Just recieved this email:

Hi there

I'm sorry to have to say this, but Maunsfeld Gaming is now closed for the foreseeable future, including tonight.

Maunsfeld Gaming is going into liquidation shortly; the company is not insolvent - there's enough assets to cover any debts - but the longer it carries on, the more debts will accumulate and it will achieve critical mass at some point. With the attendance falling, organisers cancelling events, terrain being stolen, staff leaving, not being able to stock Games Workshop products in the store and the quite breathtaking and totally unjustified vitriol on the internet from some quarters, it seems the venue is no longer wanted by most.

I know this is a major disappointment for those of you that still attend but I have no alternative but to call an end to it.

Someone may take the assets over and start it up again as a new business, or perhaps one of you wishes to do so, or maybe a consortium of you; if that is the case, please speak to the Insolvency Practitioner involved - Chris Brown of Hart Shaw at chris.brown@hartshaw.co.uk - and you can discuss that with him.

Note that I've been trying to sell it - even give it away - since January, as I realised fairly quickly that the venue was going nowhere with me in charge, but nobody's particularly bothered about taking it on and I'm just throwing money away by keeping it going.

I hope you all understand why this has happened and that it's not what I or our staff wanted. I wanted to sell the company, perhaps even the assets alone, so that someone can keep it going, but nobody seems to want to take it on, so that's that.

May I take this opportunity to thank all of you that have attended the club nights at the mill over the past few years; you have been superb and I hope you have all enjoyed the facilities we put so much effort and time (and money) in to provide.

Thank you.

Pre-Paid Attendance
If any of you believe you are owed monies for the pre-payment of club night attendance, please reply to this message and you will be refunded in due course.

Cheers

Rob Lane

for me, this is really sad and awful news, it was the best venue in the midlands by a long margin, and I've had some great times there

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Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

Shame, t'was a good venue...

Big shame, but the writing was on the wall from the moment that GW stopped them selling abroad and Rob didn't immediately fire three quarters of his staff to cut costs. Everything snowballed from there.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Until it rises again.

I think that a lot of people walked away from the club following the mess that Maelstrom was in and the bad feeling that created with the community at large. I anecdotally heard of a couple of events that were booked before Maelstron turned sour but which were scheduled after the mess, which cancelled.

Can the club not be linked to the 'were are not really Maelstrom but a totally different company, even though we use the almost identicle web shop layout and were the warehouse' new store to stay viable?

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I think that's what they tried doing anyway, as far as I understand, it was primarily the webstore which got into trouble with the GW embargo losing them thousands per week in business, they tried to separate it from the venue (although I think whether this was done in time is still being discussed with the lawyers) but obviously a lot of people lost money and this created a lot of bad feeling, which is difficult to cope with as a business

the blame game has already been debated all over the net and I won't go into it here, I have my own opinions of course.... I'm just really sad that it's closed, it was a great venue, full of character and really felt like a "home" of wargaming...

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Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

I think its a shame in many respects. They provided me good service. They were a great venue which I ejoyed on a number of occasions. And its always sad to see a hobby business go under.

On the other hand there's the £150 worth of product I had on order with Maelstrom when it went under, which was transferred to Maunsfield gaming, and I've not even had the respect of an email notifying me of this yet....

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Cheers,
Paul "TuffSkull" T.
http://hobbybrush.com - My New Website, with thousands of painted Mini Pics :)
http://hobbybrush.blogspot.com - My Hobby Blog
TuffSkull's notepad- My Old Blog on Wargames Wiki.

We went to Warhammer world last night as a stop-gap before going to a new venue, reminded me how much I dislike GW.

Usually they have a box of Epic terrain (enough for 8 tables) woods with 6mm scale trees, 12+ FW bunkers and 20+ nice buildings built up from ruins sprues, asked for them at the shop - 'sorry no SG terrain, you are welcome to bring your own'. On further enquiry they have just chucked the lot in a skip

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I also liked nick 'GW police' Bayton immediately doing the rounds as soon as he spotted us playing epic..... as far as I could tell, he wasn't even working!

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Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

I'm sure the old story for the Siege of the Emperor's palace diorama was much the same. Heck if Canon can set up an ebay profile to sell refurbished camera equipment, I'm sure GW could make a small mint selling unneeded terrain.

That's a recent development, because there was Epic terrain on some boards when I was there last, which was in 2012.

On the topic in question, it's sad to see a venue close down, but it did have an air of inevitability about it, once it became linked to the whole Maelstrom web store fiasco.

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