Pretty soon, you’ll have the opportunity to grab a copy of the New Underworlds which I am incredibly stoked about. There will be a new core box, and eventually 16 old warbands and 2 additional new ones available for purchase with updated fighter cards and warscrolls. (All existing warbands will have free rules available, so don’t stress too much on that front). You’ll likely have a rash of newer people getting into the game as well as some returning ones popping in to see what the new game is like, and many of those people are going to want to buy things too. It absolutely behooves you and your local community to make these purchases at your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) and NOT online from some bulk retailer, even if it saves you a couple bucks. Let’s talk about why.

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This article is in the Community Growth category which aims to help people build a local scene for the game, improve the quality of life for their play group, and retain the players that they have already brought in. Supporting your FLGS absolutely assists in all of these aims. So let’s chat about the concept of a FLGS, or Friendly Local Gaming Store, and why you should spend your time and money there instead of elsewhere. It’s a good economic thing to do for your community, but it’s also a good thing for you to do from the perspective of expanding the number of players available to you, availability of product, and success of your events and community as a whole. Want to play Underworlds more often with more people? It may cost 10% more to buy stuff in person, and you won’t see the impact overnight, but it’s real.

Visibility to Other People

One of the biggest benefits to buying from and playing at a local store comes in the form of being seen and improving your odds for new player recruitment. If you and your buddies play in your living room, that’s all well and good, but the group can only expand as far as you’re able to invite people who you already know. If you play in a public space, more people will see the game as ‘something people actually play’ and have a greater interest in trying it out themselves. If you’re playing at your FLGS, you know the people seeing you will be somewhat local and already interested in gaming in general. Whether that interest is in board games, card games, or miniatures games, there’s something in Underworlds that can draw them in. Here’s my post on why it’s such a great game, and how just about anybody can find an aspect they vibe with. Best case they watch for a while, get your contact info, and come out to play a test game at some point, but even if all that happens is they think ‘oh, people play WHU here’ you’ve planted a seed.

I’ll admit I bought the original Shadespire box after coming in to a FLGS to buy a 40K product and saw people playing Steelheart’s Champions vs Garrek’s Reavers in the store and having a great time. I didn’t talk to them, and didn’t buy Shadespire that day, but I did eventually dive in and it led to the spot I’m in now. That happened because of visibility and playing in public, which can have effects even if you the players don’t see them. Even if all you’re doing is buying your toys or cards in person, it will show ‘people play this game’ and the shop might be able to tell others that even when you’re not around.

Sense of Community

When you play at, meet with friends at, and buy your models and cards at a community location, you become a part of that community. You meet other regulars, even if they’re playing other games, and you become familiar with the staff in a way that can bring you a sense of belonging. It also increases your opportunity to network with those other regulars – maybe they play Underworlds with you a few times, and you try their game out a few times. You both might benefit, and even if neither of you dives all the way in to each others’ favorite games, you still strengthen community ties, make friends, and expand your circle of people to include their friends who might be Underworlds curious. Your FLGS likely has a Facebook page, Discord server, or something similar, and participating in that can do much the same for you. Buy enough stuff at the store and be friendly and there’s a chance you and your group could even earn a discount on future purchases, and the store manager could reach out to you in advance for preorders to make sure you and your group get what you want.

Easier Promotion/Advertising

If you’re an active member of a store community and are on good terms with the staff, you will have a much easier time getting the word out and recruiting people for any tournaments you might hold, leagues you might run, or other events like a painting contest. The store can promote for you on their social media, you can have banners/flyers/handouts at the register, and can work together to bring people in. Some stores have official calendars you can be added to, and ultimately the store’s clientele can be a ‘captive audience’ for any promotional stuff you’d like to do. Somebody buying their minis online and running events in a private space has to do all of that work themselves, not to mention that it’s harder to convince somebody new to come out to a Kevin’s garage for an event than it would be to meet at a public space like an FLGS.

You Can’t Play WHU on eBay or Amazon

Did you save a couple bucks on the newest warband at an online retailer? Congrats. Buy 10 and you’ll have saved enough for an 11th!

You and all your pals do this for long enough and that FLGS can’t afford to keep carrying your product line since it isn’t moving units. That keeps up long enough and they can’t afford to keep the lights on at all and will have to cut hours, downsize, or close altogether. Now where are you going to play? Where are you going to meet new people, and grow your community? Sure hope they can Prime Day you a play group and a positive third place to hang out at.

Facetiousness aside, pay your FLGS. You spend a little more, yes. But the store can stay open, the hobby can thrive, and community can persist. We spend enough time online as it is and the economic struggles of the FLGS are absolutely worsened by your desire to save a handful of dollars. I’ve done it too, so I don’t mean to come across as holier-than-thou, but we as a community should be mindful of the effects here. You spend a few percent more on models, paint, glue, etc, but get a physical place for all this to happen and therefore a better community and play group as I mentioned above. If you don’t have a purchase to make that day for a game you play, lots of places sell snacks and surely there’s something you can do to keep them afloat. 5 dollars on a few cans of Baja Blast is what my group does between releases! More than worth it – think of it as the price of admission and avoid being a squatter who plays there but buys elsewhere. Realistically, you’re paying yourself in the end. And you get to drink tasty sodas.

Small Local Business is Good for Your Local Area

When you buy locally, the money you spend stays local. According to this Michigan State assessment, purchases made at a locally owned business have 27% of the revenue leave the local area, but nonlocally owned stores have 57% of the revenue leave. The more revenue that stays in your zip code, the more people in your zip code get paid, and thus can turn around and spend again – increasing job stability, wage growth, tax revenue for your local government and services, and generally improving the overall economic well-being of your home town. The store workers and store owner live near you and buy near you as well. Even though some of the revenue goes to England for GW prime (even better for the UK play groups), if the FLGS you’re shopping at employs people who live with you, your community benefits. Buying stuff online means ALL the money leaves your local scene, and while Jeff Bezos might be local to MY area, he doesn’t even spend here. Even I don’t benefit in that scenario. That, and the whole ‘ungodly wealth transfer to ten individuals is destroying the planet in an environmental sense and is a direct cause of human strife worldwide’ thing.

Store Owners & Staff (Generally) Care About Games and Players

They call it the Friendly Local Game Store because it’s a friendly place with friendly people. Somebody who put in a ton of time, effort, and personal financial investment/risk into opening a small business chose the games business because it is something they care about. There are other businesses with better profit margins, greater reach, and more ‘growth potential’ – if they were looking to make truckloads of money a vicious entrepreneur would choose something different. Your FLGS operator likes games. They are your people. The person behind the register might just be looking for a paycheck, but they could work a dozen other places and chose a game store. These people are your friends – they like the same stuff you do, or close enough, and they are interested in you having fun, getting games, and expanding your play group. Who knows, they might even play with you! Giving them your money and playing at their store helps them, and in turn they’ll help you. That’s not something you can say about an online retailer.

Quotes From People Smarter Than Me

While working up this article, I came across a pandemic-era roundtable discussion on Goonhammer, which you can read here in its entirety. I felt like they made a ton of great points from perspectives that differ pretty widely from my own, and it’s worth a read. If you’d rather not, I have copy/pasted some choice quotes below about what FLGS means to people and why to support them.

• I have always said that the cardboard and plastic costs the same whether I shop online or in store; when I shop in-store I’m paying for all the other things the store provides.
  
• The FLGS isn’t just about a single business, it’s about the network of companies and creatives that use it as their point of contact, and someone workspace, that produce the games everyone loves.
  
• LGS are vital for this, and the few that remain here in the wake of chain stores are becoming fewer and far between post-pandemic; so while I might indeed pay a few dollars more for a board game than I can on Amazon or CSI, the investment is, in some small way, in hopes of one day getting to actually enjoy my miniature hobbying again.
  
• Community. Above absolutely everything else, Community. The best stores I’ve ever been in aren’t the ones with the greatest range of stock, or the best locations, they’ve been the ones with the most vibrant and passionate communities
  
• Without an FLGS, that would not have been possible. Gaming is so often a hobby that takes place in peoples’ basements and garages, and without a centrally-located establishment for people to meet and mingle, you’ll definitely miss out on what might very well turn out to be life-long friends.
  
• A Lot of these stores are run by people that did not get into the business to be rich, let’s be honest, B&M shops are not hugely profitable. What they provide is an experience that we hit on in our nostalgia section, all of us have some kind of experience like this and without your FLGs you risk losing these experiences for the next generation of gamers which will eventually just kill your communities. Finding places to run events will be very hard coming out of covid with rising rental prices and with shops disappearing this could lead to a real hard time for TO’s, especially if you also can not find prize support via these shops anymore.
  
• If people want spaces to game, to hold a product in their hands before they buy it, for there to be a local events scene, then you have to spend some money at your LGS.
  
• The margins in gaming stores are never amazing, and it’s not a sector that pays well, but the people who do it, do it out of a deep love for the hobby. You’d be surprised how many stores are kept afloat by personal investment from the owner.
  
• Think the idea that spending money is the only way to support a LGS is wrong. Word of mouth is really important too, as are things like SEO results; google reviews of your favorite stores can be a huge turning point these days, and it’s probably easier now to find a new store to shop at or play at (assuming they are local to you) than it ever was, but I think a lot of people neglect to consider these as ways to support their local businesses!
  
• I’ve seen it happen in front of me; our local comic book store juggernaut has swallowed smaller, game centric stores with vast ranges of products and turned them into carbon copies of their flagship stores that only carry Magic, Pokémon, some GW, and very entry level board games. It’s important to do what you can, within reason, to protect the FLGS you have, because they are not guarantees.
  
• Amazon doesn’t provide you with tables to play at, with a neutral ground for your friends to all meet up without having to juggle house cleaning or other schedules to make space, and doesn’t support smaller publishers or products as readily.
  
• I myself would never have got into 40k if it were not for a local shop having these products on their shelves and randomly seeing them
  
• You’ll be surprised at how a little conversation every now and then can go a long way toward getting the inside scoop on new releases, getting someone to hold a limited edition copy for you, and making sure the store is supporting the games you want to play.

Wrap

There are dozens of other reasons to support your local store financially – even if that’s a tough sell for you now even just being in the store physically can make the sense of community more apparent and tell passers-by and passers-through that ‘this is a place people hang out at, play games, and have fun’. If a store is dead empty, the customer who does wander through is probably less likely to buy something or hang around. Restaurants seat people by the front windows for a reason! If you’re there with your group, it’s a more inviting place, their sale odds are better, and more gaming enters the world. Which, after all, is good for everyone – a rising tide lifts all ships.

Now get out of your house, toss a coin to your friendly local game shop, and don’t forget to spend your glory too (assuming glory spending is still a mechanic, anyway)!