End of the Year Wrap Up

As the end of the year approaches and our club nights are now finished till January 11th (make sure to mark your calendar). I thought it a good time to reflect back at what we’ve achieved as a club so far.

We’ve come a long way from starting off with just 6 gaming mats and using some of our own terrain. With the club only opening on the 2nd February 2023, we are still shy of being a full year old. Although, I can honestly say that none of the committee expected to be at the level we are already.

Here’s a picture of our last night of 2023, where we had 8 games of 40k, 4 tables of Necromunda, a table of Star Trek Attack Wing, the Hobby Corner, a table full of pizza and still some tables free!

Attendance Numbers

The club is doing great! We finished off the year with a total of 44 club members and an average attendance of 30 plus. Not bad considering when we started we thought if we got 10 people a night that’d be a great success!

Here’s a look at our numbers across the course of the year.

It’s great to see that the numbers have continued to grow steadily since opening.

Games Played this Year

Warhammer 40k

Unsurprisingly, Warhammer 40k is easily our most popular game system and is doing exceptionally well.

The success is in no small part due to Simon’s excellent narrative Crusade. Which had 6 alliances of 5 players fighting it out over the surface of our campaign map. While Neil’s Orks, and their allies in the Green Team continually rained nuclear warheads on them from the space Hulk in orbit.

We had great engagement in the crusade. It lasted for 18 nights, with a total of 124 battles out of a potential 135 being played.

Here’s the final Crusade team standings, it ended up being quite a close run thing for the most part.

Note: Teams with more players initially had a handicap applied to their win count, until the numbers evened out later in later phases.

Pos	Team	Wins	Points	% Wins	Score Dif.	Map Hexes
1.		18.4	2098	51.11%	291	49
2.		18.4	1972	43.81%	140	24
3.		17.6	1863	52.38%	109	29
4.		16	1862	50.00%	286	31
5.		15.2	1746	44.19%	-140	25
6.		9	1829	25.71%	-606	9

Horus Heresy

We are starting to get some consistent Horus Heresy games taking place. As more people are making it along and interest is steadily growing. Some of our regulars have also been keen to dust off some of their Heresy armies and get them on the table. It looks like this is a system that will continue to grow.

Gang Warfare with Necromunda

Woah, the interest in Necromunda took us by surprise! We’ve only started playing some intro games, in preparation for our campaign next year and we already have at least 18 ppl looking to take part.

It’ll be the first campaign I’ve run for the system and I was expecting maybe 8-10 players. No doubt it’ll be the first of many if that many people are keen.

Other Wargames Played this year

We’ve had a good scattering of other wargames, including Age of Sigmar, Kill Team, Bloodbowl, Infinity, Marvel Crisis Protocol and the occasional WW2 game.

There is interest in all of these and more, we’d love to see more people getting involved in different systems. If you play any of them or are interested feel free to give us a shout!

Board Games

As the club has grown, so has our board games crowd, with a few people dipping in and out of other systems as well. It’s a great bunch of people and the club has been lucky enough to be able to invest in some great games (with more coming in the future).

Continual Improvements

Since starting we’ve achieved quite a lot for the club. We now have enough terrain and mats for more than 20 tables (although we might need to find more tables).

We have a dedicated hobby area set aside every club night. For which we supply paints, paint brushes, glue, paint pallets, paint handles, clippers, hobby lamps etc. Allowing people to come along and work on some hobby projects and just hang out if they don’t fancy playing. All completely free for attendees to use.

The club has invested in starter armies/sets for Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Underworlds, Marvel Crisis Protocol, Star Wars Shatterpoint and Game of Thrones: A Song of Fire & Ice. Allowing folks to come along and play these games without needing to buy anything. We may look to expand these in the future. Although some of the starter sets still need to be painted. We’ve also invested in multiple Bloodbowl pitches, Kill Team boards and Boarding Actions terrain sets.

Additionally we’ve been able to buy a selection of Board Games to supplement our board game library. All of which are able to be used by anyone attending club nights.

Challenges

Starting a club isn’t without its challenges though. The biggest challenge we’ve encountered is dealing with North Lanarkshire Council. They run and operate the hall, which on the face of things is fine (a massive shout out to Scott, the Caretaker, who is great, as are all the Caretakers that we’ve worked with!). NLC close the hall during school holidays as a ‘cost saving exercise’, despite us offering to pay more during this period or jump through any hoops required to change that. It also means they won’t allow the hall to be booked at weekends.

This has been a massive detriment and has stopped us running weekend events, something we are really keen to do! It has also forced us to find temporary accommodation during the Easter and Summer holidays, sometimes without much notice. We have considered moving permanently to another location, though the hall is just so well suited to our needs.

We’re hoping to avoid this headache again in 2024 and there are some things moving behind the scenes but no concrete news as of yet, we will keep you updated with any developments.

Building the Best Gaming Club We Can

It’s always been our goal to create somewhere that provides the best gaming experiences around. With full sized tables, great quality gaming mats, a high standard of terrain (ideally themed tables where possible) and some of the best opponents to play against by fostering a brilliant community. While being a place that’s welcoming and open to new people, fun to attend and safe.

None of this would be possible without the support of our members and attendees. From everyone on the committee we want to say a massive thank you for being a great bunch of guys & girls and helping us to build such an awesome community.

We hope you all had a great Christmas and all the best for the New Year. We’ll see you back at the Village Hall on Thursday, the 11th of January 2024!