"good wargaming store in London ?" Topic

I will be in London for a couple of days and I was wondering if anyone had any recommendation for any gaming store one should visit over there ?

regards,

Francisco

There are no specifically wargaming stores in London.

There are a couple of reasonably general game shops:

Orcs Nest
Dark Sphere
Leisure Games

There's Navwar but that is out at Seven Kings and only opens on the whim of the proprietor.

Thank you.I never knew about Dark Sphere or Leisure Games.

Unfortunately you're about 25years too late for the heyday of wargame shops in London.

The Orc's Nest has a good selection of stuff upstairs.

Lots of plastic boxed sets, rule books. Also a nice range of Board War Games last time I was there.

haha… this is terrible! What are you guys doing over there :) …

ok , I guess I'll look into those and certainly Orc's nest…

thanks guys…

cheers
Francisco

In general it's way too expensive to have a wargames shop in the UK due to business rates etc

Your best bet is to see if there are any shows on when you visit.

See newarkirregulars.org.uksubheadingdwight shrute

heroes and legends in Croydon

It depends what you are after, but I would recommend Leisure Games, although is in North London and not central. link

Orcs Nest is central London orcsnest.com
Dark Sphere is just south of the river, not far from the Imperial War Museum darksphere.co.uk

Orcs Nest does have a lot of stuff. Not all fantasy/SF.

I remembered a generalist games shop opposite the British Museum, Playin' Games, which has rather depressingly shut down according to a google search.

A trip to London for me used to include the best part of a day going from Games Shop to Games shop, all of which had different stock to drool over. It used to be a real highlight. Curse teh interwebs.

Interwebs nothing. Curse the real estate shortage in London.

I remember looking at ads for flats in a real estate window and thinking "prices are high but not insane…" until I realized the rents listed were by the week.

A few years since I've been to Londinium but the main problem in the rest of the country isn't retail space as there are so many empty shops you can rent one for buttons.

Leisure Games is excellent but it mainly does board games and role playing games but you can get the rulebooks for the more popular wargames and there are some figure sets and paints for the big name games.

Dark Sphere I like a lot but, again, you're looking at Games Workshop, Battlefront, Warlord, the Perrys, etc. but it also has a wide stock of paint, miracle dip and brushes.

For a UK wargaming shopping trip, you need to head northwards to the Midlands. Nottingham and Stafford in particular.

I'd not heard of Leisure Games but then it's so far north it's almost in the Midlands!

you can rent one for buttons

It's the business rates that are driving shops out of business in our part of not-London. New businesses get a brief Rate "holiday" – not free of rates but at a reduced level. But when they full charge kicks in, a lot can't survive and end up empty/charity shop/coffee shop. Rents may be low but rates are not.

Doug

Leisure Games is worth a visit for rpg stuff. It's an easy ride to Finchley Central on the Northern Line and then a couple of minutes walk.

I second the suggestion for Orcs Nest and when you are done there, Forbidden Planet is close by at 179 Shaftesbury Avenue. Not a gaming store as such but they have lots of boardgames, scifi and fantasy books and other fun stuff.

Leisure Games has been there for decades, a large proportion of my boardgames came from there.

As above, sadly London is a wargames shop desert these days, not like 80s. To find real games shops you need to head away from the overpriced Southeast.

Up here we have two wargames shops, two model shops (three, four? – two I regularly go to anyway) plus the usual GW presence.