“Mostly games you can finish in an evening”
We play by genre, not by title: what matters is the shape of the evening, the number of players and how forgiving a game is to a newcomer.
By genre, not by label
We do not list titles here, and the reason is practical: games come and go from squad nights faster than any website could keep up. What stays is the shape of the evening. A co-op night wants a plan and patience. A strategy night wants a notebook and a sense of humour. League night wants a referee, a clock and a set of rules everyone has read.
Every genre has a lead member who answers questions in the guides section. If you are unsure whether you will enjoy a type of game, ask for a trial night. You can sit in the voice channel for an hour, listen and say nothing at all, and nobody will think less of you for it.
Connection matters more than hardware. A modest PC on a wired connection will serve you better in our matches than an expensive machine on a wobbly wireless link, and we are happy to talk through your setup before your first night.
Pace matters as well. Most of our matches run between thirty and fifty minutes and a night is built from two or three of them, so a latecomer never misses more than a round, and nobody has to apologise for a bus that ran late.
Games are chosen by the squads in turn. Each captain proposes one genre for the trial weeks, the squads vote, and the most popular two go on the Tuesday roster. Nothing is ever dropped without a reason posted in the announcements channel.
Because the servers we use sit in the Oceania region, ping is rarely a problem for anyone on the east coast, but the time of day sometimes is. Public lobbies fill quickly in the evening, which is why squads book their own private matches for Tuesday and Thursday instead of hunting for a spare seat.
Not every evening needs concentration. After a long shift a lot of members want something light, so each genre has a gentle option: a relaxed co-op map, a slow strategy scenario, a time trial with no opponents. Tell a moderator you have had a long day and they will point you at one.
Co-op survival
Squads of four, one shared plan and no one left behind.
Real-time strategy
Long builds, loud voice channels and friendly rivals.
Team tactics
Objective rounds with referees and replays for league nights.
Racing
Short time trials for the end of an evening.
Sports sims
Quick matches for the evenings when only an hour is free.
“And when the screens go off?”
The first Saturday of the month is the one time we play in the same room, so the club room shelves hold more than controllers. There are cooperative board games, deck-building games, short card-driven party games and a few worker-placement games for the patient. Members donate boxes, and the guides editor keeps the list up to date.
Table games are always optional. Some members arrive with a gaming laptop and never leave the screens; others spend the whole afternoon at a single table. Both are welcome, and the moderators make sure nobody sits alone at either end of the room.
If you are new to board games, say so at the door. A volunteer will teach you the rules in about ten minutes and sit in for the first round, so you can ask the silly questions while nothing is riding on the result.
Boxes go back on the shelf in the order they came off it, with every piece counted. It sounds fussy until you have tried to finish a game with a missing token, which is why the counting is done out loud and with a certain amount of ceremony.
The shelf has a simple etiquette. Anyone may borrow a box for the afternoon, but nothing leaves the room, and nobody teaches a game they have not played at least twice. It saves a great many awkward moments halfway through a rule book.
Tables and screens
