Going Clubbing (or not)
After fifteen months of varying degrees of frustration, freedom and more frustration (and with more of both doubtless yet to come!), our local club has finally started to get up-and-running once more.
Hooray!
Round these parts, a popular and friendly club is the Torbay Tabletop Games Club - it's in a community centre and run by a chap called David, whose infectious enthusiasm for getting people gaming is matched only by his love of creating beautiful, hard-wearing terrain. It's a broad church, too, so on a normal game night a casual visitor might expect to see a decent range of games being played, including Bloodbowl, Fallout, Gaslands, and Adeptus Titanicus, in addition to the regular staples of Warhammer 40K and Bolt Action.
Of course there a number of restrictions in place at the moment, in order to keep us all safe (so much so that in fact the 'casual visitor' I just alluded to couldn't actually come in at the moment - all attendees have to be pre-booked and traceable), but it's been great to be able to get back to some semblance of hobby normality, and I thought I might focus this week on some of the pictures that one of our members, Justin - a keen photographer, takes each week.
Or rather, I thought I might focus on why I love the fact that Justin makes the time to take these pictures!
Justin's pics are always shared rapidly onto the group's facebook page, and this means that those members who cannot attend for whatever reason (be it work, family, or devastating global health emergency) have a chance to hobby vicariously through others...
...we can gawp at the pretty toys, see that new unit our friend has painted or laugh along when a series of photos documents the evident demise of an elite unit. It means that we can join our friends as they game and ask them for the gory details, and it enables us to enjoy our own hobby remotely, through their enjoyment of it.
All of the pics in this blog entry, by the way, are Justin's pics of members' miniatures in action at the club; used with his permission.
I should be clearer: this isn't really a 'pandemic thing' or a 'lockdown thing' - it's just what Justin does, and he's done it for a couple of years now. He takes an interest in everyone's games, he says nice things about our minis, and he is always polite and friendly. It's all very pleasant when we're able to attend...
...and something of a lifeline when we can't!
So as our hobbying communities start to edge back to physical gaming again - with all the ifs, buts, and maybes that continue to hang in the air around possible future restrictions - I shall raise a glass to the concept of sharing photos of our games: we must continue to share the love of our hobbies, and who knows - maybe share some of our 'war-stories' thereafter, too?!
Happy gaming.
Round these parts, a popular and friendly club is the Torbay Tabletop Games Club - it's in a community centre and run by a chap called David, whose infectious enthusiasm for getting people gaming is matched only by his love of creating beautiful, hard-wearing terrain. It's a broad church, too, so on a normal game night a casual visitor might expect to see a decent range of games being played, including Bloodbowl, Fallout, Gaslands, and Adeptus Titanicus, in addition to the regular staples of Warhammer 40K and Bolt Action.
Of course there a number of restrictions in place at the moment, in order to keep us all safe (so much so that in fact the 'casual visitor' I just alluded to couldn't actually come in at the moment - all attendees have to be pre-booked and traceable), but it's been great to be able to get back to some semblance of hobby normality, and I thought I might focus this week on some of the pictures that one of our members, Justin - a keen photographer, takes each week.
Or rather, I thought I might focus on why I love the fact that Justin makes the time to take these pictures!
Justin's pics are always shared rapidly onto the group's facebook page, and this means that those members who cannot attend for whatever reason (be it work, family, or devastating global health emergency) have a chance to hobby vicariously through others...
...we can gawp at the pretty toys, see that new unit our friend has painted or laugh along when a series of photos documents the evident demise of an elite unit. It means that we can join our friends as they game and ask them for the gory details, and it enables us to enjoy our own hobby remotely, through their enjoyment of it.
All of the pics in this blog entry, by the way, are Justin's pics of members' miniatures in action at the club; used with his permission.
I should be clearer: this isn't really a 'pandemic thing' or a 'lockdown thing' - it's just what Justin does, and he's done it for a couple of years now. He takes an interest in everyone's games, he says nice things about our minis, and he is always polite and friendly. It's all very pleasant when we're able to attend...
...and something of a lifeline when we can't!
So as our hobbying communities start to edge back to physical gaming again - with all the ifs, buts, and maybes that continue to hang in the air around possible future restrictions - I shall raise a glass to the concept of sharing photos of our games: we must continue to share the love of our hobbies, and who knows - maybe share some of our 'war-stories' thereafter, too?!
Happy gaming.
