Lately, at Local Gaming Stores all over the world, we have been seeing a lot of growth - tons of people are coming to the game. The market is surging and not quite receding. People are getting the game in their language, which is soon to be available in 6 languages, representing over half of all the countries and territories in the world.
We each already know that the table is comfy, that the game is amazing, and that we all can enjoy it. The trick - or the tricky part, friend - is making sure that other people can see that too, and that newcomers always feel like they can pull up a chair and enjoy the feast. Not to be gruesome, I only want to stick to the nature summed up in the name of the game: Flesh and Blood. Play this game in person, let people see the fun that can be had in TCGs again, and keep it growing. Keep it going, keep it growing.
Today, let's talk about the metaphor of the table; the perceptions that we face and perhaps might overcome; little things that anyone can do to help grow the community or make the place more welcoming; and finally, community efforts that might be a little more than any one person should take on all on their own.
The Table
I like to think about my game nights as a big table for a feast - a table where everyone should feel welcome. A place that might serve to a theme, but ultimately is designed to cater to lots of different tastes. A smorgasbord of things for all to enjoy from, with a good balance of differences that make a cohesive whole.
We've got collectors and players, sure. Organizers, judges, grinders, casuals, jank lords, lore fiends, drafters, builders, netdeckers, tweakers, learners, and teachers. Everyone enjoys their own unique mix of things, and if you want to have a wide-open community, it can be a wise move to plan out nights that cater to all of these flavors over the course of the weeks and years. Rather than trying to fit it all in one stew, I recommend for your game nights to feature an armory event and casual play - or at least, have the option for casual players to pull up and jam.
I like to think about keeping a seat open at the table for newcomers. As a tournament organizer, it can perhaps be for the best if you aren't playing the tourney but instead are helping new players get grips on their new hobby and hero. Somebody should pretty much always be ready to teach a new player how to get into the game for an hour or two each night. If that could be an LGS employee, all the better for the store and the game! Either way, it should definitely be someone who wants to do that sort of thing.
Somebody should always be ready to teach a new player how to get into the game.
Many players do learn from the internet or even self-teaching; but if someone has come up to your group of players and has asked about learning, they might just be the type of person who learns best in person. Keeping a seat open for the prospective new player, both literally and figuratively, can go a long way towards making someone feel welcome at the table.
The more people that we can welcome to the game, perhaps the more players in the game there are. The more players, the more everything - the game can continue to grow, which I think is something that we all want! I certainly wish for many, many more years to come for Flesh and Blood.
It's the Little Things
There are little things that you can do to help make any environment more welcoming. Smile and greet prospective players. Just saying something simple and in a friendly tone - “Hey, are you here to play some Flesh and Blood?” - can make someone feel like they are in the right place. If you prompt them with their opening statement of purpose, that's one less barrier they have to overcome at the opening. Introducing yourself and shaking off the perception of being a stranger makes new people feel like they belong that much faster.
One thing I like to do when starting to learn people's names in my FaB community, is associating them with a given class or hero that they play. I wear Bravo on my sleeve, and it's no secret that some players could only recall me as “that guardian guy” and the like - which was easy enough to transmute into my actual name over time. I certainly don't mean for you to diminish anyone to just the class or hero that they play, but for me it's a little way to start remembering all the different people that come to the scene. Names are hard to nail down; and while it's important to eventually learn what people like to be called, it's more important to make your new acquaintance feel remembered as quickly as possible.
Make your new acquaintance feel remembered as quickly as possible.
As a tournament organizer, make sure to fit the smaller deck formats into the rotation. I know that a lot of players prefer Classic Constructed - I sure do! - and it certainly is the flagship format of the game; but it's also generally the more expensive format. Having Blitz once a month, or however often, can be a way for players to hop in to the competitive scene, and maybe transition from playing casually on the side into playing in Armory events and testing out more of the dishes on offer at the table. Not only that, but maybe we should be making sure that our local players who really enjoy Blitz are given an opportunity to play that in the scene, or at Armory nights, competing in their preferred format for cold foil Armory prizes. It can be a challenge to strike this balance, but I think that it's a surmountable obstacle in general.
If at all possible, try to coordinate with the person who owns or manages your Local Game Store to hold boxes and packs back to run Limited events as well. A lot of players really enjoy draft and sealed play, and if you have enough players interested and the space to do it, it is so much more powerful to say “yes, I can run a draft for you” than having to turn those players away.
As players, recognize the goals stated above and try to be receptive to new formats and ideas. Try out draft, sealed, Blitz, Classic - try out Ultimate Pit Fight sometime, and play the game a different way. If the formats up at the game store this week maybe aren't your favorite, and you haven't even played those formats in a long time because of how they were several weeks or months ago... maybe jump in and try them anew! The metagame is always changing in each of the formats, and there's bound to be some gameplay that you've missed. There are great games to be had in all these formats, if you give them the chance!
As players, try to be receptive to new formats and ideas.
One more thing that anyone can do: keep multiple decks with you. I suggest starting Commoner as your second deck, or even Clash, or maybe just keeping one of the $12 precons built in your favorite class or hero. Start cheap and simple, and don't feel obligated to get any more extravagant than that. If a new player asks to play a quick game, the last thing you should do is take out your most honed and deadliest deck and beat the tar out of them with it. Ideally, you also don't want to say no to their request, especially if you are the games coordinator. If the timing just isn't right, maybe you can reschedule - “hey, friend, I've got fire this tournament, but I would love to play a game with you here in 10 minutes or so!” is all it takes to make that person feel like they did the right thing by mustering the courage to ask for a game.
And Occasionally, It's the Big Things Too
The suggestions that I have here are, frankly, a bit bigger than those in the previous section. You can probably get away with calling these Endeavors, or even Community Efforts. If you can, try to get your LGS involved in these sorts of things directly. As is often the case with these things, the only way that they'll get done is if we at least start. So let's dive in.
One of the “free” things that you can do as a community ("free", because time is not free) is sort the bulk card pile and make starter decks. All of the stores I have been to that sell cards, have a bulk area for the various games that they support, and players are encouraged to donate cards to and from the bulk area. Some stores sell commons and rares, and if that is the case then they probably don't want or need your help with sorting cards, as they make money on the practice. If that's not the case, as it is often not, once a year - or more often if your community is capable - I recommend that you give the bulk a good and thorough Sortening. Then, you (or a well-sorted store) can build new player decks out of the bulk using any of a variety of lists, like Joey's Bulk Decks, or even the new Brain Gottlieb HP1 decks. These will usually sell better to, or be received better by, new players.
If you've never sorted 16,000 cards before, I have a little bit of advice for you. I recommend combing through the sort process in a tiered system. First, you'll need enough storage for all of the cards once complete, plus some wiggle room for new cards to be added. Then, start going through the unsorted bulk and just separate it by class. You don't need neat piles; you don't need to worry about names or rarity or anything. Just sort by class. Then, once all of the bulk cards have been separated into the classes (and generic), you can start to sort by type, then name. This is usually good enough, but if you are feeling froggy, you can sort by pitch band as well. By the end of this process, it should be very easy to find cards, if you know their class, name, and type. This also makes it a little easier to space out and give pieces to your community members to pitch in on: if everyone knows the steps and the end-goal, then the work should be a lot easier!
Another big thing that I like to do: stockpile playmats to give to new players. Any time that a new player comes and learns the game and really truly gets into it, we hook them up with a playmat. As I'm sure you've seen, playmats are not free, and LSS graciously sends us two a month - but we often get more than 2 new players in a month these days! So, once or twice a year, I will host an Armory night at the LGS wherein players who donate any number of playmats to the store, will have their Armory entry Covered or Sponsored by the store. This can be an expensive endeavor if you take it on all on your own, so I very highly recommend that you partner with your LGS on this one. I have found that a lot of players seek out their “grail” mats, their favorite playspace to slap cardboard and spill blood, and their playmat collection grows in the background. This is the perfect, paired, opportunity to let them unload playmats, and get a stockpile of playmats to give to new players.
Little gifts like that from the community are strong plays when it comes to community growth. For one, everyone pitches in on the effort eventually, which means that everyone sees and feels the satisfaction when a new player gets their mat. And for two - and I really can't stress this enough - everyone gets to play on a mat. Much like a uniform or club patch or any such thing, playing on beautiful FREE playmats is one of the easy ways that people can feel like they simply belong at the table already.
Little gifts from the community are strong plays when it comes to community growth.
The last big thing that I can't help but recommend for new players is to have Learn to Play nights baked into the schedule. It doesn't have to be every game night - although that is a really strong thing to have. You should probably try to host learn to plays once or twice a month. Your store might still have access to the Ira Learn to Play stuff - if not, those cards are quite inexpensive to get regular printings of. Keep a few of those sleeved up, and if possible, have a few that you can just give away; your LGS should be able to get a set of like, 18 of these from their regular TCG distributor. Having a regular L2P event is a great way to funnel activities and make it so that each night can sing.
A huge way to support the Learn to Play efforts in your community is by reaching out to local gaming conventions to see if they have a game room or tournaments - any such thing like that - where you might be able to host an event. When my teammate Ryan and I reached out to the convention Nan Desu Kan here in Colorado in 2022, they were happy to have us come and teach people how to play. It was so successful that we are likely to do more with them in 2023. Part of this process was reaching out to Legend Story Studios directly and asking for promotional materials, to which they happily obliged! I will say, reach out far in advance, and get planning with your game convention, LSS, and LGS early. It's a process, and having lots of time for everything to work out is absolutely crucial.
Finally, I want to shift the focus back on our competitive players. There is a lot of talk about keeping the table welcoming for new players to come and feel welcome, and I did touch on keeping various formats in the rotation so that players who like different formats are always getting served too. But I just don't want to ignore one of our biggest factions: tournament grinders. For many players, Armories are the highest level of competition that is available to them. These players need to be served to!
For this one, you are going to have to check your local laws and listings, but a big thing that we can do to cater to this community is hosting big competitive tournaments that are not driven by LSS. What I mean is, partner with your LGS (and probably a lawyer) and plot on the calendar carefully for a $40 or $50 entry tournament of your own! You have to work with a store for product as prizes, or - and this is where the law comes in to play - have cash payouts. Hosting big and independently-run cash prize, or multi-box prize, tournaments is an excellent way to cater to your more tournament minded players. If cash prizes are not legal in your area, then having big prizes like whole boxes or whole cases is a great way for to compensate for top-tier play.
As this game grows and as we absorb more and more players, both new blood and refugees from other tables, we should be certain to make everyone feel like this is the table that they want to play at, and that includes people who want to see big stakes and high competition too.
Conclusion
Community building is a monumental task that is also, usually, monumentally rewarding. It takes time, effort, dedication, and resources. I certainly didn't write the book on how to build a community, and I have learned a lot from folks like Joey Senart, or other local game community leaders like Matt Dawkins. The more that you put into the community, the more you will see come out of it. The more that you cater to the various unique voices in the scene, the more interesting and new things will sprout out of that community. Players new and old need to be served too: it's not a linear thing, but a circular one. Your casual players may never become tournament players, and that's okay, so long as they're all having fun. Keeping the table open for newcomers, and hosting feasts for the entrenched players to revel in: that's the sort of stuff that thriving communities are made out of. Keep it going, and keep in growing!
