Where Do You Get Your Gaming Fix? Or How I Found My First Visit to a Gaming Club.

Good evening children of the Plague Father and welcome once again to our corner of the garden. Today I would like to take a break from the Tale of Three Gamers to talk about where you get your gaming fix. I wanted to post this up sooner but had a long weekend planned with my wife and wouldn't appreciate using time off together to blog so you lucky Nurglings get it tonight.

Until last week I had only played my games of 40k ( along with a sprinkle of Blood Bowl & Necromunda ) at the homes of friends. After seeing a post on the work boards asking any war gamers to try out the local club  we thought why not?. Plans were made to go down for when it opened at six which gave us a five hour limit on the game, which was more than enough for a 1750 each game.

Now aside from my trip to Maelstrom earlier in the year this is the first time I have attended a gaming club and to be honest I'm not sure it is for me. Don't get me wrong it had some good points and bad but over all I found it less enjoyable than our usual set up.

So in the interest of fairness firstly I will start with the good points;

Terrain - The terrain selection available while not the best selection was very good considering there was terrain for different game systems and scale. Along with it being a good mix of home made and bought terrain it was all painted ( with simple schemes but was still all painted ). The only downside I saw with this was a lot of the terrain had a very small foot print on the table. This made me feel a bit guilty taking enough to make a decent tables worth of terrain.

Game Systems -  Looking around the room it was nice to see people playing a fairly wide selection of games including 40k, Fantasy, Mordheim, Flames of War and a funky looking game which seemed to be based on aerial dog fights called Wings of War.

Variety of Opponents - This is the most interesting part of a gaming club to me as I currently game with around 8 different players depending who is available to squeeze a game in with which does give me a variety of armies to face, with most having at least two armies to use.

Not always the best role model for personal hygiene in a confined space

Now on to the bad points;

Organisation - Lets face it when I think of a club that is on a set day between a set time in a set place I don't think it is unreasonable to expect to turn up and be able to get inside the building and not have to wait nearly 15 minutes for someone to unlock the door. Once inside we were told to just get a board and set up a table any where we liked as people get them out as needed rather than set them all up, which seemed fair to me.

With the lay out of the room we went on the end leaving more than enough room between us and the next table for another 4' x 6' board if needed. We did this more for the location of where we could put the board rather than not wanting to be right next to other players and to leave room for people to get in an out without going to the end of the row.
However about 30 minutes in to our game the club captain asked us to move our whole board down so that there wasn't a gap and another board could be put where ours was. I suggested that rather than move a game in progress he could just put another board in the gap which I didn't think was unreasonable, sadly this was not to be and it was insisted that they knew best. I still have not decided if this really was just a failure to grasp that just putting a board in the gap was easier or trying to show who was top dog.

Venue - The club is running out of the function room of a working men's club which had no natural light or windows that could be opened, no air conditioning and two doors to go through to the outside which were required to be kept shut so no air flow there. Sadly this made the room very hot and gave a nice mix of sweat and the lovely aroma of a pub carpet that has seen its prime which smoking indoors used to cover up.

Members - Now this was my first time there so I was bound to be an outsider there and this I was fine with though had a couple of gents come over and have a chat with most of them seeming fine if not a little shy. Though there was two that stuck out to me who realistically were making everyone else look bad.

First up was a lad I would say was in his twenties giving it the big talk about how he had been barred at a pub for telling the barmaid to get her tits out and make him a sandwich. Now I am happy to believe this might be true but really isn't something to be proud of and just reminds me of school boys bragging about their conquests while if they had a real woman wouldn't know what to do with her.

Secondly was an older gent ( 40ish or a hard paper round ) who was trying to teach someone the finer points of fantasy, an admirable task I am sure you all agree. The trouble was on more than one occasion over the noise of the room ( loud enough to make me have to shout over the table what I was rolling for ) I heard him bellowing how he was doing it wrong.

40k Armies Present - This is something I was looking forward as I hoped to see most armies represented so while waited I had a word with one of the lads who informed me that most people were playing Space Wolves & Imperial Guard with a few on Blood Angels, Grey Knights and Dark Eldar picking up support quickly and one person on the older armies if I was lucky. Now this was a bit of a disappointment but I tried to cover it up with a joke about them chasing the new armies which got the young lad very defensive saying how they needed to change book "to stay competitive".

I do love dusting off my Necrons, this guy isn't one of mine though.

Unfortunately this was the final nail in the coffin for me as while I do like to win when the chance shows itself I wouldn't sacrifice my T'au for a brand new army and think I will go back to games at mine or friends houses.

Overall it had some good points but I was a little underwhelmed with the whole experience and think I will give it a miss unless times become desperate enough to give it another go with my collection of 4th edition armies.

Now the question I want to put to you people out in the warp is a simple one "Where do you get your gaming fix?" and to a lesser extent is this your first choice or a necessary evil to play the games you love?

O'Shashar