Murder Squads

Several years, one pandemic and two work location moves at work ago, I had grand plans to introduce wargaming to kids at the community library I worked in. It was in a disadvantaged area and so I knew that whatever I did would have to provide everything as the young people themselves wouldn’t be able to buy their own models necessarily.

My current library has a slightly different dynamic (fewer youngsters but Jesus bloody Christ has the state of the world not just meant most people will struggle to buy into anything new). I’ve been trying to move over to working more with adults as well after 20 years of working with children and young people. The idea of wargaming in the library remains stuck in my head.

Loneliness was, even pre-pandemic, a problem for adults here. The Scottish Government had released reports on it, several charities were shouting about it but for some reason it just never gained traction as something we’d try to tackle in libraries.

Well, actually there is a pretty specific reason. Money. There is always funding available for working with young people or the elderly but there just aren’t the grants etc available for anyone in the 20-60 age range. Post-pandemic funding is now beyond dire and I could rant about the whys and what-the-fucks around that all day but ultimately it achieves nothing. I have no control over that so it is time to focus on what I have control over. And I’m not meant to get too political.

I’m in touch with Models for Heroes about potentially setting up a group for them (I suspect this is still a 50/50 chance at the moment) and we’ve just started a crafting group for all the local arts and crafts folks. Next up is to try and convince my bosses that a gamer’s night would work.

RPGs, board games and wargames. Bring your own but also have a stash of stuff for people to try when they come in. We’ve got a budget for boardgames for teenagers (see above grumble about money allocation) we can borrow and I have a few RPGs I’m happy to donate for a small shelf. Wargames though is truly where my heart lies.

Skirmish sized games would be mostly I’ll focus on for intro games. While GW have been turning out some pretty reasonable games of late (Kill Team and Warcry both regularly get played in our clubs as part of a pub skirmish night), again there’s no budget so we’ll go with cheap/free rulesets and whatever models I have laying around.

Time to go dig around in the pile of opportunity…