Manufactured Conflict Meeting-ish Thing

Most of you who read this blog probably already know that I run a gaming club in my home town.  If you don’t, then: I run a gaming club in my home town of Dartford.  You should stop round if you’re ever unfortunate enough to be in the area.  Manufactured Conflict, the rates are reasonable.

Anyway, as a fairly young club (just passed our first birthday), it’s taken us a while to get our shit organised, but we are finally getting round to it now.  We’ve got a club bank account set up, we’re going through the process of joining the GCN, all that stuff.  However, the most interesting matter we’ve had to address recently is that of upgrading the club.  Due to some very reasonable rates by the landlord and a nice and consistent turnout, we’ve managed to acquire a bit of buffer in the account.  Naturally, when you have money, you kind of want to spend it.  So a few of us met up and started discussing it, complete with all the umm’s and ah’s of a group of guys who clearly have no idea what they’re talking about.

The first call was for scenery so we can outfit our tables better.  Recently we had a bit of a record club-wise and had five full-size gaming tables out at one time and all being used.  This is undeniably a good thing but it brought into sharp relief how unprepared the club is for that kind occasion.  We only had four Battle Mats (we had to draw the boundaries of the game on the MDF board with a pen) and it was only due to some of the regulars bringing their own scenery that we had anywhere near enough of it.  We were fine on the day, and all the tables ended up being decently stocked with terrain, but it was still cutting too close.  As a moderately successful club that looks like it could grow even more in the near future, that just won’t do.

Another thing we needed was definitely an improvement to the terrain that we have at the moment.  We’ve got a small variety of terrain (some hills, some craters some ruins, a castle, etc.), but it is mostly unpainted and some it has fallen into disrepair.  One way to combat this is to encourage people to take the scenery away with them and tart it up while they have it.  I basically just instituted a free-day-for-some-scenery programme and it seems to have been taken up by a good few of the attendees, so that’s encouraging.  Hopefully we’ll have the scenery looking decent and in good enough supply for our first all-day event in February (Saturday the 18th, on the off-chance that any reader is interested).

So, various purchases were agreed upon during this meeting (although meeting seems far too formal a word for what was actually going on), not least of while was another battle mat for our tables.  We also decided to buy some really cool-looking card scenery from World Works.  Terraclips scenery, to be precise.  Although this stuff is specifically designed for Malifaux, it would look great for most skirmish games, really.  Particularly now that we’ve decided on firing up a 28mm Inquisitor campaign.  I’ll be GMing that one, which will be a bit of a challenge, I’d assume.  It’s been years since I played that system, but it was one of my favourites from the specialist games line and I’m looking forward to introducing a load more people to it.  It really helps you get a different perspective on the world(s) of 40k.

Speaking of introducing people to new things (and speaking of scenery specifically designed for Malifaux), I’ll also be trying to get a bit of a Malifaux circle down the club as well.  I like the world and the test game I had at the IMPs was really enjoyable.  It’s also a really cheap buy-in for a game, as you can get starter gangs for about £20-25, so I’m hoping there’ll be a fair amount of interest in fellow MCers.

Well, that’s the round up from a club perspective.  Not really my remit on the blog, I suppose, but I couldn’t think of much to write today, and I don’t want to fall out of practice keeping this thing up to date.

See you all later.

Maybe even with something relevant to say…