Matrix Games Forums

Some of you may be too young for this thread, if so I'm sorry...

(Just imagine, there actually was a time when "PBEM" would have just been an abbreviation of the condition of some of the people I used to run into in the Club/Studio scene..."PROBABLY EMERGENCY ROOM MATERIAL!")


1. AFRIKA KORPS
2. 1967
3. A board version more or less of PACWAR,
A KAMPFGRUPPE style boardgame,
A board version of BATTLE OF THE BULGE,
and a unique game about the siege and subsequent fall of
Constantinople in 1453, in which Emperor Constantine felt he couldn't afford the giant cannon offered to him by Urban, a fellow Eastern European Christian, who then crossed the Bosphorus and sold it to Mehmed II. You know the rest of the story. It was the worst asset allocation debacle in Western History. I can't remember the name of this game though.
Oh yes.. and RISK!, so basic in it's deadly simplicity to so many opponents with each roll of the dice! Aggression in it's purest form!

The World will be mine!

Was it Africa Korps or Blitskrieg that was first?
Blitzkrieg was red vs Blue with a lake somewhere about mid point. Artillery existed...but you had to get them into position. I cannot remember if they had range for combat attack.

Originally posted by Mike B
Blitzkrieg was red vs Blue with a lake somewhere about mid point. Artillery existed...but you had to get them into position. I cannot remember if they had range for combat attack.

Blitzkrieg was my first, and I was hooked.

1914 was the first real boardgame I got, then it was S&T's Battle of Moscow with paper counters that I had to mount myself.

Before that I played games like Battleship, Stratego and Risk(which I hated, to much dice rolling and to little strategy). Then of course I was a Chess player. Once boardgames entered my life Chess and all the others were left behind.

For me, it was Avalon Hill all the way. Blitzkrieg, Jutland (laying all those ******** ships all over the floor then kicking them with your knees), France 1940, Battle of the Bulge, Waterloo, etc...

Kingmaker was great for a while (was it Avalon Hill??), but it convinved me the Brits really are a silly people.

I once played a game of Risk with friends and my wife and I solemnly promised her I would not attack her armies if she attacked someone else. I swore up and down I wouldn't attack. Chump. She fell for it, got badly attritted, and then I blew her out of the game. She never really did ever forgive me and now we're divorced. Wonder why, eh?:D

I think it was AH's Stalingrad, around 1967-68. I still have it tucked in a closet, along with Afrika Korps, Midway, Alexander the Great, Panzerblitz, France 1940, Arab-Israeli Wars, used to have 1914 (I gave that one away years ago), several SPI games (War in the East, Moscow Campaign, Kursk (1980), The China War , The Kaiser's Battle , Panzerarmee Afrika and maybe a few others). It was Stalingrad, though, that got me hooked on wargames and the Eastern Front. "Now YOU can decide the outcome of the greatest land war in history..." Ahh, nostalgia.

Originally posted by Mark_BookGuy

For me, it was Avalon Hill all the way.

Same here.

Kingmaker was great for a while (was it Avalon Hill??),

Yes, AH. They had a computer version too. Hmmm, maybe I oughta take a look at ebay and see if any copies are available.

I once played a game of Risk with friends and my wife and I solemnly promised her I would not attack her armies if she attacked someone else. I swore up and down I wouldn't attack. Chump. She fell for it, got badly attritted, and then I blew her out of the game. She never really did ever forgive me and now we're divorced. Wonder why, eh?

You are cold blooded. Backstabing your own wife?!? What happened to family loyalty? Did you ever play AH's Diplomacy? I'll bet if you had, you weren't able t to get anyone to play you after a while.



For me the first game was Panzer Leader, the platoon level, West Front version of Panzerblitz. Although a bought other tactical games, once I played Third Reich, I was kinda hooked on strategy games.

The first computer war game that I really loved was Kampfgruppe on an Atari 8-bit machine.

My first wargame that also hooked me was Tactics II by Avalon Hill. The time was sometime in the mid 1950s. I had a version so old that the counters had designations like 1st Ar Div or 25th Inf Div but no symbols. Years later I was told that it was a collectors item and gave it to the person who told me. It was completely worn out by then.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Mark_BookGuy

Kingmaker was great for a while...
I once played a game of Risk with friends and my wife and I solemnly promised her I would not attack her armies if she attacked someone else.

Kingmaker was fun. Yes, AH as far a I recall. Yes, out eventually on computer. Didn't get great reviews though if I recall correctly.

In Risk!, if you didn't lie to and betray your friends and family, you probably had no one to play. Probably better to not do that with "Your Significant Other" however. Sometimes it's difficult to separate fact from fiction.

I LUVED Diplomacy, even more than Risk! I still have both board versions tucked away. I wonder if there's a computer version that let's you play "Dip" via E-mail. I'm sure it would be fun.

It was PANZER LEADER that I played a lot in the 70's. (Kampfgruppe style game). Operation "Goodwood", "St. Lo", etc., great game.

"BUMP MY STACK AND YOU'RE HISTORY, MOTHER FLETCHER!"

Remember saying something like that at least a few times?

Tactics II, 1964 (I was 10) my father said, "here you might like this" and I've been addicted ever since.

My First Board Games was Wooden Ships & Iron Men.
I' been introduced to D & D in high School, and moved from there to Ancient's Minatures & WWII Armour minatures prior to playing Boardgames
(I don't suppose anyone here remembers "Shock of Impact" or "Sandskrieg"?)

Originally posted by Possum
My First Board Games was Wooden Ships & Iron Men.
I' been introduced to D & D in high School, and moved from there to Ancient's Minatures & WWII Armour minatures prior to playing Boardgames
(I don't suppose anyone here remembers "Shock of Impact" or "Sandskrieg"?)

Dear Mr. Possum:
With all due respect, W.S & I.M. is a relatively new game...and anyone in "MINIATURES", is going back many hundreds, if not thousands of years, potentially.

Dude, you may possibly be a Vampire!
Are you looking for blood?

These two games you mention, that I don't remember, sound like something that the Ancient builders of the Pyramids would have played, when they argued with their superiors.

"D & D"?

Your Humble Potential Gaming Adversary

I was a freshman in high school, and a friend of mine came into study hall with an Avalon Hill catalog ... U-Boat ... D-Day ... Waterloo ... Stalingrad ... Tactics II ...

but the thing that really caught my eye was Afrika Korps with THIS ...

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn

You are cold blooded. Backstabing your own wife?!? What happened to family loyalty? Did you ever play AH's Diplomacy? I'll bet if you had, you weren't able t to get anyone to play you after a while.

She wasn't good at anything else, so why should she be good at a ruthless game of Risk? The whole point is to stab your neighbor, spouse, whomever, in the back and crush the opposition. World domination is not for the faint of heart.

"If you are ambitious, and you can't betray your friends and family, I hope that you are very sociable" - Stefdragon

D&D is Dungeons and Dragons, the old TSR roleplaying game.
Shock of impact, a set of Ancient's minatures Rules, Took it's name from the devestating effect that the Shock of impact of Charging Horses/Chariots/Mad Gauls had on impact with the enemy.
Sandskrieg, an old set of Rules for WWII tank minature's battles in North Africa.

Originally posted by Possum
Shock of impact, a set of Ancient's minatures Rules, Took it's name from the devestating effect that the Shock of impact of Charging Horses/Chariots/Mad Gauls had on impact with the enemy.
Sandskrieg, an old set of Rules for WWII tank minature's battles in North Africa.

You know Poss?

It's really funny that after all the years I've been playing board and computer war games, I've had very little exposure to the "Miniature" phenomenon. It would be fascinating just to read the rules on either one of those games.

In NY there is, or was such a club that met once a week to beat eachother's brains out on these big plywood terrain boards of different types, that they of course made themselves.

I even saw an article in the NY Times about them...Raving fanatics as far as I could tell. Don't get them angry. The wargame equivalent of the "Beserkers", or something like that. You would rather take on a Mongol or Vandal rather than one of these guys.

I knew this one member, in his mid thirties. I would go to his house where he would sit for hours, painting and mounting his soldiers from every era!.... tanks, guns, ships, horses, trees, rocks....they're insane.

WHERE'S MY MOUSE??!!

Originally posted by Stefdragon


Dear Mr. Possum:
With all due respect, W.S & I.M. is a relatively new game...and anyone in "MINIATURES", is going back many hundreds, if not thousands of years, potentially.

Dude, you may possibly be a Vampire!
Are you looking for blood?

These two games you mention, that I don't remember, sound like something that the Ancient builders of the Pyramids would have played, when they argued with their superiors.

"D & D"?

Your Humble Potential Gaming Adversary

Wooden ships & Iron Men is OLD. It dates from mid-late 1970s. I'm talking about the AH board game. I remember playing it in HS - Trafalgar with my good friend. I was kicking his a$$, because I loaded every single British ship with double shot both broadsides (range =1, but tremendous damage) I bow or stern raked every one of his ships that I got next to and his ships were bloddy death hulks. My only problem was a piossible difficult time with HMS Africa, (64gun , smallest ship in the British line, it missed a signal to tack earlier, and was off to the north at the start of the battle) coming in from the north, with 30% of the French fleet trying to grapple or board it.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ranger-75


Wooden ships & Iron Men is OLD. It dates from mid-late 1970s. I'm talking about the AH board game.

Really?

I quess I was thinking about the computer game that came out a few years ago. I didn't know that there was an original board version that it was based on. But if anyone on this board was going to know about something like that, I would fully expect to see that CARRIER on the horizon.

Have you played the computer version? If so...What do you think about it?, you old salty dog, you!

I have a Microprose game called "Task Force"('92?) that is a modern version of that, with no aircraft. Then they came out with "Pacific Air War Gold", which combined both sea & air. Really great game for it's generation.

Hitlers war and axis and allies were my first.