Tell me about wargaming in the 70s

[RSDean]

I discovered wargaming in 1971 at the age of 10, and I gamed through the rest of the decade (and beyond…I’ve never stepped completely away in the past 50 years, although the emphasis has changed now and again).

I’ll have to do a longer post later when I have an actual keyboard, but there was a big difference between playing WWII games with Airfix and Terence Wise’s Introduction to Battle Gaming in 1971 and the metal fantasy armies from Minifigs, Ral Partha, Heritage and Grenadier we were fighting with by 1979…

In between, as an American I had Wargamer’s Digest from 1974 on, and went to my first gaming convention in 1976.  They were good years and my nostalgia now extends to building fantasy armies with Minifigs ME figures, the first lead I had in any quantity.

Happily, I still have my original copy of that first book…

[steders]

Then Airfix gave us some proper Old Guard, but we had to make our own Guard Artillery. All looks a tad different from wot we have today, don't it!!!???

 

I can smell the humbrol paint from here!
I love that collection of yours, simply awesome

[steders]

Started playing ww2 using operation warboard (by Bernard and Gavin Lyall) when I was about 10 at school, that would be 1979, right at the tale end of the 70s.
Played every sunday in the school common room, one of the teachers was a gamer. Played some huge Napoleonic games all with poorly painted Airfix figures. I do remember one weekend the teacher brought in his 'proper' painted metal nappies. We all stood with our mouths hanging open.
Fairly sure they were minifigs because there was a shop in our town sold them.
This shop had a huge class cabinet with the a terrain board covered with 100s of minifig figures, all UNPAINTED except one british infantry man!
Always struck me as very odd.

Started playing Dungeons and dragons in 1981ish, using really badly photocopied rules. Great fun

[dickiegranthum]

Started playing ww2 using operation warboard (by Bernard and Gavin Lyall) when I was about 10 at school, that would be 1979, right at the tale end of the 70s.
Played every sunday in the school common room, one of the teachers was a gamer. Played some huge Napoleonic games all with poorly painted Airfix figures. I do remember one weekend the teacher brought in his 'proper' painted metal nappies. We all stood with our mouths hanging open.
Fairly sure they were minifigs because there was a shop in our town sold them.
This shop had a huge class cabinet with the a terrain board covered with 100s of minifig figures, all UNPAINTED except one british infantry man!
Always struck me as very odd.

Started playing Dungeons and dragons in 1981ish, using really badly photocopied rules. Great fun

I used to get my dad to photocopy the players sheet - and the RCAF photocopiers had this cool raised thermal thing on them. Vivid image - I started D&D in 82!

I owned about 20 miniatures in that period, no idea about primers, and wondered why my paint kept coming off. I would also make my lead miniatures “shiny”, which I’m sure is the reason I have brain tumours today.

Ah the good old days!

[Moriarty]

“Achtung Scweinehund!” by Harry Pearson is a musing read of one man’s journey in Wargaming in the 70’s.

[dickiegranthum]

“Achtung Scweinehund!” by Harry Pearson is a musing read of one man’s journey in Wargaming in the 70’s.

 

Good memories! Those Germans!

[Doug ex-em4]

After a few months playing a homemade WW2 game with Airfix kits and infantry on a square grid, I was amazed and delighted to find this magazine in a shop in Liverpool (October 1969). It was incredible to realise this was an actual hobby.



Doug

[has.been]

It was incredible to realise this was an actual hobby.

Even earlier was when I became...enlightened. It was in the early 60s.
About once a year there would be a short article on the TV News.
Old men (well I was about six or seven) moving toy soldiers around
(what I considered at the time to be) fantastic miniature Waterloo battlefield.
I noticed the tape measures & dice. They had to be important, but why?
No one could tell me anything about this thing called 'Wargames'.

Not till I got to Grammar School & a class-mate (Stephen O'Leary, aka Oscar) let slip
that he ...Wargamed !!!!!   The rest is (my) History. 

[dickiegranthum]

Even earlier was when I became...enlightened. It was in the early 60s.
About once a year there would be a short article on the TV News.
Old men (well I was about six or seven) moving toy soldiers around
(what I considered at the time to be) fantastic miniature Waterloo battlefield.
I noticed the tape measures & dice. They had to be important, but why?
No one could tell me anything about this thing called 'Wargames'.

Not till I got to Grammar School & a class-mate (Stephen O'Leary, aka Oscar) let slip
that he ...Wargamed !!!!!   The rest is (my) History. 

The 60s - the decade I was meant to grow up in. Other than the brown acid, I would have taken it EVERY SINGLE FREAKING DAY. Until 1970. Things changed then.

[SJWi]

Hmm, I think I started semi-seriously circa 1974 when I found a gaming shop in Liverpool. Until then it has just been WW2 Airfix with "Battle" rules. From memory Warrior figures were 6.5p each. Minifigs 7p and Hinchcliffe an extortionate 7.5p.  Paints were Humbrol enamels and gloss varnish was the order of the day. Bases were often just painted green but sophisticated gamers used flock.

[Doug ex-em4]

Hmm, I think I started semi-seriously circa 1974 when I found a gaming shop in Liverpool.

Which shop was it?

[Vanvlak]

I did not wargame in the seventies, but I did collect loads of plastic troops and vehicles (WWII and modern) as well as scenery which today I cannot locate! Apart from a few Airfix commandoes, Germans and Arabs (which were very nicely detailed, better than the others, I think) the majority of my models were made by an Italian company, Atlantic (no relation to Wargames Atlantic, I believe).
My favourite sets included modern Italian troops and scenery in the form of what I think was a vac-formed polystyrene (was it?) sheet producing mountain peaks, trenches, walls, concrete fortifications and so on. They also had an eclectic collection of vehicles, two per box with some exceptions - I remember the M50 Ontos (of all things!), a French AMX13 (I think), a bridging tank and a bridge layer (my favourites), a rocket launcher...

They also had WWII troops as a wargame set, my very first. It included a desert war map (a square gridded photo of sand!) and some British and German troops - Shermans for the British, I think, and half stracks and quad flak guns (!) for the Germans.  I tried playing against myself as I knew no-one who played back then, so wargaming proper had to wait until the nineties.

http://www.atlanticmania.com/IT/1403.htm

Moderns - http://www.atlanticmania.com/IT/Eserciti%20moderni.htm
WWII - http://www.atlanticmania.com/IT/Eserciti%20della%20II%20Guerra%20Mondiale.htm

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

My wargaming in the 60s was AH/SPI cardboard games with a smattering of plastic minis (Milton Bradley Battle line games, 1/35 scale Tamiya plastic models.) Airfix got introduced to me as the Romans and Britains were used in our local D&D game, and we started using ww2 as stand ins for counters for the game “Sniper”.  my first lead figs in the 70s were 15mm traveller figs but never had enough of them to run a game but i did start using a few lead  D&D figs, at least for player characters while stand in cardboard counters worked for everything else.  We always played on a laminated hex map with felt tipmarkers for the terrain.  System 7 Napoleonics was a big chunk of my gaming. WSIM too.

In college in the early eighties I discovered napoleonics, but again couldn’t afford the time, money or space to play except at the local con as part of a team.  When I went active duty in 86, i started buying up 15mm Naps for home brewed rules and lots of fantasy 25mm forD&D, enough to play with.  I got really serious in the 90s when i discovered DBA and could buy, paint and play with numerous periods on the cheap.  Armies (and navies) kept getting bigger and bigger.