Quote from: Terry37 on 08 November 2018, 05:01:06 AM
PS - Bill, I still have my copy of "Charge" and my first wargame book - "Tackle Model Soldiers This Way" by Donald Featherstone, and keep the letter I got from him with it.

Terry

You do realise that this revelation will get Nobby all excited

Quote from: Norm on 08 November 2018, 05:53:57 AM
It seems that collectively we have much to thank Featherstone for...

Seconded

Quote from: paulr on 08 November 2018, 07:05:32 AM
You do realise that this revelation will get Nobby all excited

I am very jealous.

My mother always wanted me to write to Jim'll Fix It to ask for me to meet the Blessed Featherstone, but Saville scared me. 

Quote from: John Cook on 08 November 2018, 12:41:11 AM


So, 56 years of wargaming summed up in few sentences!

Disturbing that you're a lieutenant at your age!

"Miny Madness"........ Heretic !!!     Its a serious study of military history using  accurately painted collections of miniatures, using carefully crafted rules  that with the randomisation caused by the use of dice allows us to recreate warfare.

Now I have corrected our dear friend:-

I always played soldiers starting with the 1/32 scale soft plastic soldiers in the garden, digging trencehes in the flower beds and using tufts of grass for cover.  I did not use dice, but sought to knock them over using Darts from about 10 feet away.  For Flame throwers I used paraffin in a squeezy "jif lemon" container squirting it through a candle flame. (for those not familiar the lemon is soft plastic and has a nozzle with a small hole so you can sirt the juice over your food)



I them progressed to using lots of Napoleonic Airfix figures ( with ACW ones to make up the numbers) and the "Charge" rules. I also use the "operation warboard" rules for WW2

I then progressed to Micro tanks and using "tank battles in miniature" by his grace Donald Featherstone

Then one day when I was about 15 a friend came round with a lot ( probably only 150) Mikes models renaissance figures, all nicely painted.  I was hooked.

My Mum said "you will have to give up playing soldiers when you meet a nice girl "  my response was that she would either have to accept my hobby as part of me or take a hike. All my girlfriends and partners have been fascinated by them.  So no problems there.

Nowadays Mrs Orcs is very positive often telling me to "go and paint something" when I am getting a bit tense. Apparently if I have not painted for a while I get tetchy.  When we go on holiday  she insists I take something to paint - I think it is so she can read in peace. 








 

As long as she's winning my Little Lady enjoys it. She also loves watching my face if I've got a partner and she can see he's doing something idiotic. Hmmmph...Siamese sadist.

Quote from: FierceKitty on 09 November 2018, 07:35:59 AM
As long as she's winning my Little Lady enjoys it. She also loves watching my face if I've got a partner and she can see he's doing something idiotic. Hmmmph...Siamese sadist.

Knowing your enjoyment of polyamory I read the sentence above I got to the "She also loves watching my face if I've got a partner" and initially thought "where the cr*p is he going with this!"

Chuckle...not in such a public forum!

  As Quark might say, "Humons!"

I only returned to it this spring, 2018, after a hiatus of 35 years. Back then I had both Prinz August molds to cast my own SWY troops, and an enormous collection of Airfix ACW, started by my brother. In the late eighties and the nineties it just wasn't en vogue in the circles I frequented. I did always keep reading about military and particularly imperialist history.
About two years ago, a colleague (very much with the same political war-not-en-vogue background) told me about his wargames passion, and that rekindled my interest. To my surprise, my (re)new(ed) hobby met with great support from my partner, again very much from that not-en-vogue scene. Meanwhile I'm starting on my 4th army, and having a whale of a time!

Thought this might be a good place to share this picture, as long as we are talking about the "way-back Machine", here are some of the old journals and books I still have from my earlier years of official wargaming. Back in those days we did not have any such references or material available as we do today, so IF you could afford a journal (and for me it was always a decision between getting the journal or getting the figures!), then you waited anxiously for the next issue to arrive. Of course you devoured it immediately and then had another wait for the next issue. But Oh how we loved them!!! The Stadden issues of Tradition were teh super top of the line and I was never able to afford them although i would always enjoy looking at it when ever I had a chance.



Terry