Thanks for the Welcome!
I am in the Lynchburg area of VA personally. I have a rather large group of gamers in the Richmond area The Stony Point Refugees, Who play just about any war game that can be played on the table top. (Not too many Historical players if any that I know of.) We have our own forum set up and have currently 148 members of the forums and actively play games at least twice a week.
http://www.stonypointrefugees.com is our URL. So far there has been some talk about playing and a large group may end up starting up! So we will all have around the same amount of minis as well as the same understanding of the rules all of us being beginners. More than likely if it gathers enough interest the club will more than likely organize our own tournaments!
At this point everything is in the mail on its way to me and I am definitely excited to get my hands on everything! I eventually plan on having a neverborn force, and there is already another guy who is loving the look of the Vicktorias. So I should have plenty of opponents in my area!
Just a mater of time until more people start picking up boxed sets!