The Intricacies of a Gaming Group

After looking back at my last post that referenced two of my local gaming buddies, it got me thinking about the intricacies of gaming groups. Our group is made up of 11 or more gamers, depending on the day, weather, month, girfriend behaviour...

The group can be easily split into three catagories; we have the full time gamers, the part timers, and the casual guys.
In my eyes, full time gamers meet a certain criteria:

• Constantly working on models
• Attend every meeting, whether they are battling or not
• Contribute to the growth and development of the group

The part timers are those who either are; stop start modellers ( a couple months of progess and then periods of nothingness), attended around half or more of the meetings, and contribute every now and then to the growth of the group.

As you can probably guess, the casual gamers are like the casual staff at any job - they work every so often and then you don't see them for ages after that. These are the guys that take years to finish an army, who attend spasmodically to meetings and really have little to do with the development of the group.

As such, here is how our gaming group breaks down:
Full Timers


• Nick - Our noble Cheesehound! This guy is always working on something new. His Tyrant's

  

  The Cheesehound in all his glory

  Legion army was a thing of sheer awesomeness. He has since moved onto a 2nd edition Tyranid army, as well as an Adeptus Mechanicus army using Tau. To be honest it is actually hard to keep track of what he is upto, as it changes so often. He is at every meeting (mostly due to them occuring at the place he shares with Mitch), and is always all too happy to help the newbies to the group when it comes to rules, army ideas and gameplay





Mitch aka Mr-I'll-Never-Win-
A-Tournament-With-A-New-Army

• Mitch - Even though he has somewhat fallen off the wagon the last few weeks due to his band kicking ass and taking names, I still classify Mitch as a full timer because he is working on his second army (Dark Elder, following on from his Necron army), he attends nearly every meeting we have and he helped TO our in-house tournament.

• Stuart - I feel for this guy within our group. He works his ass off on a Tyranid army (and might I say, that given it is his first army, the models are actually coming along really well!), attends every single chance he gets, but sadly, the gameplay eludes him at the moment. Everything he seems to try ends up going wrong for him. He is steadily getting more competitive which is a good sign.
• Matt - Ah, young Matthew. This guy had been hanging out for the new Tau codex for so very long. Finally it gets released with the new models, he purchases all he could ever want and a week later he drops the idea for a Space Wolf army.
• Rylie - Rylie is working on a White Scars army that is actually coming along really nicely. He has spent countless hours modifying the models and each one of them has its own unique flavour. Attends every gaming night and is always a blast to play against due to him not having one single fibre of doucheyness in him.

Part Timers

• Flynn - We all have 'that guy' within our gaming groups, and for us, Flynn is definitely that guy. We came across Flynn in our local gaming store and he got involved in a game with Rylie. We invited to be part of our group thinking the more the merrier. Sadly, unbeknown to us, Flynn had a split personality, and once he joined the group and set about pissing off everyone with his blatant bending of the rules and general demenour at the table. He has been put on a very short leash lately, so here is hoping his head will be firmly pulled in.
• Aidan - Aidan is the newest member to the group, and due to him living a distanct away from the rest of the group, he is a part timer due to the amount of times he attends. He is slaving his arse away on his new army, a Blood Angels army. He is new to the rules system, but has thus far been able to pull of a few wins, even finishing mid table in our in house tournament.

Casual

• Justin - Justin is the brother of Matt, and even though he probably models more than anyone else - with the exception of Nick -, the fact that we only see him once every couple of months makes him a very casual member of the group. His Sisters of Battle army looks amazing and would shudder to think about the hours and dollars he has dropped into it.
• Kell - Kell is an exceptional painter. His Eldar army looks a million bucks (his wave serpent was glorious until Daniel came along). Unfortunately, a mixture of work and his new found pursuit of boxing has left him with little time to game and model. He still attends as many nights as he can, but it is now in a viewing capacity. Sadly, a hand shake has left him unable to paint at the moment, but here is hoping he is back at the table soon!
• Daniel - Oh Daniel. Daniel would normally be a part timer, but due to a recent downturn in his attendance, as well as in ability to maintain any interest in a game past the 2nd turn, he is a very casual game. Where it may take the rest of us half a year or so to paint an army, it will take Daniel that long to desprue a unit, glue it together and undercoat. And don't get me started on the hover dinosaurs...

Myself, I would hover somewhere between a full timer and a part timer. Work constraints don't allow me to get as much modelling done as I would like, but I attend our weekly gatherings and get as much gaming in as possible :)