Hi Sailor,
I've read several of your posts on this subject and really feel for you. I know what it's like not to be able to get a game you love to the table.
I am curious though, did you not mention previously that you had found at least one group that played regularly, but you were not able to get there easily by bus? That could explain the discrepancy. Again, I could be misremembering but I unfortunately don't have time to search through the forums to check.
My playgroup is entirely made of beginners who I taught how to play. All but one of them live an hour away, and the one who is nearer is rarely able to leave his house. One of them lives nearer to me during the semester but he's extremely shy and gets really frustrated when he loses, so it's better if he plays against other beginners first rather than me. Additionally, while they do like the game, I don't think they like it anywhere near as much as I do. It gives my friends and I something to do together though. My friends and I don't have many if any other common interests, mostly just common experiences and compatible personalities.
As for the local game stores, I have never seen any news about organized play in my area nor have I ever seen anyone else playing Mage wars here except at Origins. One of the store managers at the Guard Tower said he plays Mage Wars I think, but it seemed that he couldn't point me to where or when I could meet other people in the local Mage Wars community, although I vaguely remember him saying either that he'd seen other people playing it there or that there were other people in the area who play it.
I'm probably going to start taking uber.
There's no public Facebook or meetup group for the local Mage Wars community except the one I started that has only a couple of members from my playgroup plus my sister who never has time to play anymore and also lives too far away.
I've posted about this many times on Facebook and I got exactly no responses for any of them. Not a single one. It really seems like people are either just ignoring me or there is no local Mage Wars community in my area. I've tried reaching out many times and got absolutely zero responses. I haven't exactly been inconspicuous about it. If there is a local Mage Wars community in my area, then they have done a pretty good job of keeping me in the dark about it.
One person who doesn't live in my area told me that it is personal and that the community does exist and just doesn't want to include me. I am skeptical of this however because it is second or third hand information from someone who disliked me so much that they tried to drive me away from the game altogether. They also claimed that my presence on the forums specifically was hindering its growth, or at least making many players in his local community decide not to join the forums. However, the claim that I myself am personally hindering the growth of the forums is a testable hypothesis. So I sought independent confirmation or falsification of that hypotheses. If it was true, that would mean that Arcane Wonders would be losing profits over it. I asked Laddinfance if that was the case, and he assured me that I was not noticeably hindering the growth of the forums in any way. However I only have his word for it, and he didn't back up the claim with as much specific examples as the other person did.
