Today was an odd day. It was York's annual gaming show, Vapnartak, and I had offered to help out local henchman Chris who was running the Malifaux tournament. I volunteered to help for two reasons, one was to catch up with the Malifaux tourney crowd and the other was to ease the pressure on Chris as it was the first he was running (I don't think anyone would have guessed though).
When I looked at the entry list, roughly half of the names were familiar to me and there were some that I really wanted to catch up with.
Old people often say that it's the little things that make memories and I finally understand that. It was the little things that made me smile today, as much as an ice hockey player can smile anyway. Here's some of the little things that made me realise why I miss the tournament scene.
Mike Marshall bounding into the room like a beardless Santa on a sugar high.
Matt Spooner opening a can of Dragon Soop at the start of game one (roughly 10am).
Joel Henry coming back from lunch with so much shopping even Barry would be impressed.
Meeting another Twitter regular for the first time in the form of Pete Wright (a thoroughly nice chap he is too).
Dave Chandler remaining the cheeriest man alive despite getting hammered.
Craig Johnson bitching about how badly it's going while battering his opponent.
Lee Batrick shamelessly whoring out bendyboards.co.uk (yes, the ironic plug was intentional).
I'm sure you'll notice that none of those have anything to do with the game being played. One of the random people I spoke to made a great point when I said the community is great, he said that the same can be said of any gaming group. Later in the day I saw Baby Jake who had not seen many of the Warmachine crowd in a year or two. Despite that, when he entered that area they welcomed him like a long lost brother.
Vappa is also a somewhat unique event. York has two gaming clubs (York Garrison and York Wargaming Society) and it is the only event where both clubs work together. Although in the past relations have been strained (all is good now), Vappa is the one day of the year that members of both clubs get in the trenches together.
I've been to YWS a few times and it is a very different club to Garrison (they're big in the Warmachine scene) but dealing with their members at Vappa makes you realise that gamers aren't significantly different just because they play a different game. This makes me confident that whatever direction my hobby ultimately takes, I'll find people that I can call friend.
Last time I wrote a post like this I got called a sentimental old git and to be fair, that's not entirely untrue. There are people I see on a daily basis that I genuinely don't give two shits about yet there are people I've met at tournaments that I'm proud to call friend.
As a final note I'd like to urge everyone to take a step back and really look at your gaming group and appreciate what it gives you. If you're one of the "tractor massive", please don't do this, all you'll realise is how fucking inbred you all are.
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