After reading the terrain rage thread, and the new 4x4 board in gw thread, I feel like I need to post about the recent changes in my Local GW. People seem to think that the GW stores have blanket policies across the board (they do for some things) but its not the case with how stores are run apart from rumour lockouts, prices, etc. The store manager gets to choose what goes on in that store in regards to a lot of things.

This is about the GW in middlesbrough, my local one. It is fairly large, has a 4x4 and three 6x4 tables, which can be arranged differently into 8x4 tables if nobodys painting. Thats the main room. This store has a big "back room" too, which a few years ago used to be open for gaming, but got closed because from what ive been told not enough people were coming in to use it and they wanted to gamers in the front of the store where they could be seen (obviously looks better people playing games out front where people walk past, than having what appears to be an empty store)

Lately, over the past years or so, ive noticed its always full. People are always playing games, often even during weekdays.

We recently got a new manager here, and hes made some drastic changes, all of which are positive to gamers. They used to have thursday as a late night opening, and that was it, 9 - 6 the rest of the week. Now, they are closing totally mon/tues. But opening late most other nights to allow more gaming, and they are building a bunch of new boards and re-opening the back room to expand the gaming area. They are putting on a few ranks for the hobby days/nights too where newer people meet to play, so they dont get smashed by power gaming veterans.

It all seems like a good change to me, more gaming focus, which will probably lead to more sales. I know I make a hell of a lot of impulse buys just having a wander round the store.

So yeah, its not all doom and gloom with changes to GW stores! If you have an issue with how things are been run, blame your Manager, not GW!