| Archive for Forum.ChesterGames.co.uk The official forum for the Chester Games Club |
| dead |
News from th HangmanHi allran into Gary the other day and had a quick chat. The deal to turn it into a wine bar has fallen through, the other party has pulled out. Gary is now looking to purchase the hangman outright, he should know by the end of this week. He wants us back in there. Discuss, but remember open forum, anything that makes us look bad or gets personal will be deleted. Ian |
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| Teflon Billy |
I vote no.
Straightforwardly, irrelevant of the other 'stuff', The Railway Inn is simply a better, bigger, brighter venue. On those grounds it's a no-brainer (IMHO). |
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| xorsyst |
I personally prefer the ambience of the Hangman, despite the Railway Inn having better lighting. I think a better question would be - at what weekly rate would it be worth moving back to the Hangman? If he let us have the room for free, should we return? | ||||||
| paz |
In general I like the Railway Inn, but I have two reservations:
1) The music - can we get a general agreement that they're not going to pump cheesy pop music into our rooms? 2) It may just be because I've been in the smaller room both weeks, or maybe we have more people, but we do seem to be slightly more cramped. Having to work round the space, including perching things on corners of tables, led to the 'coke incident' on Monday. 
PS: xorsyst, your new avatar looks like Chris Moyles. |
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| xorsyst |
Paz: That's because my avatar is Chris Moyles 
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| Teflon Billy |
How about he pays us? /flippant
Was the music thing just the Bank Holiday? I didn't notice it the week before (may just be me of course). I am in general agreement - probably just a case of asking them.
Why?...why would you do that? Can we have a separate thread on offensive avatars?  .
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| xorsyst |
I think the main problem is that most of the space is taken up by the pub's tables. It must be nice to get the area by the dartboard with one (or two!) of our white tables, but otherwise the tables are a little too small for some games. I'd hate to have to not play a game because of small tables. |
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| bikermatt |
I vote hangman, at least it's going to stay a decent proper pub now, stupid winebars | ||||||
| Liebasket |
Couldn't agree more. I did like the Hangman when we went there, but I stronly vote no for the following reasons: 1) Drink selection is unpredictable at the Hangman, and is expensive. Significantly more expensive during race season which is about to be upon us. 2) One minute it seems fine it's on, the next it's unsure at the Hangman. I don't like that uncertainty, and would rather put it behind us. 3) Having already agreed to move it may put is in a bad position if we appear flaky and have to move from the Hangman again, if say, it closes down. 4) The lighting and cleanliness is much nicer in the Railway. 5) For those of us with vehicles, parking is way easier near the Railway. You don't have to walk far, and aren't blocked in, like you often are in the Hangman car park. With regards to music, when we popped in the other day they mentioned that they'd be quite keen on letting us put whatever we wanted through the PA on our side. Or nothing at all. If this vote was AV, I wouldn't put down a second preference. |
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| Marla |
Railway Inn. I like being able to see! | ||||||
| metagaia |
Quite simply the railway inn seems to have a nicer ambiance. The main downside seems to be the table issue for which we might need to plan ahead of schedule who will need big and small tables (board gamers and RPGers respectively).
Regarding the music issue, I would much rather have cheesy pop than whatever seems to get distorted through the floor on the open mic night. Drinks (alcoholic) seem to be about the same price. |
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| dead |
The music wasnt a problem on the first night was it? I didnt notice it at least once we got going.
I understand that there was a problem with how the speakers are wired that means they cant turn them down just for us, it has to be the whole pub. Keep it coming. Ian |
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| Liebasket |
Coke at £1 each is a bargain at the Railway too. And it kinda means that over a three hour game I feel happy getting one per hour, rather than getting a single pint of coke for £2 and trying to make it last all night! 
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| Marla |
That was my point from earlier. Don't steal my points. |
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| Shiny |
there is always mitosis... 'O-O'Trendy roomy sexy spooky somewhat unreliable underlit bar with bad drinks but always has room for my cakes etcvs new comforting accomodating pub, better positioned for travel, a lot better temperature control with real plentiful better value drinks and a nice beer garden (really enjoyed it last monday in the sunshine) young hip me wants the hangman, bitter aging me likes the railway i will happilly go wherever the majority chooses 
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| dead |
Steal each others points if you agree with them. I want to know what people think about the place. We have 4 of the big tables, Can we not pile some of the pub tables in a corner to make space for them with the bigger games? It just means that the GM(or one of their players) needs to be a bit organised about picking a space. If it becomes an issue should we look at a standard layout each week and have people book their tables? Ian |
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| metagaia |
Re: there is always mitosis... 'O-O'
Where the hangman always shined/shines is it's weekend nights rather than the Monday crawl. As a gaming venue the Railway is the better choice, as a night out, the hangman is still viable. EDIT: Shone! gah, my grammar has died! |
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| 52 |
The Railway Inn, it's nice being able to see for one thing. I also like how I can afford to buy a drink while I'm out instead of having to wait till I get home because sometimes five hours is a bit much.
Another plus for them is how they actually seem to want us there. And really? The music? It seems kinda petty complaining about that since you could barely hear it when everyone got started |
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| paz |
Phil & I could barely hear the GM over it, so we asked to have it turned down. I think it depends where you sit too. |
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| TornadoCreator |
I vote the Railway Inn without hesitation. It's brighter and easier to run games in, we have our own bar so we don't need to pile downstairs to order drinks, the staff are more friendly, the toilets are actually clean and they serve real coca-cola rather than crap the Hangman serves (also the Hangman staff where barefaced enough to lie and say it was really coca-cola when I asked, I don't like liars). It's no contest in my opinion.
The only issue I have is I like Loura's cakes, but you know what, I recon we could get the staff to agree to let her bring the cakes if we asked nicely. They are after all very accomodating people who have been nothing but nice to me and will probably realise eating cake will make you more thirsty, so we'll probably drink more. It's worth a shot at least.
When we went there on the first week to check it out we where told we can request the music be turned off if we want and they'll only play it in the other room at which point we'll barely be able to hear it. Becides, we could barely hear the music anyway over the other games which are much louder. We're more of a sound polutant to eachother than the music would ever be.
We do have slightly less space granted but not by much, but we also had a larger turnout this week and the coke incident could have been avoided if we used our tables (one went unused) rather than trying to make do with the less suitable tables in the pub already (we've been told they'll put their tables into storage if we ask). It was an oversight on our part, but we can all learn from our mistakes. I think Ians idea about booking tables is a good idea, especially as we have some games like my own, with 6 regular players, one drop-in-drop out player and a GM which need a fair bit of space so there's only really two places we can go. One final point. The Railway Inn actually wants us there and is happy to have us. The Hangman wants us only when it's convenient and may well kick us out next month when another offer to buy comes up. Quite frankly I'm not prepared to trust an establishment that keeps flip-flopping over it's future. We're not a small society, if we leave the Railway Inn only to have the Hangman kick us out again next month (or decide that someone else is more profitable, remember we've been forced to cancel one week before because another fuctions where given preference over us despite us being long time customers), we could find ourselves without a venue at all. I hope I've made my opinion well and I hope our new venue gathers good support because quite frankly, before the move, myself and a couple of my group where considering splitting off from the Hangman anyway because we found the place really rather unappealing. (I defy you to go into those mens toilets and disagree with me). |
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| paz |
Don't get me wrong, I prefer the Railway Inn. I was just pointing out a couple of issues that were experienced last week. | ||||||
| Marla |
We've only been there a couple of weeks so a few teething problems are to be expected really. | ||||||
| Kamikazegerbil |
I'm for the Railway Inn. The light really is a big seller for me and I like the ambience. The table one is something I feel will improve as we get used to things (though I agree organising ourselves a little can't hurt). And the music isn't something I have much to say about as I've not had problems.
And I admit I have a hard time trusting the Hangman after how things have gone the last few weeks. Plus as others have said bouncing back and forth could cause us more problems in the long run. |
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| Jimmy |
The coke issue came about because I had sorted out an area for my game and then was asked to swap later during the night to an area I had not had time to prepare.
Knowing how long my session was meant to last for I did not have the time to set up the area to best suit the game considering it was getting close to 8. I think the main problem with tables last week was cause by the MTG tournament being so spread out - with this unlikely to be happening every week we should be fine if we choose to stay. PS I vote that if we do stay we ask for no music - the problem may be localised to one spot but is was a distinct problem there. |
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| Teflon Billy |
Sorry if the MtG Booster caused problems.
It won't happen again until probably 29th August I would imagine. And we can take note of the tables issue for the future. If I recall we had similar table teething problems at the Hangman: http://chestergames.myfreeforum.org/ftopic1502-0-asc-0.php Probably just a case of taking the initiative and sorting out tables at the start of the evening, i.e getting all the white tables out & logically putting the pubs tables together where we can. This may become an issue we need to keep an eye on, there's usually an upsurge in membership over the Summer. I'm probably now tangenting from the original question though, so any further discussion would probably need its own thread. |
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| xorsyst |
I'd like to say that I still think the Railway inn is the better choice, even though I prefer the "feel" of the hangman. To answer a couple of points:
1. I dunno what the rest of you drink, but John Smiths is 10p dearer in the railway inn than the hangman. 2. I defy tornadocreator - I have no problem with the mens toilets in the hangman. 3. I don't think the music will be an issue, providing they are happy to have it down/off. 4. We'll have to see how tables go. I agree we can probably keep on top of it, but at the moment this is my biggest worry. |
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| TornadoCreator |
Are you serious? The last time I used those toilets there where smears of faecal matter on the inside of the cubicle wall, as if someone had wiped with their fingers. The floor was covered in urine, enough that at least two people had completely missed the urinal, the cubicle seat was stained and the lock for the door broken, there was no toilet paper and there was vomit in the left hand half of the urinal. I would struggle to find a toilet LESS well kept. Granted this was one of its worse days but at no point has the toilet been what I would consider clean, I've never seen any toilet paper in there and it always looks like someone has recently peed all over the floor. Maybe I'm only going in at the worst possible times, but I somehow doubt that. |
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| xorsyst |
Wow. Were we using the same toilet? I've never seen it in that bad a state, and I did use it most nights. I've seen toilet paper in there, I've not seen urine on the floor. It wasn't massively clean, but didn't seem worse than most pub toilets to me. |
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| TornadoCreator |
To be fair, I've used the toilet at the Hangman only three times and not at all in the last few months, I tended to avoid it after the last time for obvious reasons, but I've never seen it in a good condition. I could have just seen it at it's worst and it may well have improved since then but I'd rather not risk it. Rob and I used to make a point of going to the Square Bottle before club and buying one drink so we could use the toilet there and wouldn't need to use the toilet at club. |
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| Milly |
Aye, I've never seen the Hangman toilets in a good condition, compared to those of most pubs I've been to recently.
I've not had chance to come over yet, due to having so much on my plate recently, but from what I've heard, and from the several times I've been into the Railway Inn in the past with friends for a few drinks, I'd prefer it over the Hangman any day. |
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| metagaia |
My experience of the hangman toilets is in-between Tornadocreator's and Xorsyst's, plus, for us guys, not having to go upstairs and downstairs every time we need to is a major bonus.
I vote railway all the...way... |
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| xorsyst |
A Major bonus? My goodness man, how small is your bladder? |
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