The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread - Gaming Clubs

Hi all, Johno here,

I would just like to discuss why joining a gaming club can enhance your hobby and bring your enthusiasm to a whole new level. Simple things like chatting with like minded individuals and discussing basic views on parts of the hobby are just some of the advantages to getting involved with your local club.

I would like to kick this off by giving a scenario that I think most of us have been in at one stage or another and where I think most of the gamers in the country are at currently. There are the gamers who haven’t yet discovered a vibrant and active community such as ours with players attending tournaments regularly and at their local clubs and participating online in various forums and blogs. For the few hundred players that we all know and that take part on online sites such as www.w-ired.org, I am convinced that there is at least twice or three times that amount of players who have started collecting a wargame and are completely oblivious to the Irish war gamming scene and on their own.

Obviously the Irish war gaming scene is relatively new in its current format that we see today. For instance when I played in 2^nd edition WH40k back in the 90’s there were no clubs around where I was from. When I got back into the hobby about 5 or 6 years ago I did what a lot people did, I went online to GW and checked out their models and since then I have never looked back. For two years or so I collected by myself, not knowing anyone else in the hobby until one day I went online and discovered Drogheda Gamers had a forum. Through there I met Jan Karnowski who was also living close to me at the time. We played nearly every week against each other but we realized we needed more opponents because although they were always fun games, we needed fresh blood so to speak.

I discovered www-w-ired.org run by Nigel Kavanagh and promptly wrote a post on behalf of Jan and myself looking for local gamers to play and perhaps set up a club. Nigel got back to me informing me that NWG and Grumpy Old Gamers were also looking to merge and form a new club and heard that a new hobby shop (The Hobby Shack) were opening in Wicklow town. On September 1^st 2011 5 of us met up and formed The Last Chancers gaming club over a very late pizza. Since then the Club has gone from strength to strength absolutely exploding in size and attracting players from miles around.

Since forming the club we have held painting day’s and competitions, ran painting tutorials and airbrush tutorials, hosted games days and held gaming nights every Thursday. Sure at the start there were Thursdays where sometimes on a rare occasion there were too few of us turning up every week to consistently get games in but we grinded it out and over time this has become a less and less an occurrence until it basically never happens anymore with up to 20 players or more playing one game or another on a Thursday evening.

What a club can offer is a group on enthusiastic gamers who all have similar interests to you and love sharing their ideas and talking and playing the hobby. Ever need advice about good or bad units or army lists? The lads will always jump hurdles in order to help you out. Members are always buying new armies and getting rid of old stuff. I can’t even begin to imagine how many bargains I have gotten from fellow TLC members over the years.

If you are really lucky like TLC is or some of the Dublin based clubs are, your club will obtain a base for gaming regularly. If you and your buddies are looking to start a new club in your area the first thing you need to do is secure a location to do your gaming week in week out. Without this it is very hard for your club to get off the ground. TLC was blessed to have The Hobby Shack’s support and indeed it was crucial to the clubs success to date.

If you are living in an area of the country where you think there isn’t any other gamers and you feel that enthusiasm for the hobby is slipping away, try dropping a post on www.w-ired.org and you never know what other players might be closer than you think…

I thought I would just leave you with some pics from Thursdays gaming in the club. Enjoy :)

Johno