Warlord Games Wigan has been open for a couple of months now. Our goal was to create a hobby centre for the North West of England, which would be a great showcase for our games and miniatures, and could both introduce new people to our wonderful hobby, and act as a hub for the whole community. Kris, who project-managed the store opening and now runs it, has created a fantastic hobby venue and is continuing to run an exciting programme of events.
We thought it was a great time to get him to tell us all about what’s been going on in the store and what he has planned!
K – It’s been an exciting journey getting the store to where we are now, and from the beginning it has always been about more than just selling people our awesome range of miniatures.
The really rewarding thing has been watching communities grow around our games. We’ve gone from those first few weeks of finding our feet to bustling games nights, full tournaments, hobby days, terrain building, and even recording our own battle reports. We’ve written custom scenarios and event packs, tried new things, learned what works and, most importantly, started to see the store develop its own community.
So, with quite a lot to cover, the easiest place to start is at the beginning.
Building a Games Night
One of the first things I added to the calendar was a regular games night. We deliberately kept it unfocused. Rather than making it a Bolt Action night or a Konflikt ’47 night, we wanted people to feel welcome regardless of what they wanted to play.
In those early weeks we guaranteed people a game. If somebody arrived without an opponent, one of us would pull an army out of the cabinets and get involved. A few months later, one of the nicest measures of how far the store has come is that we don’t get to play nearly as much!
These days, the nights largely run themselves, with regulars arranging games and plenty of Bolt Action and Konflikt ’47 appearing on the tables. We still occasionally lend out one of the store armies to help someone get involved in a pick-up game, but increasingly our job is simply providing the space for the community to do its thing.
From Games Nights to Organised Play
Naturally, Bolt Action and Konflikt ’47 also found their way onto our event calendar as regular Organised Play tournaments, and we now aim to host a monthly event for each system.
Our first events were capped at eight players across four tables. We’ve recently squeezed in a fifth gaming table by converting our hobby space on event days, and are working towards a sixth, which will give us room for 12-player events.
And yes, technically that means we could get 24 people into a doubles event…
That said, one of the lessons we’ve learned along the way is that bigger isn’t automatically better. When we first opened, I had plans for temporary tables that could push some event weekends to 16 players. In practice, we’ve realised that it’s much more important for the store to remain comfortable and be somewhere people actually want to spend an entire day. We’d rather run a great 10 or 12-player event than cram a few more tables into every available corner.
Although that does raise the question of whether we might eventually have to take some of our larger events off-site…
OP: More than just Tournaments!
To us, Organised Play is more than just tournament play. It’s about adding structure and giving people an answer to the question of “If I buy into this, will I get to play it?” and as part of that, we have hosted painting and hobby activities, built terrain, run our Platoon Box Challenge, and started looking for ways to get some truly epic games onto the tables.
A few of the team are currently working on Epic Hail Caesar armies, while the approaching release of Zulu! has given us a perfect excuse to start thinking about appropriately sized and themed terrain for some very different battlefields.
We’ve been trying to share some of that journey through our Facebook page too, through our always 100% serious posts about what we’re working on in the store. (If this store lark doesn’t pan out, the lads have got bright futures as comedians… -ed.)
Taking the Store Online
That has led to another experiment: trying to make our online content feel a little more like actually visiting the store. We’ve started playing around with different formats, including short videos and our first video battle report, recorded from a game played right here in Wigan.
The aim isn’t for everything we post to simply tell you what’s on sale or remind you about the next event. We want the page to be somewhere you might actually stop scrolling for a few minutes because there’s something fun, interesting or useful there.
In many ways that’s the same philosophy we’ve had for the physical store: Give people a reason to come through the door, give them somewhere they enjoy spending their time, and hopefully build something they want to come back to.
What’s Next?
We’re still learning what the Wigan store can be.
There are more events we want to try, more systems we want to get onto the tables, more terrain we probably don’t have room to store, and plenty of ideas for hobby and video content that we haven’t had a chance to make yet. But perhaps the most exciting part is that increasingly those ideas aren’t just coming from us.
The community that has grown around the store is starting to shape what happens here too. People are arranging games, suggesting events, bringing in projects, and giving us reasons to try things we hadn’t originally planned.
A few months into this experiment, that feels like a pretty good place to be.
And we’re only getting started!
Want to check out Warlord Games Wigan? Their Facebook page is a great place to get in touch!
