What got you into wargaming?

[DAK]

As a boy I played with Airfix figures and Roco tanks as I loved anything to do with the military. When I joined the Army a buddy of mine showed me his GHQ collection. That was in 1983 and I remember thinking about all of the tanks that were offered that Roco did not produce and I was hooked. Then when GHQ came out with IND. Infantry packs in 1999 I spent thousands of dollars building up every army that was offered and I am still doing so today. What would I do without GHQ

[Cav Dog]

would I do without GHQ

Well there's always liquor and women.

Oh yeah, that's why I have all that unpainted lead laying around, well pewter now!

[DAK]

I'm married with 4 kids, not sure which is cost more, the family, or the hobby.

[voltigeur]

Well there's always liquor and women.

Isn't the lack of liquor and women the reason we are waramers?

When I had hair and a flat stomach I didn't wargame much. As the opportunity to date multiple women and have a girl in every port dwindled GHQ started getting more and more of my money. Hummmmmm sounds like a good conspiracy theory.

GHQ conspired with McDonalds, and my local TV stations to make me bald and out of shape so I would buy more and more miniature tanks. Yes that was it! And I'm sure there was a UFO involved at some point.

[DAK]

I'm sure that's Bush's fault

[bound for glory]

me and my best friend were heavy into d&d in 1978. there was a local hobby store that had a good amount of figures and we were there all the time. i think it was more about the figures than d&d. anyway, a friend told us about a bigger hobby shop about 20 miles from our town. well, we were only12 years old so we asked my mom to take us there.
macs hobby hall, bethlehem pa. great store. well, we go in and after getting our d&d stuff, i see the ghq display. i was always into "tanks". models, etc. but this looked very interesting...
i did'nt buy any that night. but within a few months, i say an artical in wargamers digest call "the advantages of the sandtable" it had micro armour in the story.
well, after showing the artical to my friends, we decided to build a sandtable in my basement. and we planned another trip to macs for some micro armour. my first 3 packs were jagdtigers, hetzers, and 234/3.
and we were hooked. avter buying many packs at the sum of $3 a pack, we got back to school and did'nt buy for a month or 2. when we went back, all packs were $1. the owner said he was maybe going out of business. well, we bought all the ww2 stuff the guy had(and it was alot). nothing but modern left.
1 went back a time or 2(because the store still had d&d stuff) and the modern was still there. i should have bought it, but now i'm getting into high school and i was more into other things.
anyway, the place is still there. about 2 years ago, my wife and i went in just to see how it looked. wow! like going back in time. they still had a rack with role playing stuff from the 1980"s. gaming dice, in the same plastic organizer boxes that i swear were there when i was a kid.
and there, in a box of misc. miniatures, were 2 packs of very old ghq micro armour. a pack of leo 1"s and one pack of bmp 1's. both marked $1

[Panzerleader71]

Wow! GHQ packs for $3 that waas a while ago.

I can remember when they were around $5 a pack, that was when you could still by them in most gaming stores, you were pretty much buried in GHQ at CanGames back then. I really should have gotten into the hobby at that point. Oh, well hindsight and all.

It's interesting that everyones story on how they were hooked on the hobby is pretty much the same.

[kiasutha]

Wow! GHQ packs for $3 that waas a while ago.
It's interesting that everyones story on how they were hooked on the hobby is pretty much the same.

Panzerleader71:
When this "dinosaur" started buying GHQ,they came in 3 prices.
Small items were $1.95 per 5 pack.
Medium size were $2.20.
The Big Boys like the Tiger 1 were $2.45. There were only a couple of those...
And there wasn't a single truck or soft skin in the line; you towed the handfull of guns available with White M-3's and "251's".
Man,that was a long time ago...

I guess I got into the hobby much like a lot of people.
Played with the Roco and Airfix stuff when I was a kid.
(Grandmother bought my first Panzer; a Mk.4h at Woolworths "5&10" for 39 cents.)
I got into plastic WW2 ship and tank models as a "teen"; actually before.
(Anybody else remember the old Aurora 1/48 series kits?)
Probably got into "real" gaming after stumbling into some British wargaming mags that showed up in a local hobby shop. Oddly, I started with 25mm Ancients...