What a to-do!

Well, that was an event! One hundred and fifteen of us enjoyed a fabulous evening at the Daniel Owen Centre last Thursday night.

Games

What better way to bid a fond farewell to the name Deeside Defenders than celebrating by exterminating tyranids on the most rickety, poorly-commanded space hulk you’ve ever seen, charging recklessly into battle for chocolate pudding, playing polo with hobbits on walruses or any number of other games.

Food

The DOC staff and volunteers made us proud with curry, buffet food, Christmas pudding, cakes galore and (apparently) Lobster!

The Daniel Owen Centre

In thanks to the efforts of the DOC over the year we made a donation of an iPad that will power a new Point of Sale terminal for the cafe, helping improve the venue and simplify the day-to-day work of the staff and volunteers. It should also enable us to run the cafe counter ourselves on Mondays and Wednesday evenings, when [IF - Karen]  I’m allowed behind the counter to make coffee again.

We have also made a donation of £200 directly to the volunteers to enjoy a slap up meal at a place of their choosing. Thank you to Karen and everyone at the DOC for hosting us this year.

Awards

We made a number of awards to winners of leagues in Bloodbowl, 40k and Bolt Action. The winners names are recorded for eternity in the Virtual Trophy Cabinet.

Raffle

The raffle raised new standards with over £1,700 in prizes and 1,500 tickets sold. We are simply blown away by huge donations from club member Mark Lewis, and Grim Dice which pushed the raffle-pot to heady heights.

The draw went smoothly and quickly [and prevented Dave from winning - John] So that was a success. Getting suitable prizes to cover the wider range of games we play is always a challenge, especially when we have donations that we can’t predict. With hindsight we realise that the RPG portion of our community was under-represented with prizes, apologies for that - we will fix it and a significant portion of next years investment is likely to be towards RPG assets.

New Name

Luke unveiled the results of the club-wide vote and our new name is North Wales Tabletop Games Club. Chosen by you the members, this is a name that doesn’t tie us to a small region and is inclusive to all forms of game playing.

You will see some changes already with social media and the website beginning to use this name. This will take some time for every reference to be updated, and google and other search engines to catch up. We are aiming for a slow transformation - not a big bang. The new website address is https://www.northwalestabletop.org. The old Deeside Defenders address automatically redirects there, so you should not have to update anything on your phone or PC. Luke will be in touch about the upcoming new logo competition very shortly. Pictures

We trialed the POV app, allowing everyone to take pictures and automatically share their experience with the club to give us a stack of pictures from the night. We seem to have missed the mark with this idea, with only 4 people taking a total of 45 images. Thank you to Jackleen and Vincent for their efforts ...

We hope that everyone was having too much fun or too many calories to remember to take pictures! If anyone took personal pictures, then please can you provide them to any of the directors (NOT via social media as this will compress them and make them unsuitable for many potential uses.)

A massive thank you to club members Gaz and Barry who both took a lot of "official" pictures many of Barry's you see throughout this post, we shall share Gaz's when we get them.

THANK YOU to everyone who attended another successful evening. Onwards into 2026! Mathew, Alan, Luke and John.