Blasts From The Past Part Three

Books are not the only source of inspiration, the most obvious other diversion made of paper has to be the wargames magazine. My first experience of this was whilst in sixth form bought from the newsagents in the local town and being.....

Yes issue ten, and whilst I still have this issue it's not in the best of shape with the cover being detached and dog eared. Looking at it these days and you have to think it's not that polished but back in the day it was EXACTLY what a new gamer needed. I do wonder if the modern editors could do well to revisit such early publications and try to emulate some of the feel that these old mags produced at the time. I subbed to this magazine well into the 100+ though by this time I was also getting Illustrated Wargames. Anyone remember the days of MW for the articles and WI for the eye candy?

Eventually I found that I was reading less and less till I was often doing little more than flick through them. Finally I cancelled both and have never had a full time professional mag since, unless you count Arquebus or English Civil War Notes and Queries in the same category as wargame mags. Still these magazines introduced me to many more periods scales and ideas. I was like a sponge in those early years and I think a lot of my preferences remain fixed due to those mags and it seemed that anything was possible though I think all the images of those beautiful 28mm Napoleonic's actually put me off trying Napoleonic's in that scale. Indeed it was quite a while before I actually tried Napoleonic's at all.

Of course the other big influence has to be ones mates. Andy who was my first wargame opponent and the one to get me into the hobby in the first place also had the Avalon Hill WWI boardgame The Guns of August and the idea that this type of game actually existed was a revelation to me and we played it a few times and whilst it's not the best game in the world (yes it replicated WWI fairly well) it was the game that got me into war boardgames and for a time I had quite a collection though one game was to take the centre stage and it's grown up brother is still with me to this day.

Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader deserve a post all to themselves which will be the following Blast but it's a fitting place to end tonight's post. If on discovering this game I had found an opponent who was as into it as I was I am fairly sure I would have dropped out of figure gaming many years before I did. I sure am glad this did not happen as I would not have developed my painting to a point I would have come back to the hobby and when all is said and done ASL is one hell of a jealous girl when it comes to sharing you with the rest of the hobby.

Blasts From The Past Part Two

I left off last time hinting at the first time that trait of the wargamer that today is called "Oh Shinny" or shinny'itus. That diversion from one project into something else entirely. With the 25mm Feudal going nowhere and the 1/72 WWII ticking over with the purchase of the odd model (this scale was to die out a few years into my gaming time as we found other scales and mediums better suited to the period). I was casting my eye for something else and my main opponent at that time was into The English Civil War and lent me a book. Whilst it was not THIS book it was a copy of this book.

It just captured my imagination and I was hooked. It was not long after this I think that Matt joined Andy and me in our gaming and agreed to raise his own army. Andy had the Royalists and I had a soft spot for the New Model Army thus Matt took an early Parliamentarian Army based on Essex and Waller. Scale was heavily discussed and as we were mostly fighting battles on the floor or on a dinning table so this limited our options and thus our commitment to 15mm was started and remained the main stay of our spending for years and years to come. Indeed today I still paint and wargame in 15mm having never gone for 25/8mm in more than skirmish level.

I still remember clear as day that first army, I bought it from Derby Wargames show at the Assembly Rooms and it was a starter boxed army by Essex no less. I still had that box a few years ago and just seeing it would bring a smile to my face. 

The first Regiment I painted up was Sir Thomas Fairfax's foote regiment,most of which is pictured below. Since then we have used a number of rules and these are now based for Field of Glory : Renaissance though we have yet to actually try the rules. The ECW was to remain a main staple for years but became a victim of our heavy play and was replaced by other shiny but for a time it was king of the table and we had so many great games through time.

During this time we learnt campaign's, multi-player gaming and that all rules are not good rules. On the darker side I got my first experience of club gaming and it goes a long way to explaining why I don't tend to gravitate to traditional clubs, indeed I have little interest in them. It was at the very old and I believe defunct Mansfield Wargames Club that both Andy and myself were enjoying yet another ECW game when a club regular offered to play the both of us the following week/month or what ever. Just 1200 points or such and we eagerly agreed, after all it's good to play other guys and we would belong etc etc.

We turned up and started to lay out our troops he did the same, except gone was the pike and shot formations we expected. Instead Elephants and other exotics were placed on the table. What followed was a fairly comprehensive defeat, we stood zero chance but whilst it was bad form that this guy had deceived us into a battle we could not win he took quite a poor attitude to our taking of defeat lightly with comments like what's the factor for sword and two mice? Seems we should have been driven to despair and gutted by our loss. To the clubs credit another bloke witnessing the other members churlish actions offered us a game another week but we soon stopped going as at the time it had a bit of a negative atmosphere running through it mostly surrounding anyone playing in the other room. This happened to be where the fantasy wargamers (Loud) and the roleplayers (LOUDER) hung out. It's where new guys like me and Andy tended to play as the best tables were for the old timers. Not that most of the best room guys know what we played, we just had to be part of the problem as we were from the other room. I wonder how many players have been lost to mainstream this way? All I can say was that whilst the Loud crowd were, well load they were fun and whilst the odd jibe was thrown our way it was always in jest and always returned in jest. In the end it was easier to stay at home, play each other and not pay a club fee because apart from the very odd occasion we played each other anyway.

Going back to the figures for the final segment. Whilst I did buy other makes of figures from time to time the majority of the army was made up of Essex and only later was I to learn that the equipment was so very far off in most parts but that is another story. I had just started to move over to Acylic's at this time and for the most part actually used tube acrylic and due to having an artist for a mother, good stuff as well. I actually used oils for the horses for some time but the dry time forced me away from them. Probably a good job I never thought of popping them in the oven in those days! 

I kept with a mix of tubes, Humbrol tubs and eventually Colour Party which replaced all but all my original paints over the years. It's kind of ironic that I bought my first three Vallejo bottles just before leaving the hobby and the idea of using inks was not even on the horizon, boy things have changed.

Next time I think it's time to look at a few outside influences.

Blasts From The Past Part 1

I have used this old photo once before but it's a great introduction to another series of posts I am planning to do. The idea came to me whilst I was lying in bed half awake but not really wanting to get out of bed and not actually having to either. By the way I am the good looking one at the front of the group of young gamers and it's 1/76 scale WWII using my railway board as a battlefield. We got a lot of fun out of that board and the plastic figures and tanks.

I was 16 at this time and the rules we used were hand written half ideas though it was about this time we went to the Table Top Games rules Firefly that happened to play great, I wonder if I still have them somewhere and if they were that good after all?

That's more or less the idea, revisit old times, old rules, almost forgotten periods and systems and how I see them today. Funny looking at the photo I was the oldest by two - three years, of the four of us the only one not still gaming is Andy at the back. He stopped a few years after the photo was taken and died just two years ago. Rolf (the patch of brown hair) still I believe roleplays whilst Steve went to the dark side and plays 40K or was still doing so when Maelstrom Games was still in existence.

First ever proper wargame for me was with the plastic WWII though I had used my Airfix Napoleonic Le Haye Saint battle set as some form of wargame before I really got a real idea on how to do it after watching an old TV program showing grown men doing the same.

Though the first ever Wargames I played were actually board games, first was Gun's of August by AH quickly followed by Siege and Cry Havoc which to a lad of 15 is a real exciting step. This actually lead to my first metal figures from Irregular Miniatures.

I decided to replace the cardboard figures with metal ones and at Derby Wargames Show (at the Assembly Rooms) and each time I bought one figure Ian Key gave me a second one. I ended up spending the majority of my spending money in dribs and drabs that day.

Ian's generosity gained traction as I ended up buying my first full army from him, this being a 25mm English Medieval army, though it was never destined to be finished as I moved onto easier projects (where have we heard that before?).

Before I moved on though I did buy at the age of seventeen WRG 6th Edition Ancient Rules, rules that were to sit unplayed for too many years after a poor attempt at getting a game with Steve above. That though is another post for another week.