A Round of Applause, please...

...for those who literally laid the foundations for our wargaming!

Over a decade ago, back when we first came to Ada, we got our first dedicated game table.  Of course, it was destroyed via drunken debauchery.  That table was replaced like the next day - we've always had a table, even when we had no venue.  we faced a conundrum.  We didn't have a large venue, or storage for terrain, so we were forced to make concessions as far as our gaming went.  Some of you might remember that we had to do these things for ourselves, because at the time the local gaming store had 10ft for a table and was only open for 2 hrs a day except on Saturday and closed on Sundays.

So we did what we always did:  we gamed with each other, and slowly built our club.  You can really set the begin date for our current collection of gamers at...1995?  Yeah, but six years later we'd actually start to set up something we thought was cool.

From 2001-2003 we traveled to our venues.  I had a Kia Sportage that could carry the tables and terrain, and we'd meet where ever we could stand it.  Sometimes we met at Crazy Bill's downtown, sometimes we'd hit Fellow Potter in the trailer park...and sometimes we'd even hit Bignutt's A-Frame at 8AM, because that's when and where we could game.  Looking back, that was fun - but I'm really glad that's over.

In summer of '03, we attended the Eye of Terror tournament in Oklahoma City.  Of course, the majority of us won as Destruction.  We stayed in a tiny cabin while we hit two venues there on two different days, that was fun.  While we were there, we got our first and longest lasting battle mat - a 6'x4' piece of thin carpet from some carpet store, maybe it was Lowe's, I don't remember.  It was Bignutt's idea we use carpet after I described what we needed (battle mats were still a comparative rarity).  Yet we've used that piece of green material for 9 years and counting.

9 years.  Next summer, that green carpet will have served a full decade in our club.  I'm not sure how much this cost, it was negligible.  We've definitely gotten our money's worth from it.

So last year, Skim and I were talking about building new terrain.  I do it every so often, but mainly run maintenance on the hordes of stuff we already have.  We spoke about the types of "worlds" we would mainly be doing battle on, and we spoke of the ways people in our club base their models.  We concluded that we should focus on three terrain collections for three different "worlds".  One of these is our fabulous Green World, and we have a lot of terrain for that particular table.  So, we were free to focus on other projects:  game specific terrain and terrain for the upcoming "Brown World" and "Grey World".

We discussed what could be represented on those three fields, and of course everything but naval battles could be played on Green, Brown or Grey land.  I had some ideas, and I've actually already collected all the materials we need to begin on a lot of these new projects.  Yet, we still just had the Green World mat.

So imagine my surprise when Skim told me he had purchased Sabol Designs Combat Mat: Sands for the club.  It doesn't seem these mats are readily available now, but that was almost a year ago and I've been meaning to thank him for it publicly here online for quite some time.  Behold:  The Wargate's Brown World!

Special Thanks to Skim for our new Brown World!

We've gotten some pieces ready for this particular table already, and you'll be seeing some of it here soon.  Also, it goes right with Skim's Tomb Kings army he'll be playing next season for Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  Coincidence?  Maybe, but it also goes with my Goff Orks, Cygnar and one of my Mordheimwarbands!

Well, in the last few months we've moved to make our plans complete.  Bignutt up and got a Zuzzy Terraflex a few weeks ago, and it's ready to be painted and move into service!  However, I might point out that several members of the club have asked us not to paint it at this point.  I feel it might get a little inking and highlighting, but will remain grey so we can battle in the Grey Mountains and on the rocky deathworlds of the Imperium.

Big thanks to Bignutt and to Skim for helping us build up our collection of terrain with these top quality mats. These are truly the foundation of our collection, fellas - it wouldn't jive right without it.  You guys are the best contributors a club could hope to get, and all the rest of us truly appreciate your help!

Special Thanks to Bignutt for our new Grey World!

More terrain will be arriving soon for all three of these "worlds"!  Club members who are interested can always help, just yak at me next time you feel froggy enough and you'll find yourself with a nifty project to help build our terrain up even further than it is!