Your first time…

[Angel Barracks]

Do you remember your first ‘proper’ wargame?

Proper can be your definition of it of course.
My definition would be something like using some rules and dice and figures and scenery, my first time would have been with WFB but alas I don’t recall the first game…

[Matt Smith]

Yup, WFB 3rd edition, first game between us, not being taught by big brothers etc. Still remember because we plonked a wood in the centre of the table, each army did well on its left wing and poorly on the right. We gave up after the first full revolution round the wood! But we were hooked.

[Krieghund]

WFB 2nd edition, using card counters from “Bloodbath at Orcs Drift ” and some from a Citadel Journal, Hobgoblins and Dolgan raiders IIRC. Don’t remember a lot about the game sadly.

[Angel Barracks]

Krieghund wrote:

WFB 2nd edition, using card counters from “Bloodbath at Orcs Drift ” and some from a Citadel Journal, Hobgoblins and Dolgan raiders IIRC. Don’t remember a lot about the game sadly.

That was around the time I started, but did not have the figures for that scenario.
But recall reading it and wishing I had.

[kyoteblue]

1962, dirt clods and plastic Army Men….

[Rhoderic]

I got into miniatures wargaming late: WFB 5th edition, and that was only about a year before 6th edition came out.

[Mike Headden]

A naval wargame using Airfix 1/600 scale WW2 ships and Fletcher Pratt’s rules (from Don Featherstone’s “Naval Wargames” book) on the back lawn in 1965!

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Thuseld]

1995 or so. I was 8 and my brothers and me got our hands on the Airfix Guide wargame rules. We used our model railway buildings on a desk that was probably 2×4 and then used literally every Airfix, Revell and ESCI 1/72 soldier we owned. They were not based or painted, the buildings were not historically accurate and we never finished a game…we would get bored after like 2 days. My brother’s Elefant and Tiger II would make short work of our Shermans, Matildas and Churchills. But this was my first experience wargaming.

Obviously before that there was a lot of playing toy soldiers with no rules.

Experiments here: http://inexperiencedmodelmaker.blogspot.co.uk/

Tranquil Stars updates: https://tranquilstars.wordpress.com

[willz]

Playing a Napoleonic wargame at Tower ramparts secondary modern school Ipswich in the early 70’s, Kim Watts British me French.  Using Airfix figures, rules not sure might of been Airfix.  Lots of unpainted figures, great fun.

Before that lots of toy soldiers no rules, just lots of pheww, ping and arrrggggh.

[John D Salt]

1970 or so, using the rules from the Horsham library copy of Donald Featherstonne’s “Battles with Model Soldiers”, Airfix Germans against US Marines and Infantry Combat group, all unpainted. AFVs would have been Airfix and Minitanks, and terrain made with books under a bedspread.

Within a year I had graduated to Charles Grant’s “Battle!” and played my first games of Avalon Hill’s “Afrika Korps”.

All the best,

John.

[Etranger]

1975, Aged 10 or so, with the son of a friend of my mothers, with home made rules (2 sides of a single sheet of paper), WWII Airfix/Matchbox/Esci figures, mostly unpainted with very basic terrain. Graduated to Gavin Lyalls Operation Warboard rules a year or so later.

[Steve Johnson]

Most likely 1973-ish and Airfix WWII rules.

[Not Connard Sage]

John D Salt wrote:

1970 or so, using the rules from the Horsham library copy of Donald Featherstonne’s “Battles with Model Soldiers”, Airfix Germans against US Marines and Infantry Combat group, all unpainted. AFVs would have been Airfix and Minitanks, and terrain made with books under a bedspread. Within a year I had graduated to Charles Grant’s “Battle!” and played my first games of Avalon Hill’s “Afrika Korps”. All the best, John.

 

Uncanny. Apart from the boardgames, that’s me that was 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Chris Pringle]

It was the first time for both of us. It was a conventional encounter; I opted for an unimaginative frontal thrust straight up the middle. Because we were both newbies, it took a while to get the hang of it. But once I got into it, things went pretty quickly, and in fact it was over surprisingly soon. Although I was the only one to achieve my victory conditions, we both had a good time and were keen to have another go. Over the next couple of years we got increasingly adventurous and tried a variety of scenarios (always one-to-one, though – no multi-player actions). Inevitably, though, there came the day when I said I wanted to play with someone else. There were tears …

Oh, I see, you said first wargame.

(Sorry – someone had to do it.)

[Shaun Travers]

WRG Infantry Action 1925-1975 in 1979 with 1/32 scale figures.  A recent friend I had made at school (I was 14) mentioned he played games with toy soldiers and so a few of us went to his house and played a game on the dining room table.  Unpainted figures.  All I remember is that is was the US Vs the Germans.  The US had a halftrack and it moved about half way down the table and managed to dominate the game for a little while.

[Ivan Sorensen]

A home brew affair using figures from the Space Crusade box set.
First “proper” was Warhammer 4th edition, which was odd because I never did get into Warhammer at all but 40K 2nd edition hit us hard and we lived and breathed that for almost the entire run of the game.

I had played roleplaying games before (red box D&D and Runequest) and board games (Hero quest and the aforementioned Space Crusade)

[irishserb]

My first “proper” miniatures game with published rules was with Heritage’s Panzertroops.  I’d swear it was in 1979, but since the rules were published in 1980, I’m thinking that I may be wrong about that.  We built “rolling” terrain on a table with paperback books, placed a few HO scale trees on them and gamed with 1/72 scale plastic soldiers and a bunch of models.  The German player had a couple of PzIIIs, and Jagdpanthers against my three M3 Lees, and two M3 Stuarts.  It was a tough day, but I did manage to kill a Jagdpanther with a bazooka at one point, leading to a most dynamic reaction by the opposing player.

We never used the 15mm figs from Heritage, as they were so much more expensive than the plastic kits, and the local shop only had a few models available.  But quite an arms race ensued over the next couple of years, as each of us built up our forces, trying to find bigger and better tanks and whatnot.  Still have my figs and a copy of the rules handy, though haven’t played since probably 1982.

[McKinstry]

1975 using C in C 1/2400 ships and General Quarters 1 rules. As I recall, a German CL and some Narvik type DD’s versus a Leander class Brit CL and some Tribal DD’s. Must have been good as I am still gaming.

I did not count the Avalon Hill board games in the 60’s but as I recall, the very first of any kind was Milton Bradley’s Broadside in around 1964 and we played the heck out of that.

 

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[Guy Farrish]

1973 French Napoleonic vs Austrian against Dave Hay using Grant’s rules (Can’t have been the Napoleonic – unless we got them from the magazine articles? Or maybe we just used the 18th century ones from The War Game). Kept those going when Grant’s Napoleonic book came out, and branched out into WRG Armour Infantry with Leicester Micro Models and early H&R.

Car trip of 20 odd miles to the nearest shop selling figures netted me my first Hinchliffe figures at the vast sum of 4.5p each.

[willz]

Guy Farrish wrote:

1973  Car trip of 20 odd miles to the nearest shop selling figures netted me my first Hinchliffe figures at the vast sum of 4.5p each.

Ah them was the days, so £0. 4.5p a figure using a web historical inflation calculator the figure would cost £0.54p a figure at today’s prices.  Lets call it £0.60p a figure, I am not sure how accurate that is but I suppose if you buy figures in bulk it’s about the same.  So how do I sell this to my wife, “but darling they cost the same as they did in 1973 a bargain price for 2000 figures.”

[PaintingLittleSoldiers]

Yes.

In 1990, American Civil War with Airfix figures and my first ever victory. Ironically tonight the same people are playing with the same figures !

[PatG]

1973 or so – PanzerBlitz

[Kaptain Kobold]

I can’t remember the specifics, but it would have been in my first term in secondary school – Autumn 1975 – using unpainted Airfix figures and models, and using a set of rules someone in the fifth-form had developed from the ones in ‘Battle: Practical Wargaming’. It was the beginning of the school’s wargames club and some friendships I still have today.

The Stronghold Rebuilt: http://hordesofthethings.blogspot.com.au/

[William Jones]

Angel Barracks wrote:

Do you remember your first ‘proper’ wargame?

 

Vividly.  I was hanging out with my best friend at the time, and saw a shelf full of Roco minitanks which just blew me away.  He had some Roco sponsored rules as I recall, but had never played them because he couldn’t find an opponent.  Within ten minutes we were on the floor, with bunkers made out of playing cards, as my mish mash of Shermans and Centurions brewed up while assaulting his army of Tigers, Jagdtigers and Jagdpanthers.  It was not a pretty sight, but it was a lot of fun.

It was an odd coincidence in time that I discovered this.  I had no idea there was such a thing as wargames, and I was trying to contrive some weird synthesis of map games and chess with Cold War ‘pieces’, a project quickly abandoned.  I’d also made a model T34 in paper mache because I didn’t think anything like Roco or Airfix existed, and I wanted some gaming pieces.

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