Today’s Community Growth article is gest-written by The Canada Goose himself: Derek Traquair, AKA Kaptain Murder on Discord. Derek is a Community Champion in his home town of Calgary, Alberta, where he runs the Calgary Underworlds Facebook Page, as well as a recent Grand Clash winner, punching his Golden Ticket to the US Open Finale in Atlanta, GA. He also just hosted the Underworlds Grand Clash at the Alberta Classic, a 26-player weekend-long event with multiple competitive categories. In addition, he is an active participant in the Underworlds Vassal League, where he trounced me last quarter with Beast Gorl, who he lovingly referred to as Cocaine Bear. Now, he’s here to let us in on his personal strategies for developing a local community, backed by his proven success. Read on below!

One of the most important things in the City of Shadespire is to have enough opponents to keep the games exciting. Like any of the Warhammer Games out there, unless you get some variety of play, the game will get stale. Underworlds helps keep this variety going by a regular release schedule and continual refinement of the ruleset. They also have brought back the OP kits and are supporting the larger event scene through the US Open Series and World Championships. If you are going to want to succeed at these however, you are going to need a good local team to get in your reps, hand you some crushing defeats, and generally prove that mithril sharpens mithril as you make each other better players.

What it boils down to is that you need to have a great community for your Underworlds games. In lots of cases, this means building your community for the first time… or rebuilding your community after the plague. Fortunately, through a lot of trial and error, the Calgary Union of Nightvault Tier 1 Shadespire Homies have the grand algorithm in place to share for your success!

You gotta Cowboy Up!
If there isn’t anyone else putting in the work to make your local scene great, then that job falls to you. I’m not going to lie, it can get tedious, frustrating, and thankless. You will, definitely, lose out on some short-term opportunities in order to benefit the group as a whole. With that said, if you are willing to shoulder this burden, it becomes more and more rewarding for each new person and each time your local tournament has a bunch of players.

So if you want this community to grow, you need to be that locker room leader. Not just in organizing but being approachable for new players to bounce ideas off. Start and stay active on that facebook page and discord server. Create a chat group with the couple people who are willing to help build with you and talk about all the new things coming out. Post your paint jobs and the games you’re playing. Be shiny and bright like the great beacon of Shadespire to attract those lost rookies to your shore!

Make the weekly event and stick to it!
Easiest way for people to come out and play is for you to have a set time each week for the team to get together. If you are unsure what works, first figure out what day(s) you are most consistently going to be available, then put it to any other interested parties and stick to that day like glue. In our case, we do Tuesdays and split these between two of our LGS (since half the team is on one side of the city and half on the other). Not only does everyone know “See You Next Tuesday” but the FB group/events page we use to manage the group makes it easy for new people to plan out their first time to our meet ups.

Then, make sure you stick to it! There are going to be some days that its just you. Chances are you will get the same person week after week. It takes time and patience. So break out some minis, bring some paints if you need to… or just bring vodka. I usually bring vodka.

Let the Wookie Win
One of the most common mistakes I see when people are teaching newcomers is that they take the opportunity to rack up a large glory total. For the life of me, I don’t understand why. The teacher just beat a noob and gave them a bad time in their first game. This isn’t Fortnite where you aren’t going to see the new kid again, or ever, in person. This is someone you want to bring into your community. With that in mind, break out the sons of Velmorn, the Looncourt, or your older swarm warbands. The ones that aren’t competitive and let your opponent get some kills and learn the basics of the game. Compliment their moves, especially if they do something clever that you didn’t teach them already. The goal is to get them to come back… again and again. They need to enjoy this game enough that they get in their reps so that in a few months they can challenge you with your hard-core teams. This makes you a better player as a result. Remember: Mithril sharpens Mirthril.

The First One’s Free
If you have been playing for a while, you have a metric tonne of carboard promo materials, old tokens, dice, hexes etc from previous editions. You know that you don’t want them – so give them out! This was an idea by Greg (Tossing Hydras on FB) in our gaming group. He started putting the objective hexes and tokens from previous sets in a baggie for new players. These were great for guys that had gotten their first warband because they liked the models or it fit in their AOS army; and weren’t sure if they wanted to take the next step of getting one of the core boxes. This let people play with their own tokens instead of borrowing for their first few games and helped them get a handle on the game a bit quicker.

Along the same line of thinking: make sure on your game nights, you bring a few extra teams for others to test drive. It will be great for new players to see how the game works or to decide which warband or box they want to go first. I personally always make sure the minis are painted, just because they look better when other store patrons get to check them out.

Support your OP Kits and Local Stores
One of the post-covid changes to the Organized Play kits that Games Workshop sends out is that they are now charging stores for them. It’s not a huge investment for your local store, but those little shops are a business, so making sure the game is profitable for them is key to making sure you maintain a healthy place to game. So, make sure you get your minis where you play. This will let the store feature their Underworlds products more prominently since they are getting sales, which gets more people buying the product and coming to play.

Those OP kits are also great for attracting new players. So, make sure you are running the tournaments on convenient days for everyone, and putting up notices on your groups social media pages, storefronts, etc. On Game Day, make sure you are organized and have the tournament format well thought out ahead of time. Have the rules and FAQs handy, and if there are a couple experienced rules lawyers in your group (I am blessed to have Beardarm to rely on here) they rule by committee rather than fiat and you will have a much easier time.

The Road Trip (yah boi!)
Finally! Once you have a team assembled, go on the road! Depending on where you are, there should be other teams and stores within a few hours drive. These are honestly some of the most enjoyable things you can do in playing Underworlds. It lets you get out to see a new group of people, enjoy some different styles of games and meta, and start to build a greater community (and rivalry!) with the other teams.

After a road trip, you should consider going to some of the larger Grand Clashes. The Alberta Classic had players from across Canada and internationally which led to an insane number of fun games and combinations of playstyles. Events such as the Las Vegas Open, Adepticon, Nova and the US Open series are all amazing events, and your team will have a blast. Book your flights and hotels together to save some cash on the travel costs, and make sure to get to at least one of these a year. Besides the great time your crew will have, the contacts you’ll get will help bring more people to your home community. It’s a slow process, but to this guy: the juice is worth the squeeze. Good luck!

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So there you have it – all that’s left is for you to apply the sage wisdom above (if any Canuck can be called ‘wise’) and grow your local scene. If you want to get in touch with Derek, check out his Facebook group linked above, or search for Kaptain Murder in the discords. Alternatively, you can meet him in the flesh (and get in a few games with me and the rest of the Rain City Thunderworlds crew) at the Tacoma Open this July (tickets are still available!). Now get out there and spend that glory!