Quote from: tenbones;831258I kid you not. This place takes their business seriously. Good customer service. Great outreach, they're growing the community. They do serve snack foods and drinks in the gaming areas. They're plugged into all the local geek-conventions.

All the stores locally are well kept and organized. Ryders and now Out of the Box come to mind readily. OotB has a nice big gaming area and also a snack bar I believe. We have not yet had chance to really explore it.

The "sty" game store I have never yet seen across several states. How the hell do you people keep finding these sorts of awful things?

Quote from: Omega;831302All the stores locally are well kept and organized. Ryders and now Out of the Box come to mind readily.

Ahhhh...Ryders. Back in the day, I bought a lot of paints and brushes and more than a few miniatures from them.

Quote from: Bren;831304Ahhhh...Ryders. Back in the day, I bought a lot of paints and brushes and more than a few miniatures from them.

I was in there a year ago and it seemed the whole game section had been replaced with Games Workshop garbage. Still a nice place. But just short of useless for gaming now.

Quote from: Omega;831346I was in there a year ago and it seemed the whole game section had been replaced with Games Workshop garbage. Still a nice place. But just short of useless for gaming now.

I haven't been there in years. That's sad to hear.

Quote from: Thondor;831020. . . I can't believe that the above was my first post on this site. I've lurked so often on the Amber parts of the forum -- I was sure I had posted here a few times.

Welcome to theRPGsite!

Quote from: tenbones;831129My gut instinct is to say your right. But my local FLGS... has done the exact opposite.

What store is that? And where?

Quote from: RPGPundit;831621Welcome to theRPGsite!

Thanks, this is a great community!

Quote from: jgants;831241One is run by a complete idiot who basically uses it to hang out with his friends and talk about magic cards. The store space is big, but contains almost nothing but CCGs and tables for playing CCGs; anything else is an afterthought. Even if you do find something there you want to buy, good luck having him wait on you.

The strange thing is this actually appears to be a viable business model. (And by that I don't mean the bad customer service you describe). There was a significant number of CCG only stores in my study (7 out of the 50). And I have seen a similar stores here in Ottawa.

Sometimes these do have some additional business (such as sports cards/memorabilia, or gaming, the strangest I saw was knitting and sewing products), but there focus is really CCGs.

I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise, several "full-service" game stores told me that CCGs are such a big part of their business, that if they stopped selling anything else they would probably be just fine.

(Kind of like the cinema -- as long as people buy popcorn, they'll do good business.)

Yeah it's weird, card stores that are just a counter full of traded/sold magic cards you can rebuy, wire racks full of boosters, and the rest of the space as tables to game at are kind of prevalent around here.

Cool Stuff Inc does that but they also do RPGs and such as a side, you go into the store, shop/browse at one of several PC terminals they have set up to the side, and then go up to the counter with your order number and they pull your stuff from the back.  All they have up front are big board games that nobody'd bother to steal anyway, and a standee so close to the counter you'd have to be behind it to boost any RPG books.

Of course they completely discontinued all miniatures except click-base and prepainted D&D and Pathfinder minis so they're kind of no longer a place I bother to shop, but whaddyagonnado, eh?

Quote from: RPGPundit;831630What store is that? And where?

Madness Comics - Plano TX (Dallas).

Some friends from LA came out this weekend I took them there. I LOVE the looks of fellow-gamers when I take them. It's like walking into Disneyland as a kid.

Smiles from ear-to-ear. Or the "OMG-face".

I wish there was a local retailer to whom "Miniatures" meant more than blind draw D&D/pathfinder/Hero* boxes, trade-ins of singles, and/or Reaper and Games Workshop 40k.

There's a whole world of great fantasy and sci-fi minis out there that I can only purchase online, which kind of kills the odds I'll drive any distance to make an impulse purchase.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;832721I wish there was a local retailer to whom "Miniatures" meant more than blind draw D&D/pathfinder/Hero* boxes, trade-ins of singles, and/or Reaper and Games Workshop 40k.

I agree, there's no way I'm buying packs of random minis.
I would still buy individual unpainted minis or painted ones, depending on the price.

Quote from: danskmacabre;832736I agree, there's no way I'm buying packs of random minis.
I would still buy individual unpainted minis or painted ones, depending on the price.

Oh yeah; I mean, I had an AD&D game where I knew the party would be facing a shitload of gnolls so I took $45 down to CSI and bought 30 common D&D gnoll minis.  There was no way I was going to buy (30 unpainted gnolls * retail price) and then spend forever and a day painting painting painting for a battle that would be over in 20-30 minutes...

Quote from: thedungeondelver;832753Oh yeah; I mean, I had an AD&D game where I knew the party would be facing a shitload of gnolls so I took $45 down to CSI and bought 30 common D&D gnoll minis.  There was no way I was going to buy (30 unpainted gnolls * retail price) and then spend forever and a day painting painting painting for a battle that would be over in 20-30 minutes...

I don't mind getting lots of unpainted minis, as I enjoy painting them.
I painted up over 100 Zombies! boardgame Zombie mine (about 15mm minis).
It took quite a while, but it was fun coming up with varied ways to paint the minis.

I painted up a bunch of other minis from boxed sets like Descent etc..

Quote from: thedungeondelver;832721I wish there was a local retailer to whom "Miniatures" meant more than blind draw D&D/pathfinder/Hero* boxes, trade-ins of singles, and/or Reaper and Games Workshop 40k.

There's a whole world of great fantasy and sci-fi minis out there that I can only purchase online, which kind of kills the odds I'll drive any distance to make an impulse purchase.

Miniatures are the thing the other stores do poorly so it's where my main focus is.  But we're in a golden age of miniatures gaming and it's impossible to carry everything for everything.  Compared to Magic, miniatures are expensive and difficult to carry.  At least we're long past the days where it's all blind ordering off numbered lists.

Many small miniatures companies that won't sell to retailers due to already low margins.  Khurassin has an absolutely stunning range of 15mm sf that I'd love to carry but they don't offer a trade discount.  Pulp figures' discount tops out with their buy five get one free.  Other World sells a discount certificate in January that can't be had the rest of the year and so on.  Really it's not a bad thing since metal figures are expensive and don't sell as well as plastic.  Reaper Bones are my star product.  But doing miniatures right still results in a lot of slow moving product on the shelves.  Everything sells eventually but I'm just waiting for that guy who's dying to do napoleonics to come in and pick-up his first box of French Line Infantry.

Speaking of Madness Comics...

http://wpn.wizards.com/en/article/inside-worlds-most-successful-fnm