I’ve been playing Netrunner with my buddy in town for over a year now, and we are hoping to branch out more in the local meta to become better competitive players. We participated in a tournament last night at Dragon’s Lair, which was a lot of fun, but isn’t exactly a close location to our apartments (takes close to 40 minutes to drive.) Anybody else on here located in Austin, TX that knows of any weekly leagues or meet-ups around town? Those I talked to last night at Dragon’s Lair shared the same yearning to have more of a local scene and asked me similar questions. I’m convinced more and more when I meet other players that the type of people who play this game are some of the best human beings on the planet.
I live up north, so most of my locations are similarly northerly; not sure if that’s good or bad for your situation.
Anyway, Wonko’s, up on 183 a little north of Anderson Mill, has a lot of weekly gaming in general and is where I first cut my teeth on Netrunner. I’ve had to bow out of the gaming scene for a while (becoming a new parent does that), but I’m sure they’ve got Netrunner gaming going on, either scheduled or more ad hoc. Ask the owner, Eric, about when Netrunner players tend to show up and he’ll clue you in even if it’s just three or four buddies who’ve informally agreed to meet and play on a specific day of the week.
The other avenue for local gaming for me has been through the Central Texas Boardgames Meetup group. Despite the broad sounding name, all the events I was aware of were in Austin. For example, there is a recurring weekly “bring games and play with whoever” meetup at the Silver Grill on Parmer on Thursday evenings. That, and meetups like it, would be a good focal point for local Netrunner enthusiasts to congregate at.
EDIT: And if you and your buddy find a couple of similarly interested gamers, it’d be super easy to create a new Central Texas Boardgames meetup event where you all and others get together somewhere and throw down. I know something similar happened for a while at Newk’s, a restaurant in the Arboretum. Once you’ve got a core group of 4 or so people, that might be enough for you to create a meetup event that could snowball into a larger, more established scene on the Austin meta. As you said, there were plenty of other players at Dragon’s Lair wanting something like that so if it doesn’t exist, you could very well make it exist.
There’s also a Boards n’ Brews group on Meetup (meetup.com) that meets at Emerald Tavern. They have at least occasional Netrunner night. And then there’s a South Austin gaming group on Meetup that meets at a place I don’t remember. But either of those might help!
Edit: they meet at Tribes comics. There’s a Netrunner event Sunday from 2-5!
Heya. Posting what I know phones about to die. Emerald Tavern each Thursday night. Dragons Lair monthly tournament. Check with Whose Turn is it and Tribes down south.
Just thought I would jump in, I live in Leander and wish there was a group more in the north austin cedar park range. Emerald Tavern is very cool but sorta drive.