What was the first wargames you played?

[junk2drive]

ORIGINAL: Jevhaddah

Chess [;)]

I'll get my coat

Cheers

Jev

I thought about checkers and chess but...

[anarchyintheuk]

Blitzkrieg, Luftwaffe or PanzerBlitz . . . in some order. Don't remember which.

[MajFrankBurns]

ORIGINAL: junk2drive

Throwing rocks and dirt at plastic army men.

I used firecrackers. We also made rubberband pistols and had 25 rubberbands a piece and the one who knocked down the most army men won the battle.

[SlickWilhelm]

Gary Grigsby's Pacific War 

[wesy]

AH War at Sea (1977 or '78) me thinks

[junk2drive]

ORIGINAL: MajFrankBurns

ORIGINAL: junk2drive

Throwing rocks and dirt at plastic army men.

I used firecrackers. We also made rubberband pistols and had 25 rubberbands a piece and the one who knocked down the most army men won the battle.

Later on it was bb guns.

[MajFrankBurns]

We couldn't have bb guns because mom used to say "You'll shoot your eye out". [:'(]

[Peter Fisla]

East Front, Atari 800 XL I think it was around 1985

[wodin]

ORIGINAL: junk2drive

Throwing rocks and dirt at plastic army men.

I started with marbles indoors...then progressed out side and discovered fire...many a plastic soldier came to it's guey end in my mates garden....

[wodin]

ORIGINAL: MajFrankBurns

ORIGINAL: junk2drive

Throwing rocks and dirt at plastic army men.

I used firecrackers. We also made rubberband pistols and had 25 rubberbands a piece and the one who knocked down the most army men won the battle.

(

My dad made a great rubberband pistol if I can remember....some sort of industrial rubber it was...that could take your eye out..

He had two buckets full of lead soldiers....my Mum saw them and threw them out with the rubbish in the 70's....Dad was happyy....

[reg113]

Me too
Broadsides
Dogfight
AH Battle of the Bulge

Wonder if we are related?[:D]

[Fallschirmjager]

In 1998 in my Freshmen year of highschool I received my first computer which I could call my own. Before that I had to share with my older brother and parents. It was a P III 550 MHZ with 128 mb of Ram and a 12 GB HD
I remember being so proud of being able to maintenance it and keep it fast and later upgrading it (128 MB TNT II!)
Before that me and my brother got into PC gaming in 1994 with HOF games like Tie Fighter, Mechwarrior 2 and Quake II. But 1998 was when my console playing and PC gaming became equal.
Anyways...back to war-gaming
Gateway whom we bought the computer from sent with the PC a Microsoft gaming bundle. It had six games in there and I don't even remember what five of them were. But the sixth game was Close Combat II and I fell in love. I would play the campaign over and over again. I also worked in the school library all four years of highschool and we were blessed with a good alumni and friends of the school who donated a lot of good books. I read every military history book I could get my hands on.
Those early days were constant late nights of Starcraft matches, Rainbow Six back when Microsoft had their gaming servers and Close Combat
Then in 1999 or 2000 I can't remember which. I was reading PC Gamer (I had a subscription back when the magazine was worth a damn) and they had a article about Steel Panthers World at War.
I had never heard of Steel Panthers but the game and screenshots looked cool and I was liking WW2 from having played CC II. Plus the game was free. I think that is what most attracted me. A 15 year old does not have much of an income so free games are the best kinds of games.
We at the time had a 128 KB ISDN connection. SPWAW took 19 hours to download. I remember that vividly. I played the game hardcore for about two months but grew board of it. I could not get into it as much as CC II. Plus I had games like Rainbow Six Rouge Spear and the Playstation One was growing towards the end of it's life but was releasing some of it's best games.

Then again in the Spring of 2002 PC Gamer magazine again directed me here. They had an article about SPWAW again and William Trotter was writing about the Mega Campaigns. Now that seemed like a reason to pick up the game again!
Plus that was my senior year of highschool and I had a job and income. I purchased both Lost Victories and Watchtower and then went back and purchased Desert Fox. In March 2002 I registered here and frequented the SPWAW boards and Art of War forums.
8 years and 5600 posts later I am still here.
After the mega campaign purchases I did not purchase another Matrix game until Uncommon Valor and I only purchased that like a year or 18 months after release. I wish I had picked up on that game earlier and gotten into it when it was first released. That was a gem and almost the perfect wargame.

So there is a brief history of me. And heres to 8 more years and hopefully for the rest of you not 5600 more posts [;)]

[Jim D Burns]

My first two games were Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg and Luftwaffe board games. My father had purchased them and found them too complex, so he gave them to me and the addiction was born.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3646/luftwaffe

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3099/gettysburg

Jim

[Nikademus]

heh.

[joeblack1862]

I am only listing the moment I played a proper game of each category (I messed about before but I don't count those):

First Wargame:
Airfix commandos vs germans using Lionel Tarr's rules from Donald Featherstone's book Wargames (1970)

First Board Game:
Avalon Hill's Gettysburg (1974)

First Computer Wargame:
War in Russia on the Atara 800. Played that a lot! (can't rember the date)

[MajFrankBurns]

I was looking at my old pc wargames of the early 80's Knights of the Desert and Tigers in the Snow and those graphics are horrible compared to the commodore 64 ones of the same games. PC gaming for the PC didn't really come around until I guess in the early 90's. Even SSI's Gettysburg and Antietam and Shilo and Son's of Liberty and Battles of Napoleon are pretty crappy looking. The Commodore 64 what a great little entry level computer back then. What still amazes me is 2mb games two silly megabytes turned into some great gaming days.

I can't forget my first computer wargame came on the commodore 64 on cassette tape Knights of the Desert. I couldn't afford one of those
5-1/4" hard drives in the early days. They were as much as the computer $200.

[Deathtreader]

Afrika Korps and Waterloo by Avalon Hill many decades ago when the world was a younger and better place. [:D]

My first computer wargame was Red Lightning on a Tandy 286 with EGA graphics.

Things have certainly changed since then haven't they??

Rob.

[mllange]

Can't remember what the first was, but a few of the more memorable that I still play today from time to time:
1. Tigers on the Prowl 2
2. Panthers in the Shadows

They still hold up fairly well, even today. Great stuff!

[Joram]

Tactics II as well

[Chris Bisson]

LOL!! I bet we ALL did that! [:D]

ORIGINAL: junk2drive

Throwing rocks and dirt at plastic army men.