Matrix Games Forums

As an aside, how about anyone a quick roll call to see who is where and what their WIF experience is ? And add anything else that may (or may not) be of interest to the group. I'll start....

I'm in the Southeastern US (around hex 74,308 on the CWIF map [:)] ). Played WIF a LOT in the past (pre-Final Edition version). Enjoyed Days of Decision add-on, and the Canadian Wargame Journal's <u>Fatal Alliances</u> modification as well. Found CWIF a few years ago and sent in a few suggestions (nothing major though) to Chris (MAJOR Kudos to the man for CWIF).

I do a lot of miniature wargaming and have a large board wargaming collection. Military history fascinates me, although lately I've gotten to reading more social histories (e.g. <u>Victory Must Be Ours</u>- a social history of Germany during the Great War.) That said, I can't wait for MWIF, and from what great work I've seen Shannon do so far, I feel I won't be dissapointed in the least.....

I live in Wisconsin (The Fox Valley are) and have played WiF for about three years. I played AH wargames as a kid, got away from the hobby for about 15 years to go to college, get married, raise a family, etc. I currently am playing 2 WiF games PBEM using Vassal. I'm also playing a game of Deluxe with a local group in Stevens Point Area (we're looking for one or two more players if anyone is out there). I also read a lot of history. Other than military subjects (games and books) I also run a couple of fantasy baseball leagues. I also love football and the NCAA basketball tournament. I'm a teacher and I'm anxious to start Beta testing MWiF. My thoughts on WiF in general: Best wargame I've ever seen. I'm pretty good with the rules but I have a ways to go on the strategy. I think WiF classic is just as fun as Deluxe. I don't like the 2D10 CRT, I think 4 player WiF is ideal. Steve H. (Shannon) is God! [;)]

I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma (CWiF map hex 73,294) and am 56 years young. [:D]

We played WiF a lot before our group broke up or turned to computer games. I parts of the game I enjoy the most are the politics, options, and production.

I Took part in the CWiF beta and am now in the MWiF beta.

I've been playing wargames since the early 1960's starting with Stalingrad (by Avalon Hill).

I've a small collection (under 1000 pieces) of Napoleonic, WW II naval, and fantasy miniatures.

I live in West Kentucky. I am 43 years old. I haven't actually played WiF in a many years. Real Life (TM) gets in the way. My other hobby is bridge. Great game - you should all try it. (See my signature).

I used to play lots of wargames and the occasional RPG. I used to play a lot of Quake (1, 2, and 3) but the reflexes are starting to slow down. Also played a lot of Civilization (1, 2, 3, and 4).

I loved the Days Of Decision Game (the original - haven't played the newer version). I certainly hope that this project is successful enough to add DOD as an expansion pack that allows you to game the entire conflict starting in 1936.

I like to read Science Fiction. Currently, I am on a Neal Stephenson binge. His book Snow Crash is a must for any computuer gamer.

Sincerely,

<====Live in San Diego. 40 going on 61 years old... I feel old...

Played WiF since the late 80's, but as I have always solo'd it, I am weak on strategising.

Kinda like Chess... I know how the pieces move, but not why I should move a particular piece there.

Have owned many wargames at one time or another, including several PnP RPG's.

Also play WoW. Poorly.

Enjoy reading Sci-Fi and fantasy genres.

Honolulu.
58.
Chess in high school through mid-20s with a final rating of 2050. A few trophies. Some play by mail tournaments (postcards).
'Majored' in bridge freshman year of college, some master points accumulated then.
SPI games much preferred over AH games and I own over 100 historical games - mostly from SPI. Prefer Napoleonics, American Civil War and WW II games.
Weekly gaming sessions from mid-1970's through mid-1990's with time out to create 2 war games for the Atari 800 (3 years). About 10 - 15 hours /week, mainly one-on-one against a chess master (his rating is over 2400).
First played WIF in mid-1980's, continued until I moved to Hawaii in 1996. Mostly 4 person games.
Read a lot of history and science fiction. I own a couple of hundred books on each subject (I only keep the better science fiction books). Snow Crash is currently in my list of top 5 science fiction books.
Crush all the existing AI opponents for computer war games. I have zero interest in the RTS and 1st person shooter genres. I have played Civ II thousands of times (I purge the saved games directory every year and it takes over a hour).
Was persuaded to look at CWIF by an old gaming acquaintance in May of 2005. Became MWIF project manager in June/July.

I first came across wargames in 76' with Tactics II. After that came a lot of AH and SPI games. We played in a local High School one night a week with about 10 - 20 people attending the sessions.

Since 86 I have played almost exclusively WiF, starting with the Third edition and progressing through WiFFE and CWiF.
Our local group played one night a week with between 2 and 6 players in each game. I have played all Powers. This group finally stopped meeting last spring, but might restart again.

Since the CWiF open Beta began in 2001 I have also played it a lot, and still am, by email with other players who still have the game. I am not distributing it to anyone. A complete game takes up to 800 emails and that is with your opponent making some decisions for you. I made a fair number of bug reports to C Marinacci.

I live in San Marcos, a northern suburb of San diego. and have been there since 73.

Lars

I live in Chula Vista, southern San Diego. I am 38 years old and am a Navy Chief Petty Officer (been in for 18 years and counting).
I like a variety of wargames and RPG's, but find I don't have as much time as I would like to play. Mostly playing ASL and WiF when I can, and also continuing to work on the VASSAL module for WiF.
I also play computer games (mostly RTS and turn based stuff like Civ 4). Can't wait for MWiF to hit the streets!

39. Mid-Michigan. Don't know my CWIF hex.

First war game was Origins of WWII (AH). I was 9. My brother (age 14) crushed me. I've played primarily WWII games both SPI, AH and others. For a while my fav was Fire in the East if anyone knows it. Now I'm dedicated to WIF, the best game ever. I've been playing it irregularly since the 90's. The past three years I've played about every other week with the same group. (My opponents include the authors of LOC Vichy for those in the know. Wouldn't it be great if that were part of MWIF! --Just kidding--[8D]) For the past two years they've been been handing me my posterior in a hat. Our current game is a hoot and I'm happy with my play. You can check out the game reports at http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/wifdiscussion. I'm b5nowak over there. Some crappy pics are here http://home.earthlink.net/~buckyzoom/GR ... un%201942/

I much prefer board games to computer games although I was pretty well addicted to Panzer General and sequels for a while. Alpha Centauri also held my attention for a bit.

Gotta run, tonights WIF nite![8D]

I have been wargaming since the early 70s. First game was AHs Waterloo. We picked up WiF in the early days and have been playing ever since. We had to quit about 5 years ago due to children etc.

i live in Toronto and once won the WiF tournament hosted by the Canadian Wargame Journal crew in Calgary.

Rob

47
Sydney, Australia
Wargaming since I bought AH Battle of the Bulge and D-Day in early 1970's
Used to Wif every week in the 90's. Version 5 with PiF and SiF
Kibbitzed a few games since then but these days I spend more time with WiFe than WiF.
Seven month old son takes up time also.
I'm in the MWiF Test Team.
Prefer WeGo/IgoUGo strategy to RTS or FPS
Prefer Red wine to White

i think people are being shy. I'm shy, so here's some very vague info.

I picked up Avalon Hill's Victory in the Pacific in 4th grade, I bought a Conway's 22-46 volume in 5th grade, I had to replace it two years ago with a reprint because I fear for the life of the original. Went on to play Flat Top *a lot*. Played 3rd Reich some. I always suffered from a lack of opponents, so I dabbled solitaire a lot with games like squad leader. Finally got on to World In Flames in 1994 and played a full game against a human in 1996. Then family took over my space. I've been a computer gamer ever since. Big on Civ 2 and 3 and a little 4. I agree with Steve's apparent sentiment that Civ 2 is the best in the series. Most recently I played a solitaire campaign of Matrix's own War in the Pacific out to the end of 1943. As the Allies. I like winning I guess.

I'm older than my kids and younger than my parents. My house is surrounded by corn and beans. beans and corn. I work as an IT professional, going on 10 years now.

I have been blessed to be a member of the beta test team, serving a role as a newbie (one game 10 years ago does not a rules expert make).

I live near Houston Texas and am anavid wargamer.

I got started in 1974 or so with AH's 1776 and moved on to 3rd Reich and haven't stopped with gaming yet. At last count 50 or 60 different titles and dozens of S&T games under my belt. My WiF expierance is extremly minimal. Bought the game, read the rules, fell in love with the system, and tried a quick solo game before going to the first Gulf War. Came back and my found my game in ruins from my then 10 and 11 year old sons and have not been able to replace it yet. So wargames exp is high and WiF is low. Past that I have a new son 1.5 years old (yeah it was a surprise at my age) and the other two are married. One is Airborne and the other flys for the USAF. As for me, I have retired from the USAF and enjoy life to its fullest and can't wait for MWiF and hopefully Empire in Arms to be released this year from Matrix.

There seems to be a remarkably similar theme to a lot of the roll call postings. Not suprising really.

36 year old from Adelaide, Australia. No idea what the hex number is but at least most Wiffers have a pretty good grasp of geography. Second kid due this Thursday so my current solo game of cardboard WIF is probably not going to get a whole lot of use in the next month or so.

CIV II and ASL the old favourites but the 1st person shooters get a bit of a run on the XBOX when I am feeling too brain dead to give WIF the cerebral time that it deserves.

37, Melbourne Australia -

Been a WiFer for 12 yrs on and off. Currently keeping my mind off MWiF by messing about with DoD3 rules, trying to integrate PoliF and PatiF .. it's been quite interesting;

'Liberation' of conquered major powers / minor countries by enemy ideology

India problems (Pakistan and Jap 'liberation')

Granting independance to - and exerting political influence on - former colonies (trying to find willpower/stability ratings as well as Treaty/War effects)

Minor countries withdrawing from war when losing, or changing sides

My efforts are amateur at best, but I'd be happy to mail 'em over to anyone who's interested in offering advice..

San Fransisco, 17 years old. been playing WIF for 6 years now. math teacher tried to teach me and some of my friends how to play with the boards, but being as we had no space to keep a game set up and we are all rather on the slow side we ended up running two incomplete games(into 41 and the other to 42(?)). CWIF was a godsend, i think we completed 2 games on it. played every day at lunch. cyberboard for now, sadly the only opponents i have live on the other side of the country now....damn college. and unlike our essteemed Mr. O'Keets, I have all of my Civ2 games saved. which when i think about is probably really a waste of the several CD's they take up.....

i feel really really out of place amoung my elders here......

I'm 111 years old and from Tasmania, Australia. After serving in the Light Horse during The Great War (and no whipper-snapper is going to convince me to use this new-fangled "World War One" malarky) I gained my pilot's licence and became a barn-stormer with a travelling air-show troop. On returning from Antarctica (where we were searching for an inland sea) I took up sword swallowing and then rode a bicycle across the Sahara before...ah...hang on...sorry...wrong person.

I'm actually 34 (although I'm sure there's some kind of mix-up there because I feel about 20). I was a gas-turbine and aircraft technician on fighters in the Australian Air Force but I'm now in my final year of a science degree majoring in computing and mathematics.

I started wargaming in about 1991 when I bought a Strategy and Tactics magazine with the game "Case Green" in it (a hypothetical 1938 German invasion of Czechoslavakia, and a real beauty). I bought a copy of WiF soon afterwards but have only played it on and off because I only had one friend who was interested. I've fiddled with CWiF as well. I've played a lot of Combat Mission and The Operational Art of War.

I'm a science/technology/history nut. You know the type [;)]

@ abj9562
"...I have a new son 1.5 years old (yeah it was a surprise at my age)"

And when you get your hands on the guy responsible...[:@][:D]

Cheers, Neilster

34 years old. I currently live in Liverpool, UK.

When I was a kid I longed to play wargames and RPG's, however I knew no one else who was interested. I did manage the odd game of Kingmker but that was it. I bought several RPG's but never played them. I also owend Squad Leader and a couple of other AH games. Sadly they never really got played and have since long vanished.

I have a 4 year old girl a a stepson who is 13. BAd news is I didnt get to my step son early enough to have an influence and turn him into a wargamer. My daughter is........very ecentric with very little concentration so I cant see her having ago either.

This is where the PC became a godsend.

I prefer tactical games overall, but in for me there is nothing out there at the moment PC wise that makes me sit up and take notice. Maybe LnL the PC game will do it.

I also enjoy HTTR and I'm looking forward to CoTA.

Grand Strategy is something that Ive always found to abstract, HOWEVER after reading the forum and the developers updates, aswell as checking out websites regarding the boardgame I cant wait for this one to be released.

Name is Nicklas Hjalmarsson from Sollentuna in Sweden and I started my gaming experience 1979 aged six with an old ALGA game called Jägersro. From sixth grade I was hooked to RPG's also tried some miniatures, but I didn't get hooked as I want to play not paint.
Started with startegy games during late '80s WIF, Empires in arms, however not to many campaign was played to the end. Was also heavily involved in POBEM where I created my own games and had very high telephone bills as I took diplomacy serious and called each and every one of the 32 players between each move.
1992 I started University and and ended up in with MUD, totally fascinated by being able to play with other fanatics 24/7. Diplomacy was my next fix which I travelled around to different cons to play, trophies included Best Italy at the european championships -93 and best Swedish player -94.

Gaming became reduced quite significantly after leaving university, first with work and now wife and son have occupied more and more of my time.
I played computergamesfor some years but I find computer opponents boring, I want to play with real people. Cyberboard have been a great way for me to actually do that and I very much look forward to MWIF and the PBEM functionaliy.

Well, here's me:-)

I'm now 34 years old but alternativelly feeling like a 100 or 20 (occasionally on the same day). Except for a few years in the US (Minneapolis MN) I've spent all my life out here in Luxembourg-Europe.

I was first introduced to wargames when my brother allowed me to push counters in his Panzer Leader games, I must have been around 8 or so. When I was 11 and my brother went to college I started raiding his game collection, teaching myself english along the way (you can imagine how I totally misinterpreted some rules at first). I bought my first wargame (Victory in the Pacific at the Military Museum of Bastogne, really odd choice I must say) at 12 or 13. After that I conducted yearly raids to London (in the summer) and Paris (winter) where I'd run around the city looking for wargame stores and return home with half a dozen new games. That is also how I found WiF (with DoD I), on my second London raid. I continued those seasonal raids on the big towns until I went to college, where for the first time I ended up with a local store to raid regularly (at first I kept the habbit of buying any game I liked which was not too good for my purse). In college I also started online (text based) RPG's which eventually took up most of my time. After college I finally had to stop buying new games (board, I still buy computer games) as I had finally outrun my financial capacities.

Almost from the beginning I also started modifying existing wargames (a war in the desert module for Squad Leader was probably my first) and creating my own games (first was a Vietnam platoon level game, though I stopped my design in the middle of my first London raid when I bought an existing Vietnam game...). I even considered buying up an old game franchise a few years ago with a punch of other people. Recently I have once again started seriously working on wargames and am also considering earning some money doing game graphics (maps and counters), maybe I'll get into the professional business after all (my first attempt to publish a game was during college, though I aborted that myself due to time constraints, I also considered starting a hobby store but couldn't take that risk).

Other then gaming (war, rpg and computer) I am an avid reader of Fantasy and Science Fiction (I've never thrown a book away in my life, the idea itself is blasphemy to me;-), occasionaly writer of Fantasy short stories (I've given up on writting my own trilogy) and European Comic reader/collector. The term collector actually applies to me in everyone of my hobbies as by now I have several hundred boxed wargames plus a similar number of magazines, thousands of comics, thousands of F & SF books etc.

Lastly I've been pretty busy in local and european politics the past 7 years, I wasn't joking when I answered the the communist question with yes (the ideology, not the party) in the beta application;-). Though I've been gradually dropping out of active poltics the past year or so, though I expect this to be only temporary.

So I short, I'm moderately young, feeling very old, addicted to anything related to gaming but totally broke and without a real skill or talent. I'm sure I coudl say much more, but who would want to read that?

P.S.: Oh I forgot to mention that I took part in the open beta for CWiF and am now on the MWiF beta team.