Tabletop · models · RC

Build it by day, play it till late.

Sprue & Counter is a hobby shop with a room that fills every evening. Open tables share the floor with a kit wall and a paint rack, and the counter crew know the difference between a starter kit and a mistake.

See what's on this weekPlan your first visit

Everything here starts as parts. Including Friday night.

20SPRUE & COUNTER123

This week

  • Open Tables TuesdayTue 6:00pm
  • Learn to Play NightWed 6:30pm
  • Trading-Card LeagueThu 6:30pm
Full board

The board

The room does something every night.

The room has five tables and a wall of games you can play before you buy, on a schedule you can join having never played anything. Check the board, then ring to save a seat or just walk in.

League night around the folding tables, the whole room laughing under pendant lamps.

Open Tables Tuesday

Tonight

Anything off the library wall. Staff will walk you through the rules if you ask, and the arguments are self-serve.

Tue 6:00pmFree

Tables left: 3

Learn to Play Night

First-timers welcome

One easy game, taught from zero. Never played anything? Perfect.

Wed 6:30pmFree

Tables left: 5

Trading-Card League

Week four of the Counter Cup season. Casual pods run beside ranked.

Thu 6:30pm$5 buy-in

Tables left: 2

Minis & Paint Night

Bring a project or start one at the rack. There are loaner brushes on the bench.

Fri 7:00pm$8 with paint

Bench seats: 6

Strategy Saturday

First-timers welcome

The long boxes come out for three-hour games, with snacks in reach and someone to coach the rules.

Sat 5:00pmFree

Tables left: 1

Sample board shown · the real one updates every Monday

Save me a seatSee the full week

New on the wall

Landed this week

A dozen picks at most, chosen by hand and never the whole delivery. If something here is your whole personality, ring us and it goes behind the counter.

Restock day: Thursday

Harbour Nine

Tabletop

A tile-laying race for two to five. Teaches in ten minutes, argues for forty.

1:72 Coastal Patrol Boat

Models

A weekend hull with photo-etch rails. Ask Dev for the right cement.

Counterweight

Card games

Draft and stack until it topples. The box is small. The table talk is loud.

Crawler Chassis Mk II

RC

Hobby-grade with metal gears. First upgrade fitted free at the bench.

Speed-dry basecoat dozen

Paints

Twelve pots, the exact shades Friday's paint night reaches for.

The Long Meadow

Tabletop

Quiet, pastoral, ruthless. Our staff league has banned it twice.

Departments

Five shelves, spoken fluently.

Each wall is run by someone who plays it, builds it or races it on their own time, so the shelf notes are written at the counter rather than pasted off a box.

Tabletop

Shelf-out boxes, a library wall you can play free, and picks sorted by the table you are buying for.

Promise: never the wrong first game

Card games

League staples and living sets, kept singles-free by design. The season board hangs above this shelf.

Promise: restocks held by name

Minis & paints

A rack you can trust under lamplight and primers that match it, run by a bench crew who swear by thin coats.

Promise: loaner brushes at paint night

Models

Kits from a first snap-fit to brass-railed weekends, with the cement, blades and balsa to finish them.

Promise: stuck mid-build, bring it in

RC

Hobby-grade cars and parts, beginner classes explained straight, and a pit bench that fixes what it sells.

Promise: first tune-up on the house

A wall rack of round paint pots arranged in colour order beside the cutting-mat table.
A staff member explaining a board game to two smiling first-timers at a shop table.
Wednesday, ten past six: the weekly learn-to-play, mid-rules.

First visit

Never played anything? Perfect.

The first visit is the hard part of this hobby. You do not need a group or a rulebook, and you do not need a plan. People come in alone and leave with a Thursday.

Your first visit · player aid

  1. 1

    Come in

    Walking in is free and you do not have to join anything or prove anything. The door sticks a little in winter, so push it.

  2. 2

    Tell us what you like

    Films, puzzles, building things, beating your brother. Any answer works, and it is the whole brief we need.

  3. 3

    We teach, you play

    A staffer sets a game on a free table and stays until the rules feel like yours.

  4. 4

    Take one home if you love it

    Or do not. The tables are free either way, and the game will still be on the wall next week.

Plan a first visit

Kids welcome · Sunday tables

Staff picks

The shelf talks.

Shelf-talkers, exactly as we clip them to the shop shelves: who it is for, and why the person recommending it means it.

Marnie behind the glass counter, sorting dice into a wooden tray under a task lamp.

Marnie

Counter · tabletop

Harbour Nine. I have lost the harbourmaster tiebreak three weeks running and I am still recommending it.

For: the table of six

Dev painting a miniature under a magnifier lamp at the workbench.

Dev

Minis & models

Counterweight. The only tower game where the collapse feels like your own fault. Paint the pieces and thank me later.

For: the kid who builds

Ray at the pit bench working on a radio-controlled buggy beneath a pegboard of tools.

Ray

RC & repairs

Crawler Mk II. Metal gears, honest axles. The kerb outside has taken four of these and lost every time.

For: the returning hobbyist

The counter

The counter is the other half of the shop.

Anyone can post you a box. The counter does what a box cannot. It gives you advice with a face on it and a box put aside with your name on it, and a bench that gets things running again.

Ring & hold

Call and it goes behind the counter with your name on it for a week. You do not need to put a deposit down, and that is the whole procedure.

Special orders

If a distributor lists it, we can usually land it by Thursday. You pay when it arrives, not before.

Repairs & servicing

RC and models, and the odd heirloom train. Straight quotes, and if it is not worth fixing we say so.

Gift-wrap & gift help

Tell us the person, the occasion and the budget, and walk out wrapped. Receipts slip out clean for swaps.

A bright fluoro radio-controlled car shell on a work stand at the tool bench.
The pit bench, first Saturday of the month.
The hold shelf behind the counter stacked with labelled boxes at dusk.
The hold shelf, rung in on Tuesday and collected on Saturday.

League

The Counter Cup

Points from any league night count toward the champions board and the shelf plaque. A season runs eight weeks and ends with one name on the board, then it starts again. First-timers seed into casual pods.

Winter season · week four

Sample standings

Season standings
PlayerW–LPts
M. Okafor5–114
T. Reyes4–211
A. Novak4–210
S. Bright3–39
An amber twenty-sided die glowing in the glass display counter.
The amber d20 lives in the counter and judges us all.

Parties & hire

Book the back tables.

Birthdays and work nights, and the grudge-match rematch. We set the tables and run the games, then clear the wreckage after. You bring the people.

  • Booked by the table, not by the head. A table seats six comfortably.
  • Games matched to the crowd, from first-timers to the table that argues.
  • Most nights can be booked with two weeks notice. Fridays go first.
Ask about a partyRing the counter
Aisles of kit boxes stacked to the ceiling under a warm pendant lamp.
The kit wall after close, set for a birthday of nine.

The lamps are on. The table is set.

Come for the shelf and stay for the room. Ring ahead and a seat will have your name on it. Most nights there is a rules argument already in progress.

Save me a seatPlan a first visit

Sprue & Counter Hobby Co. · 14 Gasket Lane, Old Tramworks · open six days

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