Club History

The History of the Angus Wargames Club By Bob Mirrey(Treasurer) 2005 If I had known that 20 years after attending the inaugural meeting of the club (apart from not having the foresight to know that it would still be going strong 20 years later and that my younger self would manage to stay interested in anything for more than a few months), that I would be asked to write a piece about it's History, I think I would have made some notes along the way instead of having to rely on memory. The Club began life in August 1985 with a meeting in the Glengate Hall Kirriemuir, of a group of people who had indicated a interest in forming a Wargaming Club at the Toy exhibition run in the July of that year by Dale Smith. Enough of us turned up at this meeting and the decision was taken to form a club which would meet every second Saturday in the Glengate Hall, Kirriemuir, an old, slightly run down church hall with high ceilings, hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, but cheap and available to rent on a regular basis which would become the club's home for the next 18 years. The Club known as The Kirriemuir & District Wargames Society or the Kirriemuir Wargames Club as it was to become more commonly known in the wargaming community, from memory didn't start with that exact title but the "District" part was added early on to reflect the fact that throughout the years the club has always drawn a large proportion (including myself) of it's membership from outside Kirriemuir and the Society bit sounded a bit more respectable alongside the Wargames part of the title, this was at a time when non-wargamers thought we got up to far more exciting (or sinister) things than playing with miniature figures. The clubs original constitution makes interesting reading, written at the time on an A4 sheet of paper and it was more a set of rules reflecting the innocence of a new club, which had no assets and which, at first, relied on the terrain and figures owned by the individual members (in my case none) to function. For the next 18 years the club was to meet on a regular basis, putting on exhibition games at the Glasgow & Edinburgh shows, later on adding trips in June each year down to the Durham show (a very enjoyable experience where we stayed in a pub a dice throw from the event allowing many a pint of the famous local tipple to be consumed). Along the way the club picked up a sprinkling of commended or runners-up places for games at Claymore, until 2003 when the clubs "Red Baron" game won the best participation game. We ran our own open day which kept growing and growing and became the Skelp of later years. The club had a small core adult membership of around a  dozen, which some years when we were swamped with Junior members went as high as 30+. But we always found it fell back to the core dozen as the Juniors grew up and found more interesting things to do with their time. So the years passed, swamped with members one year and then back to the core membership the next, an interesting fact about the club, as far as my memory serves me, is that we have always had a Church of Scotland minister as a member - a steadying influence on us all! We have had a few women members, but usually they came with their boyfriends, stayed a few weeks, before vanishing again often with the boyfriend. By 2003 the poor old Glengate was really starting to fall to bits, no heating, dangerous electric's, in hindsight the club and the membership had hung about to long in the vain hope that the trustees would manage to get funding to refurbish the hall which would allow the club to continue to enjoy the run of the hall. In the end the club was forced to switch meetings to the houses of those members who could accommodate a game, it was a bit of a disaster for the club as attendance's dwindled. The great thing about a club with a permanent home is you get a choice of games on club nights. Compared with the generous offers to meet at members homes, which tends to limit the number of places available and usually you end up playing games you wouldn't normally play. After a time even I found the temptation on a cold wet night to sit and watch TV after my meal, rather than bother going out a very persuasive option. It is not long before a general malaise sets in and attendance's on club nights declined to such an extent that if 5 or 6 people turned up it was a good turnout. Late in 2003 it became clear that if the Club was to survive things couldn't stay as they were so a decision was made to place an advert in the local press looking for alternative venues with suitable facilities for the club within the local area. As an interim measure (whilst alternative venues were sought) the Club moved to the Guide Hall in Kirriemuir and in late January 2004 a delayed AGM was held to vote in a new committee and to decide on the future meeting venue for the club with the Guide Hall Kirriemuir & the Boys Brigade Hall Forfar being the 2 venues put forward to the membership. End of an Era An era ended at that AGM when Dale Smith one of original members and a major driving force in the club who had been the un-opposed Chairman since the beginning and someone with whom I had worked with closely over the years as Club Treasurer and in sharing the pre Skelp workload withdrew his nomination for Chairman and chose not to stand for re-election to the committee. The membership proceeded to elect a new committee and at the same time voted for the club to move to the Forfar venue. The club moved to its new location in February 2004 with the new committee given the long overdue task of overhauling the clubs original constitution. The growth of the Club, it's assets and the fact that the majority of members, apart from the few founding members had never actually seen it, making this task a priority. It was hard to define who was a member of the Club, as it hadn't had a membership fee or elections for many years and who was and wasn't a member had become a matter of vigorous debate leading up to the AGM. They were also tasked by the Chairman(Michael Anderson) with looking at a possible change of name for the club which would be more inclusive to the membership as a whole . At a GM in April 2004 the committee returned to the membership  to ask them to vote on the proposed, Constitution, Byelaws and nominations for the Club name. These included the Strathmore Wargames Club,The Tayside wargames Club, Angus Wargames Club or leaving the clubs name unchanged.The membership voted and unanimously adopted the Constitution & Byelaws and at the same time to change of club name to the  "ANGUS WARGAMES CLUB" which had polled the most votes. The decision to move to Forfar has been shown to be have been a worthwhile gamble with the membership trebling and attendance's on club night's reaching new heights with the friendly atmosphere of old returning. If I have any regrets about the move it was the loss of a couple of long-standing members, particularly Dale who decided he couldn't support the Clubs move to Forfar and decided to wargame elsewhere.

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