The Scene

The main reason I quit playing 40k before was that I went away to college. I tend to have a hard time with meeting and accepting new people, so moving to a new city and trying to go to a club I'd never been to and play 40k with people I'd never met was a very daunting task. Not to mention being in a new city I'd never been to period, and the fact that I was just starting college and it was my first time spending more than a week away from my family, made it fairly difficult for me to do anything. I barely even left my dorm room the first 2 years I was up here. I suppose those were the peak WoW days too (aka: 'the dark times') which didn't help any either.

Since then I have moved into an apartment up here for real, and have really gotten to know and love the area of the city that I live in. So, yesterday, in preparation for getting back into the game again, I went down to FLGS#1 to scope out the scene.

There are apparently 2 fairly large clubs right near me, and a third close enough that if I really loved it and hated the other 2 I could go there instead. I randomly picked one of the 2 closer ones (the one that seemed smaller as I figured it would be less scary) and headed on down.

The shop was awesome. They had a bunch of comics and the usual stuff you find at such places, but their main focus is tabletop gaming. Board games, wargames, RPGs, they had it all in large supply. I learned that they are officially affiliated with both Games Workshop and Privateer Press (the makers of Warmachine, which is another mini wargame that intrigues me), and that they have a real, live British person on their staff; like, from England and everything. The club itself had sort of a smallish retail area, but a giant gaming room with like six or seven 8x4 tables to play on. They are even having a 'Ard Boyz tournament next month; which, that is a level of the game I have no interest in at all, but it is still really cool that they are doing that. Considering the club I played at years ago was a comic book shop that just happened to have some 40k stuff too, was in no way officially connected to GW, and only had two 4x4 card-tables to play on, I was quite happy with what this club had to offer.

It turns out that every Saturday from noon to close is Warhammer 40k time. As luck would have it, it was a Saturday at about 12:30. Unfortunately, it was a slow 40k day (according to one of the guys there) so I didn't get to see much of the crowd, but those that I did meet seemed like decent enough folks.

There was about a dozen or so really old nerdy guys (I'm talking 35-40+ and at least one surely in his 50s) playing a huge game of Battletech (I don't know BT, maybe every game is huge? in any case, they were all in on 1 game so by 40k standards it seemed huge to me) on one of the tables. They were a very...erm... interesting, group, but they were having a great time and really, really into their game. It was fairly refreshing.

There was a very casual teaching game of Warhammer Fantasy going on as well. I don't play WHFB, and it doesn't really interest me a whole lot, but it was very reassuring that this guy was taking the time to teach people how to play. They started out fairly slow and timid, I guess would  be a good word, in the beginning, but then towards the end of the game both sides were really getting into it. Again, super refreshing.

I saw two 40k guys with Eldar and Tyranid armies who weren't playing, I met a guy who didn't bring his 40k stuff but was just there watching, and I watched a game of Dark Angels v Space Wolves playing out of the Battle Missions book, which is cool. I talked to a bunch of people about the club and what the scene is like, and I guess there is a pretty good spread of casual gamers and competitive gamers. All-in-all, it was pretty awesome, and I definitely could see myself gaming there in the future.

Oh, they play 1850-2000 points though. Which, I guess I should have expected that. At my old club we used to play 1000-1500 and I think around 1500 is really my favorite place to be. 1850 I guess I'm ok with. At least it's not super-'ard 2500 lists all the time. It could always be worse, I suppose.

Next weekend is my graduation ceremony, so I will be too busy partying with my family for any wargaming, but the following weekend I think I'd like to go to the other club and check them out. I feel like this one is a good place and that I probably won't frequent the other over it, but you never know. I saw on the other club's website they had a 40k tournament, the grand prize of which was something like this:

My girlfriend would probably kill me if I ever brought something like that home, but who knows.