses, rather than this blanket lockdown strategy

Considering protestors can't even achieve basic social distancing guidelines i question it atleast in some places.

If the basic guidelines are propperly followed though i agree with you completely.

 Bellerophon wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Mind you, I feel a bit of an arse at the moment as just before this all properly hit, i cleared out my local GW of Ossiarch kits. Not sure they got restocked!

I was checking kits for my armies today on a few of the big online stores (Eldar, Ossiarchs, Daughters of Khaine). Almost nothing in stock at all. A few kits here and there for each one, but almost all was gone.

That said don't feel like an arse - get those kits built! They are made to be built and enjoyed. Besides I know that given time GW will return to full production and the kits will flood back to the shelves and appear in stock once again. Heck with the number of people clearing backlogs of models (myself slowly included as well); GW might well see some big boom sales; esp from some who might find renewed energy once their "pile of shame" is a little smaller!

When the lockdown started I ordered a fair amount of stuff from my FLGS because I figured I should support them in these difficult times, even though my shame pile is pretty huge. A bit like Mad Doc, felt like a bit of an arse for buying stuff that others might have wanted given I've got so many other things to work on. I imagine shops didn't really need much help clearing out the stock that they already had (as the fact that most stuff is now out of stock shows), and that the best way to support the local store would be to place a big order once GW are up and running again. So I'll probably do that too. But once GW starts shipping again I imagine that production will be reduced due to distancing measures and there will be a lot of demand from people who've run out of kits to do in the meantime, so maybe even then I should hold off for a while to let those folks get some new kits in.

Problem is some stores might not make it, atlease here.
We have like......6 stores around us, only one got the small business loan. Several got fined a couple Grand for staying open, even if just doing curbside.
It's insane, I understand the lockdown and why it is needed, but there must be a way a allow small retail to stay in business.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
The UK needs to start doing this. businesses need to find workarounds and start to get rolling again. the government cant pay people to stay at home indefinitely. theres no reason we cant take a targeted approach to businesses, rather than this blanket lockdown strategy

Lifting the lockdown - even partially - in the absence of a nationwide and comprehensive test, trace, isolate strategy *will* lead to further uncontrolled outbreaks, which *will* necessitate going back into a total lockdown once again, and every time we were to repeat that cycle there's a not insignificant chance that the outbreaks will move beyond our capacity to control in a way that will cripple the NHS. Imperial already modeled that scenario, it led to a minimum of a couple of hundred thousand deaths, and as many as half a million. Anyone who advocates for that on the basis of economics is a sociopath, as far as I'm concerned, but even then, they'd be an ill-informed sociopath, because several hundred thousand people dropping dead, an overwhelmed NHS, and a series of stop-start lockdowns will be just as damaging to the economy and cost the government just as much money as maintaining the lockdown unbroken would.

The blanket lockdown is a necessary step to bring transmission rates down to a level at which test, trace, isolate can be effective, and until the capacity is in place to implement test, trace, isolate, lifting the lockdown is an even greater folly than the multiple previous follies of the UK that have gotten us into this situation in the first place.

If you want the lockdown to end, start bombarding your MP with letters insisting they pressure the government to follow WHO advice and adopt the demonstrably successful approaches seen in South Korea, New Zealand, Germany etc.

 Yodhrin wrote:
If you want the lockdown to end, start bombarding your MP with letters insisting they pressure the government to follow WHO advice and adopt the demonstrably successful approaches seen in South Korea, New Zealand, Germany etc.

Germany allows stores to open that operate exactly like GW described in their article though. If I want to, I can buy pretty much everything by walking into stores now, and I'm living only 30 minutes away from one of worst outbreaks in the entire country. Shopping is limited and you can expect to stand in line to enter pretty much everywhere, but they are open.

It really depends on the people living in an area though. We live in an area with many high income people and good schools and people are staying at home, waiting for people to pass at a safe distance and standing in ordered lines in front of stores.
My fiancee works in a low-income area, and people are a lot less understanding there - in a convenience store nearby they need to call the police multiple times per day because are attacking employees over enforcing policies or not having the things they seek to buy or starting fights with other customers that are getting too close. In addition, people keep visiting their families (which often involve dozens of people) and doing barbecue parties in parks.
So Germans are definitely not as disciplined as the Koreans or New Zealanders, but despite all that we still managed do well so far.

Despite me not agreeing one bit with the the parties involved in my state's and country's Government they are doing a pretty good job handling the crisis and is surprisingly transparent about it.
Honestly, when I hear talks of our chancellor on COVID-19 it feels like they replaced her with a clone that they forgot to program with basic politician BS package

Edit: Also, let's not discount that we were very, very lucky. The German "Karnevall" with hundreds of parades, large gatherings and beer tents in pretty much every town in my region was canceled in many places, due to a storm making going outside dangerous and threatening to knock over tents and floats. One of the worst outbreaks in Germany was due to a single beer tent gathering on this very weekend. If not for the storm, Germany might have it as bad as Spain or Italy right now.

Wasn't one of the reasons for why germany had that much overcapacity on ventilators to do with the lack of reforms that didn't happen?

Well, I guess if you ignore the predicted deaths from an economic collapse such as that we're facing, aswell as the decreases standards of living, decreased wages, increased taxes etc, then you could probably straw man away anyone who dares to raise concerns about such issues as a 'sociopath' but then that isn't really conducive to rational and reasonable debate.

The NHS is not overwhelmed. There are how ever many thousand icu places still free, even before you consider the new nightingale hospitals popping up all over the place. No one has had to be turned down. The London nightingale has had 41 patients last I saw.

There's no reason the overly draconian measures can't be relaxed somewhat, and have businesses that are able to do so operate with customer control measures like curbside or over counter services, and still maintain physical social distancing. (The thing that is actually helping.)

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

The NHS is not overwhelmed. There are how ever many thousand icu places still free, even before you consider the new nightingale hospitals popping up all over the place. No one has had to be turned down. The London nightingale has had 41 patients last I saw.

There's no reason the overly draconian measures can't be relaxed somewhat, and have businesses that are able to do so operate with customer control measures like curbside or over counter services, and still maintain physical social distancing. (The thing that is actually helping.)

The NHS is under heavy pressure in some regions more than others. This is accepting that they are taking vastly fewer normal cases at the same time as taking high corona cases. There's a 50% drop in heart-attack/stroke patients at present and likely big drops in people from car accidents and the like. So yes its not broken the NHS, but if we restore normal working then those numbers jump up back to normal values. In addition resuming normal operations will spike Corona spread which will result in increased pressure.

Right now the UK virus spread is flatlining in most areas (from what I recall only London is going down and those values are still way higher than elsewhere). That means we still aren't reducing in cases and deaths; just reaching a point of balance. The right thing now is to maintain measures that allow that flatline to be sustained, rather than relax them and allow that flatline to increase.

You want to DECREASE the line significantly before reopening things and relaxing lockdowns. Then any increase will just spike things back to values we have now - ergo manageable values that the NHS can deal with and where imposing the lockdown again is known to have a positive effect before we get overwhelmed.



If you relax now then in a few weeks instead of the line going down, it goes up. IT might go up really really fast and suddenly you're throwing the lockdown in place again, but now the NHS is overwhelmed and will remain overwhelmed for a long period.



Honestly the big risk right now is that we've had several weeks of lockdown and people are getting the fidgets. The once a week trip is turning into two or three to pick up "essential odds and sods". They are thinking on more walks in the countryside; or using parks; they are wanting to sneak in a visit to friends and family etc.... Those who have no direct/friend/family experience of the disease are the most at risk now of starting to get lax. If anything now would be a good time to actually impose stricter guidelines on the lockdown for a short period to drive home the point and keep things locked down.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Wasn't one of the reasons for why germany had that much overcapacity on ventilators to do with the lack of reforms that didn't happen?

I don't think the number of people needing ventilators has gotten high enough for someone to start counting them. If the trend continues, we are nearing the peak at about 150.000 cases, if 15% of those require ventilators we would need about 22500. Allegedly Germany has 28000 ICU beds in regular hospitals (I did not verify that source though) and more are being created at convention centers, gyms and the like.

As far as I know (I'm not too knowledgeable in the health sector), there were some larger reforms of hospitals in the last years, but they didn't reduce the number of ICU beds by a lot for reasons not known to me. However, I do know that those reforms affected staff a lot more than equipment.

 Jidmah wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Wasn't one of the reasons for why germany had that much overcapacity on ventilators to do with the lack of reforms that didn't happen?

I don't think the number of people needing ventilators has gotten high enough for someone to start counting them. If the trend continues, we are nearing the peak at about 150.000 cases, if 15% of those require ventilators we would need about 22500. Allegedly Germany has 28000 ICU beds in regular hospitals (I did not verify that source though) and more are being created at convention centers, gyms and the like.

As far as I know (I'm not too knowledgeable in the health sector), there were some larger reforms of hospitals in the last years, but they didn't reduce the number of ICU beds by a lot for reasons not known to me. However, I do know that those reforms affected staff a lot more than equipment.

TBF, that seems a bit daft, as in why curb personel, and not equipment , because equipment for health secotr is daftly expensive, especially for hospitals. As in a balanced manner.

As I said before, I'm not exactly a fan of what the government is doing outside of the current crisis

 Overread wrote:

Honestly the big risk right now is that we've had several weeks of lockdown and people are getting the fidgets. The once a week trip is turning into two or three to pick up "essential odds and sods". They are thinking on more walks in the countryside; or using parks; they are wanting to sneak in a visit to friends and family etc.... Those who have no direct/friend/family experience of the disease are the most at risk now of starting to get lax. If anything now would be a good time to actually impose stricter guidelines on the lockdown for a short period to drive home the point and keep things locked down.

Yea I've been seeing this a bit more too. I've been shopping weekly but not really buying a weeks worth of food, so the cupboard and freezer stocks are looking pretty low right now!

Don't worry we've started a militia to keep the Londoners away, there's been a few unfortunate attacks on local Gooners fans but that's a sacrifice we're willing to make

Putting the army on the streets would certainly get people to wake up and lock down again in earnest. Government wouldn't even need any new legislation, just make a "show" of it.

Of course the backlash might be another panic at the supermarkets just as food stocks are starting to recover (and in some urban areas are still heavily impacted).

 Jidmah wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
If you want the lockdown to end, start bombarding your MP with letters insisting they pressure the government to follow WHO advice and adopt the demonstrably successful approaches seen in South Korea, New Zealand, Germany etc.

Germany allows stores to open that operate exactly like GW described in their article though. If I want to, I can buy pretty much everything by walking into stores now, and I'm living only 30 minutes away from one of worst outbreaks in the entire country. Shopping is limited and you can expect to stand in line to enter pretty much everywhere, but they are open.

Yes. And funny thing is Germany is doing what Yodhrin suggested aka tests, tests, tests. There's not much more countries that tests higher % of population than germany and most of those are small countries like luxemburg. South Korea is lauded for their testing. Well guess what? Germany doubles their test per million people.

So as Yodhrin says. UK wants to remove blanket lockdown, start doing what other countries that don't have as tight restriction or are lifting like S.Korea and Germany are doing. Removing them without actually doing anything in return will just lead to more deaths and overcrowded NHS(and with that more deaths from heart attacks, cancers etc)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Well, I guess if you ignore the predicted deaths from an economic collapse such as that we're facing, aswell as the decreases standards of living, decreased wages, increased taxes etc, then you could probably straw man away anyone who dares to raise concerns about such issues as a 'sociopath' but then that isn't really conducive to rational and reasonable debate.

The NHS is not overwhelmed. There are how ever many thousand icu places still free, even before you consider the new nightingale hospitals popping up all over the place. No one has had to be turned down. The London nightingale has had 41 patients last I saw.

There's no reason the overly draconian measures can't be relaxed somewhat, and have businesses that are able to do so operate with customer control measures like curbside or over counter services, and still maintain physical social distancing. (The thing that is actually helping.)

a) NHS is screaming bloody murder at the lack of PPE which is on level of critical and improvise something that's at least somewhat effective if not as effective as proper PPE. Well they do as much as they can seeing goverment is suppressing them from actually speaking out
b) It's not overwhelmed because there's actually lockdown. Duh. Lockdowns succeeding in what they were supposed to do. No kidding. You just gave evidence why they are in there in the first place. You make sure NHS doesn't get overwhelmed BEFORE they get overwhelmed. Even kindergarden can see that

tneva82 wrote:
Yes. And funny thing is Germany is doing what Yodhrin suggested aka tests, tests, tests. There's not much more countries that tests higher % of population than germany and most of those are small countries like luxemburg. South Korea is lauded for their testing. Well guess what? Germany doubles their test per million people.

The numbers say that, and there is little reason to doubt them (German agencies are too lazy to forge numbers), but my reality from down here is a bit different. My family was sick with two different kinds of virus infections back to back, but didn't get tested once - because you only get tested if you can name a person you had contact with that was tested positive or if you have been to a region with an outbreak like Italy. I still might have been infected, as in my company we tend to go to the airport's food court for lunch and any of my colleagues might have picked it up there, or my fiancee just got it from one of 100+ customers she deals with every day.
A friend is a health care worker and when one of his colleagues got tested positive, they simply quarantined everyone they had contact with for 14 days and tests took forever. Out of all the people I know only know two people who were tested both paid ~100€ to know "nope, you don't have it right now". So the chance of catching asymptomatic infected is basically zero.
They are still racking up testing capacities though, currently a law is in the making to allow veterinarian labs to do the testing as well.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:


The NHS is not overwhelmed. There are how ever many thousand icu places still free, even before you consider the new nightingale hospitals popping up all over the place. No one has had to be turned down. The London nightingale has had 41 patients last I saw.

Thats because of the chronic lack of trained nurses to attend to patients in Nightingale, so they can't currently take more than that. Good planning, Tories.

Yeah, this seems liike a system that's in no danger whetsoever of being overwhelmed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/nhs-staff-to-be-asked-to-treat-coronavirus-patients-without-gowns

Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.

 Azazelx wrote:
Yeah, this seems liike a system that's in no danger whetsoever of being overwhelmed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/nhs-staff-to-be-asked-to-treat-coronavirus-patients-without-gowns

Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.

Think theres a bit of "its not affecting me, I'm not sick, so its not that bad really. Why the fuss?" going on.

As far as GW opening goes..........depends on how they do it. Some shops have remained open around my way (Central London) but only for essentials such as food and booze. Everything else is shuttered.

I don't think its a good idea, personally, unless they do web orders to be picked up at the store, but its not an essential journey and shouldn't be made. Open the webstore, fine, but not the high street one. Are they going to provide PPE for their staff they want to expose to customers?

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Yeah, this seems liike a system that's in no danger whetsoever of being overwhelmed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/nhs-staff-to-be-asked-to-treat-coronavirus-patients-without-gowns

Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.

Think theres a bit of "its not affecting me, I'm not sick, so its not that bad really. Why the fuss?" going on.

As far as GW opening goes..........depends on how they do it. Some shops have remained open around my way (Central London) but only for essentials such as food and booze. Everything else is shuttered.

I don't think its a good idea, personally, unless they do web orders to be picked up at the store, but its not an essential journey and shouldn't be made. Open the webstore, fine, but not the high street one. Are they going to provide PPE for their staff they want to expose to customers?

UK and US are excluded from the allowed openings.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Yeah, this seems liike a system that's in no danger whetsoever of being overwhelmed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/nhs-staff-to-be-asked-to-treat-coronavirus-patients-without-gowns

Everything's fine. Nothing to see here.

Think theres a bit of "its not affecting me, I'm not sick, so its not that bad really. Why the fuss?" going on.

As far as GW opening goes..........depends on how they do it. Some shops have remained open around my way (Central London) but only for essentials such as food and booze. Everything else is shuttered.

I don't think its a good idea, personally, unless they do web orders to be picked up at the store, but its not an essential journey and shouldn't be made. Open the webstore, fine, but not the high street one. Are they going to provide PPE for their staff they want to expose to customers?

UK and US are excluded from the allowed openings.

Good! Going out to buy plastic toy dollies really isn't something that people should be doing right now.

Yeah there’s no worry. No store can open to the public here if they wanted to, outside of the key things like food.

Online aren’t part of this, but a lot of larger companies had other reasons to close, manufacturing for instance I guess would be GW’s

There's no reason why they couldn't reopen many stores in the US. There are plenty of places where they could. They probably just don't want to have to deal with these government imposed restrictions being different on a state by state or even county by county basis.