The October Wargames Society was founded in October 1976 as a result of a restructure within the Birmingham Wargames Society, and the name October was a result of this rather than a commemoration of the October Revolution in Russia as some people believe.
Founder members of the club included John Westwood, Karl Farrell, Greg Higgs, and David Constable. After meeting at various venues in the first few months, the clubs first long term meeting venue was at the Matador Pub within the Bullring complex, where they stayed until the early 1990's. During this period the membership of the club was restricted to 20 due to lack of space at the venue and this resulted in membership of the club being by election.
The club meeting night was Monday and it was therefore generally known as the Monday Club and at that time it was almost exclusively a club playing Ancients. Eventually the club decided to start competing in various competitions which culminated in winning three Worlds Ancient Team titles and leading club and leading team at the British 15mm competitions held at Roll Call and also making large contributions to the successful West Midlands Regional team at the Nationals (now called Britcon).
Individual members of the club have won many trophies from that period right up to the present day although entry is now on an individual basis rather than as an official club entry. With the redevelopment of the Bullring imminent with the consequential loss of the Matador, the club moved firstly to the Post Office Club and then to the Bull Ring Tavern, where we were resident for the next 12 years, a period when the club diversified from the traditional figure gaming and started to have more board and role playing games on its weekly agenda.
Following a change of landlord at the Bullring Tavern the club decided to once again move, eventually ending up at our current venue and this has seen our membership expand from around 15 members weekly to the current level of around 108.