Tell a bit about your friendly local FLGS.

[Pika...]

There are a few FLGSs in my area, and some are clearly better than others.

Tell a bit about yours, and why you prefer it over others.

[Eldan]

We don't seem to have any... or if we have, I can't find them :smallfrown:

[Pika...]

We don't seem to have any... or if we have, I can't find them :smallfrown:

Isn't your city the biggest in Switzerland?

[Totally Guy]

We have a gaming store.

But the problem I have is that I can't seem to find people that will talk to me there. I say a few words and I get a grunt or a nod. Occasionally someone will tell me about the system they play.

You know in Vampire the Requiem, the vampires recognise each other on sight with the Predator's Taint. Well I think that's how geeks work. But I don't trigger their Geekgamer's Taint.

[Serpentine]

Our what? Oh, gaming stores? The local Angus and Robertson bookstore used to sell D&D books, but not anymore :smallannoyed: There's a hobby shop that sells craft stuff and D&D books (only 4th ed now :smallsigh:) and Warhammer stuff and board games and puzzles and train set stuff and so on. I go in there lots.
I prefer it because... it's the only one we have :smallsigh:

[SilverSheriff]

don't have any local game stores. although I do have a stack of Business cards that I swiped from gencon that I haven't got to looking through yet (too busy with my Pathfinder books that I bought online:smalltongue:)

[KuReshtin]

There's a shop where I live called the "Bus Stop Toy Shop" (it's right next to a bus stop) that has a poster for Warhammer 40K in the window. I always forget to go in and check if they actually sell any gaming stuff, though, since it's a bit out of the way from where I usually go.

There are a few places in Glasgow that sell stuff, but I'm rarely in Glasgow, so can't say much about those places.

[Ashtar]

To Eldan:
Tactica Games (http://www.tacticagames.ch/) Schaffhauserstr. 411

Also on the GamesWorkshop storefinder there's:
"Using your address, we found the following 37 store(s) within 50 miles" when I select Zürich, Switzerland. But I'd suggest you try out Tactica Games.


They seem to be a pretty classic gaming store, open usually till quite late (7 PM in the week, 9 PM on Friday) makes it relatively easy to pop in after work. If you get there arround suppertime, you can participate in the pizza run and get your pizza delivered to you at the gaming table! They have a fridge and sell snacks and drinks, too.

They keep cards with your purchases on them and you get 10% after hitting a certain limit.

Two store managers who seem to live there :) The store painter is a (from what I gather) arts graduate who discovered miniature painting and is a good resource for painting questions. She (yes, she) solved my skaven skin conundrum efficiently.

There's a couch corner at the back with store copies of the codexes and what seems to be a secret passage from the back of the store leading to some wargaming crypts where only the initiated in secret and obscure rituals go to. I've seen strange creatures walking through that portal, from dark and enticing gothic girls of Slaanesh to the pungent aroma of the unwashed overweight gamer of Nurgle. (They also speak in the secret and arcane tongue which is unintelligible to outsider, namely: Switzerdüsch)

Store has 2 walls of GW stuff (W40k, WF and LotR) and 1 wall of others (Rackham and AT-43) if memory serves. A painting corner where you can sit down and improve your minis.

Sadly Switzerland is a very expensive place to buy one's minis, since they sell you the boxes as if the £ was still 2.5 CHF, nowadays it's more like 1£ = 1.6 CHF. So everything is about 60% more than ordering online. I still purchase some things there, but it does diminish my enthusiasm.

Yeah, basically it's what I've found now Oliware closed down and it sure beats buying Warhammer at Franz Carl Weber ><

[Eldan]

Isn't your city the biggest in Switzerland?

Yes, it is. But I still haven't seen a single game store around here. The best I can come up with are toy stores selling a few warhammer minis.

Edit:
Ashtar... HOW DID YOU DO THAT! :smalleek:

Hmm. If my Skaven army wasn't horribly painted (hey, first minis I ever did), most of the models damaged from transporting them in a cardboard box (hey, I couldn't afford those fancy foam boxes when I was a kid), they hadn't been gathering dust for at least five years and I had any clue how the last few editions of warhammer looked... :smalltongue:
I might even get back into Fantasy Warhammer.
Actually, if I had the money (christmas is coming around soon) I might even start buying a new army. Haven't painted anything in a while.

And yeah, I was in Oliware a handful of times. I still walk by there every day after university, it's just on th way to the station.

[Ashtar]

GamesWorkshop.com -> UK -> Menu StoreFinder -> Country: Switzerland -> City: Zurich -> Within 50 Miles -> Search.

I'd say why don't we meet there on Friday evening? I'll show you around. Could meet up at Oerlikon station or something and then catch a beer or whatever you flavor of evening drink is. We can compare broken, unpained and misshapen skaven and I'll loan you my WF rulebook and new skaven codex (if it has arrived yet).

[Eldan]

Friday evening is fine for me, really. Now, my Skaven are years old by now, and I don't know if I can even find them... I stored them in the attic at my parent's place. I think I have a handful around over here. At least the warlock, which I was insanely proud off when the colour didn't immediately clump together and drop off :smallbiggrin:

[Rutskarn]

The campus has a comic book store. Good place to get comics, cards, action figures, and (of course) dice and rulebooks.

Closest thing we've got. Not that you can find a game there, or anything, but you can at least keep stocked. Besides, I live on one of the nerdiest campuses on the western seaboard. I got a 7-man game going within a couple weeks, just using people from my dorm.

[Morty]

The only strictly gaming store I've ever seen in my country was a hovel between two large shops in a city rather far away, that had some D&D books - surprisingly, also 4th edition books - and some Warhammer miniatures. I'm sure there are some, but only in the biggest towns. And the nearest bookstore that sells gaming stuff among other things is about 40 kilometers from my hometown. There's a store belonging to the same network in the city where I'm studying... except it doesn't stock any gaming stuff.
So, yeah. No FLGSs here.

[banjo1985]

I'm lucky enough to have several gaming stores close enough for me to get to pretty easily:

Waylands Forge - An independant store selling DnD and a massive amount of other roleplaying games, every boardgame under the sun and a few figure thinsg as well.
Forbidden Planet - Decent selection of roleplaying and Magic stuff, plus lots of collectables and (shudder) anime.
Invasion Games - Discounted Warhammer and 40k stuff and just a brisk walk from my new apartment...what more can I say?
Games Workshops x2 - Sure they're overpriced and slightly scary places full of the unneccessarily overenthusiastic, but they're useful for when I decide to get into warhammer Fantasy with the new Skaven stuff.

I'm pretty lucky I guess. :smallbiggrin:

[Athaniar]

There is a great gaming store in the capital (just about two hours away) that I like to visit, although I must say it has gotten significantly more boring since the transition to 4E (not so much third party stuff). It sells all kinds of stuff, from RPGs to novels to movies to comics and so on.

[Totally Guy]

Forbidden Planet - Decent selection of roleplaying and Magic stuff, plus lots of collectables and (shudder) anime.

I went into there a couple of times. Couldn't find anything that I wanted to buy though. That's always the way it goes.

[Xsesiv]

Clifton Road Games. An independent shop. My group is having to use it for RP club since the college kicked us out having decided we weren't making enough money (?!). 90% of the club's games came from there, and a lot of the members'. You can get dice, board games, rule books, miniatures, and so on, there is also a nice big room for roleplaying. It stuck out in my mind because there were a few huge OotS paintings on the wall:smallbiggrin: I liked this one.
.
Games Workshop. Two of these, I have been to. Unfortunately, they are very overpriced, I have as yet been unable to get dice from them, and the WFRP licence has been handed around so much I don't know whether to go here to look or go to FFG miles and miles away.

[Trog]

To tell you the truth I don't care for my FLGS.

A few weeks back I was all hyped for this new DnD book coming out. So when I decided to buy it I chose, on purpose, to go there and "support my FLGS." I got there and they had sold out of the meager half a dozen copies they had ordered. But I could "order it and it would be there in a week or two."

Please. 9_9

I drove straight to Barnes and Noble and lo and behold they had a copy - several, in fact... as they always do. And I gave them my money instead.

Just because it is a gaming store doesn't mean they aren't competing with the big box stores.. and that includes having the new stuff in stock. It's like something I read once: "All companies compete with Disneyland on a customer service basis." And it's true. All businesses compete with the best business a customer has ever dealt with on customer service. Or dependability. Or what have you.

If my FLGS wants my business they'll need to do better than they have been doing, sadly. Until then I'll take my money to a better run business.

[Totally Guy]

Does games workshop even count? They only sell games workshop products. Or is that just here?

[The Extinguisher]

There are far too many in my city. There are four along a ten block stretch from each other. The farthest being about maybe a 15 minute walk from the other. And that's just in one area. They're all other the place.

And yet, none all that close to me. :smallannoyed:

[Gamerlord]

What gaming shops? None here in Staten island....

[Telonius]

If by "local" you mean "within 30 miles of my house," it doesn't exist. I'm in a very rural area in Northern Virginia (Lovettsville). We have the "good fortune" of being relatively near Washington, DC. A few years ago, when Wizards of the Coast was still in the brick-and-mortar retail business, they opened a big store in one of the shopping centers in the Virginia suburbs. It put about 75% of the little local gaming stores out of business. (They were already struggling, but it was the final nail in the coffin). The surviving shops generally either switched to comics exclusively, Warhammer, or Nintendo etc. video games. Of course about two years after it opened, they shut the big store down, but the damage was already done. Now, you have to go all the way to Reston or Frederick to find a decent gaming store. I honestly don't have the time or the money to be doing that on any kind of a regular basis.

[Kobold-Bard]

Travelling Man: Comics, D&D (only 4ed now :smallfrown:), looooooads of other systems with a order in service if it's in print and they don't have the book you want, assorted Board/Card/Misc games, assorted gaming merchandise, and monthly(?) tournaments of one kind or another.

Only problem is that the guy there is a douche, he did his dissertation on comics, and thinks he's some kind of genius.

[Dirk Kris]

Friendly Local Gaming Store? Is that the acronym?

Ours is a great little hole-in-the-wall place in a strip mall. Conveniently located a block from Burger King/gas station/grocery store. And across from the high school and the Taco Bell next door. Comes equipped with a soda machine!

Magic cards, DnD materials and minis, board games - you name it, they got it. And if not, they can order it. The only thing noticably lacking is comics, but their sales slowed so much that they just take orders for them now instead of ordering boxes at a time.

Nice place, run by a dad and his two sons. Board game nights once a week, various DnD groups meet there, Magic tournaments, etc.

The only bad thing is that when it gets crowded, it usually smells like BO.

[Totally Guy]

Travelling Man: Comics, D&D (only 4ed now :smallfrown:), looooooads of other systems with a order in service if it's in print and they don't have the book you want, assorted Board/Card/Misc games, assorted gaming merchandise, and monthly(?) tournaments of one kind or another.

Oh, is that the Leeds one? That's where I go. But as before I don't buy much. I bought a Burning Wheel book back when it was summer.

I didn't know about the Comic Dissertation. I'll have to see if it's the same guy.

[Gamerlord]

Anyway, why buy from some silly gaming shop? Just buy from some nice website like amazon.

[Athaniar]

I buy from Paizo, and am planning to make an order from Noble Knight when I have enough money.

[Thiel]

Aside from the usual bookstores, there's only one actual FLGS in town.
Dragon's Lair
It's part of a small chain of about three shops (I think) The have all newer releases for most of the major systems (DnD, Vampire, GURPS etc.), more boardgames than you can shake a stick at and even more card games.
They have a gaming room you can use for free, Card games night every Tuesday, Warhammer nights every Wednesday Boardgames night every Friday and a card game tournament every Saturday.
They also carry a wide range of SF fantasy books and they can order just about anything.
Oh, and they have a fridge with soda and snacks and it in the middle of downtown, so food is only minutes away.

There's also another shop called Læsehesten (Litt: The Reading Horse. It makes sense in Danish).
It's not a gaming store, but a used books, movies, games, whathaveyou store. They tend to have a rather large selection of old RP stuff, mostly DnD 1st and 2nd edition.

Lastly there's a comic store called Comic Express. This is quite probably the nerdiest store in town. It the place you go if you want this specific comic from year xxxx in it's original plastic film.

[Mystic Muse]

"Books comics and things". they sell some D&D stuff, other RPG related stuff,warhammer, about twelve dozen more obscure games and comic. lots and lots of comics.Oh and TCGs. I'm currently addicted to MTG

[Inhuman Bot]

We more have... UfLGSs. :smalltongue::smallannoyed:

[skywalker]

So... The title, with the acronym expanded, says "Tell a bit about your friendly local friendly local gaming store." :smallbiggrin:

I have a couple. One is in the mall, part of a regional (I think about 3-4 stores), locally owned chain. I stop in there a lot, the manager is a good friend of mine and I'm in his D&D group. I stop in on a semi-regular basis and we discuss stuff/ogle girls walking thru the mallway (yes, that is a portmanteau of "mall" and "hallway." Sweet of you to notice :smallcool:). It bucks the seeming trend of being "4e only now :smallsigh:." Now, they don't order any new 3.5 stuff (I mean, it's not being produced anymore, how could they?) but they do have remainder stock of a fairly wide selection of 3.5 books (you won't find the core manuals, but you can always find those for cheaper than retail at the giant used book store just down the street). They stock White Wolf, Green Ronin, Steve Jackson, and Pinnacle Entertainment, all the major publishers. Lots of 3rd party stuff for 3.5. Of course they have 4e as well. They also have a bunch of Pathfinder stuff! Thru the course of this post, I have realized what a well stocked gaming store I have, because this is only half the store! The rest of the store has dice, puzzles, and every board game you can think of! The downside is that it is strictly a retail space, there is nowhere to hang out/play games.

The other store is downtown, and I have not reached it yet owing to transportation difficulties. Supposedly, they have a much more friendly, casual atmosphere, and will demo games for free! A friend of mine is good buddies with the owner, and I only have to find a time to get down there and I'm sure I will love the place. I've been tempted to go down there so as to "buy local," but I realized that it's more just "buying more local!" Yay for multiple local options! They also sell comics.


I've seen strange creatures walking through that portal, from dark and enticing gothic girls of Slaanesh to the pungent aroma of the unwashed overweight gamer of Nurgle. (They also speak in the secret and arcane tongue which is unintelligible to outsider, namely: Switzerdüsch)

Ah, the Slaaneshi gothic girls, I know their wiles well. Would that there were more of them, and more accessible too!

[banjo1985]

I went into there a couple of times. Couldn't find anything that I wanted to buy though. That's always the way it goes.

Yeah, I can't say as I'm particularly impressed by it either, but it's a good backup for when the Forge don't have the new WoD book I'm after. :smallbiggrin: