CST Future at C&M

To be clear, I don't even mean for Brainstorm to start carrying GW product right away... I meant simply as rent for space to play, period. I know I probably meshed two messages, but every time I try to explain my thoughts I get nerd-raged for leaving a wall of text.

Bottom line - if we walked in there, saw they had space to set up tables and *maybe* a bit of closet space for terrain storage, I think we could feasibly go up to the guy and say "Hey, if we wanted to start a weekly game night, and everybody who plays at a table donates $5 for the space/time set aside, how would you feel?". Some nights it may be two dudes, some nights it may be 10. For a small business that can be a big help, though, if the space is otherwise empty.

Down the line it may be worth it for him to start stocking some stuff... but that would require us to seriously bulk out our "active" numbers. If we could regularly get 10 guys going each week? Then we could talk to him about stocking stuff. For now, we just need a place to play on the regular.

Plus, Saga.

i'll drive to DD

we could, eventually, talk to them about doing tandem tournaments on saturdays. While I couldn't lead that per se, I could help "be active" in anotehr way (ie, I'll be at work, but scenarios/rules/whatever playetesting, etc). By tandem, I mean they do a once-a-month saturday already, so... not on those days. Then again, they may just want to stick to that and keep other weekends free for other systems.

Alright, calling it now as a trial run. Wed Nights during the week. Also open to Saturday (night) games. If we can get off our couches and out of basements, and make this work for the next couple of months, we can start turning it into a real thing. Meantime, facebook group to start.

Ill let them know, Wednesday at DD it is.

Jeff and gang...

Here's the contact info for Brainstorm: www.facebook.com/brainstorm.comics?fref=ts

The owner's name is Sean. Awesome, awesome guy. He also does stand up comedy nights at Brainstorm in addition to Magic and D&D campaigns. (I've also played Pathfinder, Wreck-Age, and Munchkin there in the past, and have known of Heroclix and Call of Cthulu being played there too.)

If you're welcoming he'll game with you and just jump out to wait on customers.

With the new open format of ChicagoStyleTabletop, keep your 40K at Wanderer's/Dojo and do some events or join in some events at Brainstorm to build a relationship. I just watched the Dead of Winter episode of Wil Wheaton's TableTop and it looked like a really fun game and since you brought it up, it would be a perfect thing to do at Brainstorm on a slow night to connect with Sean and scope out the scene.

Russell is completely right that spreading out to multiple stores means spreading out your hobby spending. And ultimately that can mean either increasing your spending or each store getting less support per person.

Still, one thing I learned at NDG is that different events are going to draw different people. The Zombicide events I did brought in new people and had people walking out the door with product who weren't you guys. Haha. And that, in a way, long term would have taken pressure off of you guys. You know... if we lived in an alternate reality where things were completely different.

The other thing about setting up events outside of 40K is that its a less intense way to expose people to your group because when you're playing a 6 player game, a new player may not connect with one person in the group, but they might connect with another. 40K can suffer from "bad day" syndrome where you're stuck with one person for 2 hours who just isn't fun to play against because they are having a bad day. Multiplayer games offset that. Long story short, a person could come play Dead of Winter, like you all as people, and then dig out their army buried in storage. Ken Aponte at NDG was one of those guys. Haha.