The first item of influence is the book "Introduction to Battle Gaming" by Terrance Wise. My Mother bought this for me in the early 1970's for my birthday. It was her attempt to get me to read (something I had stubbornly refused to do with any enthusiasm) and it worked. This book introduced me to wargaming and all the opportunities of scratch building and converting my Airfix figures. Over the next few years I tried to emulate many of the armies shown in this book. I was hooked.
The second item is the starter set "Battle for Macragge" for the 4th edition of Warhammer 40,000. Purchased mid-2000's with my son as the "let us do this together". Up to this point my wargaming has ceased for many years with moving countries, marriage, career and kids. Everything was boxed up and unfortunately all my old Airfix armies thrown away (moving countries causes many unused items to be shed).
Wargaming in the 40,0000 universe meant I had a shared interest with my son and a conversation with him. As he was soon to move into the adolescent stage were a grunt is a form of communication. I really enjoyed to building of models and painting aspects of wargaming. As Warhammer 40,000 allows, and encourages, this creative aspect of the hobby. I kept up with the rules at the beginning, even going in to a competition, admittedly to keep my son company. Overtime I gave up on the rules due to the tedious need to constantly check the rulebook to see which rules applied.
The third item was purchased out of curiosity around 2015. The book "One-Hour Wargames" by Neil Thomas has been the trigger for me getting out my old metal miniatures (which I did manage to keep) out of their boxes and back on to the tabletop. I liked the simplicity of the rules, the thinking behind them, and how you can quite easily add to them to create home written rulesets to a level of complexity to suit one's tastes.
I am now enjoying my historical wargaming as much as I did back when I started wargaming as a hobby. This last period of my wargaming hobby I have been merrily bogging about.
This is a bit of a filler post as I have been messing around with my WW2 rules while I decide how best to approach my Napoleonic project. The good news for me is I will be starting the project next week having identified a free set of rules I can tailor to a square grid. The rules are from the blog Numbers, Wargames and Arsing About by Jay (Old Trousers) who has a number of free games and rulesets. Some are influenced by other rulesets which have been reworked and reimagined for different periods and use a grid-based approach with hexes.
I plan to convert the game Waterloo a la Carte to a square grid for my tabletop.
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| A WW2 game from earlier in the week |
I so nearly lost all my Airfix and Peter Laing figures in house moves and so called growing up. I am very glad I didn't but at least you have the Touchstone of the Terence Wise book from your childhood.
ReplyDeleteCuriously I have never read this, could never find it in shops or the local branch library (it was probably on permanent loan) and must catch up with it one day. Luckily Don Featherstone books could be occasionally borrowed.
I wonder if the simplicity of Neil Thomas One hour book of rules and scenarios (along with Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame?) will be the new Featherstone and Wise intro gaming books for a coming generation?
I luckily held on to my Peter Laing and have WW1 and AWI armies I can game with. I am currently reading Portable Wargame with interest.
DeleteThe Terry Wise book is outstanding - I was looking at it again last night! (Note to Mark Man of Tin - John Curry has republished Introduction to Battle Gaming; the picture quality is rather poor but you'll get the same thrill from the text!)
ReplyDeleteOHW is a super little book and brought me back to wargaming during the dark hours of the Great Recession.
I too still enjoy looking through Terry Wise's book.
DeleteMe too! It has great charm and captures the enthusiasm of the early days when one had to do one's own research, often convert troops from Airfix figures and make one's own scenery, before the hobby became so influenced by consumerism and the emphasis on high quality painting. The pictures showed figures and scenery of a standard young readers could easily reproduce themselves, instead of something few could reasonably hope to achieve, which is what so many books and magazines present today.
ReplyDeleteIt was a very practical approach to wargaming.
DeleteMy monumental moments - young teenager, while on a trip to a bookshop with my mother, just happened across 'Battles with Model soldiers' by Featherstome. I still see that lone Sherman crawling out from under the bridge to engage the enemy in his pre-amble account to his WWII rules. This was soon followed up by Discovering Wargames by Tunstall (Shire Publications).
ReplyDeleteNext milestone, late teenager, found a shop that stock hundreds of military boardgames. I was lucky, I bought issue 67 S&T Cobra, a virtually errata free sysem for the Falaise gap 1944.... hexes, wow, I was hooked, is there such a word as empassioned ? if not there should be. I read it and played it and read it and played over and over. Amazing how things can just press the right button.
I have obtained an unpunched copy of the 40 year old Cobra and plan to break it out and take a nostalgic trip down memory lane soon.
My third milestone was meeting Mike, by chance in a gaming shop 35 years ago. We became gaming buddies and have since gamed on as many Friday evenings as life allows.
For me, the internet also needs to be in this list, because writing about what I do is an essential enjoyment of my hobby. The power of the pen has been given to the common man and through it I have discovered the joys of others, such as this blog.
Agree with including the Internet. The ideas and inspiration from a whole variety of wargaming blogs is phenomenal.
DeleteLike Norm, Featherstone's BWMS was what got me hooked although I had been aware for some years that wargaming was out there after seeing an article in our Boy Scout Magazine and a chapter in Henry Harris's book on model soldiers but none of these told me "HOW" to go about it.
DeleteI picked up Battlegames 5 or 6 years later but after a diet of WRG and other contemporary "sophisticated" (sic) rules I dismissed it rather too lightly and when I left college and set out into the world it was one of the things I jettisoned. I'd probably think more highly of it now.
Ooops, That should have been Introduction to Battle Gaming not Battlegames.
DeleteI did end up preferring the rules from various Featherstone books sourced from the local library.
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