What got you into wargaming?

[exodusforever]

I'm not quite sure where do i stand in terms of expertise or wargaming.
But i can safely say I'm one of the new boys in that area. How i got to know GHQ and into Wargaming has been a long epic journey i guess.

It all started when i was 11 years old. I discovered that my dad took an interest in military model kits. He was an avid model collector during his childhood times and had a couple of books in which he collated a catalog of newspaper cuttings and model kit stuff that he had collected. This very same scrap books he had as a child was passed down to me.

Pictures from articles and newspaper cuttings from their vietnam war and his various WW2 model kits fascinated me. After my childhood days tinkering with transformers and ninja turtles. I got into the action of collecting Model kits and Military collectibles. Took particular interest in researching and collecting Modern Military stuff as it was around the period which I was born in 1986.

But even as i progressed into Making Model kits, I still wanted to move them around and simulate battles in my mind. (Psychopath)
In any case, I stumbled upon Warhammer and picked up fantasy as a hobby when i was 13. It was then i was introduced into the world of tabletop gaming. However, my primary hobby of Modern Military and Fantasy Tabletop gaming battles never really intersected.

As the years went by, i continued developing on my warhammer collection and enjoy numerous games, I was only just pretty sad that there was no modern warfare counter part. In Singapore, The warhammer community is relatively large, but modern wargaming was almost non-existant. FoW came in.. but i was and am not a particular fan of WW2 ( wanted to stand out, or break out from my dad's collection of WW2 stuff). While all these was going on, i was continuing to amass my collection of modern naval warships, armour and planes. but the trouble for me was that there was not much of an array of models around the scales that I particular took interest in. 1/700, 1/72 and 1/144.

Eventually i decided to find out more on Tabletop gaming and stumbled upon GHQ with my friend on the internet 3 to 4 years back. It was like a dream come true. The variety for modern warfare is always never that wide in any tabletop wargaming, but GHQ provide a variety of miniatures that was way more than any other producer i know and it was real affordable. And the war-gaming tabletop scale was perfect for larger scale wars than those I have encountered. What really caught my eye even more is the fact that GHQ had micronauts for modern navy that was just totally awesome.

When i got my first ghq stuff from them.. Customer service was really awesome. The detail of the case was sick. I as amazed at it miniatures size but also for its details. Some of you guys even add details that i don't do for bigger scale models. Furthermore, This forum was a real great place to converse and generally the entire experience has stirred me to continue on to try and get down onto making dioramas like Gompel and also amass more stuff and paint on the same grade as u guys.

Being in an armoured commander in Singapore for mandatory national service, I have my fair share of knowledge on warfare techniques. GHQ has made me expand my interest in modern warfare, and i look forward to find ppl in the wargaming community here to join me on GHQ wargaming.

Cheers

[Theodore]

First got into wargaming when I picked up a copy of the old Avalon Hill Tactics 2 at a yard sale. Of course against my Dad's wishes because it was 12 and up (I was probably 9-10) and that it would probably be missing pieces anyway. It was but had more than enough blank counters to replace them. I was hooked from there and had another buddy in highschool that had Third Reich and the Russian Campaign. We would sometimes start on Saturday morning and play 20 hour campaigns of Third Reich to finish the game in one sitting.

I got into tactical level gaming around the end of high school start of my army service with Team Yankee and Test of Arms. It gave me the addiction of company/battalion level games.

First got into miniatures when I found GHQ stuff at The Hobbit, a hobby shop outside of Fort Bragg. First considered them with the miniatures supplement to Advanced Squad Leader but decided to stick to the moderns and play WWII on the hex grid. Played microarmour with the First Battle rules converted to minis when I only had enough for small battles. Then played Command Decision and built up US, Brit, German, and Russian units for Germany. Used to spend all day Saturday or Sunday fighting tank and AFV battles. Bought one pack of the old formation infantry and went back to counters, still haven't painted them yet so they have been in my unpainted box since Reagan was President.

Then the Cold War ended and Saddam invaded Kuwait. Slapped some tan colored paint on my miniatures and we actually used the miniatures for vehicle identification. I even took some of my GHQ miniatures with me to the desert and we even gamed some battles in the rare slow times during the air war of Desert Storm.

When I got back I painted the vehicles that saw action in DS were repainted sand colored and I gamed those actions. The vehicles that spent their lifespans sitting in Germany and never saw action is still sitting in their boxes wearing their original green spray paint and Nato 3 color pattern and have not seen a table since at least 1990. The thought of collecting troops for hypothetical battles when there were real ones in history to refight just lost all interest as the mass of T64s, T80s and others gathered dust. I began expanding into Iran/Iraq, then Arab Israeli focused on Lebanon and 1973.

After I got out of the army and back to Pennsylvania, I started attending the conventions in Lancaster and found other manufacturers made infantry and started adding them to my collection. This lead me to play more infanty actions and get into lower tech battles like a lot of the great battles around the world. Also life family work and such made the day long campaign a thing of the past so the focus switched back to company/battalion level games that could be played in 2-3 hours. Last big game I played I hosted at COld Wars when it was in Baltimore, had a heavily reinforced Syrian Division (platoon level) attacking a reinforced 77th Tank Battalion in the Sinai 1973.

So I really came full circle, but instead of T-80 charging M-1s across the Fulda Gap I play T-55s charging Centurions in the Valley of Tears. But what really interests me is the low tech fighting, modern forces fighting guerillas and urban warfare since so little tank on tank fighting exists anymore it just seems like science fiction.

[ACWBill]

In the mid-1970s my friend Mickey, his brother Mark and I were into the GDW and SPI classic board games and the Avalon Hill games Panzer Blitz, Panzer Leader and Arab-Israeli War. We walked into a hobby shop in Huntsville, AL (our families were US Army based on Redstone Arsenal) and spotted GHQ Miniatures for the first time in a case. I think this must have been around 1975. I bought 10 Shermans and Mickey 10 Stugs. I think Mark bought some British stuff. Back then, Roundhouse Hobbies sold the figures individually. We were hooked.

Fast foward 20 years. I went to Cold Wars 1993/94? and saw GHQ Rebellion Miniatures for the first time. Remember all those board games we had? I sold them all to a Hobby Shop in Newark, DE where I lived at that time and bought some $ 300.00 worth of GHQ Rebellion Miniatures. This was the best thing I ever did. I had not EVER played Drang Noch Osten and Unensheiden and most of the other games in the collection which I sold. I have used my 10mm ACW figures so many times now I cannot count them. Now I game in many scales and periods, but that visit to Roundhouse Hobbies in Huntsville, AL got Mickey and I hooked on a lifetime of gaming, painting and collecting miniatures.

[Firefight]

What ACWBILL states is true. He, however, is much more active than I am and by far a better painter..lol. I first got into wargaming while on a vacation with family to Massachusetts...probably 1970. I was about 11 years old at the time. We went into a hobby shop and I bought BLITZKREIG by Avalon Hill and a wargaming book by Chalres Grant, THE WARGAME. I still have both of those early catalyst that sent me into wargaming and a love of history.

[IRISH]

When I was young ( about 9 ) I got a Battleship game for Christmas, I soon tired of it and a friend had Sub Hunt which wore me out fast. I used modeling clay to copy the Battleship pieces and made plaster copies. I then made my own version of a 3 level version of Battleship / Sub hunt.
After that I started making ships from modeling clay in the mid 70s for each nation.
I spent many weekends at CSUN ( Cal State Northridge ) copying stats of each nation to make the ships look as good as I could. In the late 70s, early 80s I got into Role playing and collected figurines. One day while in the "Last Grenadier" I spotted the IJN Tone and Chikuma hanging on the rack and out went the old clay ships. I have been collecting and gaming ever since.

William Compton ( IRISH )

[RaccoonEmpire]

PANZERBLITZ !!

My Uncle Mitch gave me a copy in 1977, then from there I was snarfing up wargames like crazy, especially during the 1980s..."The Sino-Soviet War", "The East Is Red", AH's "Arab-Israeli Wars" & "Panzerleader", "Ogre", "Sinai", The "Assualt" series, "Gulf Strike", etc, etc, etc...

[Sudwind]

I see quite a few folks mentioning Panzerblitz and Panzer Leader. I played the heck out of those games in my youth and now I am going full circle. I have been playing miniatures games using those rules, with some of the modifications from Arab-Israeli wars. They might not be the most realistic set of rules, but they are easy to understand and teach to others....and they are fine simulations. I use the 1/285 scale minis and the 4" GHQ Terrain Maker stuff. I am working on desert terrain for North Africa/Middle East battles now....and I found some cool lists online that have many of the Cold War vehicles from the 70's configured for Panzerblitz/Panzer Leader style games.

[opsctr]

For my fifth birthday in 1951 my uncle sent me a box full of Britains' sets.

http://www.treefrogtreasures.com/Search ... 5Qod7TEJxw

The box was big enough for me to climb into at the time and became a giant castle that the various miniature soldiers defended or attacked for years using small pellet firing cannons by Dinky-Toy or Britains own pellet firing guns to adjudicate fire.

My father was into model railroading in both "O" and "HO" scales so it was natural to move into Mini-Tanks and Airfix using "HO" scale buildings for inside gaming or "O" scale buildings for the Britains and Revell plastic soldiers and equipment for outside gaming.

While at University I met Greg at the Hobby Chest in Chicago in the late 60's when he was promoting his new products. Our group made a very large purchase for our 1 to 1 scale Afrika Corps battles not too long after that meeting.

During my years in the Corps wargaming played a very important part in mission planning and survival. It seemed natural to continue participation in the past-time when the opportunity presented itself. That eventually lead to contracting for the DoD and serious miniature modeling to help support my lead habit, ...which has grown to include many other scales and periods to include the following from a 30mm Napoleonic game.

http://commandoperationscenter.com/glwc.htm.

Will

[jb]

My father was into model railroading in both "O" and "HO" scales so it was natural to move into Mini-Tanks and Airfix using "HO" scale buildings for inside gaming or "O" scale buildings for the Britains and Revell plastic soldiers and equipment for outside gaming.

...which has grown to include many other scales and periods to include the following from a 30mm Napoleonic game.

http://commandoperationscenter.com/glwc.htm.

Will

Looks like the village of Aspern. From the west side looking to the the east; situation on the second day (22 May 1809). Austrian IV th,Ist, IInd,Reserve, and Advance Guard depolyed...

[TAMMY]

Impressive. We started to play Napoleonics with 30mm by Segom (a French Company) then moved to 15mm and now we are changing to 28mm but our tables are not so crowded with figures. I suppose it is a question of the rules used.

[Vdmfighter]

Hi,
quick answer : in the late 80's I had bought some boardgames in a shop (in a small town south of France) which runned D&D games on Friday nights. It was the time you could came across a guy in a bar who would say : "Hey, I recognize you you are the one who used boiled oil against me last week (alternate weapons being b) poisoned arrows, c) a mace, d) a dagger...).
Generally speaking of course the guy was wrong...
One day the same shop had ONE pack of "brand x" 1/300 Napoleonic British infantry figures. I bought it, studied how to use them, and...
I never looked back except for LOTR; but it is another story.
Cheers,
Vdmfighter

[opsctr]

Thanks, here are couple photos of the battle just before Aspern became a full-on slugging match... I realize they are not micro-armour oriented but they do illustrate detailed historically based games can be played in any scale given enough room and a little "fudge factoring". The table in the photographs is 12' X 6'.


Above: French forces crowded onto Lobau island just prior to the crossing...


Above: Remains of the initial cavalry clash on the left and right and the infantry begins its advance toward Aspern.


Above: Reinforcements begin crossing the bridges. Heavy Cavalry on the bridge closest to viewer and infantry column (head of column represented by bridge train) on the further bridge.


Above: More cavalry melee which actually occurred further from the Danube in the actual battle but due to table space was worked into the battle as an "unknown" element as the game progressed. The Austrian command had an abundance of cavalry near Aspern as the French were advancing that they did not use to their advantage historically. Will

[Oberst]

I starded playing RPGs in high school (D&D 1st printing). I kept playing RPGs after joining the AF after high school, which led to more money in my pocket, which led to spending more time (and money) in hoby shops. One day at the hobby shop I saw a group of guys pushing tanks around and pounding each other. I thought this was great and wanted to play, so I bought some WWII U.S. tanks and a set of rules (Firefly) and bellied up to the table. To play any of the allies I found myself on a waiting list and got to play once a month. I learned real fast that if I played the Germans, I got to play as often as I wanted to. Sometimes it was expected of my to play them. I bought books on WWII and learned German tactics and put them to work on the table and increased my win rate to 4 of 5 games unless I played against someone who understood tactics. I also learned over the many years to let the new guy win the 1st two or three games. They tened to swollow the jook, line, & sinker fsater and keep playing. Also I would give a newbe a few of my tanks for his 1st chuncks of lead. They are still playing today, although threw out the globe. When I was stationed at Kunsan AB in Korea, I started my own hobby shop out of my dorm room, just so I could buy more lead and terrane maker when it 1st came out. I added a good 600+ veh. to my Germans and 200+ to my U.S. Army that year. So all in all, I have been collecting and playing since 1983.

[kamill]

After reading some of previous posts I suppose I'm a rather casual wargamer

For me, wargames came as a natural step after strategy boardgames and roleplaying (in that order). I had some vague knowledge of what wargames are since deep 1980s when I found remnants of a napoleonic army at my uncle's, but haven't met anybody actively playing until 1994 when I discovered the (pretty small back then) world of roleplayers. People I met were also playing WFB (or was it WH40000?), but I didn't start with the hobby myself until two years later, when polish edition of swedish game Warzone hit the shelves. Some time later I was introduced to historical miniature wargaming and... pretty much stopped playing at all - I got to the university and such new, exciting activities as carousing and travelling extinguished my enthusiasm for gaming (not to mention that being an archetypical poor student didn't make things easier).

I returned to wargaming only about 2 or 3 years ago - adult and financially comfortable enough to keep steady influx of miniatures I almost immediately grew bored of all the fantasy and sci-fi stuff and turned exclusively to historical gaming.

And as for GHQ miniatures - these are the only ones in 6mm that are readily available in Poland (more of less), so after I fell in love with that scale it was pretty much done deal