Tell me about wargaming in the 70s

[Charlie_]

I'm enjoying the threads here about the wargaming of yesteryear....

So here's one for you. What was wargaming like in the 70s?

A while back I enjoyed watching some episodes of that wargaming TV show from (I think) the 70s which are on youtube, and was fascinated to see how unfamiliar a lot of it seemed. Somewhere in the comments somebody had a link to the rules which they were using, I believe it was some edition of WRG? I had a read and found it all very interesting. Had rules for weather, passing orders from the general to different units, a myriad of headache-inducing charts and tables.....

I'm fascinated to hear about how the games worked back then, especially for massed battle historical games. How things were different, what worked well, what didn't. A lot of the rules and concepts which are familiar across all sorts of systems today I'm aware might have their roots in the late 80s and 90s, a lot of it through Games Workshop.... What was it like before this?

[AndrewBeasley]

Cannot help with the historical unless you count WW2 1/72 and 6mm  as we normally played fantasy...

We where lucky in that we had a WargamesFoundry shop in town so had a chance to browse catalogs without having to send Postal Orders (too young for a bank account) or a stamped addressed envelope.

Like a lot of the group I started with Airfix models as they where the simplest to buy and them moved on to 6mm using a mix of rules that always seem to involve lots of tables and cross checking weapons against armour and noting down hits on scraps of paper.

Before Games Workshop grew, we had two ranges of fantasy from Minifigs and mainly used the Lord of the Rings rules from SELWG with lots of ‘counts as’ to cope with figures outside the classic ones.  Again though these had tables to cross check.

I’ll skip over the RPG side except to say my claim to fame was I bought the second white box D&D rules from the fledgling Games Workshop (they kept the first) as we went to London on holiday and mum and dad where kind enough to take me across the city to find them.  At this time they where behind an estate agents and could only do postal orders when it was dry if customers came into the ‘shop’ as it was only big enough for three!  Turns out it was shear fluke that the rules arrived that day

[fred]

I think I started wargaming in the 70s, but might have been the very early 80s.

It was all WWII with airfix, esci and matchbox figures. Generally the infantry weren't painted, although vehicles sometimes where, though lots of them came in pretty much the right colour plastic.

I had two 4'x4' pieces of chipboard that could go on trestles as the table - these were really heavy, painted a bright grass green. And hills made from unpainted ovals cut from white ceiling tiles (unpainted). Houses were an assortment of toy ones, I seem to recall made with card long walls, and wooden end walls.

Games were very slow due to having far too many single based figures to move - which being 20mm plastics just fell over at any chance.

Rules were Operation Warboard - we eventually got a bit fed up with the ground scale problems as troops couldn't run the length of a tank! Somewhere I'm sure I have some photos of the games.

[has.been]

I started wargaming in 1966, aged 11. A school friend kept going on about 'Carthaginians' & how wonderful they were.
Really just to annoy him, I did some research (my first ever) at Coventry central library (no internet then). I found out  
that the 'wonderful' Carthaginians lost all three Punic wars! I fell in love with their enemy, Rome. Every time he would mention
a Roman defeat like Lake Trebia or Trasamin I would reply with an Illipa or Zama.
One day he came in & said there was an advert in Airfix magazine (the only tenuous link with wargaming) about a new set of Ancient rules by something called the 'Wargames Research Group', and should we send for a set each, we did, though it involved an old fashioned thing called a letter and buying Postal Orders from the Post Office. No 'plastic cards' and no online/phone ordering. Two weeks later I received a nice hand written letter from one of the WRG, Bob O'Brien, saying that they never expected as much interest & the first edition was sold out, but 2nd edition would be exactly the same.
A visit to the only shop in Coventry, that had the new Airfix Romans, where the hoarded pocket money (a ten shilling note) purchased their entire stock of 8 boxes. How was I to know they were Early Imperial & not Republican? after all the school text books had one drawing of a 'Roman soldier' & he was in Lorica segmenta.
Came the day of our first ever wargame, Airfix provide not just my Romans, but lots of other troops converted mainly from the Robin Hood set & (for mounted units) bottom halves of the US cavalry. Bob O'Brien did a wonderful series of articles (Roman friends & foes) in the Airfix magazine.
Such was our inexperience that after several hours we realised we had no idea when a game would/should stop. In a foretaste of how we would solve many problems in the future, a dice was thrown, to decide how many more moves we would play.
I still have many happy memories of that first game:-
My general & my best cavalry (top half legionaries on US cav bottoms) chased his Numidians (Converted Airfix Red Indians) from the field, in move two, and failed to ever return;
The Roman infantry, judging from their reaction tests were happy to see him go;
Despite better generalship from my opponent, both armies had to take 'Army reaction tests' in the same move (near the end);
My legionaries stood firm, even though almost every one else on my army had long since packed up, however a small unit of mercenary camels (Airfix Arabs) on his side decided to change side!!!!! which gave me the narrowest of victories.

[Arlequín]

I started 'proper' wargaming about 1980 and WRG were pretty much state of the art (http://www.wargamesresearchgroup.net/WRG.net/History/wrg.html), with Newbury Rules as their main rival.

Many folk were still gaming in the 1960s styles of Don Featherstone (The Wargame, Skirmish Wargaming, Solo Wargaming) and Peter Young (Charge!) - a few still are.

Airfix Magazine Guides provided easy access and simple rules for WWII, Napoleonic, Ancients and the American Civil War - I loved them.

I've dropped enough names there for you to get a grip on how things were done and you can download WRG'S Ancient Rules from the link above. In short IGOUGO was the order of the day, with player one moving, player two moving, player one firing and so on. Charts for everything and much use of normal D6 and Average Dice.

While GW gets a lot of flak today, its relatively streamlined and simple rules really cleaned house when Warhammer Fantasy arrived in 1983. Bear in mind though that the present day acorns of GW games and Bolt Action haven't fallen that far from the tree in 34 years.

There were only a few manufacturers of metals back then and 'real wargamers' played with 25mm figures. The big dogs were Hinchliffe, Minifigs, Greenwood and Ball; Spencer Smith produced bags of plastic SYW figures.

[vodkafan]

I started wargaming in 1966, aged 11. A school friend kept going on about 'Carthaginians' & how wonderful they were.
Really just to annoy him, I did some research (my first ever) at Coventry central library (no internet then). I found out  
that the 'wonderful' Carthaginians lost all three Punic wars! I fell in love with their enemy, Rome. Every time he would mention
a Roman defeat like Lake Trebia or Trasamin I would reply with an Illipa or Zama.
One day he came in & said there was an advert in Airfix magazine (the only tenuous link with wargaming) about a new set of Ancient rules by something called the 'Wargames Research Group', and should we send for a set each, we did, though it involved an old fashioned thing called a letter and buying Postal Orders from the Post Office. No 'plastic cards' and no online/phone ordering. Two weeks later I received a nice hand written letter from one of the WRG, Bob O'Brien, saying that they never expected as much interest & the first edition was sold out, but 2nd edition would be exactly the same.
A visit to the only shop in Coventry, that had the new Airfix Romans, where the hoarded pocket money (a ten shilling note) purchased their entire stock of 8 boxes. How was I to know they were Early Imperial & not Republican? after all the school text books had one drawing of a 'Roman soldier' & he was in Lorica segmenta.
Came the day of our first ever wargame, Airfix provide not just my Romans, but lots of other troops converted mainly from the Robin Hood set & (for mounted units) bottom halves of the US cavalry. Bob O'Brien did a wonderful series of articles (Roman friends & foes) in the Airfix magazine.
Such was our inexperience that after several hours we realised we had no idea when a game would/should stop. In a foretaste of how we would solve many problems in the future, a dice was thrown, to decide how many more moves we would play.
I still have many happy memories of that first game:-
My general & my best cavalry (top half legionaries on US cav bottoms) chased his Numidians (Converted Airfix Red Indians) from the field, in move two, and failed to ever return;
The Roman infantry, judging from their reaction tests were happy to see him go;
Despite better generalship from my opponent, both armies had to take 'Army reaction tests' in the same move (near the end);
My legionaries stood firm, even though almost every one else on my army had long since packed up, however a small unit of mercenary camels (Airfix Arabs) on his side decided to change side!!!!! which gave me the narrowest of victories.

That's my mate there! I am lucky enough to have met him by chance in WH Smith looking at the wargame magazines....after so many years of playing wargames you would think he was stuck in a groove, but no, every new ruleset fills him with the same schoolboy enthusiasm.

[warlord frod]

Back in the late 70's many of us old grognards where playing Avalon Hill and SPI board games and many of the miniature rules used similar charts. I also was a D. Featherstone fan when it came to my miniature gaming and the first set of dedicated miniature rules I used where Chainmail the precursor of D&D because I was most interested in medieval warfare and eventually fantasy. Many of us would write our own rules as well so it was a creative time. I do remember that many early rulesets where very complex as many people tried to make the game's simulations. This was why there seemed to a chart for everything and games often lasted for hours.

We did enjoy playing larger conflicts Because Airfix figs were cheap by today's standards it was fairly easy to build large armies. My first really big armies where ACW Airfix with 500+ figs on each side. I played many a game with those. Fun times

[Vintage Wargaming]

have a browse through Vintage Wargamong, and maybe look at some of these articles/posts:

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/wargaming-in-twin-cities-1966.html (ok it's 1960s but the same feel)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/operation-warboard.html (since it has been mentioned)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Big%20Battle%20League (a 1995 big moderns game)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Edward%20Woodward (a brush with fame)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Leipzig (Lepzig Sesquicentennial plus ten)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Waterloo%20refought (the Big One)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/At%20the%20Colonel%27s%20Table At the Colonel's Table (1969 but fun)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/that-terry-wise-article.html (plasticine and banan oil)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Peter%20Gilder (the late great Peter Gilder)

http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Charlie%20Wesencraft (The sadly underrated Charlie Wesencraft)

and from elsewhere:

http://henrys-wargaming.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Siege_of_Dendermonde.pdf (but using some of my scans)

and something recent:

http://prometheusinaspic.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/going-going-gone-peter-gouldesbrough.html (but of 1980s vintage)

Happy hunting!

[MartinR]

I started wargaming with Airfix figures and Charles Grants Battle, from Meccano magazine. 1971ish? 20mmm Airfix Napoleonic with the Bruce Quarries rules, but in both cases moved fairly rapidly onto the strange new 6mm scale and WRG rules. 1925-50 and 16xx-18xx. No headache inducing charts in any of those (well, maybe Quarries). Fantasy was the old Minifigs Middle Earth range, and the Skytrex rules although  did play Chainmail.

The 1970s was the boom era for boardgames and RPGs, so we played a LOT of those, and some were pretty complicated.

Yes, there were some very complex rules around (Cambrai to Sinai, I mean you) but I tended to just read those for amusement.

We were kids, with little money and no Internet, so the only resources were what was for sale in the localshops and the odd wargaming article in modelling magazines.

[Jacksarge]

I played plenty of games with toy soldiers right through the 70's, just didn't meet anyone who used actual rules until the 80's 
I guess the games I played were "solo rpg-lite" - many a battle fought through the garden rockery, on the dining table or floor...

[Sunjester]

I started wargaming in 1972. My friend and I both had collections of Airfix WW2 plastic infantry and tanks and we had been playing "games" with them for a little while, without my satisfaction. My Mum saw an advert in the local paper that the local club, Eastbourne Wargames Club, was hosting an open day, so gave us our bus fare (I think we were getting under her feet that day) and sent us off. I was hooked! As a beginner I was lucky, as well as a dozen of so established wargamers with their own figures, the club owned an extensive Napoleonic and ACW collection of 25mm figures, so I had access to "proper" armies from the start. WRG rules of course!

I was also lucky with shops, one of the local model shops acted as a stockist for Hinchcliffe, so you could go in and browse the catalogue, look at the limited range they held in stock in stock, order what you wanted and go an collect it the following week. No trips to the post office and messing about with postal orders for me. Brighton was a short train ride away where a toy and model shop held a massive stock of 1/300th micro tanks. And of course I could always have a day trip to London where Minifigs had a shop just around the corner from Victoria Station.

I suppose with today's culture many parents would be horrified at the thought of a 13-year-old flitting around SE England on their own, but it was different times.

[westwaller]

During the seventies we played in the dark, in a shoebox because of the strikes and things, we could only ascertain which army was which by touch alone and we each had to shout out a random number as the dice we had carved out of coal, couldn't be seen, the winner being the one shouting the biggest number.

 I remember one time, I pushed forward a mass cavalry charge, only to find that my opponents had gone on strike. We did some great miniature painting by candle light- you will often see these 'pro-painted' miniatures on ebay...

Then at the end of the seventies the agents of Sauron were elected to run the country...

Okay, I'll get my coat...

[Arlequín]

Luxury... now WE had it tough. 

[MartinR]

The power cuts didn't generally inconvenience our Wargames as we played during the day.

They did lead to some very, very boring evenings though.

[Charlie_]

Thanks for the insights people, all very interesting.

I started 'proper' wargaming about 1980 and WRG were pretty much state of the art (http://www.wargamesresearchgroup.net/WRG.net/History/wrg.html), with Newbury Rules as their main rival.

Ah yes, those are the rules I was talking about - I've downloaded the 5th edition Ancients rules from that page and had another read through them. Seems there is quite a large roleplay aspect to them, in terms of writing down orders etc, and requiring an umpire to interpret the orders....

What were rules like prior to these WRG Ancients books? Someone mentioned one called Charge! from the 60s, I think I've seen the cover to that.... Were earlier ones more complex, or simpler?