National Lottery Community Funding Helping to Improve our Club
As many of our club attendees and followers will be aware, we were very fortunate to receive some funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to be able to grow our club and advance our plans. Frankly we were bowled over by the generosity of the community team at the National Lottery and their wholehearted support for what we do. At its core Crossfire is about allowing people to come and enjoy whatever board gaming or tabletop hobby that they choose, in as inclusive and supportive a space as we can provide.
The National Lottery support has allowed us to dramatically step up the timeline for what we were planning to provide to our members and visitors and to ensure that it is furnished at no extra costs to themselves.
It has also permitted us to plan for the long term future of the club and draw up a strategy for what we would like to be able to provide going forward.
What we can Provide with the National Lottery’s Support
With the additional funds we have been able to further invest into the club, as a committee we have discussed how we would like to enhance what we do and support further gaming systems. What this looks like is further investment in a number of ways.
Supporting Warhammer 40k
Warhammer 40k is by far our most popular game and is receiving a lot of interest from new players and people getting back into the hobby. We wanted to make sure that we could support this and so people didn’t need to have an army to turn up and have a first game.
Therefore, we ordered a copy of the 10th Edition starter set for Warhammer 40K, this will providing club attendees with a couple club owned armies that we can use for intro games for people picking up the game for the first time.
We are also working on another bespoke scenario for 40K after the success of the Assault on the Eternity Wall and a recently kicked off a Warhammer 40k Crusade Campaign.
Club Owned Starter Sets
We have bought copies of both Marvel Crisis Protocol and Star Wars: Shatterpoint to add these gaming systems to the roster of supported titles.
Again, we will get the basic models painted up for the club sets and we are printing out more interesting terrain for their respective battlefields. We also have some new battlemats for each of the systems.
Expanding our Board Game Collection
To allow our attendees to have more options for the board games we play, we are committing to providing a bi-monthly vote on new board games that we will add to the club.
This will increase the options available for people to play in the long term without deluging the club with games that are unlikely to be played.
We hope this also means that we are continuing to allow for community involvement in our gaming group and for their choices to drive attendance.
Investing in the Club’s Hobby Supplies
Many of the people who come to the club also enjoy their hobby time, building and painting while at the club and enjoying the atmosphere.
To encourage this we have been investing in new hobby stations that provide access to a selection of paints, brushes and supplies so that people can enjoy being part of the club without needing to play a game every week.
Gaming Mats to Play On
Playing your games on a premium gaming mat surface can help improve the overall gaming experience drastically over playing on a bare tabletop or MDF board. This helps to create the feel and enhance the immersion into the battlefields of the far future, high fantasy, across the African deserts or anywhere else.
We always wanted to ensure a high quality gaming experience for all of our attendees and having a great selection of gaming mats to play on was always a high priority for us. The Committee has happily loaned a couple of our own personal gaming mats to the club to help get it off the ground but having some funding allowed us
Fantastic Themed Terrain
We have a some great themed sets of 3D printed terrain for people to play battles over at the club from an Ork Scrap Town, Necron Ruins, and Slaanesh corrupted Aeldari ruins to things like our Zone Mortalis boards. As well as a lot more, Chris is always expanding this and working on more.
One of the things we pride ourselves on is that you’ll find some amazing themed battlefields at Crossfire to play on, that you just don’t get at other gaming clubs or stores.
Pre-painted Terrain
We’d love to be able to provide some bespoke, themed, 3D printed terrain for all of our gaming tables but creating them is something that takes a lot of time. Therefore we decided to invest in some great looking at alternatives that keep our high standard and would still be fun to play on.
We have added a large selection of pre-painted resin terrain to our collection with 10 sets split between City Ruins, Industrial Ruins, Gothic Ruins and Sci-fi.
This also puts us in a great position for when it comes to running tournaments and large wargaming events.
Our Longer Term Strategy
Whilst we are currently aiming to provide the best space to play games in the local area we are also aware that we can do more.
We continue to have some issues over the availability and cost of our premises but we would like to be able to offer more time and space to play games where possible. That being said, we are still looking to be able to provide more gaming time in the future and support further gaming systems. One of our committee members, Dan, is a big Bolt Action player and is working on a table with terrain for the club, we are hoping he can attend more frequently in the future once work has provided him a little more space. We are hoping we can run further campaigns and leagues for Necromunda, Blood Bowl and other games.
Ideally we will also look, in the longer term, to be able to provide weekend gaming once a month (subject to demand) along with quarterly tournaments and hopefully, interclub events.
Much of these ideas were mere pipe dreams for the committee but with the support of the National Lottery and our wonderful members they are looking more possible. We truly hope that everyone feels like our little club is the place that anyone can come and enjoy their hobby in their own way and we are hugely grateful for all the support we have seen.
