A few dozen adults, one stubborn shopfront and a lot of tea: this is how a kitchen-table habit became a proper club room.
For about a year the Mob was three people and a dining table. Then the table started to groan, the neighbours started to ask about the shouting, and Ian, who owned most of the boxes, announced that something had to give. We tried the back room of a café, which was lovely until the evening it filled with people who'd come for something else entirely.
The room on Lyttleton Street found us rather than the other way round. It's an old shopfront with a big front window, a stubborn back door and a workbench left behind by the previous tenant, a sewing-machine repairer who must have been a very patient man. The workbench is now the library desk, and the sign in the window is the only advertising we've ever done.
We call it the hub because it's where everything meets: the shelf, the kettle, the long tables, and the corner where the console sits under a tea towel between sessions. Volunteers take turns opening up, and the owner of the building lets us use the room on the understanding that we leave it better than we found it. So far, we have.
Winters here are properly cold, so the first job on any evening is switching on the heaters and sitting the early arrivals nearest the warmth. By seven the front window has fogged over, and anyone strolling along Lyttleton Street can see a row of heads bent over boards.
Ian Singh started the Mob and still chairs the Tuesday meeting, which is a very short meeting held standing up. Everyone else takes a job for a season: someone looks after the shelf, someone watches the chat, someone writes the guides, someone runs the leagues. Jobs rotate, and so does the person who has to bring the biscuits.
The website is a different thing from the Mob, and we think it's only fair to say so. It tells you when we're open, how to join and what the house rules are. It doesn't run the evenings and it doesn't own the shelf.
The operator of this website is WAFFLE ADVERTISING LTD, 85 Great Portland Street, London W1W 7LT, United Kingdom.
Everything else you read here is written by members, and every opinion about a good game is theirs alone.
Most jobs take an hour or two. The shelf keeper counts and mends on Monday, the moderator reads the chat over breakfast, the organiser sets the Saturday room on Friday night, and the teachers read tomorrow's rule book on the couch. Nobody does all of it, and everybody does a bit.
We don't sell anything, we don't charge to sign up and we don't run adverts for games. If a publisher ever offers us free boxes, we politely decline, because the shelf is ours and we like it that way.
Guides editor
Alison edits the guides and writes the “teach it in ten minutes” sheets taped inside the box lids. She came for a single Tuesday and stayed for the co-ops, which she calls the only fair way to lose. Her trademark is a lime-green highlighter, and nobody has ever seen her without a pencil behind her ear. Ask her about a game and you'll get a one-page cheat sheet by the end of the night.
Moderator
Natalie runs the group chat, which sounds easy until you meet a heated debate about whether a rule applies to the corner tile. Her method is to reply with a question and a cup of tea, in that order. Off duty she plays long strategy campaigns, and she keeps a strict no-scoring-talk-before-dinner rule at home. Most disagreements in the chat have ended with her saying 'fair point', and a fair few began that way.
Event organiser
Andrea organises the Saturday long-game afternoons and the finals night at the end of each season. She knows which tables seat six comfortably, which chairs wobble, and which of the Mob will turn up early to help. A thermos of tea and a roll of masking tape live permanently in her bag. When the room is full, she can seat twenty-four people without raising her voice.
League referee
Trevor referees the leagues and ladders, keeps the rulings book and has settled more arguments about corner cases than he cares to remember. His own taste runs to quick tactical duels, and his rulings arrive with a short written reason and, usually, a joke. He carries a spare die in case anyone loses theirs, and he has never once been asked to explain a ruling twice.
Ian Singh did, at a kitchen table with three friends and a stubborn rulebook. He still opens up on Tuesdays, mostly to make sure the heaters are working.
Not really. There's a Tuesday meeting where whoever shows up decides what needs deciding, and anything that affects everyone is announced in the chat first. It all runs on goodwill and a roster pinned to the back door, and the roster is in pencil so it can change.
Please do. Tell any volunteer, or tick the helper box when you join. Jobs are small, last a season and nobody is ever stuck with one.