"Why are you here?" Topic

Hi all,

I have often wondered why we as gamers and modellers actually do what we do.

I reckon I know why I do and would love to hear your memories about the moment you knew you were hooked.

Back in the late 80's my dad picked my brother and I up from my mums house to spend the weekend with him (always loved seeing dad, so this day was memorable already) and in the car on the way to his place, my big brother decided to lay down the law.
Mid-drive, my brother told me that my dad had picked up 4 boxes of soldiers (Airfix waterloo), he said he was having the Brits and I'd be stuck with the French.
Needless to say, a few younger brother tears ensured I got the Brits (Highland inf and the artillery – the yellow ones) and getting to Dads house and opening them up was – for me, day one.

I was on a high, gifts were few and far between and I remember that day as if it was yesterday. I even recall the orders I shouted out to 'my men' on dads kitchen floor. ('Billy, look out behind you!!')
Within a month, with much persuasion, grandad made sure I had another 2 boxes of highlanders and the following toy-day at school ensured I was the spice.

I believe you can't, or I can't (as a man), recreate the boyhood joy you experienced upon opening a box of soldiers and I expect that seeking this ever elusive thrill is what keeps me involved and forever buying figures.

My obsession with the Zulu war of 1879 follows a similar vein, but that's for another day.

I suspect my story is unusual but not unique.

So, what about you, if it's not too personal, why are you here, why are you hooked?

Cheers

Matt

I love the feel of the minis, and how they look when I'm done painting.

Opening a Marx playset when I was a kid, and that smell of plastic got me hooked.
I still love the smell of plastics when I open one up.
I have had toy soldiers all of my life, as far back as I can remember.
Wargaming was the natural progression…..telling people that "I am recreating battles from history", when in reality, its just an excuse to still play with my toys!
Sometimes I just take out soldiers and set them up on the dining room table in a sort of review…..I just like looking at them.
I do it because I love collecting them, painting them, and gaming with them.
But as I stated earlier, "I just like playing with my toys"

"Why are we here?"

Is this a religious question?

I played with toy soldiers at my grandfather's knee. Been hoked ever since.

When I was about 6 my dad was overseas with the RAF quite a lot. A couple of young couples lived near us and were friends. Both the husbands were wargamers and sort of filled that gap for me for a while, so on I went from there…..

Always interested in History. Ancients, picked up one of those British Commando comics about the 10,000, hooked on Greeks. Opened a packet of Cornflakes one day and a couple of Airfix WW2 soldiers dropped out, hooked on that size of figure. Grew up with Airfix Magazine, the Romans and Ancient Britons set provided the Ancients, built a trench system, Airfield, POW camp etc in the garden, masses of Shermans, Panthers and a few conversions – quite proud of following the article to convert a Sherman into a Priest – then went to Uni.

Discovered metal. Garrison and Minfigs. Couple of years building armies up, had always known there was such a thing as wargaming but didn't know much about it – no clubs advertising anywhere, for instance. So I did the obvious thing – stuck an ad in the Student Union newsletter saying that I was starting a Wargaming Society.

Which led me to here. Eventually.

I'm in my mid-40s and have been interested in wargaming for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid in the 1970s I had loads of 1/72 Airfix,Esci, and Atlantic figures. I used to go to the local Woolworths and use my allowance to buy a box of figures each week. Many hours were spent having battles on my living room floor. I even unwittingly played Pulp and Fantasy games by pitting various figures from my 1/72 collection against Marx dinosaurs. At that time many older movies from the 1930s-1960s had been released to television and these served to fire the young imagination.

My earliest memories are of playing with toy soldiers in the yard. Got Marx ACW play set & some WW2 guys at some point and saved up to buy my own Castle and Viking set at about 10. We used to play in the "sandbox" in the yard (read a minimum of sand, no box, mostly dirt) building bunkers trenches etc. That, and playing Army with cap or squirt guns, was all we ever did (loved my Thompson. It burned through a whole roll of caps in no time!). As a teen, toy soldiers were not cool so I switched to trains for a few years. Then, one fateful day when I was about 18, I was visiting a hobby shop out of town and discovered minis: Heritage 25mmLOTR & 15mm Napoleonics, plus board games! Bought 2 packs of Orcs, Laketown archers and some Dunlendings, also a pack each of French & British line, Cuirassier, Scots Greys and Avalon Hill's 3rd Reich! The rest is history. BTW I never went back to trains once I realized I could still play with toy soldiers again!

I remember Lincoln Logs and a large bucket of WWII soldiers, a cranked spinning UFO saucer and hordes of Roco Minitanks from the late fifties to early sixties. And that HO military train set. A lotta cap guns, all types-odd, I've been shooting but never owned a firearm. I'm fascinated with firearms until I have one in my hand. And books, tons of books.

A limitless immagination, and a liking for well crafted objects and artwork.

Oh, yes. AIRFIX scale models and, especially, figures.

My father was career Navy. Most of me first memories are Navy bases. Sometime around '59 he bought my brothers and me the Milton Bradley Games "Battle Cry" (US civil War) and "Broadside" (AWI Naval). We painted the parts with model paints and I have never looked back.

To quote the great George MacDonald Fraser in Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma:

"Life is like a piece of string with knots in it, the knots being those moments that live in the mind forever, and the intervals being hazy, half-recalled times when I have a fair idea of what was happenng, in a general way, but cannot be sure of dates or places or even the exact order in which events took place."

The knots on my wargaming string are:

My parents and grandparents buying me a second hand Airfix bridge assault set at the school fair when I was about 9. There was so much goodness crammed into that box that it has kept me going for over 30 years.

My discovery of Featherstone's "War Games" when I was about 14. Instrumental in making me feel ok about playing with toy soldiers just at the age when I thought I should be more grown up. Now I had rules for my soldiers!

Discovering wargames magazines at the local model shop when I was about 18 – not only was it ok to play with toy soldiers but seemingly lots of other poeople must be doing it if there were magazines about it! Not just that though, I think it was the pictures of epic battles and the write-ups that captured my imagination.

First "real" wargames figures – heaps of 6mm Napoleonics – Wow! Now I could re-fight those colourful and epic battles I had seen in the mags.

Several years later, the arrival of my first 15mm figures – Napoleonics again but giants at the side of my 6mm's.

And a few years after that my first 28mm figures – Real giants!

Since I bred children and they have become gamers, most of the games we play are knots on the string – I've never had so much fun gaming.

And yes, I can still get that boyish sense of excitement when something in the hobby just "clicks" for me (or us) – most recently our (rather belated) discovery The Rules with No Name – see here link

Good times.

Thorfin11,
Great quote from a great book! I can add another knot in the string: When I was in middle school I was falling a bit into delinquincy so I was packed off to my uncle's house for the summer. My uncle was an antique dealer in the Mohawk Valley and we spent June-August traveling to various old farms, barns, antique shops and so on. In one small shop in Syracuse NY I came upon a huge framed print of "Le Cimitiere De Saint Pravat" by Alphonse de Neuville! I was too young and poor to buy it and I did not even know the name of the painting until much later. It's remarkable that I have not collected mid-19th Century armies yet.

I was born and came out playing miniatures with my father. Mom took us along to every convention in the midwest in the 70s. It wasn't until I was 13 that I realized Uncle Steve {Jackson}, Uncle Lou {Zocchi}, and "The Duke" weren't my real uncles.

Only natural that play the games I enjoyed watching and looking at as a child.

When I was a boy, my aunt and uncle gave me a boxed set of Tolkien paperbacks— the ones with the Tolkien paintings as the covers. I read The Hobbit and fell in love with fantasy (though I had always loved fairy tales, the "real" world of Middle-Earth was something new). A few years later, a friend in Middle School invited me to play a game called Dungeons & Dragons, in which I could be the hero in my own fantasy story! That led to forming my own D&D group that summer. Eventually we added Risk to the games we played, which spurred an interest in war-games as well as RPGs. I also used my paperboy money for a subscription to Dragon, which introduced me to the existence of miniatures and AH-style wargaming. The bug has remained with me ever since.

It was the thing boys did in the sixties make airfix kits planes tanks & of course the troops ..my friend went on to make balsa gliders. plactic kits were left behind for some time while we all made gliders & powered aircraft.
its the joy of creating things them using them. I left it go for some years making the odd kit

now I paint 28mm figures &convert .&really haveing a grand time wargaming & winning some battles with troops I painted

Similar thread – my Dad used to travel a lot when I was a kid and we bought me the Airfix ACW kits (Confederate grey, Union blue and those odd red coloured artillery – which seemed to be better figs than the infantry, for some reason) – plus the Marx Wild West cavalry kits

Hooked me in – Airfix WWII Germans and Brits followed, the Battle Rules, and it went on from there – - -

The great turtle saw that the world was in need, so it made me.

Being a bit older than most, rather old indeed since by federal decree I'm not allowed to reveal my actual age, I look back on those halcyon days when Robert would invite me over for a game and we'd go at it for hours on end. Then, many a year later, Pop being in the diplomatic corps, H and I would crawl about on the floor pushing soldiers about – of course, I've always felt he shouldn't have so blatantly cribbed all of my ideas for that little book he wrote. Well, that's water so far under the bridge it's probably ice down in the Antarctic by now. Then there were those two bloody messes and so many, many people lost their lives. Truth be told, I put by my toys for a bit. Then I settled into those sunny days in southern California until I bumped into Jack. It took a bit of doing to get his interest going but, certainly, once I had his dander up he just wouldn't back down. As a matter of fact, a friend out of the hobby used the story I told him about Jack to be inspired to write a long running television commercial campaign about a pink rabbit and some batteries. Then some rascally sort in a basement really messed things up bad, bad, bad. Damned tree hugging author inspired those kids to create weird beasts and mess around with magic and other incomprehensible mutterings. I was so thankful when Peter, for all the controversy swirling about his early days – I believe Don had some impact there, started to get some recognition (not that I had anything to do with him) and that revitalized my interest yet again and the rest, as they say, is history because I've been unstoppable since then. Though I do admit the odd creak in the knees now and again. And lately I've been wondering a bit about where old gamers go when the life ebbs out of them. I rather hanker to the notion that there is a nice, richly paneled with dark wood library crammed with old tomes and piles of aged maps. The central feature of the room is a gigantic sand table and littered all about in the sand are wondrous painted men afoot or horseback, a gun here, a general there and all just waiting for when the mood strikes me to have a few best buddies over for yet another romp into some great moment in history, no matter if it is one that was or never was. Doesn't even matter if my side wins or loses as long as I get to push a few figures about and cause my opponent to have to knock a few over. So, I guess that's why I'm here – though I really shouldn't be 'here' since I really should be at the painting table and Tonka tractoring that lead mountain down to manageable size and thereby threaten the structural integrity of the display shelves. Now, don't no body be asking about what I'll be doing in the well appointed 'salon' next to the library in the great beyond. That's purely between me and the missus since I'm quite certain we'll be restored to ever lasting youth. And, oh, was she a neck breaker when she was young. I do hope I done did answer your question, Matt, you impertinent young whipper snapper.

My 2 brothers and I played with soldiers all throughout our early years. Most of the time, we'd mix up the collections into 'big' collections for larger fights. We'd play on the bedrrom floor or in the yard,making hills,hiding in the grass, dirt, rocks, etc.

Vietnam came along and the 3 of us went from toys to M16s. We all came home. Many of our friends played soldiers with us also growing up. From a blue-collar neighborhood, we all packed it in for a stint in uniforms. there was no all-volunteer back then; the war swept us all up.

But as kids, we had wwII plastic army men, ACW, Knights, airplanes, etc… And when it wasn't toy soldiers (or baseball, swimming, basketball, stick ball, football, girls, etc, we'd play 'guns' in the woods.

Again, girls got in the way also.

Today I'm the only borther still playing with the toys. They admire my collection, but I stayed behind in the 'lttle boy and his soldiers' mode. I think I have more fun.

"but I stayed behind in the 'lttle boy and his soldiers' mode. I think I have more fun."

Amen to that. Could not have said it better in any other way.