Battle Bunker Games

The owner, Chris, recently had a chat with me about my previous poor experience and apologized for that happening. Additionally, he said he enforced reprimands and also hired new staff. Though I haven’t been back to the store yet, his reaching out to me and addressing of the issue is the right way to do business and I appreciate it very much. I don’t live close to Battle Bunker anymore, so I probably won’t be back, but I think if this particular issue is resolved then this place deserves five stars.

It’s a card shop. Yeah they are going to be a bit disorganized… yeah they are going to give priority to the events… they have to pay the bills. And as such, yes things will be more expensive. It’s a brick and mortar location, a small business that has to pay bills just to keep a roof over the head and employs locals. It does not have the clout of mega stores that need not specialize, and yeah ok fair enough with the complaints of mess. But they are reorganizing, the people that run the place aren’t all geek-​arrogant and they do have an extremely wide selection of games and toys. Ok you can go buy the cards at Target for cheaper but good luck playing there, and that really is the logic behind supporting your local business. You can play there in comfort, ask questions and there are a ton of regulars who are helpful. My kid came to a release tourney with me and people were throwing their extra cards at her like crazy. Mostly commons yes, but she now has a ton of cards to play support in a variety of decks. My other daughter, even younger, had an awesome experience playing against more seasoned players who took the time to teach her mechanics and timing. These are good people, and the owner Chris accommodates a wide variety of people of different interests. I wanted to rate this four, but felt the need to balance out the unreasonable people giving it 1 when their description warranted a two or a three.

My hubs, our best friend, and I are all tabletop gamers and we had noticed Battle Bunker Games /​Gamer Guild. We were all in the mood to spend some cash on some gaming gear (the Hubs was looking for miniatures in particular) and decided to check this out as a possible gaming store close to home.
Pros:
It’s a gaming store in Pittsburg/​Antioch with a somewhat decent selection of games. There doesn’t seem to be a specialty here though there were more miniature games (Warhammer) than there was non-​miniatures. After poking around for a bit, we found some stuff we liked. There was a selection of Munchkin games as well as other board games too. (Not to interested in board games so I didn’t spend too much time in this section.)
It has a space for regulars to play games with the ability to buy snacks (the usual gamer grub — a steady diet of soda, candy and other junk food) from the store.
We didn’t have many problems with the customer service. Our BFF and I are both female gamers which means half the time, we get the, «Uh, do you know what this store is?» kind of look. Which we didn’t get this time, for which we were grateful for. We wanted to look around for ourselves though and didn’t ask for much help but when we had questions, we got decent answers.
Cons:
This place has «geek grime» BAD if you know what I mean. And if you don’t know what I mean, imagine an episode of Hoarders, except instead of hoarding animals or scary looking food way past expiration, they hoard geekery (in this case games and toys) strewn about with no discernible organization or standards for cleanliness.
Frankly, it’s the kind of place you visit and immediately want to run out and shower, while rocking back and forth muttering, «Unclean… unclean!!!»
And before anyone jumps on me for this, I’ll point out that this statement is in no way anti-​geek. i’m about as geeky as they come. I swear to you, ask anyone that is a real geek and I’ll bet you anything they know someone guilty of geek grime.
While Gamers Guild has seen better days. The floor looks like it had a carpet at some point in time; you can see patches of it here and there. The place is DUSTY, especially towards the back.
There’s product everywhere but it’s very poorly organized with the possible exception of some of their Warhammer stuff. There are plenty of shelves; it’s just unlikely that they’ve been assembled.
We took our four year old with us. Oblivious to the grime (remember: four year old + dirt = FUN!!) she had a wonderful time exploring and even found a Pokemon toy she wanted. We are the type of folks that WATCH EVERY STEP this kid takes. There was no way we were voluntarily going to let her out of our sights, especially with the amount of stuff they had out. But even with three adults watching her, we had trouble keeping track of her, with all the nooks and crevices she could hide in.
I know it’s a gaming store and not geared at kids but even accounting for that, the haphazard way things are stacked — not just product but unassembled shelves, too! — make it dangerous for just about anyone, not just small children. And if you’re disabled, forget it. There’s no way that anyone could maneuver with crutches in there, much less a wheelchair.
Even accounting for all of that, we really wanted to try to support our local geek population and tried to find stuff to buy. The lack of organization didn’t help any but eventually we found a book or two that we considered. But looking at the prices, we decided to pass. We’re not against a store making a fair profit and I’ll always choose a local book store over Amazon, especially when it comes to gaming books and assorted geekery, but the markup was just too much. We left without anything and were severely disappointed.
Summary
Battle Bunker Games /​Gamers Guild has the potential to be a really great store. The space is excellent, it’s easy to get to and with some updating of the merchandise — and OMG CLEAN THE STORE — this could be a real gem for East County gamers. But the state it is in now is just sad.

Battle Bunker Games and Gamer’s Guild are two sides of one big store. The staff greeted me when I walked in and offered to help me find stuff, but when I turned him down did not follow me or get all pushy. I went in on a Friday night, there seems to be a strong Magic community and from what the other patrons said is that it is pretty steady. I did see a couple younger clients although it seemed most of the Friday night clientele was at least high school aged, again not shocking since it was later on a Friday that I went. There were a couple role playing games in progress as well, which is nice to see since I might be in the market for a gaming group. I saw on their calendar that they also run leagues/​days for miniature games and board games, but haven’t checked those out yet. They have a massive stock of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K (new and collectables) but I was pleased to find War Machine and Malifaux too. They stock a wide variety of games and hobby items both current and collectors pieces. I am a nerd at heart and being able to find out of print role playing books that I haven’t been able to find for years had me practically bouncing in the aisles. The customers seemed happy and engaged both by the event coordinators and the staff. I am a big fan of being able to see the miniatures in person before buying so the massive collection was fun to ogle. I checked the paints based on Aaron K.‘s review, saw some that were dry looking but the packaging was shiny new so I asked about them… I was unfamiliar with the new Games Workshop Citadel Dry or Citadel Texture Paints, they are dryer looking than regular hobby paint-​they are designed to be that way. Which, by the way, was informationally helpful without turning into a pushy sales attack-​I hate pushy people. There is only one register and I did end up waiting in line behind the masses (on a break between Magic rounds) when I bought a soda and candy bar but the staff member was helping customers not ignoring them.
I will admit some of the packages were dusty although I wouldn’t go so far as to say grime covered. The «smell» was not really noticeable beyond the waft of pizza but I did follow in a delivery guy so that made sense, I am also not in the habit of sniffing random strangers. I have visited game stores all over the country and I would say that dust and pizza are pretty normal for a gamer store. I would not let my toddler or preschooler run free in the store, but honestly I don’t let them run amuck in any store-​even ones that are actually geared towards their age group. However, I am sure an kid who is actually old enough to fly solo would be fine. All in all I was pleased to find so many options with a knowledgeable and congenial staff, oh and not feeling like a zoo animal was a super bonus (being a female gamer gets mixed responses in stores). I was pleased to see several other female gamers present that night, which is always a good sign for me.

Where to begin? so i recently moved to Pittsburgh Antioch area and was happy to see a game /​hobby store here. man was i in for a shock. first time i visited the place it was in shambles, it looked as if some one was living in the place and everything was in boxes and cluttered about. the one person that was there explained that they had just moved in and that they were working on getting things set up so i didn’t mind the mess to much.
Fast forward a couple months and most the boxes have been replaced by tables with piles of old merchandise, and when i say old i mean some of it is 10+ years old and has the dust and crud on the boxes to prove it. the store is supposed to be a local game store specializing in miniature war gaming and obscure games one could only find in a local game store but they have a little bit of everything if you are willing to dig for it and pay the prices they are asking. my sons are just getting into warhammer 40K so we thought we might get a deal on some of the miniature’s they have in ziplock bags with no instructions or even documentation as to what they actually are but unfortunately that is not the case here. I find it obscene that a box set from 1998 with outdated miniatures and a rule book that is not even close to being usable would retail for what a new current set would retail for. don’t even get me started on the dried up paints they are selling.
customer service is another issue here, after waiting for the employee or maybe he was the owner to ring me up I finally asked for someone to help me. I was asked to wait a minute so he could finish helping someone at the other store to place an order. in real life this must be code for just stand there and wait as i have to finish the game i am playing on my laptop as that is exactly what he was doing.
to summarize:
horrible customer service
messy store with piles of old outdated stuff for outrageous prices
smells a little worse then what you would expect of a local game store
not safe for small children, if they don’t get lost in the rubble you can be sure they will either be eaten by the D&D players or at the least learn some interesting new words to take with them from the experience
Did i mention the smell?.
one final note, this store is somehow linked to gamers guild as you have to enter through battle bunker to get into gamers guild, not quite sure how the 2 are related but they are in the same shop.