Independant Wargames Shops

Woody's, a thriving model/gaming shop in Burgess Hill, Sussex

Sadly, these have almost become extinct over the last 10 years. A lot of this was due to the mentality of gamers who thought it acceptable to look at the products and use the game tables in the smaller shops, but do all their actual purchases online. The same gamers then moaned whenever "their" local shop ceased trading!

Thankfully, some of the larger manufacturers and distributors have changed their supplier agreements in the last couple of years. In many cases it is not possible to sell certain ranges (Warhammer being an example) through an online shop, unless you also have a physical "bricks and mortar" store. Many suppliers also restrict the levels of discounts available online. This is a good move, as it now means physical (and ofter smaller) independent stores can now be viable again. Its just a shame that big companies like GW took several years to realize that although online sellers with no overheads could sell masses of product on narrow margins, the lack of physical stores killed of the next generation of gamers (example - most kids get into Warhammer by visiting and playing games at a local store).

I'm back!

Well I'm slowly getting back into the hobby after a few months out - mainly caused by work and uni study. To kick things off, I've started offloading surplus items on Ebay. But I've hit a little snag. They are restricting the number of items I can sell until I get some recent star ratings. So for the next few weeks, expect a small number of auctions ;-(

But, they will be bigger items....

 

Engineering works over.

I've redone the site blog layout using a dynamic blog template supplied by blogger. This means you can select alternative layouts from the first item on the left of the navigation (menu) bar. There are 7 layouts ranging from a standard blog, through to something that resembles FaceBook's TimeLine layout. I've set the default layout to "Magazine", but just select another layout if you like and the layout will take a second or two to dynamically change within the browser or viewing device. 

I've tested the layouts on a Windows PC running Firefox, an iPad2 and an HTC Wildfire phone. They look OK and are navigable. So consider this as my contribution to accessibility and usability on the web ;-)

Expect strange things.....

I'm trying to integrate a photo gallery into the site, so there may be some periods of non-availability or strange page views over the next 48 hours.