Tidewater Area Gaming Society has been a continuously running game group in Hampton Roads since February 2006, though it’s origins go back to July 2004.  The group has since Incorporated as a business in April 2009 and intends to file as a tax-exempt Social Club (501(c)(7)).

History

It started in 2004 when someone created a Yahoo group looking for gamers.  The list was named Tidewater Strategy Group and the message went something like this:

Greetings,

I started this list because I am interested in putting together a
group of gamers in the Tidewater area who meet regularly.

I could go into a long description of myself and the kind of games
that I enjoy, but instead I will simply provide a list of games that
I own. This is a pretty complete list, including games that I rarely
play anymore. It also has some kids games on it, but for the most
part, this is who I am as a gamer. I included games like Spades and
Hearts — even though they’re really not games that you can “own”,
they’re games that I enjoy playing.

It’s a pretty long list. I’ve been collecting these for quite
awhile. Now I’d like to find a group of folks to enjoy them with on
a regular basis. If you have any questions about any of these,
please let me know.

This soon turned into a group that met on an infrequent basis in each others homes.  Not too long after though it turned into something more.  In February 2005 Stephen Glenn had decided to open a game store of his own.  Called Family Game Factory, it focused solely on board gaming.  This quickly became the meeting place for our small group to gather and play games.  Several new members would join us from all over the area on a regular basis, some coming from as far as Richmond.  Sadly this was not to last.

In February 2006 Stephen had to close his store.  This started a minor scramble on where we could play.  But since the group had existed before the store, we fell back to our old habits.  We quickly organized a meet up in one of the members houses.  So on Feb 12th 15 of us met.  The event was a success and it was decided to hold it on a monthly basis.

The March 4th turn out was a little lower, only 12 folks, but this was the momentous day.  Before gaming started we sat around the table and discussed our future.  We decided that we liked what we were doing and wanted to build a support structure to keep it going.  We decided to form an official group, defined and elected officers, and committed to having the event we called Game Day on the first Saturday of every month.

We eventually outgrew members houses, and moved to renting a public venue.  Many new members have come, and some have moved on or out of the area.  We’re proud though that we have held a Game Day at least once a month since that first meeting in 2006.