Learn by doing

So I’m pleased to say that my first (hopefully not my last) The Drowned Earth event was a success!
("Event" might be over stating things but it's my blog so event is what we’re calling it.) What we had was an informal meet up and intro session punctuated by me shouting out encouragement.

I’ll start from the beginning just in case you fancy doing something similar.

Okay so I had some cool models and a basic (very basic) grasp of the rules, add to this a general over excitement and a drive to make others just as excited I decided that if there wasn’t a ready supply of players I would have to hunt some down.




Step one was set up a meet up. Which meant picking a time and a place, my FLGS Dark Sphere seemed like the ideal place, I have a tried and tested rule for choosing when to run events, when is best for me? That's when it's happening and then shout about it until people decided to come and keep me company.

Step two was decided what I was going to do when people showed up. Now as I’d never played the game planing a demo had its challenges, but I've demoed enough other games that with a bit of work and luck I cobbled together a plan.

The plan was to run a cut down version of the scenario “Attack and Defend” Using 3 models, leader, tough, and medic/mech. I also cut the turns down from 6 to 4 just to take any time pressure off. I also decided to leave out scout deployment just to keep everything as simple as possible.

The actual running of things was fairly simple, tables set up I just pointed people to seats until we had a pair at each and then run through the basics of how to set up.
After that if someone was unsure of a rule we solved it as a group assuming that at least one of us would remember what was supposed to be done.

This was made easier by the arrival of James the actual creator of the game (honestly I was tempted to ask him to sign my book but that seemed on the creepy side). Lovely fella, happy to chat about the game and answer any rules questions that came up.
Surprisingly for a game that almost all of the nine people playing had never played before there weren't that many points we got stuck on outside of remembering bonuses and negative to certain actions.
 
As is often the way all the players that were there were a great bunch, keen to play and happy to put up with me throwing my (unearned) weight around. Everyone seemed keen to play more and talk of regular games, a league, and even tournaments cropped up.

I even managed to get a game in. Which I promptly lost (as is often the case in any game). Luckily it lived up to my expectations (would have been awkward if it hadn't )

Huge thanks to James and Tom for the guidance and also to all the players, it literally would have been pointless without you.

Next step might be a small slow grow league, maybe followed by a smallish tournament... then maybe world domination if I have the time.

Truth be told I had a great time running this (not that it took much actual running) , I enjoy setting stuff up and getting people involved in something I'm excited about. Do think I'd realised just how much I'd missed it.