Wednesday, January 7, 2015

A Tale of Wargamers?


No pictures of minis today but I have been wittling away at some more Vikings and I've finally started on "The Family" from Across the Dead Earth.

 I've also entered the latest terrain competition that The AtDE facebook group is running. Two rules for the competition - 1. The base can be no bigger than a CD.
2. Minimal purchased bits. Must be mostly scratch built. Looking forward to this. I've got a couple ideas, to the point of possibly entering 2-3 pieces.

The real reason I'm posting today is because I'm curious...I was listening to an old episode of the View From the Veranda podcast (w/Neil Schuck and Henry Hyde) and they were talking about inspiration for wargaming. Which got me thinking of a couple questions for you all. (Call me rather weird, but I do consider my followers as cyber friends, hence I'm curious, and be advised, if you're ever in the Kansas City area, shoot me a message and we can try to have a game!)

So the questions - 1. What started you into wargaming, or board gaming?

2. What inspires you to wargame or pick up a new period/genre?

I look forward to reading your replies.

5 comments:

  1. Great questions, for me (albeit a very recent thing) the start was geared around giving up smoking and finding a distraction for my hands. I had always been interested in history and enjoyed the prospect of immersing myself into a hobby that had so many possible avenues to explore - I certainly haven't been disappointed and still not smoking!

    As for the second question, I'm a bit of a magpie and will pick up and put down periods without any real thought, it all depends on what captures my imagination at the time. I have to confess that reading blogs often sets me off in all sort of directions as I see what others have achieved.

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  2. KC is too far from me. :(

    Good luck with your terrain competition. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

    To answer your questions:

    1. My grandparents got us into playing board games at a young age. Primarily Monopoly, but we also played others. I was introduced to miniatures wargames when some of my classmates back in the late 80's brought their strange, but cool, Rogue Trader stuff in one day.

    2. I've learned to deal with the shiny-itis of this hobby, knowing full well that my gaming group is more of a roleplay game centric affair than tabletop minis. Plus the prospect of having to paint ALL the minis for any new system I pick up (Cos none of my mates would even bother to try) kind of puts me off. Luckily in the last couple years I have met a few folks outside of the group (Flames of War tournament group) who have put forth new ideas and shown they'll put in as much effort into a new project as I would. This makes getting into new games easier.

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  3. Always been in to toy soldiers since I was a kid, I fondly remember a vast Airfix 1/32 collection from my childhood. Interest lost in early teens as hormones directed one's behaviour. Around nineteen was introduced to GW 40K, hooked from there. Lately moved to a zombie horror skirmish because of space issues and complete disillusionment with GW.

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  4. The first game that I can actually recollect paying was chess (on a very cheap plastic travel chess set) and at about the same time recievng a Britains swoppet knight. - I was seven years old and got the idea of combing rules (from chess) with figures, beofre I discovered Little Wars a few years later and then "Wargames" by Don Featherstone and I was hooked.
    As for what genres I delve into, it all comes from being inspired by reading (non-fiction mostly)

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  5. I remember playing board games in my house very early. My older brother introduced me to space marines while I was still in elementary school. Roleplaying games came next and I've just sorta run with it. I really like games in general. Interstingly, my father helped work on the board game Quebec 1759, and had a credit on the first edition (published by gamma two games). I suppose gaming might come from him?

    2/. The look usually catches me first. Often reading about historical periods interests me in various periods. Typically what others are playing also attracts me to games. It's nice to have opponents (and even nicer to simple be one and use someone elses nicely painted minis).

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