I enjoyed an evening at Gatwick Gaming club in Crawley and they got me hooked on this game
Gatwick Gaming promises ‘an electrifying evening of board games’ – and I certainly got that when I visited the club.
Set up by Derek Cox and held at Ifield West Community Centre, Gatwick Gaming is a chance for keen board gamers to get together and play their favourite games or learn something new.
I have loved playing games from when I was child with my mum, dad and brother (UNO, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit) to now where I have branched out with my wife and son and friends Dan and Hannah.
When I heard about Gatwick Gaming, I was intrigued to see what it was all about.
Derek started the club back in the summer 2024 when he worked for GRIDServe at Gatwick. “Just as an initiative to try and get more people through the doors, I thought ‘why don't we try and get board gamers in?’ We've got loads of tables, board gamers need tables, so I contacted loads of different clubs, no one really was interested. But I've always thought about starting my own game club up,let's just do it.”
It started slowly but he eventually got up to 28 people before his time at GRIDServe came to an end.
That's when he moved to Ifield West Community Centre and the club now sees up to 40 people a week.
And when I first entered the room and saw eight different tables playing different games, I felt a real sense of community and kinship between the attendees.
They were playing all sorts, from card based games to more complicated-looking fare like Dune: Imperium and Art Society.
"They can play Scrabble here if they want to”, said Derek. “As long as there's people to play it, it's not a problem. But that's not the sort of things you normally see. So here you see more of the modern ones, that have surpassed things like Monopoly, even. You see Catan, but obviously a lot of the games have surpassed even that, to be fair. You've got Dune: Imperium over there, we've just played Cockroach Poker, a little bluffing game. Others are playing Castle of Burgundy, where you're building your own sort of lordship duchy, which is quite cool.”
I didn’t have time to build civilisations, lordship duchys or art galleries, so Derek and partner Sara entertained me with two card games – Cockroach Poker and Flip 7.
Cockroach Poker was simply a bluffing game and turns out I had beginner’s luck. That was over ion about five minutes so a nice gentle start.
The popular Flip 7 game was another card game which had elements of Black Jack and UNO. This took about 15 minutes and, again, I had beginner’s luck!
I really enjoyed that game and Derek mentioned he is holding a Flip 7 tournament on February 18 – so who knows if there is a trophy in my future. This is the game I will be looking to get and get my family and friends into.
"I want people to come together,” said Derek. “I mean, look around the room. So many of thesepeople are friends of each other now. They get on, they talk to each other outside of here. They're excited about it, and I love that. It's almost like matchmaking time. It's brilliant.”
I also chatted to Simon, who was busy playing Art Society with a couple of friends. Simon is also involved in the Board Stupid podcast, youtube channel and Instagram page with talks about ‘talking tabletop board games, D&D, and other awesome stuff’. He met Derek at another club they run at Tilgate and he loves that he has this club to come to now.
"It’s a really friendly atmosphere and we get to see loads of people every week playing a whole range of games,” he said. “There's so many games out there that you can buy and then finding the people to play them with can be a bit of a barrier. So having stuff like the Gatwick Gaming community to come to is absolutely fantastic. I've got about 100 games at home but I'm not going to be able to play all of them on my own, or necessarily find people to come to my house all the time. So being able to bring them out to a community centre and get people playing each week is amazing.”
And Simon is right, I got a real sense of community at Gatwick Gaming and it’s always nice to see like-minded people enjoying each other’s company and having fun in the process.
Gatwick Gaming is held at Ifield West Community Centre every Wednesday night 6pm-10pm. It’s £4 entry but the first week is free if you want to give it a taster.
U18s must be accompanied by an adult. The group is run as a non-profit and all proceeds go into running costs.
You can find more information on Gatwick Gaming’s Facebook page or email Derek at [email protected]