What got you into wargaming?

[GHQ]

We have recently received a few e-mails from customers who wrote out their stories about how they got into wargaming, and specifically GHQ products. Over the years we have recevied quite a few of these, and it is always interesting to see them. Many people were first exposed to our models while in the military. Some first saw our models in the ads that we used to run regularly in Boys Life magazine. Others came across our lines while visiting a hobby store. There are a lot of different routes that people have taken, but they all lead here.

What was it that got you interested in wargaming, and GHQ?

We would really like to hear all of your stories.

Thank you for your support,
GHQ

[Panzerleader71]

When I was in High School I got invovled with a group that were into Role Playing games initially. One of our number intorduced us to some WWII tactical board games (Panzer Leader being my favourite still.) From there over the years we dabbled here and there, mainly with the board game format, but we did get involoved in some micro armour games at conventions. But, we never actually got into the MA hobby.

Over the years I have collected a few rules systems (like a lot of us I am sure) and finally decided I am going to give this a try. Here is where I got a little frustrated. All those conventions that I went to when I wasn't really interested in Micro Armour, all the dealers had armies of GHQ for display. Then a couple of years ago I was looking over one of the many books in my collection and saw an add for GHQ, and said to myself "I remember these guys" and started to look around for them. Zilch!...None of the gaming stores I went to carried them any longer (not much of any type of figure really.) So, I checked the internet and found that they were still operation, and started placing orders and haven't looked back since.

[SSgtBuck]

I was introduced to wargaming by my freshman history teacher. He was doing 15mm Civil War at the time and new some of the guys in BGB (Battle Group Boston) He and I and couple of my high school friends decided to get into Modern Micro Armor so we ventured to a hobby shop called The Toy Soldier (sadly no longer in business) and bought a hodgepodge of GHQ moderns.

Over the course of my high school years we built sizeable modern forces then ventured in WWII a little.

I haven't gamed all that much since high school. I've sold as many minis as I've aquired and currently I seem to just be collecting unopened packs.

I'll push lead again someday though.

[ed*b]

My first exposure to wargaming was a very simple board game put out by LIFE magazine during the centennial of the War Between the States. When I got to university in the late '60s a wargaming club was in the process of being organized. Despite the excorciation and calumny from the university newspaper, we met twice a week and did our best with primitive rules, HO scale land figures and 1/1200 scale handmade wooden ship models. Occasionally the richer among us would buy high-quality 1/1200 metal ship models, or the luckier (myself) would find an entire set of WW2 1/1200 ship recognition models. The group of friends I made during and just after university have stayed wargaming together ever since (with a few losses and additions) for 35 years.

In the late '70s we advanced to microarmour models (can I mention that not all were from GHQ?) and the WRG 1925-1950 ruleset. A group of us did the background research and created our own WW2 naval rules, which we have used for over 30 years now. At the same time, we started replacing the rather bulky 1/1200 scale models with much more reasonable 1/2400 models. At that time (just before and after SPI went out of business) there were still a number of hobby stores in the local area that carried a wide range of historical gaming models and board games.

In the mid to late '80s we were mostly doing large SPI boardgames, complex refereed naval campaigns, and scenario based WW2 microarmour. Computer games started taking over in the '90s as multi-player games became more common. In the past 10 years, the board games have been dropped (we're just not as flexible mentally any more), but the naval miniatures gaming has picked up along with a steady diet of computer games. Some of my friends are also into ancients and have very nicely painted ancient armies, but that's something I was never drawn into.

So I'm now 40 years into this hobby, with many good friends both in the local area and other cities. One of my close friends still tells the story of how, in university a girlfriend told him "once we graduate and are married, you'll have to give up that wargaming stuff". Thinking about it, he decided it was easier to find another good woman than another good hobby, and broke up with her. That's the attitude!

[Hugewally]

Seemed to be a natural evolution from board games. Mini-tanks were big and expensive and the railroad layout was becoming too much of a fixed battlefield. Once the local hobby shop opened and started carrying all the 1/285 & 1/300th scale miniatures back in the early '70's, we were off and running...

[Mk 1]

I am an avid reader, and had already been reading (even studying) about tanks for several years when I stumbled into micro-armor wargaming at the age of about 13 - 14.

I was in Jr. High School in the L.A. area in the early 1970s. I had built up a collection of about 30 or 40 Rocco Minitanks (1/87 HO scale styrene plastic tanks and trucks that come pre-assembled) by that point, and had already started putting more "structure" into the "playing with tanks" that I did with my friends. We started making rules about how you'd move, how you'd shoot (tossing pebbles from one tank at the other) and how many hits which tank had to get on which other tank to kill it (mostly matching Pz IIIs against T-34s against Tigers).

Then I saw the Avalon Hill game PanzerBlitz at the local toy store. Man, I just HAD to have that game. I read the box ... oh it was everything I dreamed of. Talking about the sound of tank tracks breaking the calm of morning, how the "commanders close the hatches on their dreaded T-34s" and rumble off to fight the panzers. It was wickedly expensive (gee I think it cost more than $10) and there was no way I could afford to buy it. But I just had to have it. I made such a fuss that my mother made sure to get it for me for my 13th birthday (I THINK it was my 13th ... might have been my 14th).

That was my first real wargame. But, while I read (fairly devoured) and re-read all the rules and descriptions of the units, and all the scenarios that came with it, I was terribly disappointed by the little cardboard cut-outs that were the actual game pieces.

Then one day I was at the local hobby shop where I bought most of my minitanks and models (called Kit Kraft, in the L.A. suburb of Studio City -- still there, I think). I was reading the side of the box on the Tamiya 1/35th scale JagdTiger (I used to read the side-panels on every kit on the shelf, to learn everything I could about every tank I could), when the "George Carlin-esque" guy behind the counter who used to chat with me a lot said something like "Oh yea, JagdTiger's quite a tank killer with that 122mm gun." I corrected him about the gun being 128mm, and that led us into a general discussion about tank killers. He then said I should look at the JagdPanther, and said something about how it had "A" class frontal armor.

"A" class frontal armor?

I asked him what he meant, and he told me that the wargaming rules he used rated it "A" class.

Wargaming rules?

So he told me about how he played wargames with little lead tanks on a table using a rule book called "Armor and Infantry 1925-1950". I asked him where to find these items, but he told me I'd have to go to another store, as Kit Kraft focussed pretty much on models, not miniatures. He then told me about the store he went to, Valley Plaza Hobbies.

I pestered my mother for weeks about going to Valley Plaza Hobbies. She finally took me to Valley Plaza, but after an hour of searching the mall (and the mall directory) I finally had to give up. There was no hobby shop at Valley Plaza mall.

My mother, practical lady that she is, then suggested we actually look the place up in the phone book. What an idea! And so we found it, about 2 blocks away from the mall, tucked in behind the J.C.Penney's.

And she took me there one Saturday, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven!


They had walls of tank models! Not just 1/35, but 1/76 (to match all that Airfix infantry I had)! And then, inside the display counter, they had ... LITTLE LEAD TANKS!

They had one of EVERY MODEL in the GHQ catalog, most of them painted up pretty well, mounted on to wooden strips in the display. Oh My Gawd! They had T-34s! And Panzer IIIs! Not just one, but a few different versions. And ... TIGERS! Oh, I just had to have them. I can still remember buying the little plastic boxes of T-34/76c's. They came with red foam. Russian tanks had red, Germans had gray, and US had green. At first I bought them to use with my PanzerBlitz game. I bought KV-85s, JS-2s, Pz IVs, Tigers, StuGs.... I also bought KV-1s, KV-2s, Pz IIIs and Pz IIs, even though PanzerBlitz didn't have them in the rules, because with all my reading about those tanks I just had to have them. Then I bought the WRG Armor and Infantry ruleset, and PanzerBlitz went on the shelf (eventually moving into the closet where it still sits to this day).

And I waited and watched for the Modern version of the rules to come out. And when it did, I started buying T-54s, T-55s, T-62s, BRDMs, BMPs, M113s, M60s, etc. etc.

I used to game against one of the kids who was in "The Waltons" TV series. Hardly fair ... he could buy any GHQ minis he wanted with the money he had. So I started scratch-building Shturmovics and P-39s to find an advantage. The kid I gamed against most often was more working class, and our armies matched up fairly well. He started objecting to my growing airforce, so I also scratch-built a Stuka or two for him, and even an He-111 IIRC. Eventually I sold him my whole German collection by the end of Jr. High School.

Played mostly moderns through the 1980s and 90s. But the wargaming really slowed down in those years, as I moved away from the L.A. area and my childhood friends, and as work and family rose in prominence. Gaming buddies were scarce and hard to develop, so my hobby time shifted to collecting rather than gaming. I spent time reading wargaming mags, buying micros whenever I saw them in a hobby store, teaching myself to scratch-build balsawood buildings, and to cast resin at home. Still played an occasional game (maybe 5 times in about a decade and a half), but most of my armies sat in boxes in the garage, and I still have hundreds of pieces that have never seen a battleboard.

Then ... a few years back, I found this forum... And Thunder invited me to join in a game he was putting on at a local gaming con. And I started looking at all the amazing pictures on the FesterPlatz Ritterkrieg. And I got those boxes out of the garage. And those same old T-34s have come out to wreak havoc on the hun again. And I've been having more fun with my Micro Armor than I ever remember having before, even in Jr. High.

[Cav Dog]

I have been playing with toy soldiers all my life. My earliest memories are playing with Airfix 1/72 plastic soldiers and Roco minitanks. My father was a career soldier and avid history buff so every Saturday when Mom needed a break, he would get my brother and I into the car and we would go to the movies to see whatever Hollywood war flick was out. Once the movie was over we would go to the PX and buy airplane, ship or tank models relating to the movie.

I remember we were living in Germany and had just seen the Battle of the Bulge so that Saturday we went to the hobby shop on the economy that sold Roco. A couple of Long Toms and Tigers later we were off and running. My Dad was also an HO railroad man so my brother and I set up the tiger on the RR tracks scene and prepared to do in one of Dad's engines in the tunnel! Having dispatched the train, we were now ready to extract some revenge but got into a big fight over who got the Long Tom in firing configuration instead of towing mode. We also played AH boardgames.

Once I got into high school I discovered sports and girls and passed my armies on to my little brothers. Then Panzerblitz came out and my inner geek returned. I dabbled in LOTR minis just for the modeling aspect of it, but never really gamed with them, just the occasional boardgame in college. This was long before the LOTR movies of course.

I was in the Army when I was first exposed to GHQ through the department of tactics at Ft Rucker. We used the battle simulation center for threat tactics training using a precurser to Dunn Kempf. The models were in terrible shape but I was hooked. Once I got to my first duty station, Ft Hood, every payday I would bypass the hookers on D Street and go to the hobby shop around the corner and spend 25-50 bucks on minis. The first set of rules I played with were Angriff, Shermans vs Mk IVs battling it out on an army blanket drapped over magazines on the dining room table.

Fast forward 2-1/2 decades and now I have thousands of WWII and modern minis. I still have those original Shermans and MkIVs too.

I guess it was ingrained in me at young age but now whenever I see a war movie, I immediately have the urge to go buy and paint up the necessary minis to refight whatever battle was portrayed.

Thanks to GHQ and all you gamers out there.

[battlewagon]

As a Navy brat, model builder and a History major in college, who worked in hobby shops on evenings and weekends how could I not get into it! I grew up on Avalon Hill's board games, but none of the local stores carried anything smaller than 1/700th scale ships and 1/72 scale armor.

I first purchased some of the "other guys" ships first by mail order and then at a convention I saw GHQ stuff for the first time...there went my convention budget! The amount of detail made my existing fleet look like fishing weights. I started buying the battleships first and expanding out from there. (With a short break while I went to OCS and served on an actual warship, USS Enterprise CVN-65) When I could rope friends into playing we used the Seapower II rules. I have since purchased the Micronauts rules and am looking forward to giving them a workout

...and the fleet continued to grow, and grow.....A hundred or so kits later, here I am.

[Luca]

When I was around 12 My father and I went to a hobby models fair. There I "met" the lead miniatures, 15mm ACW were my first, and I fell in love with them because I always had the problem with the plastic kit to glue them but then never paint them. The miniatures were perfect for me, just painting them, and collecting big army. Then I switched to napoleonics, and then I wanted to try some WW2. I had a quiq look around the web, but I found the 15mm WW2 stuff to "bulky" for my tastes. Then I found GHQ, and from then I'm mostly painting and playing micro armour.

[BattlerBritain]

I was mad keen on planes from the age of about 8 years old. I started off collecting Airfix models but could only get a few for birthdays and Christmas etc as we didn't have much money. As I started to learn more about Spitfires and Hurricanes and Stormoviks I began to read about the Campaigns they were in and how they were used. That got me into tanks and initially into moderns.

We had a British Army barracks in the town where I lived right opposite my Nan’s house, and they had Chieftains there which they used to roll out every now and again in big clouds of smoke (a Chieftain trademark). Man they were huge to a little boy peering over the railings with his Nan trying to pull him off.

Then when I went to secondary school I met up with other kids with similar interests to me. One boy had very rich parents and had a massive collection of Tamiya 1/35th, so we tried gaming with those and doing Squad Leader scenarios. There was a little shop just opened that started to sell boardgames. It was mid-70’s and the first game I ever bought was SPI’s Air War and it took me 3 months paper round money to get that. It took a lot longer to read the Rules!! Being able to recreate the stories about dogfights over Vietnam was just amazing for me.

The game shop then started to sell GHQ mini’s. I got some Chieftains and some T-62s and we were off. A set of WRG rules to start with and a table at my friends house and we had fun.

And the rest – as they say – is history.

Suffice to say that last weekend I finally got around to painting some more GHQ Chieftains to go with the ones I painted 35 years ago. And the models haven’t changed a bit

[Timothy OConnor]

When I was about 11 or 12 my dad took me to a presentation by a local military modeling group at our library. They did a slide show of collector-quality finished pieces and works in progress. I was hooked! My dad also built models, so I started doing the same.

We then discovered a model shop called Hobby Chest in Skokie, Illinois. They carried plastic models, large scale lead collector models, and some "wargaming stuff". This was the first time I saw board games and little bags of metal soldiers (this was circa 1978). I had no idea what to do with the metal soldiers but I did start buying board games and played them extensively until graduating from college in 1988.

And then in college I discovered Warhammer and Warhammer 40K (still have my armies from that time!) In the early 90s living in Chicago we had Games Plus and Todd Fisher's EHQ to learn about historical gaming. I attended one of Jim Purky's monster games at EHQ which led me into historical gaming. Soon I after that I bought my first GHQ WWII microarmor at EHQ. I later sold it and moved to 15mm WWII but have since returned to microarmor moderns in a big way. I intend to also do WWII microarmor after completing some other projects.

So, key influences which got me into wargaming and microarmor:

1. My dad's love of models
2. FLGS such as Hobby Chest, Games Plus, and EHQ
3. Friends I met at those stores and with whom I gamed

I think the challenge we face today is the demise of the FLGS which is a key ingredient to getting started. My own boys wargame because I've taught them (my 7-year old loves to paint figures!) But for kids who don't have a parent or friend who wargames it's probably difficult to learn about wargaming (outside of Games Workshop which is still not exactly common.)).

Perhaps our best hope are the collectible miniatures games which may lead young people to find out about "traditional" miniatures gaming via the internet?

Tim

[ferret701]

I'm relatively new to this, sort of.

I first got started playing wargames of various kinds during high school. I played football, and on Friday night before Saturday games, the offensive and defensive linemen would get together to play Risk or similar strategy games, primarily as a way to stay out of trouble. We eventually morphed to other games -- including Epic 40k (also a 6mm game) and Battletech with miniatures. I bought some GHQ minis, but never did much with them. I lost opportunity (and, in truth, interest) when I went off to college.

Fast forward 10 years later, and to the arrival of my first son. I needed a hobby that was quiet, kept me at home, and was relatively inexpensive. I found my old box of GHQ tanks (maybe 100 total) half-painted in a storage crate, and was hooked. That was 6 years and 5000 tanks ago... Now I've managed to paint up at least 3500 vehicles and probably 1500 infantry, and I've firmly found an inner geek.

Pat Callahan
www.microarmormayhem.com

[Garf]

I was fortunate to grow up in Minneapolis, MN - home turf of GHQ and one of 'the other guys". My whole Jr and Sr high school career was spent playing RPG's. I happended into one of the local hobby stores with a few buddies my first year of college and was amazed at the collection of little lead soldiers hanging on all the walls. As a role-player I had painted several small men, but had never heard nor seen anything called wargaming before. I just could not imagine taking the time to paint up hundreds of little men to play games on a large tabletop battlefield. It so happened there was a beer and pretzels game happening in the back room and after witnessing the fun and excitement these gentlemen were having with their little men I was sold on wargaming.

The following week I showed back up to purchase my first armies and was ushered into my first micro-armor wargame experience with a pickup game that was taking place. The excitement and feeling of commanding companies of tanks and batteries of artillery was profound and would shape much of my adult life with what time I spent collecting, painting, and playing. I was invited by this group to join them on friday nights at 'the other guys' production facitliy where we fought modern and WWII games across beautiful game boards. Over the years I have collected both modern and WWII micro-armor, the majority of my collection being GHQ due to their beauty and quality. Now that I am older I dont game as often as I once did, but when I do, my GHQ armies fill the board.

[Thomaso827]

The gaming part had to have started with PanzerBlitz while I was in High School, but about the same time, my brother and I discovered Lowery'd Guidon Games rules. Didn't know where to get the minis from, but we had a couple of sets of rules. I discovered GHQ when I got to Ft Hood, TX in 74, and the group at the Checker Flag Hobby Shop in Killeen was using the old Angriff rules. I was smitten with the micro-armor, but Angriff was too vague, so just before I left for Korea in '76, I bought Tractics. It had the details I wanted. I introduced a friend to GHQ and Tractics in Korea, and we both continued to build a collection. We were stationed together again at Ft Hood, where we found the Bunker game store in Coperas Cove and continued playing, trying a new set of rules or two but always coming back to Tractics. The millitary seperated us to other parts of the world, but we both gamed, intruduce new players and added more to our colletions, adding 15mm ACW. Retiring to the Dayton area, I didnt initially find gamers until I stumbled on the HMGS Great Lakes folks. By then, I had donated most of my minis to the game group at the West Point Acadamy Prep School at Ft Monmouth, thinking I would never use them again. In the past 2 years, and after being reunited with my old army buddy at several conventions, I have restarted my GHQ collections, in both the Vietnam era line and WW2, and using the Piquet rules systems. In the Army, I wargamed in large part for professional development, but now I play more for fun, and still enjoy introducing new players to the minis and my favorite rules at the local game store and at regional conventions.

Tom Oxley

[GHQ]

These are great stories. We want to thank all of your who have shared your stories here, and those who have e-mailed their stories. We really want to stress sharing your stories here over sending them to us in an e-mail (if you aren't registered, it only takes a minute to fill out the information, please include info about being interested in military gaming, modelling, etc.). It really helps give everyone some perspective on the hobby to hear the stories of other people. One thing that has come out of these stories has sparked the idea for another informational topic- Who did/do you game with? It seems like one common theme is that this has changed for many people over the years, and it has gotten more difficult to find a game. Do you think this is true? We are going to start another thread titled "Who do you game with?"

We see this forum as a tool that serves a few vaulable purposes. One is that it gives all of you a venue to share information, and ask questions, about things that interest you with other people who you may have never been able to connect with any other way. Another valuable thing that this forum does is it gives GHQ, as a company, the ability to see what people really think, find out where they are coming from, and where they want to go with their hobbies. We really encourage all of you to be active, and post here regularly. Each one of you has a lot of great information to share. For more experienced military gamers/modelers/historians, obviously you know a lot that many others benefit from. For newcomers to the hobby, you probably know more than you think and can add to the ongoing discussions, or you probably have some great questions that many others are also wondering about too- don't be afraid, ASK THEM.

Keep the stories coming in, these are all very interesting to hear!

Thank you,
GHQ