How did you get started in wargaming?

[ilovestrategy]

The title says it all.

With me, in high school in the early 80's I saw some kids playing StarFleet Battles and I was hooked ever since.

How did you guys get started?

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: ilovestrategy
How did you guys get started?

Board wargaming : around 1980 - I had just transferred to this new high school when a guy noticed I liked history and that we had the same weird sense of humour. He introduced me into this bright new world of wargaming and I was hooked from the first minute.

PC wargaming : some years later - my ZX-81 and b/w tv wasn't powerfull enough to program computer wargames on, but another buddy of me had an Apple ][ and a divisional level Nato vs. Warsaw pact game we played for days on end. Shortly after I earned my first paychecks and a spanking new PC-XT, 4.77 Mhz was mine - can't remember whether my first pc wargame was Sid Meier's Silent Service or something from the SSG boys though as pc wargaming always played second fiddle to boardgames.

Oh sure, I played the V4V games and the (mostly) abominations AH put out but I didn't predominantly become a pc wargamer until Talonsoft appeared on the scene - TOAW was king - only to be replaced by the first Squad Leader, eh, I mean : Close Combat put out by Microsoft [;)]

Then this new kid on the block called "Matrix Games" appeared offering a free War in Russia game - can you spell "hook, line and sinker" ? [;)]

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[MadmanRick]

My start came very naively, I began by playing Stratego and Risk in the late '60's & early 70's. From there I "graduated" to Afrika Korps, Bismarck & Guadalcanal by Avalon Hill (back then wargames were available at local dime & variety stores!). Soon after that I began playing more advanced strategy games including Fortress Europa, The Longest Day, Fleet Series & Third World War series in the 80's. My foray into computer games began mainly as a response to not being able to locate opponents on a regular basis and my first computer purchase was in direct response to 360 Pacific's publication of Computer Harpoon! It only grew from there.

[Joram]

I was apparently born with a copy of "Tactics" in my hand.

[TonyE]

At about age 12 I was introduced to computer Harpoon at the next door neighbor's house.  I don't remember the how or why he was showing it to little kid me.  A couple of years later our family got a Windows machine to replace the Apple II compatible computer and I scrimped and saved and bought my own copy of the game.  The next door neighbor gets a free copy of each new version of Harpoon Classic and thanks to Larry Bond, his copy of HCE is signed [:)].
 
 

[JudgeDredd]

That's funny this post has been raised...I was just looking through here.
 
Started with boardgaming I think. Bought Pacific War (never played it...too damn big), Red Storm Rising (loved it) and The Hunt for Red October (loved it). Then moved to Comodore 64 and had a Guadalcanal game. Then my Amiga 500 but had mostly flight sims.
 
One of my first strategy games was probably Dune, or Battle Isle (I think Dune was my first). Then when I got Panzer General, it opened up the world of strategy gaming to me, though I've never lost my love of simulations.
 
I had lots of strategy games over the years...but I think Panzer General was the one that hooked me.

[Brady]

I was prety young, grade school, I was into building models of WW2 Tanks Planes,guns ...exc. It all started from some Huge old Time life picture book on the War, on a book shelf in my Dads study, then I bought a book from the school libery on the N.Atlantic battles for like 25 cents in 5th grade and I still have it, it was the first of hundreads of other books I have colected so far...Anyway at the model/hobby shop, they had this shelf with these packaged games that always fasacanated me, and I asked my dad if he would play one with me, and well, it was called Toyko Express, came in a plastic bag, huge maps and cardboard counters...That led to Panzer Leader, SL and then ASL, when I got my fisrt PC in the 90's it was all Computer games after that.
 
 I still miss ASL, the PBEM WitP and AE games are almost as good, ASL was just so much more tanagable it seamed, those dice, those dam dice, and the fact that their was someone their to see you get pissed when you lost that IS-II to a panzerfaust....the guy had to role a one with one die to get!

[andym]

Well,are you sitting comfortably?Then i will begin.I come from a Military Family so have had an interest in all things Military.When i went to my last Boarding School,they had a Wargames Club that held meetings on a Saturday afternoon.I use to walk past the clasroom where it was held and eavesdropped on what was going on.The rattle of dice,the sound of metal rulers sliding back and arguments as to if a Thracian could hit a Boetian with a sling at 300 feet and such like.Eventually i plucke up the courage to enter and that was it!!!!Hooked BIG time.My first foray was into WW1 Naval warfare using Skytrex miniatures.I then moved on to 1/300th Micro tanks and  25mm Roamans,since then i have always played wargames with miniatures or without,at one point i had around 90% of tyhe Total AH catalogue!I stil have a load of "traitional" wargames,but sadly lack opponents!

[Kuokkanen]

For some reason I was examining newspaper, and there was page about Chess, including graphical instructions. From then on I had wanted Chess, and it was bought next christmas. Years later I played North & South with NES, but that was just with introductory console set in supermarket. Eventually my dad bought 386 (in 1993 I think), and after seeing my friend playing Civilization on his PC, there seemed to be NOTHING I'd had wanted anything more than that. And I got it! [:D]

[Ketza]

First board game I was 12 and Played Avalon Hills D-day was hooked from the moment I opened the box.

Best board wargame experience ever was 3 on 3 Fire In the East of the Europa series. We would start playing Friday night and go through late Sunday. We normally got in enough turns to get to the October 1941 timeframe which gace us a good indication of how the early German invasion of USSR was going to go.

Aslo had great fun with huge Squad leader scenarios that we used to play in the Summer at MIT. Whole brigades of squad leader on ping pong tables in a gym. great fun.

First computer wargame was SSIs Guadacanal in 1982. Been playing them ever since.

[pasternakski]

I was sitting in study hall during my freshman year in high school when my pal George whipped out a brochure for Afrika Korps. I got one look at that bright, red 7-7-10 panzer regiment, and I've never been the same since.

Right about then, Mrs. Hanley, the old battleaxe school librarian came charging over and confiscated the brochure. Not only was I a wargamer, I was now at war with society. Still am. Wouldn't have it any other way.

[Hertston]

Through pen and paper RPGs really.  I discovered those at college but a couple of guys in my regular group played SFB, Warhammer (1st edition, which shows how long ago that was!) and ancients (WRG 6th and 7th) as well.  I just sort of drifted into it.

[Widell]

We were a group of friends (male geeks, need I say that?) in the mid 80-s playing D&D, when we found a board game covering WWII in Europe (cannot recall the name, but it was grand strategy) at one of the stores we used to go to. For some reason we later traded that one for NATO: Third War in Europe and Squad Leader. The rest is history I guess.

[Grell]

I started wargaming at the age of 12. Somebody bought me Blitzkrieg and from there it lit up my life.

Regards,

Greg

[Procrustes]

Early seventies - a friend got his hands on a copy of Blitzkrieg by Avalon Hill.  Next came Tactics II, Panzer Blitz, Sniper (by SPI), Squad Leader..... And on it goes..

[BoredStiff]

How did you guys get started?

As a young teenager, mid 1970's, I was into reading WW2 books and building models - or trying to. I dabbled in making my own wargames, using maps of the world I drew myself on large 2'x3' poster stock. That never worked out too well, since the throw-one-die, win-or-lose thing didn't grab me. But that's all I had and it was fun drawing the maps, which I really got good at. Sometimes I'd even throw in a fictional continent, usually Atlantis.

I also played Stratego at that time which was moderately interesting. I once even made a custom Stratego map, using yet another sheet or two of large poster stock, complete with oceans and special ship units that could do battle, like the real Stratego pieces, as well as transport the Stratego pieces. The ship units were just pieces of paper, with one end folded up in an L-shape, which had the unit information on it so only the owning player could see it.
Basically, Stratego on steroids.

One day in 1977, or thereabouts, I went to Queens Center Mall (it's still there, in Queens, New York). I went into a bookstore, it might have been Brentanos, and saw a couple of interesting boxes on one of the shelves - they were wargames. Up until that point in time, I never even knew these things existed, which is odd in hindsight, since I'd been to model airplane stores before.

Anyhoo, one particular game on the Brentanos shelf really caught my attention. It looked very interresting because it covered the part of WW2 that interested me the most. I didn't have much money and was a bit leery about spending it on something I knew nothing about. But the game was enticing enough for me to buy it. I think it cost around $12.

I remember at first being a bit disappointed upon opening the box at home and seeing the cheap cardboard cutouts that were the units.
The map however was nice and I started reading the well-written, concise rules manual. Actually, I ended up reading the rules 3-4 times because there seemed to be something missing. The rules kept referring to two sizes of units, Corps and Armies, yet I could not find anyplace in the manual which showed how these sizes were denoted on the units themselves. Try as I might, the information just wasn't there.

For this reason, the game went into the closet and remained unplayed for several months. I must have considered sending a short question to Avalon Hill regarding this issue, but for some reason I just didn't.

The issue kept nagging at me and I would from time to time take another glance at the rulebook to see if I had missed anything - but no luck. It's not like it was a large rulebook, as it was only a little more than four pages. At one point I even reread the entire rulebook once or twice yet again.

The game thus lingered in the closet for about two years until one day I tried once again to see what I may have missed.

And there was the info, right near the start on the first page!

To this day, I don't know why my eyes refused to see this information nearly a dozen times prior to that point.
The good thing about what had happened was that by that time I knew the rules by heart. I went on to play many a game for several years after that, all solitaire of course. [;)]
One particular stroke of luck for me was that this particular game, my first real wargame, turned out to be one of the best board wargames ever made, to date. So it was a very good introduction to the hobby, despite my intial "eye" problem with the rules. Sheesh!

Oh, and the name of the game? This one, of course, in case you haven't guessed yet:

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Ketza


First board game I was 12 and Played Avalon Hills D-day was hooked from the moment I opened the box.

I saw a couple of guys get into a fistfight over a game of D-Day one time. It was a rules dispute. I guess they hadn't bought into the "friendly roll of the die" idea.

First computer wargame was SSIs Guadacanal in 1982. Been playing them ever since.

The first one I remember having was SSG's Carriers at War. Man, when that map came up on the screen, I was in hog heaven...

[sabre1]

Tactics II, local toy store, similar to MadmanRick.

[Arctic Blast]

I was 11, and my father was sick of playing War in the South Pacific and Carriers at War against the Apple IIc, so I was drafted to replace it as his opponent. Got my ass destroyed for awhile, but absolutely loved the game,s and it went forwards from there.

[sabre1]

First computer wargames that hooked me if memory serves correctly, on the Apple II +:
 
1. Cosmic Balance
2. Computer Ambush
3. Bismarck (cassette)
4. The name I forget but you played on the board and input your moves into the computer.  It was a WWII German vs. Russian based game, and I believe it was done by SSI.
5. Cassette game that simulated a B1 during the cold war era (again the name I forget).