Cult Of Games XLBS: Tabletop Games – Where To Buy? How To Buy?
August 28, 2022 by avernos
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Well, this a pleasant surprise. Right when I was finishing up some stuff to release publicly as part of my privates. I’ll go to sleep now and update said thing later. You’ll need to wait Gerry. Its time for sleep.
Buy stuff.
You need something to weigh down your bookshelf so it doesn’t flutter away at the slightest crossbreeze.
Ooh a Hobbit Squirrel ? Hi XLBSers an OTTers.
Help Help theirs been a Terrible accident said? Gerry.
An ex Amazon worker?!? John.
It’s the XLBS Show………Happy Sunday Fellow CoGs!
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Nice surprise package from Workshop! I have received a few packages from Amazon that I’ve not ordered. I call them up and say, “I didn’t order this”, and they say, “keep it, no need to send it back”.
.
Congrats to the Golden Button Winners!
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Q) Where do you buy your miniatures and how do you buy them? Do you still use your FLGS or do you do a lot of your shopping online?
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A) I have no FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store). At 75 mph I have to drive one hour and twenty minutes to reach a proper hobby store.
So I buy most of my stuff online. Once in a while my wife will insist that we drive to the far away land and visit the FDGS (Friendly Distant Game Store)
When I’m buying online, I shop Amazon a lot. Bargain prices and usually here in two days. I have been know to order directly from Game Companies. Firelock Games, Para-Bellum, The Phalanx Consortium, Burrows and Badgers, as well as the smaller miniatures companies that @avernos has clued me into over the years as places that I can find certain minis I’m looking for.
I have even on occasion ordered from a little store across the great pond that is run by a couple of Irish Brothers and their close friends, who help gamers get what they need for their hobby time. Really nice chaps. I do hope they make a go of it! 🙂
Ooh that’s great Blitz figures guy’s.
Happy Sunday!
FLGS all the way….. If I had one! *sigh*
00:00 All the noms. “I eat your stuff and there is shit all you can do about it!”
00:30 Rain? was that why there was water coming from above?
01:05 Wargaming sauna….. NO! No! No! NOOO!
04:00 fits with my ecperience with Gerr as RPG player XD
05:22 Story time with @brennon!
05:53 “No? Why would we be nice?”
06:40 CAT! Hello Pascal! Here have this little bag of catnip! And chew some more on some cables XD
07:45 Mars? Lucious? What?! XD
08:45 “Agent Santaclaus”
10:15 MORE CAT! And a scared @fcostin trying to keep it together
11:30 Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagaaaaa
14:30 remember remember… Memberberries.
14:55 Dear editior: are you bored? 😉
16:00 streams crash? That’s nightmarefuel!
18:18 Math can’t hurt you.
21:00 heavy gear… wasn’t that an anime?
23:30 Battletech was always there!
23:45 CGI Thunderbirds? What?! Oo
25:15 briiiiiing meeeee toooo life
26:22 Horatio… I bearly knew him…. SAAAAAAGAAAAAA
32:15 Helpful @avernos is helpful
33:00 Watersliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiides! Oh wait. Transfers.
33:30 Fleeeg!
35:18 Not going to say it was aliens…. but… Aliens!
37:55 It’s the sleepover set
40:00 “new army projects” …. nope, not starting anything new for a long time.
43:30 Buy at your FLGS. If you don’t have a local store buy from a place that has an online shop and a brick and mortar store. Only go to “cheapest online store possible” when you really need to save on your budget. Do not do pre-order. Treat crowdfunding sites as “investment” not as an order system.
51:25 no surprise here… and I’m going mental on that too… because, what John said, it’s hard to get outside the US
59:00 suddenly white noise in my ears
1:05:00 ebay is a hobby in it of it self… I haven’t struck any deal on there for ages. The last hobby related buy was the Star Wars Legion Obi Wan from the core set for a Darth Maul diorama…. that was Jan. 19th 2021
1:08:00 there was a German equivalent to Trolltrader but when it launched it was not really cheap and now I can’t even remember the name…
1:09:45 what Ben said. support your local dealer. It’s not only there to buy and sell but to meet new players, have hobby chat and do actually some hobby. it’s a pillar of the community.
1:11:30 see 43:30
And now for something completely different: coffee.
The CGI Thunderbirds, if you didn’t know, was a co-production where Weta Digital supplied the CGI.
I watched the first season or so… The one of the major differences is that Jeff Tracey had disappeared and there was a sort of through story line as the brothers were trying to find their father.
Friendly local game store’s eBay an Amazon ? No local real shops.
Kilmarnock or Glasgow I know off that, the paisley or Irvine one’s may be gone now.
Covid the Happening II?
The local FLGS sells GW with large stock, from Star Wars legion it has a bit but you can ask anything and they will order it for you. They recently started selling Warlord stuff and then board games but not the more specialist kind of games. Because I already bought my Bolt Action army in the past from Warlord I only buy my hobby stuff there.
Then I mostly buy directly from the company if they are located in EU.
But for games like Battle Tech I have found two online stores that sell it, if they have it in stock so like John I will probably join in on the KS.
For KS itself if it is not an add-on to game I have I will not buy it, I don’t mind the waiting if they would place realistic dates, as with some you can already tell in advance it will take longer but it is more the uncertain nature that we have lately and you never know if you will have to pay more.
They missed a box? I got one last year and it was still square one of the APC’s an was perfect Gerry.
Victoria miniatures Kangaroo APC.
A good,n guy’s.
Rest your dice arm Ben you don’t want dicers wrist ?!?
Happy Sunday.
Generally if I know that my local hobby store will possibly stock something I want I’ll always try and get it from them first. Otherwise I’ll get it online. I’ll always use Amazon as a last resort though.
Many years ago (in my late teens8 I ordered a Warmaster Undead starter army from GW (for £35 I think) by phone (yes, before internet). I received it but they forgot to charge my card for it. I waited for a few months but yep, no charge and I got it for free. Sadly I no longer have that army but it was a thrill.
If I had a good local FLGS my buying habits would definitely change. That said, miniatures excite me, and if I see something new and cool then all kinds of impulses start kicking in. I never used to hesitate to push whatever button would get that goodness to me. Now I’m getting better at resisting, not least because you can make no assumptions about delivery costs these days. Well, you can…if you live in the UK and it’s not coming from the UK you can assume it’s going to kill your excitement completely.
So if I had a good FLGS then I would talk to them about their plans to stock whatever shininess had caught my eye and decide from there. As it is, shiny syndrome still wins most of the time, I don’t think too hard about the format of the purchase.
Gerry, what’s wrong with DBX. You line them up on straight lines, push them against each other with a loud bang, toss some dice. And go home happy. What’s not to like.
My FLGS for board games… Internet Canadian shopping for my Basing needs, and KS for those things that aren’t as available in Canada, like Burrows and Badgers. Can’t wait to back Maladum when it comes out.
Happy Sunday,
did i miss the review on the Greatest movie ever made again?
Late again, busy weekend so didn’t watch the show till B.H Monday.
Gerry you are correct still use Asgard, popped in yesterday for some tufts for bases and came out with another Ghost Archipelago Supplement.But it does tend to be a mix. Vincent doesn’t stock everything and it depends were he is on a distributor supply chain as to whether I order anything from him. Tend to get most of my Wargames Atlantic figures off him, likewise anything Frostgrave/Stargrave/Silver Bayonet. More specialised like Infinity has been Firestorm games, Battletech wherever I can find, though the majority was a Birmingham Retailer Waylands Forge.
Are (Birmingham) Waylands still going. I’ve no excuse really, they’re just down the road and several excellent pubs around.
Yeah still going, though Naimh isnt sure they will survive the lecky bills, though on fixed contract for at least a year. Does keep a fair amount of Battletech stuff in, which I tend to empty them of.
Jeebus yes the energy bills. Whatever I need next I’ll try them first before hitting the internet.
* Then: Most of my miniatures came with boardgames, bought from OLGS and Amazon sales.
* Now: Bulk purchases through KS, including CMON and other boardgames, and OLGS and Amazon sales.
Unfortunately, CoVid resulted in the FLGS moving further away. Much of the room at their old location was for tournaments and gaming, so they moved to a smaller less expensive store.
Amazon sells Battle Systems. I’m getting the Battle Systems Village and Core Space boxes, and trying out painting the edges, since I have a ton of craft paint from terrain painting!
Fond memories… [MASK] https://youtu.be/_YOqaSnET3w
rewatching the intro, I had a flashback of the toys I had from this show. Motorcycle/helicopter!
I never noticed the googly eyes on the Thunderbird radio controlled elevators before.
I see “last chance to pre-order” on games emails and think “so now I’ll just order it? ok”
Warlord have put extras in the box quite a few times. Not by mistake though as it had a note to say they had added the stuff. Ground zero games is also known to add stuff for free as a gesture on bigger orders.
I’ve had a few bonus goodies from Warlord (your first sprue’s free etc). Foundry are good for that too.
After two years of exclusively buying online, it’s been nice to get back into regular trips to the local game shops (we have several good ones here in Portland, Oregon). My shopping habits are pretty much the exact opposite of Ben’s — I haven’t found a good local source for hobby supplies so I tend to buy that online, but I’m back to making in-person impulse buys for board games. I’ve also sworn off Kickstarter unless it’s something from a small publisher that looks really interesting and unlikely to make it to retail.
With regard to miniatures games, we don’t have much variety in the US — for the most part it’s impossible to find anything locally other than Games Workshop, so I tend to buy direct from the publishers for the games I play (Great Escape Games, Knight Models, Crooked Dice, Footsore, Warlord, Lucid Eye). International shipping has got a lot more expensive, but the pound-to-dollar exchange rate has been very low for the last few years so that helps make up for it.
@brennon if you decide to go down he rabbit hole of Mezo America , Conquistadors and Sea Dogs, but were like myself knew very little about history , culture etc, there as come cheap intros to the 3 main mezo American Cultures , for a few quid on Amazon , or withoug spending a penny there are some very good two to 3 documentaries on Y-tube, [art of some guys look at the rise and fall of great civilisation’s which give you quite a good potted look at how they formed, a bit on there cultures and then what the Spanish(and everybody else) did to them .
Here in Seattle , Washington USA we really don’t have a hobby store anymore. We lost American Eagle’s over a decade ago and nothing really comes close to that wonderland . A lot of my hobby buying is now direct from the manufacture and to be honest I really don’t spend any where near as much as I used to. Just like Gerry said it helps the manufacturers out greatly and hopefully they can release more products and maybe give there employees a raise. ?
I just want to say thank you to OTT for the Golden Button . I really appreciate it a lot .
I just want to say that the Aztec kit from Wargames Atlantic is a fun kit to put together and paint .
I always used to shop at FLGS whenever possible. Now that we own our own, it’s even easier to lol. I’ve always appreciated the community and social side of gaming that a FLGS can offer, and that’s something we make a big focus of at ours. It’s great to have somewhere to meet like-minded people and share the hobby, and its a big plus small independent stores have over Amazon and such like, although I do appreciate the range, convenience, and competitive prices to be found online.