Hi everyone, M and I (and out 3 wildlings) went to visit the Skulls Tournament run by local(ish) gaming club Outpost 6030. Outpost holds a lot of sentiment for M, he was one of the founders of Outpost South, it’s where he and a lovely man called Bob Grey ran his first tournament (with me scoring – and we thought we were so good using excel with formula instead of just pen and paper hahaha). Ahhhh I’m getting all nostalgic thinking about those plain green boards that we painted with a roller and then splashed a different green on to give it some depth and terrible terrain, such simple days hahaha. Ok, enough, back to my point! So while we were at the tournament a couple of players asked me if I was enjoying the break from ObSec. Ahhh bless, you think we are having a break, while we don’t have any more tournaments scheduled for the remainder of the year, we are 100% not taking a break. So this post will be a quick run down on what we are working on.
Southern Hemisphere Open is taking up 90% of my waking hours, luckily I have 3 kids so gave up sleep a while ago, while I’m focusing on SHO and swinging madly between ‘OMG this is going to be amazing/epic/awesome’ and ‘OMG why on earth would we take on something of this size’, M is getting ready for the other events we have scheduled for 2017. On top of that we have been working on starting Saturday night gaming nights.
When M first opened Outpost South it was literally heaving. There would be 50 people attending each week, it was standing room only in the old Manning Hall. At the risk of showing our age here, this was before the days of Facebook and social media, people had mobile phones but not many people used them because the calls were so expensive and text messages incurred an extra fee so while some players had pre-scheduled games (generally by talking to another player the week before!) other players rocked up with armies looking for a game but happy just to hang out and chat if they couldn’t get a game. There was often a terrain table or guys (and occasionally a girl or two) there painting their armies. Players would meet at the pub before club opened and then stand in the carpark for hours after club closed just chatting (I know players who had beanies especially for the carpark session after the club!) It was a fun night and the community wanted to attend. I’m going to be honest, I haven’t been to a regular club night at Outpost since Manning Hall was demolished (which tells you how long it has been!) so I can’t comment on how busy it is now or how it is operating now (although if the tournament on the weekend is anything to go by it seems there are players from multiple game systems heading there regularly which is awesome to see).
I often talk about our aim of building and supporting the local and international gaming community. Clubs are an awesome way to build that sense of community, come along to one of the events and you will see the sense of comradery between the KRAGS boys, the Albany players or the Outpost crew, the guys who play regularly at Freo and those rambunctious few who remain from the Armadale days. At our events everyone ‘fits’ and everyone is welcomed, that sense of smaller local community through clubs is still evident. Sadly with Armadale on a very long hiatus, TGA closed and other of the smaller groups now disbanded the opportunities to enjoy that regular social gaming is diminishing. As they say in Robots ‘See a need, fill a need’, one of the ways we will be working to create and support community in 2017 is by offering regular social gaming with the emphasis on social.
Armadale Boys!
We want to create a gaming night reminiscent of those nights all those years ago where gamers, new and old, can come along, play a prearranged game or bring an army just in case and hopefully get a game and if not hang out with other people who have the same interest in table top gaming. We hope to not only create that friendly atmosphere and social nights we also want to support newer players or less confident players. It’s a big leap going from gaming in your garage with a mate and your brother to attending a club or attending your first event. We want to help bridge that gap! I could (and probably will) write an entire post on bridging the gap, but for now I’ll just say we want ObSec to feel like a great big, supportive, welcoming family. It’s also about supporting gamers to grow as a player. If you only ever play against one or two other players then you aren’t getting the exposure to how other people play, how other people interpret the rules, how your army fairs against other armies, how other players who play with a similar army to you use it on the board. All that good juicy stuff. So in short it’s an opportunity to hang out, have fun and improve your game as well.
We decided to run fortnightly on Saturday nights, we will differ slightly to the clubs not only in frequency, we will also have a licensed room for over 18s with a bar and a connecting room for under 18s (obviously there is nothing stopping the over 18s entering the under 18s area however under 18s wont be able to play in the licenced area). Initially I suggested Friday night beer, pizza and gaming, however given M pointed out KRAGS is doing a great job offering gaming on a Friday and Freo is open late nights on a Friday so Friday night gaming is covered. We decided Saturday was a better option. (It was a funny conversation between M and I, I thought we should run it on the weekend because weekends are ‘going out days’ and I struggle to go out on a school night haha M thought it shouldn’t be weekend because people go out on the weekend. I thought we should try and create something for people who would choose to go to a gaming night AS their going out, M thought just because people want to game doesn’t mean they don’t want to go clubbing, his word were ‘I used to go clubbing every Saturday night’ key words there ‘used to’, my response was ‘yeah but you don’t any more! Scotch, pizza and a game of 40k sounds like your ideal Saturday night doesn’t it?!’ And so here we are booking it in for a Saturday!)
We were also looking at location, trying to find a community venue for regular hire on a Saturday night is near impossible. We wanted something sort of central but far enough from Outpost, KRAGS and the GW stores that we were complimenting them not competing. We were trying to find something that would also meet the needs of those players who are in the hills who don’t have anything really close to them. We were lucky enough to be able to negotiate with Kaarakin to hold the gaming nights there. Kaarakin is in Martin/Roleystone, just off Tonkin Hwy, and Canning Mills Rd so even though at first we thought it was too isolated we decided that it’s actually pretty easy to get to from Joondalup, Midland, Kalamunda, Roleystone, Armadale, Gosnells etc.
Our first night will actually be a Christmas Social Gaming Get Together on Saturday 3rd December. The cover fee of $5 per person will be to cover the room hire and we are inviting girlfriends, wives, significant others to come along and get to know each other a bit better. We ladies can sit outside on the verandah over looking the gorgeous view of the city while the players are inside gaming and chatting. This has 3 main benefits, the first is guys are more likely to attend if their significant other is involved, the girls get to know each other and create social circles (amazing thing happen when women circle) and those girls who play but don’t feel comfortable going to events/tournaments or even clubs will meet other girls who play and their confidence will increase and they may start playing more publicly! (See previous comment about bridging the gap, we hope that when the girls get to know the make players they I’ll stop telling me that they find the guys intimidating and instead feel that the guys are friends and feel comfortable playing!)
So in a nutshell, that is the thoughts and feelings behind running the social gaming nights. I have a few ideas that we will try to hopefully value add and as soon as I convince M they are a good idea I’ll let you know :p
While our interstate and overseas friends are always welcome, it may be a little far to travel, if you find yourselves in our neck of the woods then we would love to have you along. Local gamers, whether you have played at an ObSec event, played at clubs in the past or currently or if you have never played anywhere other than your garage before we would love to have you along. We will have all the ObSec tables and terrain up there for you to play on and as DR and I (I’m discounting M from this given I know his love for terrain) finish more tables over the year you will get to test play them before they hit our event circuit!
We look forward to seeing some new faces and catching up with some familiar faces as well!