The Try-It Table

As some of you may know, I run a small local wargaming group. Recently we had quite the surplus of club funds built up, and with adequate scenery I decided to splash out on some of the starter sets for other game systems, to try to broaden the clubs horizons at a time that GW felt a little stale.

Of course, shortly after that GW released Codex: Imperial Guard (no I won't use the new name) and Codex: Orks, plus kicked off the Fantasy End Times with my old favourite Nagash... so well done GW for reinvigorating my interest.

This does however leave several boxsets that haven't seen the love they deserve. With this in mind, I plan to run something in the new year, once I have finished running the Fantasy Badlands campaign, called the Try It Table. I will, each week, set one of the gaming tables aside to be solely used for "other" games. I intend to pick a game each week and either run it myself for any interested parties, or get someone who is into that game to do so.

I plan to start with X-Wing. I know this quite well, we have a few players who are into it, and between myself and my friend Rob we have enough rebels and imperials to run two games simultaneously. It's also a quick and easy game to get into, with plenty of well known background, and is very accessible.

We also have Dystopian Wars (which hasn't quite taken my fancy but we do have three players on that one) and Warmachine (again, not for me but we do have a few people who have played in the past and there is some base interest around the club.

 

Then it's onto the stuff that seems more of a gamble. Flames of War seems to be of interest to only two members thus far, though I am vaguely interested... though it has to be said I tend to window shop at Flames of War when GW feels stale to me, so right now with GW kicking out lots of shiny I'm not  paying flames much attention. At the bottom of the scale is Dropzone Commander. I've heard good things about this game, but so far I seem to be the only one to have shown any interest - though this isn't helped by me not exactly being able to explain how the game plays to anyone yet.

Now in anything like this it is always easiest to get people into it if you already have some people that know what they are talking about. With the earlier mentioned stuff we have that, so I don't see any problems there. With Flames we don't, but we did have a former Portsmouth resident drop in who seems to know his stuff, who kindly offered to run an intro game for us if he is ever in town visiting his folks when we meet - an offer I shall gratefully accept should it ever become available, though with real life obviously being a priority I won't hold the guy to that.

That leaves DZC as the ginger stepchild of the family - unloved, locked in the basement and fed nothing but fishheads from the one person who remembers they still exist.

The new year will be the new games time to shine. I know my club, it generally needs someone to make people get out of their usual habits and do something different. At the moment I have my hands full with the campaign, but that finishes just after Christmas. Then the Try-It Table will become a mainstay of Tuesdays. I'm confident on the early games. I'll give the rest a good go too though.