Global Gaming Community Spotlight – Teaching Warmachine in China
Earlier this year Privateer highlighted a group of dedicated fans at a well attended tournament in Shanghai. In this week’s Insider they talk with Jeff Torrance – an Australian player living in China – about the Warmachine community he’s building and what it’s like to teach new players in a foreign land.
After many years of playing in Australia, I moved to China in the pursuit of that most mercenary of all things: more coin. When I landed here, there was not much of a scene in wargames. Since then, I have found a few like-minded individuals, and we travel for some larger tournaments to Beijing and Shanghai.
My school has an after-school program that encourages various interests, like sports, robotics, Lego, cooking, and more. After a few students showed interest in the models I was painting in my downtime, I decided to offer it as an after-school activity. Our club this year was eight strong; we meet once a week after school and during the week for lunch play.
For a couple of weeks, we started with battle boxes and learned the rules. It made sense to follow the journeyman league rules in building the army, but the limited time meant we only built up to 30 points. For the end of the after-school program finale and last hurrah, I ran a tournament that Sunday.
After two hard-fought battles, the Legion of Everblight came out victorious over the Protectorate of Menoth forces. Khador scraped out a third-place finish over Skorne (after a draw on victory points and army points was decided by an important rock-paper-scissors challenge).
The kids had a great time, and we gave out a few small prizes in the form of custom school dice, a medal, and a special feat token coin. Overall, a great time was had by all, and we learned a few things about sportsmanship and painting—and, of course, how to put too much glue on a model and then glue your hands together.
Share your experiences with building community and teaching the next generation of tabletop gamers in the comments!
