"Your Gaming Group?" Topic

Come on, if you've got a gaming group, tell us about it! Make us laugh, make us weep, make us jealous, make us tired!

Don't leave yourself out Bill, how about your group?

I don't currently game with a group.

My regular gaming buddy got married.

Our gaming group has been around since 1968.

Too much history to impart here.

Cranky old farts that get along.

SWMBO and I host for our relations, social friends, colleagues, and friends we have met through gaming elsewhere one weekend a month. Attendance is variable depending on who has vacation, work, or other commitments, but there are usually a dozen people at a time.

We start with a 2-3 hour tabletop wargame for everyone, then break down into smaller groups for other wargames, board games, card games, etc.

For the last ten years, food has worked on the loaves and fishes principle.

Mix of old friends from high school, my two sons and a few gamer acquaintances that I've made over the years. What's interesting is the age range: 18 – 65, yet we all get along just fine.

We do everything from historical miniatures to fantasy/sci fi to boardgames to RPGs.

I mostly game with friends I met early on in college, about 20 something years ago. A few new faces, but none of the gaming is on a regular basis, uinfortunatley.

Last gaming group I was in was 10+ years ago. Good people, good games and good food. Life and geography ended it (though I think a few that remained still get together).

Currently it is me, and which of my kids I can rope in

Group been together since 1975.

Biggest game lasted 76 hours straight with no breaks back in 1977 . Player simple physical and mental exhaustion stopped the game. The miniature moves at 4 am in the morning were a wonder to behold… but the next 6 hour shift sleeping under the table didn't notice. One player painted an entire brigade… raw lead to finished based product during the game…. 48 English miniatures (Highlanders)… only to see them wiped out several turns later. Table was 24x6 and was simply all our imagination armies vs. all the reality armies… SYW to Napoleonic era. Units only used once on the tabletop. Only a few battle scarred starting unit survivors played or survived the entire game. The "reals" won the day…. after three days plus of fighting on the massed tabletop. Nowadays there are surely larger miniature count games out in the world…. but someone mentioned 7,000 25mm miniatures or so were used back in those days. Twenty two players had time on the tabletop. Several played on both sides… nobody noticed I guess. Someplace there are pictures from the old Kodak… buried deep under the dust of time. Yep…. gaming while young in life.

Now… to the modern age… we still play the occasional big club historical game here in So. California but most are smaller affairs. The fantasy armies have travelled away…. including the army of "Grand Fenwick"… to points long forgotten. The club games are electronic documented on the internet under the "Wargamerabbit" nameplate instead of the Kodak. I was young then… just in university. Still paint my 25/28mm historical collections, bigger than all the miniatures we used back then.

Lots of grand memories…. including the famous written WRG 4th edition game orders quote to the Gaul (Celtic) army commanded by "?" (name protected). He ordered all the Gauls to avoid combat with close order enemy horse…. was fighting a Mongol army. A classic…. never to be repeated again.

Still gather for games each month. We are a lucky group…. just older with gray hair.

Our group has 10 regular members and 3 casual. 5 members have game rooms so we switch to whomever is available, gaming every Thursday. The group is varied in ages from early 70's to early 40's, I'm 57. I've been with the group over 20 years, and it was around a lot longer than that.

We play Armati 2, Shako 2, Longstreet, Rapid Fire on a regular basis, plus trying other rule sets. Our group paints and collects many periods, with best guess over 300K of figures between us, mostly 28, 20 and 15mm.

Last year we did Ligny and Waterloo at Enfilade, in Olympia Washington, on 18 foot tables with approx. 2500 Figures each, a massive effort. Some of you have seen me post pictures of Calpe Prussians I painted for Von Bulow's Corps.

We get along very well and all say it is a great group!

Ours has spread out over the years from a twenty minute drive to anyone's house to athree hour drive for me if our furthest south member hosts. More than half the group are role-players, so they drive game selection. Even when the wargamers that make it to HMGS con clandestinely get together, we resort to Gnomes on MBA or another member's complete A&A collection (all types/all scales).

The good news is that everyone's kids are getting older (but not weekend travel team sports old) so free time is more and more available.

The FLGS is hosting a painting clinic this weekend, and I'm bringing the girls with me. Just noticed that the instructor has like-aged boys and lives 15 minutes from my house. Perhaps I can find a half-cranky local group to suit my needs without feeling guilty about the old guard.

We have full and part-time players who number 6-12 and age from 21-61. The old thing, or maybe not, is that 2/3rds are single with just a couple of us old married farts.

We've pretty much kept to ourselves, then the last two years we ran a one-day con (Tundra Con) and dog-gone-it, we're making friends!

Our Monday Night group is really the old Friday group that moved to Wednesdays …

Actually we usually meet on Thursdays but this week, because of the holiday, we are getting together tomorrow … in the afternoon.

So much for the name!

We'll be playing a big ancients game, I'm told.

Happy Easter!

Phil

I left my gaming group in Charlotte and a nice bunch of fellows who I dearly miss. I've not had much opportunity to form a new group in Dallas. Although there are a ton of gamers here my schedule had prevented me being as involved as I would like. However at some point I hope I will have a more normal life.

I just recently moved to the Charlotte area, and have slowly made new friends in the area. We play on week nights, so our games tend to be on the lighter, shorter game side: DBA, Song of Drums and Shakos, Lion Rampant, etc. My most frequent opponent lives only 10 minutes away, while another new friend lives 45 minutes to an hour on the north side of town.

Before Charlotte, I lived in San Diego, CA, and played nearly every Saturday night in someone's garage. Since we had more time, our games were longer and were usually multiplayer. But bigger and longer did not always mean better, and even before we moved, I had been thinking how I wanted to become something of a minimalist Wargamer. And the guys I play with now come from a boardgaming background, so don't have oversized miniatures collections they "just have to get on the table".

I wish!!!! :(

Local club in my small home town, been going about 10 years meeting in the hall of a local school on a weekday evening. Typically 8-12 players This naturally emphasises 2-3 hour games.

We do a couple of all-day sunday meetings a year to let the longer stuff get played.

The club has always mixed board games, RPG and miniature gaming in roughly equal proportions.