Building a Flesh and Blood local community

Hi there folks!

The Armoury Line is back from a much needed break after playing at the National Championship.

Time for some wholesome goodness.

Since I started playing Flesh and Blood, I was dead set on ensuring my LGS strongly supported the game and that we have a local community. I think we did it

It was a long road, but we did it.

Along the way, I have heard echoes of the same journey being undertaken by other Flesh and Blood players, near and far. Some were successful and some were not. Hearing about those other journeys, I wanted to document my own experience of what worked here for the local group south of the river, from no games at all to consistently firing Armouries. I hope that anyone wanting to build a local FaB community finds this article useful.

Before the journey began ...

My closest Armoury used to be more than an hour away (P.S. London's a big area with loosely defined borders, so I'm really still just playing in London). Of course, I would want my LGS, whose 15 minutes away, to support FaB so I don't have to travel so far to play.

My local store was Troll Trader Bromley (TT). When I first messaged TT in late October 2021, their response was:

Hello Hung Hoang! We unfortunately do not currently support Flesh and Blood in our store. We are aware of the game and it might be something we will revisit in the future but for the time being the store is limited to Magic the Gathering and Pokémon TCG as far as card games go.

TT's stance at the time was so that I would not have even been able to book a table to play FaB casually with a friend either. So, this was where we were in the beginning:

We were not able to play Flesh and Blood in any form at all in the store.

I wanted to tell you about this part of the journey because I want to encourage you. I hope for you, dear player, that your LGS is more open than mine was at the time. But, even if they are not, I know that you can still overcome because even I managed to.

Building block 1 - Get support from the store

I continued to message TT for 4 months after initial contact, asking them if they have revisted the idea of supporting FaB.

At the beginning of Februrary 2022, TT suddenly got back to me:

Hello, would you be available to come by the shop to have a discussion regarding getting something organised for you guys? This week I'm available Wednesday between 12:00 - 18:00, and then during the weekend 12:00 - 17:00.

The tone of this message certainly was different. Something had change.

Of course, I made arrangments to come down as soon as I could. Upon arrival, I met the change himself. TT had a new store manager, Erik Johansson. Erik wanted to support more in-store play for all games, Flesh and Blood included! The store started running on-demand games the very following week.

Erik and Javier from TT have been amazing supporters of the game since. They mention Flesh and Blood to customers whenever they get the chance. They are one of the reasons we keep getting new players interested in the game and this is one of the best ways for a community to grow, article pending. Check out "The next stop is" article on Troll Trader Bromley and drop by the store if you're in the area!

Store support was the foundation for growth of the game in the local community. If your LGS doesn't support playing in-store yet, speak to them about it. There might be some complications in the beginning, as did mine. But, with persistence, I'm sure it'll work out.

Building block 2 - Get support from LSS

Once in-store play was supported, we immediately took steps towards getting Armoury support from LSS.

TT followed the steps detailed here:
https://fabtcg.com/resources/retailer-quickstart/step-1-how-stock-flesh-and-blood/

In summary, the store should sign up for a GEM account to start hosting on-demand games. The store should get in contact with their distributor to stock Flesh and Blood Products. The store should also get in touch with LSS at op@fabtcg.com to indicate their interest in organised play, so that LSS can green-light the distributor to start sending Armoury kits to the store.

LSS does like to see that there is some interest in playing the game at the store, TT had to host a couple on-demand tourneys before they got the green-light.

Armoury kits incentivise and retains players in the community. Once the Armoury kits were in, local players that haven't came by the store before or wasn't doing so that often, started coming more regularly. It just gave the scene more excitement with prizes and made the trip down worth it for the players.

Whilst nice, I don't think the Armoury kit is essential for a local FaB community. I have certainly seen other communities still doing very well without Armoury support, which is amazing.

P.S. TT was also fortunate to have a local, Jason Hamer, who had direct contact with the FaB European regional manager. Jason also chased up LSS which helped TT get the Armoury kits sooner rather than later.

The glue - Consistenly turning up and repping the game

If you, dear reader, are the person attempting to build a local FaB community,this section is for you.

Whilst waiting for Armoury kits to come in and having communicated that Thursday night will be the weekly FaB night at TT, I turned up every Thursday, without fail. I was also always posting in TT's facebook group, letting them know I'm down on Thursdays to play games.

Sometimes we'll have enough people to fire the on-demand. Sometimes its just me. Sometimes it'll be a new player and I'll sit down and help them learn to play. I usually come prepared with a learn-to-play deck (more about these in future community building posts).

Personally, I would say this is the most difficult bit, but also the most important bit to building a local Flesh and Blood community. I know of stores that don't have someone doing this. And even though the store host games and have Armoury kits, their Armouries does not fire consistently at all and there's not much of a scene.

Its a shame in these cases as I knew new players who would like to start playing, but they were under the impression that the there was no real scene in their local and decided to drop the game. This could be avoided with just having the one person whose always at the store on the date to play and keep the new players interested. New players is how one grows the community.

Furthermore, just because there are a few experienced players in the area, doesn't mean there will automatically be a thriving scene, even with Armouries. This was the case for a store in London that eventually decided to stop doing Flesh and Blood altogether. Without someone consistently turning up, communicating with local players, organising the best day for Armoury and tying it all together, its actually difficult for a new scene to consistently fire Armouries. It's genuinely no one's fault that the store stopped doing FaB. It's just proof that a local scene needs someone who is able to champion the game for it to survive and thrive. The store themselves won't necessarily have the capacity to do all that work.

A local advocate of the game consistenly turning up is really key to a budding local scene. Consistently turning up becomes a consistent turn out for Armouries later on. If people know there's always going to be some games on the agreed day of the week, people will start turning up too.

Summary

A store supporting the game, telling customers about FaB and advertising it on their social media, is the base of a local FaB scene and how it can grow. Armoury kits, whilst not necessary for a local community to thrive, does help make it a whole lot easier. If the store is able to stock products, just running on-demand events, charging an entry fee and rewarding booster pack prizes is a good alternative to Armoury too.

The key is still a local champion for the game. Not patting myself in the back (or maybe I am), but such a person was genuinely the difference between a thriving scene and a dud scene around London. Store support and Armoury kits are building blocks for a good FaB scene. But, they still need something gluing them together. That's where the champion comes in. Consistently turn up one day a week, shout about the game on the store's social platforms, make learn-to-play decks and help new players learn the game.

The overall London group have essentially agreed that this is the way. It's all just up to dedication and execution. If you are wanting to build a local FaB community near you, I hope this article helped and I believe you will suceed, keep going!

In the future I hope to be able share more community building post, watch out for these!

P.S. There's a champion's playmat in it for you.