Matrix Games Forums

What was the first wargame you ever played?

For me, it was Kriegspiel by Avalon Hill. I got it for Christmas when I was 15. It was really more of a card game with a board and unit counters. However, it did get me into wargaming and Avalon Hill, may its departed wargame incarnation rest in peace. (Unless some entrepreneur buys it back from the heartless corporation that bought and killed it.)

Eric Maietta

it was called

"Matchbox/Airfix soldiers meet firecrackers in the sandbox"

Now honestly, the first two (got them same time) I also seriously played where "Kampfgruppe" (SSI) and "Panzergrenadier" (SSI). Both on the C 64.

Btw, I´m desparatly looking for the game "Panzergrenadier" for the C64.

Richtofen's War

Boardgame Axis and Allies. Standard issue first wargame for kids I think.

On the computer it was Patton vs Rommel. Came on a single 5 1/4 disk and was a what if game about Normandy if Patton was controlling the forces landing.

Avalon Hill's "B-17 Queen of the Skies”

Played the living heck out of it and still have it in my closet along with many, many more! All in near mint condition.

I just can't let them go...

You guys make me feel ancient.

My first wargame was Tactics II.

There was probably something predating Tactics, but I don't recall anything.

I can't remember what my second and third wargames were though.

One might have been Midway.

Certainly weren't a lot of titles to remember back then though.

MY first wargame was a plastic Thompson with a spring loader thingy you pulled back and a fake plastic red muzzle blast.

The battle field was the beach by my house wich had a big concrete wall and a bench on top(bunker).

My friends and I would come out of the water to make our assault on the german positions at normandy beach.

Some times we would get the hawaiin kids to play and man the bunker,then we were playin kill the japs

Ahhhh...memories.

My First wargame I got in 4th grade... AH Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich. Its my favoriate wargame to date. On the PC it would be B-1 Bomber and Midway by AH as well. Need I say it did not take me long to find Guadalcanal and Bomb Alley by Gary Grigisby for the Apple when I was in high school. I went and got a second job just to buy a apple computer to play those games.

David

Someone actually got you Third Reich in grade 4 David ??

Hmm lets see, my son is in Grade 4, and he is 9.

You either have weird parents, or you are just plain odd David

The only way my son could afford a game like it was then, is to have me buy it for him.

Is Grade 4 the same grade in the US?

Les, perhaps you should introduce the lad to it. Look where David wound up.

My grandmother got me Avalon Hill's "Bull Run" game for my 9th birthday. When I first looked at the huge box, I thought it was a giant history book (it was a "bookshelf game") which I thought was ok, but I wasn't used to reading books quite that large. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it wasn't a book at all, but a game! I was hooked from that moment on. I think within a month I was already designing variants for the game.

Of course, I had already started reading books on the American Civil War when I was 7, so I had some prior familiarity and interest in the topic.

I saw an Avalon Hill ad in the back of Boys Life magazine and spent some of my hard earned hay baling/soybean field walking money and got a copy of Stalingrad and Panzerblitz at the same time. I was hooked from the moment I opened the first box and the plastic army men went in the trash there and then.

Hmmmm, I think I'm in the same age group as Sarge here.

My first introduction to cardboard pushing was Blitzkrieg followed by, about an hour later, Tactics II when a buddy gave me his copy.

B

AbsntMndedProf wrote:What was the first wargame you ever played?

This is going to sound lame, but it'd have to be Diplomacy, if you can call that a wargame. Failing that, Empires in Arms. But to be honest that isn't a true wargame either. Again its based around diplomacy and backstabbing. I'm so glad to see it getting a PC conversion, although I'm always going to compare it to Europa Universalis - the computer game since I never played the board version.

Les the Sarge 9-1 wrote:Someone actually got you Third Reich in grade 4 David ??

Hmm lets see, my son is in Grade 4, and he is 9.

You either have weird parents, or you are just plain odd David

The only way my son could afford a game like it was then, is to have me buy it for him.

Is Grade 4 the same grade in the US?

Yea it was me... I saw the box in Toys R Us and beg my parents to buy me it for my birthday.

I similarly cut my teeth on a Toys R' Us bought coppy of Third Reich - for my 11th birthday - followed by PanzerBlitz and Luftwaffe at Christmas and birthday thereafter.

They were $6.95!

I recently came full circle and bought the final incarnation of the Third Reich system. World at War from GMT - almost exactly 30 years later - and $140!!!

It is the definitive stratgic WW2 game. Well worth the price (even now at $175)

I can't even remember the name now, let alone the publisher. It might have just been "War in Middle Earth" - the subject matter is pretty obvious. My father picked it up at a second hand sale as he knew I was a big Tolkien fan. I think the original publishing date was the late `70s.

It's probably still in my parents attic, I'll dig it out next time I visit the folks. Very good game as I recall, although I was maybe a little too young to appreciate it.

I didn't really get into wargames until I went to college, starting with Battletech and SFB and pretty rapidly moving onto ancients and Napoleonic miniatures.


EDIT: I remember now, it was called "War of the Ring".

Paul could you crawl around in A World at War, and tell me what you think of the naval rules as evolved from the A3R evolution of the game for me.

I might like to get it, but am unsure what might have changed. I only know, that a lot of people were unhappy with Rising Sun's inability to co exist with A3R seemlessly.

As for the son here, not sure, he ain't got my patience yet hehe. Plays every Playstation game via cheats, hasn't yet mastered the notion winning through superior intellect is more satisfying.

For the record though, I was into paleontology during my early reading years. So I am actually more scientist than historian in some ways

The year was 1967 and on the shelf of my favorite hobby store(can't remember the name) at Gulfgate Mall in Houston was a copy of D-Day by some unknown company called Avalon Hill. Bought it for a few bucks and that was a big deal back then, probably wiped me out for a few weeks. Stayed up all night reading the rules, punching out the counters, even set it up and played against myself, but by morning I still hadn't finished the game. Needless to say from then on I was hooked, followed with Midway, Afrika Korps, and no telling what else is still up in my attic and the enthusiasm just seems to go on and on ....and on.

My first Board wargame was Avalon Hills "D-Day". It was followed up by "Africa Corps", "Tobruk", "Fall of France" and the game that really hooked me "Russian Campaign".

I was a big time fan of "Squad leader" for many years as that game grew into the rules monster from hell.

Then the game of all games landed on my lap. "Drang Nach Osten". Man I loved that game and when "Fire in The East" and "Scorched Earth" came out I played nothing else for 5 or 6 years board game wise. A group of 6 or 8 of us used to get togther on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for giant games afew times a year. The Russians always won.

My first computer game ever played was SSIs "Guadacanal" in 1982. Me and this army Captain used to play it at Fort Monroe Va every weekend. I then bought my first computer, an Apple II and grabbed "Bomb Alley" and "North Atlantic 86".

Whoever would have guessed the hobby we knew and loved as kids would slowly die out.

We are truly the die hards the ones who are left.