Abstract:
So, what are your Armada-playing communities doing? Are you hosting tournaments on your own, or are your FLGSs making that happen? Are you engaging in other styles of play? If so, what styles of play are those?
Are there factors that you think makes this more or less likely to happen in your community?
My long-winded thoughts on the subject:
When I began playing X-Wing about a year ago, I was interested in having games that had a bit more depth than the 100-point-6-asteroid-death-match. In my fairly sizable and spread-out X-Wing gaming community, however, that mode of play was and has been the go-to style of play. There is also a thriving tournament scene, which are hosted by the game stores, but in some cases the TOs are volunteers rather than employees of those stores. That's all good in my book, but wasn't quite scratching the itch I was feeling.
To the south of my community (Portland, OR), there's a small-ish college town, where they seem to have more of the gaming style that I am looking for. It seems like they're able to make that happen by having:
- a smaller, but more tight-knit community, but also
- a gaming entrepreneur: a guy who has great ideas for different styles of play, and who can get his community to go along with those.
Because Armada is a smaller community by virtue of it being a new game, I thought I would try to knit it together, and try my hand at introducing those different styles of play. So far, so awesome! I've met some like-minded souls, who are even less cautious about introducing new things than I am. We've organized a couple of tournaments, which the local FLGSs have hosted without them actually organizing those events. In a week or two we will start an escalation league (with narrative commentary from HNN ), and after that concludes perhaps a narrative ladder/tree campaign in anticipation of Wave 2.