Introduction

Club History

Both Clubs are based in Ghent, Belgium.

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The Red Barons

The origins of the Red Barons are a bit shrouded in mystery. Word has it that it all started back in 1978 when Edwin bought his first wargame (Battle of the Bulge from Avalon Hill) and convinced his friend Alain to play the game with him after some pitiful attempts to get his sisters drawn in.

The real start as a club was a couple of years later when we got a place of our own at a local youth club to play our wargames. In those days we played primarily boardgames and did try unsuccessfully WRG 6^th edition ancient tabletop rules.

In 1988, as the informal club was flourishing we decided to go public at an annual convention. The biggest problem we faced was that we didn’t have a name. At that moment there were two groups in our club: one playing mainly WW2 and the other playing mainly ancients. So we decided to pick a name from neither period and, in a rare moment of blinding creativity we went for the ‘Red Barons’ because we held our meetings and our first convention at a local pub called “The Baron”. We organised the convention on 25/06/1988 and attracted a lot of new players afterwards.

Soon after a major change in our club life occurred when we moved to a wargames shop called Magic Dice in the middle of the students quarter in Ghent. Our club boomed and we soon got more than 50 members, attracting players from Ghent, Brussels and even Lille in France.

The running of such a large club began to put too much strain on the family life of the aging hardcore founding fathers of the club who felt they were dedicating too much time to organise club activities instead of playing wargames. In 1993 they decided to stop the public activities and devote more time to the playing of games. As promotion of the hobby has always been one of the main aims of the ‘Red Barons’ we started organising game afternoons and publishing our own magazine “The Red Barons Briefing”. The last Red Barons Briefing was published in 1996.

you can download some Red Barons Briefings here :

At the moment the Red Barons have become mostly miniatures tabletop players with the occasional board game and the inevitable fun card games. Especially popular is the Warhammer Ancient Battles system. These players gather each second thursday evening at the "Gouden Mandeken" - café (located at the Pensmarkt in Ghent). For other games we don’t have a fixed venue were we can play but most members are settled responsible members of society now and have their own wargames room at home (cellars and attics being the most popular locations) where players are invited to indulge in some stiff wargaming accompanied by the inevitable bottle of high quality wine (or soft-drinks for some). Periods played range from ancients, renaissance, 7 years war, ACW, colonial, 19^th century to WWII, with the odd naval game (be it on the oceans or in space) or ‘Crimson Skies’ fur balls thrown in for good measure. Recently Flames of war and CD IV have made their introduction.

Bylandt

As said in 1993 the founding fathers of the Red Barons went underground and decided to discontinue the organisation of public activities (besides the annual RB-convention) Several members (notably those who lacked the playingspace) decided to form a new club and went in search of a new lair. This was quickly found and after some time a new name was born : Bylandt, after the commander of the Dutch/Belgian brigade at the Battle of Waterloo.

Club activities are a wide variety of boardgames and an even wider variety of tabletop figurine games. SF & fantasy is intensely played. We don't organise a convention of our own but gladly participate in the annual Red Barons convention.

Since february 2004 we're located at the Krejo Youth Centre, Claragoed 2, Gentbrugge, Belgium. We meet every thursday 20.00 - 24.00 hrs.