I have blogged a revisit of a scenario I played as a teenager, back in the days when wargaming was less sophisticated, but no less pleasurable for that.

It may be a backwards glance with rose tinted glasses, but good fun anyway.

LINK http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/remembering-old-wargame.html

Love this.  Reminds me of my own pathetic early attempts at wargaming.  Different genre (fantasy) but no less basic and no less fun.

Brilliant Norm

1969, OS map of Anglesey as the basis of a campaign, two Airfix armies - Union and Confederate, London Wargames Section (?) ACW rules, and two sixteen year olds having a whale of a time. Imagine the hotly contested, but little known, ACW battle of Llangefni.

Like it!
I remember doing 6mm campaigns run on a made up map, not much fighting but lots of political and sneakybeakies!

Also remember girlfriends... Hmm...

Hmmm, reminds me of Airfix games with friends in the '70s with minimal terrain, tactics etc but buckets of enthusiasm .

All of the above are just as relevant today.

#SteveJ, with you on that one.

I don't know about you lot but I have been wargaming -properly with rules n stuff- since 1970,stops typing for a moment while he takes shoes and socks off to count past ten, and I am enjoying the hobby just as much today as I did back then -45 years ago when I was 14- although using the analogy of a carrier wave, I have my highs and can't-be-ar*ed times, I still love the hobby and when I go to wherever it is I end up I will still love the hobby.

It's weird, but a common theme seems to be a lack of terrain (all the hard saved pocket money spent on figures no doubt).

I can vividly remember drooling over the masses of terrain "older" gamers seemed to have 

Anyone feel the same?

Remember these? (the trees not the figures)

Yes (to the terrain comment).

With me it was Airfix ACW using Don Featherstone rules and books as hills. One was the the yellow pages, appropriately(?) dubbed Telegraph Hill.  

Oh dear Lord yes; we even used my toy wooden bricks (I'd had when I was 3) I'd found in the loft 

My terrain was very Don Featherstone inspired: dinky toy rubber buildings (an English village in 1860s North America), Bellona gun emplacements, model railway plastic snap together trees and plasticene covered balsa for hills, all laid out on a full size table tennis table.

Quote from: Leman on 14 February 2015, 08:38:30 PM
My terrain was very Don Featherstone inspired: dinky toy rubber buildings (an English village in 1860s North America), Bellona gun emplacements, model railway plastic snap together trees and plasticene covered balsa for hills, all laid out on a full size table tennis table.

And, this is the really sad bit, as good and as sophisticated as your terrain gets; it will never be as good as then

My first experience with wargaming was nowhere near as impressive as some of the stories told by you guys. 2004, year 7 after school in a history classroom playing warhammer 40k on some tables pushed together with books as hills and no other terrain.

With such little terrain anyone not playing a shooty army was pretty much obliterated.


Now I'm at university slowly painting up figures for a napoleonics army for whom I have no opposing army myself, and I know nobody to oppose it. I have no terrain. One day though... The army will see battle!

No terrain at all in my first several dozen wargames ... because they were played on the back lawn, using Fletcher Pratt's naval wargames rules from Don Featherstones Naval Wargames book and starring Airfix 1:600 ships. Rather an unhistorical number of Bismarks as I recall

Quote from: xccam on 15 February 2015, 01:38:09 AM
Now I'm at university slowly painting up figures for a napoleonics army for whom I have no opposing army myself, and I know nobody to oppose it. I have no terrain. One day though... The army will see battle!

Proud of you sir! Brings a tear to this crabby old eye.

>Rather an unhistorical number of Bismarks as I recall

You can never have too many Bismarks in your encounter

Whenever I played a napoleonic game - the Old Guard' were always there, in good numbers and always the 'first in'.

For what might be thought of as my first proper armies, as opposed to stacks of Airfix boxes of figures from every period, I had been collecting and painting Airfix Napoleonics and proudly painted an entire British Army and French Army in a couple of days with Humbrols - I doubt even the humble 'dip' could have saved them.

They were glued to strips of hardboard and kept in two biscuit tins between layers of cotton wool. I also had the farmhouse. Our neighbour found out that I wargamed and she said her nephew did and arrangements were made for him to call around. I set the game up (longways down the family table!) and he came with his contribution of a nicely painted metal infantry battalion and an artillery piece - I think my world changed again that evening.

One day Xxcam you will have a job and decide to jump in feet first and splash out on terrain. There ius some pretty amazing stuff out there.

We used painted pine cones as trees to start with, then graduated to the plastic rounded style that were probably made for the old Minitanks range and the large Britains oak trees, then I started making my own with lichen covered twigs and so on.

Polystyrene ceiling tiles cut and painted to start with, then cut, chamfered, painted and layered mdf.

Airfix railway buildings before the advent of polyfilla as a wall covering for home made.

Lichen, lichen and more lichen. We got through packets of the stuff!

Quote from: Ithoriel on 15 February 2015, 03:07:24 AM
using Fletcher Pratt's naval wargames rules from Don Featherstones Naval Wargames book

Fletcher Pratt's - so difficult to calculate the points values(!) and DF's Naval Wargames - my first book (courtesy of the local library) on 'proper' wargaming (always wanted to play the Schwein Lake game so when drawing maps for a campaign, always included a lake - but no-one ever marched that way so never got a chance to fight it - d'oh!)

Xxcam - hang on to these guys. Do not sell (like I did). Their day will come!

Quote from: xccam on 15 February 2015, 01:38:09 AM

Now I'm at university slowly painting up figures for a napoleonics army for whom I have no opposing army myself, and I know nobody to oppose it. I have no terrain. One day though... The army will see battle!

Have you tried looking around for a club? Most clubs I know are desperate for new members. The local library usually has a directory of local clubs.