"Wargaming like it was 1986!" Topic

[inspired by this news story]

What were you doing back in 1986, wargame-wise? What were you playing/painting/collecting?

And given your (probably different) interest today, if you are only allowed material (rules/figures/paints/tools/accessories) that were available on 1986 or earlier, what would you be playing/painting/collecting?

(Obviously there would be no Perry plastics, no PSC, no FoW, no DBA, no Litko laser-cut tokens, even Rogue Trader was still a year in the future. And no internet to answer rule questions, only by sending a letter to the publisher with a SASE, using questions that can be answered with just a yes/no.)

For myself, back in 1986 I was playing 99% board wargames – Air Force, Pacific War, Sixth Fleet, 2nd Fleet. I did have a handful of GHQ models (M60A2 and T-72!) and have played WW2 games using Featherstone's rules and Airfix/ESCI figures and tanks models.

Given my interests today, if only limited to 1986 and earlier material, I'll still be playing those same boardgames, but add one or more of the La Bataille series of Napoleonic boardgames to the list. Miniatures-wise I'll still use Airfix/ESCI figures and models with Featherstone rules, although the period I play will be far more diverse – Ancinets, Napoleonics, ACW, WW2 and potential WW3.

I was boardgaming then as well. Most likely still would be, without the internet board wargaming was still a big deal.

86 – pretty sure that is when Twilight 2000 came out, the RPG for military buffs, played that one to death and would do so again.

In 1986, if memory serves, I was just getting into Battletech. I was using the card stand-up figures that came with the boxed game. I would probably today be playing The Sword and the Flame, using whatever minis I could find (I don't remember too clearly what was available at the time). Coincidentally, I just found my old (1988) plastic figures for Battletech .

Ron

I was playing 25mm Cowboys & Indians with Connoisseur Miniatures and 25mm Napoleonics from both Connoisseur and Elite Miniatures and French & Indian War with 25mm Tradition and Willie figures.

I wasn't playing anything at that time. My D n' D phase had ended in high school and I was on a cross country walk for global nuclear disarmament (from LA to DC). No room or time to paint, collect or play miniature war games. I got back into the hobby in 1994-5 in NYC with my friend, Sam. We played Epic Space Marine, and OGRE miniatures.

1986 – I wasn't playing, too busy studying.

15mm(ish) AB Napoleonics and 25mm(ish)Foundry Franco-Prussian..

Not a good time, wargaming wise. The one local club near me was filled with old guard who didn't like teenagers and it was very difficult getting any advice on where to purchase figures (especially anything other than 20mm WW2 which could be got from model and toy shops), get painting guides, how to organise your troops into units, which rules were good etc…in the end most of us aged 13-16 took to playing SPI and Avalon Hill boardgames with role playing games mixed in as well. Without the internet, you were dependent on the senior gamers for advice and if they only acknowledged you with a grunt, then it was difficult.

1986 would have been around the peak of my Battletech gaming, and we were doing a lot of Starfire at that point as well. The next year I changed colleges and went into a dead stretch, but that was also when I started painting miniatures more seriously, rather than the one-off dabbling I'd been doing.

In that period I went to an Origins convention in Baltimore (the only time I went to con in my youth). I got some mail-order info, and bought 4 15mm armies: Norman, Viking, Lat Roman and Hun and spent a summer painting them up.

I used them to play 1-2 WRG games, but then mostly used them for the mass battle parts of a Chivalry and Sorcery campaign or two.

I graduated from college in 87 and packed away my miniatures for a long time, not really getting back to them until around 2000. I use 25mm today (anicent, medieval and fanstasy, some sci-fi and wild west), so I can use them for both historical miniatures battles and RPG campaigns, to get maximum value.

I was only 13/14 at the time, I didnt getintto tabletop till around 1988//89 when space marine and Adeptus Titanicus came out.

back then I was just playing the fighting fantasy books

I cant remember when th eGW first opened in Reading I think it was 88 not sure but I used to go in and look a tth eavalon hill boardgames and wish I could buy and play them, and als(this was when GW sold lots of different games)

Al

In 1986 I was playing WRG Ancients, and 30mm Column Line and Square with Scruby figures. I would also participate in anything Wally Simon ran in his basement as well as at our club. 1986 was the fourth year HMGS was running conventions.

Not being nearly as big as it is now, I would often get free figures by helping carry boxes of lead in for the dealers. I would often be given a pack or a box of figures from each dealer that needed assistance.

Boardgaming and role-playing. Not a lot of figure gaming, though I'd played more in the 70's and would again in the 90's.

For me it would be a mix of RPG, board games and mostly fantasy miniatures. Not a bad period in my opinion.

I didn't do much wargaming in 1986. I'd found the hobby in 1979, but in '86 I was 21, in college and spent all my time drinking and chasing skirt.

I was going to say "all my free time", but that's not right. I was not a good student.

I re-discovered wargames around '88 or '89.

I still went to conventions, local and national, but weekends were for other types of engagements.

Games I remember playing were 15mm ACW "Rally Around The Flag", I had a small ACW army with mini-figs figures.

Ral Partha colonials, Heritage Naps and ACW, some Star Guard, not sure if I still had my Panzertroops, and boardgames with my brother.

Starfleet Battles, Up Front, rpg's, a gaming club filled with good friends … my AH collection rarely was used for anything beyond solo play, but danged if I didn't keep collecting the stuff. Miniatures were mostly D&D stuff from my high school days, collecting dust. That dragon wouldn't awake for another couple years.

If sent back now, I'd start saving my nickels to buy M:tG when it finally dawned a few years down the road.

In 1986, I took 10 years off from wargaming.

1986…getting out of the Army for the first time;
*going to college…Original major was "Political Science with a focus on The Soviet Union and The Warsaw Pact"…
Yeah..we can see how far THAT would've gone…

*in a relationship with an amazing young lady that unfortunately ended too soon. Had our plans gone the way we wished them to be, we'd be celebrating our 23rd Anniversary this year…

*Gaming? Modern Micro Armor (Close and Destroy rules), and running a good D&D group, and the occassional "Chill" game…

Minis, were mostly Ral Parthas, and Grenadiers….

I was living in a poky 'just married' apartment in Savannah, GA, and didn't have much space. I played weekly with a group of three other gamers, and we'd alternate at each other's homes, the host deciding what we'd play. Very civilized.

Most of my fgures were 15mms – I was big on Peninsular War and the Viking Era – and had a project going with the local history enthusiast to paint 7YW figures as British and Spanish forces for (wait for it) The War of Jenkin's Ear, which involved campaigns along the coast between St Augustine and the Georgia colony.

Then I bought 6mm Ros Heroics for the Sudan, partly because I could afford them and partly because my tiny table space didn't permit me to really use those new Ral Partha 25mm colonials that everyone raved about in 'The Courier'.

I wrote a regular column for MWAN, and occasional things for 'The Courier', 'Empires Eagles and Lions' and 'Miniature wargames'. I was in an excellent PBM study/game called 'Guthrum's Army' (Alfred the Great and all that) and was working on the first version of 'Science versus Pluck'.

WRG Ancients
Empire Napoleonics
The Sword and the Flame
WRG Moderns
Jagdpanzer and Command Decision for WW2

Plus a lot of board wargames, primarily ASL and SFB. I also did quite a bit of RPGs as well.

I was 21, in university, and had free time (even going to school and working full time).

Twilight 2000, AD&D, Chill, Marvel Super Heroes and TMNT RPGs
Leopard Tracks with CinC minis.
Harpoon (the 1st Edition)
Traveller

and a WHOLE LOT of Battletech.

Wow, that's going back. I was in my last year of high school so I played in a weekly D&D or Call of Cthulhu game for the most part RPG wise. I was wargaming WWII using the WRG rules and 20mm plastics from various manufacturers.

1986 was my mid-college point. My local game group had only just started up but was already in full swing.

We did a lot of role-playing games (AD&D 1st edition, Traveller 1st edition, Call of Cthulhu, Toon) and some boardgames (mostly Avalon Hill, SPI, and Metagaming) and some miniatures games.

The miniatures games we would have played in 1986 would have included a mix of MAATAC, Starfleet Wars, ancient naval, Ogre, 25mm fantasy/medieval skirmish, 15mm sci fi skirmish, 6mm WWII and modern using my computer-assist version of Tractics, and 20mm WWII using a conversion/variant I had done of SPI's old boardgame Commando.

If I was restricted to just those things today, I'd be doing pretty much those same games, but I'd probably add in 1:2400 Panzerschiffes or 1:3000 Navwar for pre-Dread/WWI/WWII naval and finish writing the computer-assist naval rules I started writing in 1986.

Warhammer, even appeared on British Services TV in Germany talking about Tim my drunken Giant the following year, 1987, at Action in Rhinedahlen. Good times!

Tally Ho!

I was 10 or 11 at the time, so for me it was mostly Battletech (I bought minis when I bought the game -- unbeknownst to me they were the Battledroids mechs). Also was playing AD&D back then, buying lots of Ral Partha and Grenadier lead minis. Historicals were completely unknown to me, and knew of no one that played or would want a kid hanging out with them.

Damon.

In 86 I had been divorced from my first wife for a year, and I must say was thoroughly enjoying it. As for wargaming, I was playing a lot of Avalon Hill board games. I experimented with using 1/72 models for Richthofen´s War (I am YEARS ahead of WoW baby!), as well as using Airfix soldiers for Squad Leader (it didn´t work though as I had no terrain!).
I was also playing a lot of Strat-O-Matic baseball.

"I didn't do much wargaming in 1986. I'd found the hobby in 1979, but in '86 I was 21, in college and spent all my time drinking and chasing skirt. "

sounds familiar.. I may have got in a game or two of CoC but that would have been it.

we were still fighting 20mm ww2 and we started selling resin models commercially in 86, we had been making models for club membersfor a year or so and airfix had gone bust, hasegawa, nitto and esci were hard to find and only matchbox could be had easily, so that is why we started making vehicles you could not get in plastic.
there was already gramodels, milicast and cromwell.
not like now, we are spoilt for choice!

No actual minis wargaming.
But I was RPGing a tonne!

Chill, Twilight:2000, Gamma World to name a few…

1986 – was in grad school, had two kids and a part-time job, so not much gaming going on – the little bit that there was was 15mm Fire & Fury ACW

A whole slew of AH boardgames, including SL (soon to become ASL).

1986 (in the fall) I was in my second year at the Naval Academy, with precious little time to pursue hobby interests. My only exposure to wargames prior to this was Avalon Hill games, some SPI, etc.

There was a wargames club stashed away somewhere up in the rotunda at Bancroft Hall, and I do remember painting some British Napoleonics up there, with no idea what rules they were mounted for. They may have been Empire, but I never had the time to get involved with the club. Academics, drill, and intramural sports took almost all of my time.

I attempted to do some naval wargaming somewhere in '86-'88 with scratch-built ironclads and pre-dreadnoughts made out of balsa and bass-wood. Then there was also the third edition of Harpoon, but it was too tedious for a satisfying game (I didn't know what parts of the rules to streamline or leave out).

By 1989, I picked up Napoleon's Battles and some Essex French, and that was the beginning of my miniatures obsession! It would be another three or four years before I got to play any games with them, but it was where I started.

1986… Omaha, NE… working at College of Saint Mary… relative newlywed… got it!

6th Edition WRG Ancients with my 25mm Marian Romans and Carthaginians; 25mm SYW with Tricorne; Empire III(?) in 15mm with the Air Force group; a lot of Palo Alto to Peking for colonial games within that range of time; Johnny Reb II in 15mm; a variety of home grown rules for micro armor and ships. AD&D with the Air Force crowd.

Good times.

WRG Ancients and Ultra-modern (as it was called at that time) with some Challenger when I was forced to play them.

Lots of 15mm Napoleonics with home brew rules and loads of painting of projects that in many cases are still not finished….

WRG 7th(?) Ed. ancients 15mm
Stars-n-Bars ACW 15mm
Command Decision WWII 1/285
Battletech
Blue Max boardgame (with 1/144 miniatures, of course!)

Star Fleet Battles, Car Wars, BattleTech, and a variety of rpgs.

I was playing "On To Richmond" ACW w/ Minifigs, Heritage and Stone Mountain 15s, WWII "Command Decision" w/ GHQ and Scruby n gage Nappys w/ "Pas de Charge" plus monster board games

1986.. I joined my wargames club, I was playing Firefly WW2 rules and a set of rules by Skytrex; Action 200. Joining the club opened my eyes to a whole world of wargaming possiblities, I had only played what I thought was WW2 wargaminguntil then.

Let's see… that was college. D&D and Risk, at the time, with the occasional Dragon mag game trotted out (Search for the Emperor's Treasure was a favorite). Miniatures gaming was not on my list. More often than not I was playing computer wargames on my Mac— The Ancient Art of War, Strategic Conquest, The Ancient Art of War at Sea, Balance of Power… I don't really recall when all those came out, but it was in that era. I even got some dorm mates hooked on the two AoW games, and they would borrow my Mac from time to time to play.
Though of course by 1986 I had started dating my eventual wife, so I was very distracted from gaming.

Lots of Empire III with the Crowd in Copperas Cove TX. Also lots of Modern Micro Armor (I was in 2AD at the time).

AD&D Battlesystem ruled our tabletop as far as miniatures goes, with lots of roleplaying games and Avalon Hill boardgames.

Nothing. I was in college dating girls. Those were good times!

Not playing wargames, only painting 90 mm figures. Mostly Series 77, Post militaire, Almond and Barton Miniatures.

Starting projects that I'm still yet to complete :-(

Oh the HORROR-attempting to play Empire III.Minifigs sold their Napoleonics in battalion sized packs for $3.98 USD.

At secondary school studying for my A levels. Well, should have been studying; a little preoccupied with the fairer sex.
I was also heavily into Citadel 25mm fantasy wargaming, with a smidge of D&D on the side.

Ah yes. 1986 -- talked my new, fledgling game group into trying this weird set of rules I bought a few years earlier called "Warhammer". It was written for generic 25mm fantasy miniatures, but there was some talk they were going to start making miniatures specifically for that ruleset.

By then I had finished painting about 700 6mm WWII vehicles I'd bought in Ipswich for about 25p each a few years earlier. I'd have to dig out my old Citadel catalogs from 1980-1982 to be sure but I think 25mm fantasy figures cost about 25p back then too.

Everything was cheaper. Too bad I was broke throughout my college years.

What 20th Maine said. I had bought WRG 6th edition back in 1982 or so. I was living in Round Rock which is north of Austin and my parents lived there until 1988. I was in college in 1986 and already changing my major for the second time!

I did have some old Napoleonettes then. And I had some homecast 25mm Prince August along with the molds of course. My last year of High School, I was playing a lot of Ace of Aces and Nuclear War/Escalation at lunch.

Didn't get to play much serious miniature gaming until I moved to San Antonio in 1989. Switched to 15mm as it was and still is king down here. I started with ancients down here but did play ACW and micro armor on occasion.

What 20th Maine said. I had bought WRG 6th edition back in 1982 or so. I was living in Round Rock which is north of Austin and my parents lived there until 1988. I was in college in 1986 and already changing my major for the second time!