Where do you do most of your gaming? I know lots of people with game rooms, or other places at home, where they can lay out fantastic settings for their battles.
Lone Star Historical Miniatures-San Antonio does most of its gaming "out." By that I mean we meet at either a local game store, or in a restaurant. Meetings are usually weekdays after work. Currently, the group meets Tuesdays at Dragon's Lair, and some of us meet Thursdays at a local restaurant, EZ's.
In both cases, games have to be relatively portable and quick to set up and tear down. For the most part that means felt battlefields. Thus the bright green fields as seen here.
I have recently invested in some of the "European Fields" mats from Hotz Artworks. Although intended more for an aerial game, I think they work better than monochrome felt.
Either way, they allow us to get to the game faster and play longer, before the establishments kick us out at 10 pm.
I've always done my gaming at my house or my opponents, but gaming opportunities have been rather slim. I *have* learned of a game store that has some gaming in the area, but it seems to be mostly card games, warhammer, and an occasional Flames of War game.
ReplyDeleteI have done all of the above.
ReplyDeleteThe store games have been interesting, but sadly almost always time or space limited. The coolest yet has to be the 'war in the window' series of games where the minis got setup one afternoon and there are game cards at the front desk of the store. Every wednesday and sunday for a month 2-5 club members would come out and move the orders given on the cards that others have suggested, or if no moves were suggested we would corner folks coming in or out or just kibitzing watching the fun in the window. It was a lot of work but a blast and a great way to show of some really good painting works of many different people.
Tried the restaurant gig, but not many are willing to tie up that much floor space for the price of a couple of dinner and 6-8 cups of coffee. Not only that but taking away 4x6 feet of tables eats up wayy more table space than any restauranteur is willing to give up in prime time evening dining room spaces (I live in a resort sort of area and while we might pull it off in january or february, in the summer no way).
Convention games have been really great since you can generally find lots of players and have loads of room around the table to be able to walk around the big games! Sadly I have moved away from where there are lots of tabletop minis players and now have to find my own players.
The HOME table is best for this, supporting new players, as it permits the set up of a detailed game, leisurly play (if you can leave it all set up and be reasonably sure no-one is going to mess with it) and plenty of opportunity games can happen with little or no set-up time. Likewise all 'tear-down' time can be put off usually since the game ends, you can go to the very limits of time constriants since you do not have to factor in the tear-down, clean-up time.