2013 Membership Renewals

April is membership renewals month, so please remember to bring along what you need to renew your membership for this year. Rates remain unchanged from last year, and you can see them on the About page.

This year we have added a new membership type, the Gaming Membership, so we now have four tiers, plus a causal rate.

Family: Up to five family members on a single membership. This is designed to make it easy for mum, dad and the kids to join. Full year cost: $72

Individual: For single members. Full cost $60

Concession: For under 18s and health care card holders. Full cost: $36.

Gaming members: For individuals who are no longer able to attend meetings more than a few times per year. $10 per meeting attended.

Casual gaming: For non-members on their second or subsequent visit (the first visit is free of charge). $7 per meeting attended.

Family, Individual, and Concession memberships get you entry to our meetings from April through to March 2014. In addition you are able to order games through us from Mil Sims at a discount.Gaming members can also take part in the discount and with the other three levels are also eligible to take part in A Game of Games. Family and individual members are additionally able to borrow games from our games library between meetings.

Announcing Gaming Memberships

The LXG committee is introducing a new level of membership for this and future club years. Gaming memberships allows members who aren’t able to attend a majority of club meetings over the year to retain their club membership.

Rather than an annual fee, holders of a gaming membership simply pay $10 per club meeting they attend over the year.

This new level of membership is designed for existing members who find that they are no longer able to attend every club meeting over a year due to work or other commitments, but still want to remain part of the club and drop in whenever they can. We have had a few memebrs mention this to us at the March meeting.

Gaming memberships mean you are still considered a club member for the purposes of attending Winter Retreat and other club events, and participating in LXG leagues such as the Grand Melee and Thunderstone leagues. Your Game of Games score will remain on the tally and games you play at club meetings and events will add to your score. You do not have any library borrowing rights however.

If you have a gaming membership and find yourself able to attend more club meetings, you can change over from a gaming membership to an individual membership during the year.

 

December 2012 Meeting Preview

Our final meeting for 2012 will be held this Sunday December 16. We have a packed meeting for everyone, with plenty to do!

Bring a Plate + Pizza
As is our Christmas tradition, we ask all members to bring a plate of something (even lollies are fine!) to share around. At lunchtime, we will send out some intrepid explorers to acquire Pizza’s for all, and we’ll be asking for your preferences before we go.

LXG Christmas Trivia
Prepare for the return of our trivia contest. Keith has devised another batch of fiendish questions. There are still spaces left for more teams of four to join. The contest starts at 10.00am so if you aren’t in a team yet, ask around to find other interested people. Details of the event including the categories are here.

Grand Melee League finals
The finals of the 2012 Grand Melee league will start at 2.00pm. This will be a sealed event involving the top 8. Prizes will be distributed to participants (not just the top 8) after the finals are concluded. Details on the finals are here.

Christmas special melee
If you aren’t playing in the finals, you can join in the Christmas special melee. Details here. I also have three pre-made decks if you don’t have one yourself.

Sitting Ducks league
Our newest league starts this months and runs until the February meeting. Details here.

Games
Of course all the games from our games library are available for you, so there is plenty to do even outside the organised events. You can also take your final chance of the year to improve your Games of Games score.

Reviews Wanted!

If you are an LXG member and you have ever thought about writing something for this website, then get in touch! Game reviews are one thing we would like more of.

Have a look at the list of games in our games library and you will see we have barely scratched the surface in terms of reviewing the games we have. Plus we pick up new games every year!

Some club favourites such as Deadwood, Dominion and Settlers of Catan have previously been reviewed, while others such as Ticket to Ride and Puerto Rico have not. You don’t need to pick a favourite though, just a game you have played and enjoyed and would like to write a few words about. Game expansions are also fine to review, this site recently featured the Quarmageddon Quarriors expansion.

You’ll see for our existing ones that we like our reviews 200-400 words, positive in tone, and explaining what the game is about and who it might appeal to. If this is something you’d like to do, by all means get in touch with us!

May Membership Reminder

We had 20 memberships renewed or begun at the April meeting – and thanks to each and every one of you. That leaves a fair few memberships that have yet to renew.

Please remember to check out our membership rates and bring funds to renew to the meeting on May 20. This will enable you to continue gaining points in A Game of Games, and enter into our Grand Melee, Viewpoint, and Thunderstone leagues. Individual and Family membership also gives you borrowing rights to our huge games library.

April Meeting Preview

April 15 marks our meeting date. There is so much going on at this meeting I hardly know where to start!

Change of Venue: We are still meeting at the same school, however the school hall will not be available to us this month, as it is being painted. Instead the April meeting will be held in the school library. Our Treasurer, Keith D, will put up signs to guide you from the hall to the library. We will still have access to our games library, but not the tables for wargames. Sorry wargamers!

Renew Memberships: April is membership renewal month. Renewing is as simple as telling us you want to renew and paying the correct rate. If you’re a renewing member there’s no need to fill out any forms, unless you’ve changed your information. New members or changed membership will need to fill out a form as usual.

Leagues: Our Viewpoint, Grand Melee, and Thunderstone leagues will continue this month.

Radio! A team from ABC Radio will be on hand for part of the meeting, to interview anyone willing to talk about board games.

Games! The games library will be available, so take this opportunity to improve your Game of Games score. Badges for ranks up to the level of Count/ Countess will be available for anyone who has reached a rank to purchase.

See you there!

LXG VIEWPOINT LEAGUE (18th March 2012)

The 2012 Viewpoint League kicked off at the last LXG meeting (18th March) and this was the first opportunity for those who participated in our last League to get to grips with the new “Reflections” decks that were released late last year. The competitors played two rounds with four people in each grouping. The first round was standard Viewpoint and the second round Reflections. The top players from each group in round one were grouped together in round 2. The players were scored over the combined sum of points from each game.

Feedback from the League Game was very positive! Everyone was blown away by the new Reflections cards and you could tell that the event was very lively in round 2 as players encountered new cards for the first time. One comment was, “Reflections tends to make for a longer game – but in a good way! Lots of new strategies to get my head around. I can’t wait to play a brew deck and combine old tech with new tech!”

Competition in our first League game of the year was so fierce that we had a three way tie on a score of 190 points each (based on the sum of two games). The winners were last year’s Queensland State finalist, Alex D; his rival Courtney J and new-comer Daniel M.

In response to the players’ comments, the next League game will be a brew game. Each player will have 10 minutes to create a deck of 70 cards using a standard Viewpoint and Reflections deck. Then they will play three games against other players of equivalent ranks. See the 93 Made Games site for more information on Brew Decks: http://www.93madegames.com.au/article_031.html#brewdecks

Viewpoint is an Australian designed, easy to learn card game. If you would like to learn to play, visit the League of Extraordinary Gamers at our next meeting on the 15th April 2012. The club opens at 9.00am and the League kicks off at 12 noon.

LXG is sanctioned to run the Viewpoint State Championships that will take place on the 20th of May 2012. Top scorers in this event will be offered a place in the National finals being held at the Toy and Game Expo in June 2012. Details of the State Finals will be released here next month. Stay tuned.

From Steam to Blood

Another LXG member blog has sprung up around the War Machine battle box challenge. From Steam to Blood chronicles the progress of Jason C. It already has one photo of some very nicely painted figures so be sure the check them out. This blog complements the already featured Get Behind Me, Dice Gods! blog.

New Games for LXG

At LXG we are never happy with the number of games we have, we always want more! The committee has determined that our finances allow the purchase of a small number of games in December, to be delivered in time for the Christmas meeting.

If you have any suggestions, by all means make them here or over on the LXG Facebook page.

The games will be purchased from our good friends at Mil Sims.

Get Behind Me, Dice Gods!

LXG Club member Adrian R has been playing miniatures games for well over 20 years now. He’s recently started his own blog, Get Behind Me, Dice Gods! to chronicle some of his own gaming and painting. If you’re interested in seeing a huge painted miniatures collection, covering Dystopian Wars, War Machine, Hordes, War of the Ring, Ancients, Napoleonics, and more, check over there as he puts up more pics of his collection.