RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames?

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[Poll]

How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames?

1-5 years

7% (10)

6-10 years

9% (13)

11-15 years

16% (23)

16-20 years

16% (22)

more than 21 years

50% (69)

Total Votes : 137

(last vote on : 6/28/2004 6:24:41 PM)
(Poll will run till: -- )

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RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/10/2004 8:02:11 PM

AmmoSgt

Posts: 1002
Joined: 10/21/2000
From: Redstone Arsenal Al
Status: offline

I think I got ya'll beat , my first wargame was a pretty amazing little game that was published in Life magazine back in the early 60's as part of their coverage of the centenial of the Civil War. Pretty amazing for it's day , I particularly remember it was my first introduction to Riverine operations and how critical the rivers were to controling the land.
I guess my first hex wargame was the S&T Mag's "Winter War" that came out about 1971 IIRC.

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Post #: 31

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/10/2004 8:12:44 PM

robot

Posts: 1438
Joined: 5/9/2000
From: Covington Ky USA
Status: offline

Wow didnt know there was so many over 21 yrs here, Thats a lot of gaming, if you ask me. Glad to be a part of it still.

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Post #: 32

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/10/2004 11:53:20 PM

NaKATPase

Posts: 202
Joined: 3/14/2002
From: Madison, WI
Status: offline

I guess I'm a youngun, but I've still been gaming for a signifigant percentage of my life (and all of my adult life)
Got started around first grade throwing marbles at ranks of toy soldiers in the backyard sandbox... the number of marbles was of course determined by the number of lincoln log cannons still assembled on the other side, so naturally one aimed at the cannons first. (That was probably the game I had the most luck getting my dad to play with me)

I belive it was third grade (1988?) when I got AH's Bull Run, and played the heck out of it... mostly solitaire. Around a year later, my parents got aquainted with a gentlemen at our church who had a huge collection of miniatures, so I got into Napoleonics and ancients on the tabletop. First got bequeathed some painted figures, then got started painting my own. Collected various AH games through the rest of elementary and middle school as Christmas and birthday gifts (I think about that time is when I no longer requested nintendo games)

Made my first "converts" to gaming in 7th and 8th grade when I startedan after school club that played "Wooden Ships and Iron Men". Had a blast with four or five other guys, trying to design the optimal fleets.

Got into both SP and SL/ASL around 9th grade when I first got a "modern" PC.

Discovered SPWAW while at college through an issue of a french gaming zine "vae victis".

Started another club at university devoted to miniature wargames, and now have several friends that are even more prolific painters than myself.

Look forward to continued fun and friendship as a result of this great hobby.

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Colocalized with coracle in septate junctions.

"I'd love to step out, but I'd have to see the girl first." -- GM
"A lot of frogs are like that when they're young and repulsive." -- TS

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Post #: 33

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/11/2004 12:05:55 AM

KG Erwin

Posts: 8981
Joined: 7/25/2000
From: Cross Lanes WV USA
Status: offline

An amazing amount of wargaming experience is represented by the membership. Truly impressive.

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Post #: 34

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/11/2004 1:51:20 AM

Igor

Posts: 184
Joined: 12/11/2000
Status: offline

Either Diplomacy in 1974, or Year of the Rat in 1976 (depending on your definition of wargame). So perhaps 30 years.

(in reply to Major_Johnson)

Post #: 35

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/11/2004 11:21:31 PM

robot

Posts: 1438
Joined: 5/9/2000
From: Covington Ky USA
Status: offline

Any of you oldtimers ever play the blue and the grey. Loved that civil war game. The way the rifles had 3 different ranges. Wish it had been made after everything went away from dos.

Dern just noticed i finally made 3 stars. Not much good at writing but read the new posts every day.

< Message edited by robot -- 3/11/2004 4:25:13 PM >

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Post #: 36

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/12/2004 12:59:10 AM

Capt. Pixel

Posts: 1219
Joined: 10/15/2001
From: Tucson, AZ
Status: offline

I found SPI at the local commissary in '74. It all went downhill from there.

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Post #: 37

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/12/2004 2:08:20 AM

M4Jess

Posts: 5140
Joined: 1/17/2002
From: DC
Status: offline

oh baby!

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Post #: 38

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/12/2004 6:43:15 PM

Nickel

Posts: 124
Joined: 6/25/2003
From: WI- USA
Status: offline

TheChin,
I have quite a few of the old AH games as well as a large selection of SPI and some other names including a box version of Wacht am Rhein with all the errata. Fact is I have three large Rubbermaid storage things filled with board games. I also used to get SPI mag Stragety & Tactics and they had games in each month. I have some that don't even have the counters punched.

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Post #: 39

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/12/2004 6:45:29 PM

Nickel

Posts: 124
Joined: 6/25/2003
From: WI- USA
Status: offline

How did you get all the counters back into the cardboard?

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Post #: 40

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/14/2004 5:22:22 AM

Buzzard45

Posts: 364
Joined: 1/11/2003
From: Regina, Canada
Status: offline

If you don't count Risk and Diplomacy, It'd be Panzer Leader in 1977. Just before my son was born.

EEK

that is alng time ago. I was thrilled to find Steel Panthers in 1997. My son bought it for Christmas. We played the Panzer Leader Game on Christmas Eve and and I openned the game the next Morning. Come to think of it, That was the last time that I played Panzer Leader. Its hard to find a player who can spend days playing the same game.

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Post #: 41

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/14/2004 5:04:03 PM

sztartur2

Posts: 672
Joined: 7/24/2002
From: Budapest,Hungary
Status: offline

Battle Isle I and The Great War by Blue Byte in 1994. Then Panzer General I and Clash of Steel from SSI in 1995 and on. I played with the last two games for years. SSI had some good stuff...

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Post #: 42

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/14/2004 6:11:36 PM

Paddington

Posts: 90
Joined: 11/28/2002
From: Finland
Status: offline

I must be one of the youngest here. Started whit sp2 when it came out... Too bad I couldn`t play panzer leader, I wasn`t even borned yet! :)
Then after sp2 came out I bought sp1 and the got sp3 from a friend...

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Post #: 43

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/14/2004 6:26:34 PM

Warrior2

Posts: 237
Joined: 6/25/2001
From: West Palm Beach, FL USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Buzzard45

If you don't count Risk and Diplomacy, It'd be Panzer Leader in 1977. Just before my son was born.

EEK that is alng time ago. I was thrilled to find Steel Panthers in 1997. My son bought it for Christmas. We played the Panzer Leader Game on Christmas Eve and and I openned the game the next Morning. Come to think of it, That was the last time that I played Panzer Leader. Its hard to find a player who can spend days playing the same game.

I had forgotten about Risk! Used to play it for hours with my friends. Just downloaded the free sample computer version, and was amazed by how elementary it seems now. And how simple compared to the complexities of SPWaW.

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Post #: 44

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/14/2004 6:29:01 PM

Goblin

Posts: 5547
Joined: 3/29/2002
From: Erie,Pa. USA
Status: offline

Stratego kicked a$$!!!

Goblin

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Post #: 45

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/14/2004 6:35:23 PM

KG Erwin

Posts: 8981
Joined: 7/25/2000
From: Cross Lanes WV USA
Status: offline

Not to give anyone any ideas, put years ago a group of friends got together and played Risk, the only catch being it cost $10 to play and the winner collected the cash. Of course, you know how this ended. I left the table with my country captured and my wallet emptied.

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Post #: 46

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/15/2004 8:00:21 PM

Svennemir

Posts: 542
Joined: 11/2/2001
From: Denmark
Status: offline

Whoa.

So, almost half of you have played wargames longer than I have lived.

Yikes.

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Post #: 47

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/16/2004 12:39:33 AM

mattenhoff

Posts: 39
Joined: 10/13/2003
Status: offline

I started when I was about 13 or 14.

First ones were SNIPER! by SSI (IIRC), some division-level game about Normandy and western front (SSI), then Avalon Hill Panzerblitz and Panzer leader nailed it: I stuck in! And of course the "Empire" with computer.

Anyone ever played "World War 2" by SSI ? - I did, the whole summer 1989, with my friends, one game could take 100+ hours from us!

And once I thought I couldn't play anymore when I become an adult.
Hee-hee!!!

Unfortunately the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor)is pretty bad for war games these days...

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Post #: 48

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/16/2004 1:43:27 AM

BulletMagnet

Posts: 132
Joined: 8/29/2003
From: Ocala,Florida
Status: offline

Ok Ive only been miniature gaming for almost two years now. Hers my club website http://www.ocalagarrison.org/ Ive been computer wargaming all the way back to the 80's .Played many of avalon hill computer games mostly on the c-64. My c-64 favorite was red storm rising followed by sink the bismark and carrier strike.Man i feel old now.

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RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/16/2004 2:54:09 AM

KG Erwin

Posts: 8981
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From: Cross Lanes WV USA
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Bullet magnet, don't forget that advances in game technology does one thing that those old games we played didn't do--the odd thing is that we are getting closer to approximating the real life conditions of those long-ago and faraway events as we grow further removed from them. In a seeming paradox, modern technology as it progresses helps us better understand the past. Hardcore boardgamers may poo-poo this logic, but I've been a convert to computer wargames since the mid-1980s, and as the PCs get better, so does the programmers' abilities.

As the years go by, PC games have progressed also--I just compare John Tiller's Battleground games to Close Combat and SPWaW. In the operational field, the differences are even more pronounced--compare SSIs division-level games of the 80s to say "The Ardennes Offensive", or better yet, "Korsun Pocket".

We are in a golden age for PC wargaming, my friend, and it shows no sign of letting up.
To quote Bob Dylan from "My Back Pages": " I was so much older, then...I'm younger than that now."

< Message edited by KG Erwin -- 3/15/2004 7:53:04 PM >

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Post #: 50

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/16/2004 10:17:33 AM

jbcurtis

Posts: 4
Joined: 8/2/2000
From: Sunnyvale, CA USA
Status: offline

Well my first wargames were around 1972, Avalon Hill games "D-Day" and "Kriegspiel". I was nine, and having decreasing luck in persuading my older brothers in high school and college to play "kiddie games" with me, so I had to learn their games. Besides introducing me to wargames, it taught me to be a good loser at an early age. I always got creamed, but I had fun.

D-Day had been given as a Christmas present to the brother in high school. He played that game (usually solitaire) almost constantly for two years. He eventually worked out a perfect German defense, and even had it penciled in on the mapboard. Unfortunately, he'd erased it by the time I started playing.

We had that Civil War game Life magazine included as an insert, too. "1863" was the name. I finally won a game of that by the time I was in college. One game between the two older brothers broke up over a rules dispute, however. The Confederate player moved an army into the one square of Canada included on the Northern edge, and claimed the Union player couldn't attack him there.

My chances of a normal childhood were pretty much doomed by that point. I played, lost, and enjoyed Jutland, Midway, Africa Corps, Blitzkrieg, etc, etc, etc. By the time I was in high school, I could even WIN once in a while. One of the brothers, my nephew, and I actually played Jutland a few years ago. It's not quite as comfortable pushing all those cardboard ships all over the floor when you're older, however.

Regards

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Post #: 51

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/16/2004 4:21:11 PM

Sturmpionier

Posts: 99
Joined: 4/29/2002
From: Jennings, FL, USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wild Bill

Sturmpioneer!

Excuse me , but have you ever thought about some dental work?

I mean, you could look like this , then again, you might like the look

WB

This might be hard to believe, but that is not actually my picture. Actually, I look like this.

Attachment (1)

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RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/17/2004 7:34:46 PM

Mark Ezra

Posts: 340
Joined: 12/29/2000
From: Jasmin Ranch, Acton CA
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I credit Milton Bradley for getting me hooked on WarGaming. About 1960 they came out with a board game called Civil War. It was a goofy little game with dice, map and generic gray and blue markers. I loved it it and played it solo (yep nobody ever wanted to play with me even then!) for years. I never forgot it. About 1970 I started getting seriously intersted in minutatures...mostly WW2...it's how I finally learned to use a slide rule...LOL When I bought my first PC I discovered Wild Bill's Raiders and the rest, as they say, is history

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Post #: 53

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/21/2004 2:27:23 AM

simulacrum

Posts: 24
Joined: 6/30/2002
From: Michigan, USA
Status: offline

A few have me beat, but not many. 1961: AH Civil War, followed within a month by AH Midway--my first wargaming love and for which I still have a soft spot in my heart. A friend of mine, who qualified as a genius, and I gamed through junior high and high school. I could beat him with off-beat, illogical, yet reasonably realistic tactics. Many, many other games--board & minatures--followed through college and early jobs. They all are in the basement in boxes. Interest went into hiatus with the building of career and the arrival of wife and children--until the quality of PC-based simulations began to catch up. Sid Meier's Gettysburg and Gary Grigsby's Steel Panthers reignighted the passion. Am still waiting for really good, PC-based AI. In the mean time, will continue to follow Steel Panthers.

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Post #: 54

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/21/2004 2:54:31 AM

Les_the_Sarge_9_1

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Hmm interesting thought here, according to this survey at least, the views of us "old" grognards might explain why some of us (myself being one of the "us"), might not have much to say in favour of the "popular" style of quasi wargames out there.

Now that is not a slag on modern styles, merely a reflection on the fact, that a lot of us didn't grow up with modern styles, and as such, are not always entirely interested in them.

I don't enjoy the common cliche forms such as shooters and RTS games, simply because to me that is not what a wargame is.

When marketing to a "wargamer", you have to market what we actually call a wargame.
If you want to sell RTS and shooters, just assume you are marketing to young guys, whom often don't even think of themselves as "wargamers". They just want to "shoot up" things. And yes, I know plenty of guys that play the modern styles, and no they don't call themselves "wargamers". To them games are just "games".

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Post #: 55

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/21/2004 4:13:38 AM

KG Erwin

Posts: 8981
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From: Cross Lanes WV USA
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quote:

Now that is not a slag on modern styles, merely a reflection on the fact, that a lot of us didn't grow up with modern styles, and as such, are not always entirely interested in them.

I'll beg to differ, Les. You're endangering yourself into being locked into comfortable conservatism, which admittedly with SPWaW I've fallen into, also. This breeds complacency, which is anathema to development. No, we can't allow complacency. New challenges must always rest on the horizon, or else it all becomes stale, which in the gaming world leads to a quick death. You, of all people, surely don't wish this upon SPWaW.

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Post #: 56

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/21/2004 4:35:24 AM

Goblin

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From: Erie,Pa. USA
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There is a point where a game is good as-is, KG, and should not be changed. By your theory, SPWaW should never be the same game, but be changed every so often. If people wanted a different game all the time, they would play different games. They play SPWaW because its SPWaW, not because the game is changed every so often to something not 'stale'.

Goblin

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Post #: 57

RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/21/2004 5:45:27 AM

pasternakski

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quote:

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

... advances in game technology does one thing that those old games we played didn't do--the odd thing is that we are getting closer to approximating the real life conditions of those long-ago and faraway events as we grow further removed from them.

Completely disagree. As technology has been applied to historical simulations, it is bent toward the audience, not the history. Computer simulation in general is receding from state of the art of historical wargame design, not advancing it. The UV system is a fair start, but nobody else is following. AI design is dead in the water.

There's nothing on the computer that can come anywhere close to matching simulations like Victory Games's "Vietnam" or "The Civil War." There are myriad other examples, but those two should do for now.

Maybe someday. But not now. Crap like HoI, Axis and Allies, and the rest can take a long sniff of the oubliette, as far as I'm concerned. WaW is likely to earn a spot in my hall of blame, as well. From what I've seen of it in the rushes and discussion, I'm really disappointed that Matrix/2by3 decided to produce that title.

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And the people let me down.
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RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/21/2004 12:07:43 PM

KG Erwin

Posts: 8981
Joined: 7/25/2000
From: Cross Lanes WV USA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Goblin

There is a point where a game is good as-is, KG, and should not be changed. By your theory, SPWaW should never be the same game, but be changed every so often. If people wanted a different game all the time, they would play different games. They play SPWaW because its SPWaW, not because the game is changed every so often to something not 'stale'.

Goblin

By this I meant new challenges in scenario and campaign development, as far as SPWaW is concerned. New designer tools, also. There has been talk of updating the mech.exe, but it's not gonna happen. The SPWaW engine, while quirky, is still my all-time favorite game. Its flexibility will ensure that it remains on gamers' PCs for years to come.

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RE: How Long Have You Been Playing Wargames? - 3/21/2004 12:32:32 PM

KG Erwin

Posts: 8981
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From: Cross Lanes WV USA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

quote:

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

... advances in game technology does one thing that those old games we played didn't do--the odd thing is that we are getting closer to approximating the real life conditions of those long-ago and faraway events as we grow further removed from them.

Completely disagree. As technology has been applied to historical simulations, it is bent toward the audience, not the history. Computer simulation in general is receding from state of the art of historical wargame design, not advancing it. The UV system is a fair start, but nobody else is following. AI design is dead in the water.

There's nothing on the computer that can come anywhere close to matching simulations like Victory Games's "Vietnam" or "The Civil War." There are myriad other examples, but those two should do for now.

Maybe someday. But not now. Crap like HoI, Axis and Allies, and the rest can take a long sniff of the oubliette, as far as I'm concerned. WaW is likely to earn a spot in my hall of blame, as well. From what I've seen of it in the rushes and discussion, I'm really disappointed that Matrix/2by3 decided to produce that title.

Frankly, I think that Schwerpunkt's Russo-German War and Matrix' own Korsun Pocket are prime examples of the new golden age of PC wargaming. I would also include Silent Hunter II, which is more of a simulation, but is open-ended in a way that has allowed user-created mods to transform it into an immersive experience. My old board games now only occupy closet space, but I still admire the artistry of certain board-game maps and the research that accompanied many of those game designs. For the older baby-boomers, like me, pointing and clicking just isn't the same as the tactile sensation of handling those cardboard counters, but I've grown accustomed to the PC games, and I now play them exclusively.

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