"Wargaming like it was 1986!" Topic

Although working in London, we did find time for gaming. Mainly played D&D, Space Opera, Call of Cthulhu & Pendragon RPG. WRG Ancients (with my Late Romans or MacBeth Scots), and numerous boardgames of one sort or another.

I was in my last year at university, playing wargames Monday evening (WW2 land in 1/300, WW2 naval in 1/3000, and ACW in 20 mm IIRC), and roleplaying on another couple of evenings (CoC, Judge Dredd and DC Heroes were the big things that year, I think). Up Front, Squad Leader and War and Peace from AH got some play as well.

I think I picked up WRG 7th edition during the year but never actually played them, and there were probably a few other items added to the collection that never got used as well.

We played ECW with Gush Renaissance rules (still do),15mm Rally 'Round the Flag and were running out of steam on WRG Ancients. There was little surviving interest in Napoleonics in our circle. I still prefer Gush and Rally for their eras but have little support in these days of IGO/UGO and card decks, alas.

Wow. 1986 is a long time ago. I wasn't playing a lot of wargaming then.

I was heavily in RPG, mainly an AD&D/Rolemaster variant DM-ed by the great Lex. I had recently discovered Wooden Ships & Iron Men and we were preparing to play Raid on Chatham with small wooden model ships on the original board, hosted and sponsored by then-local game shop De Draak. Got to know one of my best friends during the preparations of that game who died a few months ago. Bittersweet memories.

playing DnD ( basic, expert), and slowly collecting figs, not for a coherent army just the ones that caught my eye, and thinking a bought starting a chaos army, ( chaos warriors were easy to paint, lots of black!), there was nowhere near that sold historical`s so wasn't really interested.

Wargaming 1986 style on my blog:
link

I was primarily working on my Masters Thesis. Did play Avalon Hill wargames as I had an extensive collection at the time. Didn't get into miniatures until'88/'89.

WRG 6th, Various games at Charlie Prosek's store, 20mm WW2,D&D,Bridge,and playing with the new baby in my house( which was so much fun it led to 3 more and far less time for gaming)

ECW for the second time (on my third now); Renaissance games with Tercio rules and acquisition of first units of the original Battle Honours 15mm Napoleonics (still have them – form part of current French army).

Pretty deceptive really as I've gone through a lot more lead than you'd imagine from this.

;O)

I was working as a Chef in a Hotel so not much free time. SYW and FIW in 15mm using Mikes Models and Friekops15

Ah 1986. Living in L.A. and able to game regularly. Attended Origins that year too. Big rules usage was WRG 6th for ancients, Gush for Renaissance, Empire and Stars and Bars, and a tank set by this guy Steve Lorenz. I had two completed 25mm Byzantine and Teutonic armies, and had just bought my first 15s. (last Grenadier had a sale, and I got 5 Mike's Models boxed armies for $25.00 USD) I don't remember when Warhammer appeared, but after trying to play it, I gave up, as it put me right off. Played many boardgames especially King Maker, Air War, Speed Circuit, and Wooden Ships and Iron Men.

Boardgames.

Miniatures games was something that only happened to other people who lived in the States or in the UK, and whose photos I saw in black and white magazines, written in a language that I barely understood.

1986. Finished my doctorate the year before, spent time getting my first book in press and writing my second while trying to snare the elusive academic job. All my Airfix Napoleonics and ancients were in boxes and I didn't look at them again till my first son showed an interest in the late 1990s. Since then – the lead colossus hath grown mightily to make up for lost time.

I still have all the S&T and Avalon Hill board games I'd acquired in high school though – haven't dusted them off in many years, but they're there.

By 1980 I had been in the hobby 18 years and had several large armies. I had just come back into the hobby after leaving it six months before because of a toxic group of gamers (Napoleonics of course). That's when I really started my 18th century Imagi-nation stuff.

WRG 6th, a game of the new 7th, TYW using Gush and 1/300 contemporary (for then). Club meets were 2-late on Sundays and it was possibly the best gaming of my life. I went to university in the autumn and played about 3 games in the following 3 1/2 years.

1986 Laying the last bricks to my second wargames room
( first one my 5 year old son move in to it ) building a new table to make it 10 foot long them putting my old one at the end to make it 20 foot
Figures well 25mm Napoleonic's Hinchliffe.
20mm WWII again Hinchliffe figures.
20mm Vietnam using Platoon 20
25mm Colonial
25mm ACW
And helping to run WAR

In 86 I was stationed at George AFB, Ca. and was doing 15mm SYW (Koneigs Kreig) with 4 other guys. Last Grenadier, Sunrise Hobbies, Black Watch and Brookhurst (when they were located on a corner) were monthly resupply destinations, destined for the high desert! I remember one time while taking a replacement exercise pod to Nellis for one of our F-4G's participating in a Checkered Flag exercise, we stopped at a shopping center on the outskirts of Vegas on our way back for lunch that happened to have a hobby shop. Inside, I found about 100 linear feet of pegged Heritage 15mm figs, packed 4 deep! My credit card took a BIG hit that day and slept with the pup for a week….but it was well worth it at the time!

Mostly Dungeons and Dragons for me at College. None of my friends were wargamers but lots of role players. I still got the odd miniatures game in…mostly Napoleonics but did also get some board gaming in. Fantasy. Dragonlance DL11 board game. Talisman. Stuff like that.

I don't have much to add, not being born until the year after…

1986 saw me playing 'Champions' some of the time. In terms of miniatures I was playing Napoleonic naval, using Navwar 1/1200th ships (which I still have) and 'Wooden Ships & Iron Men'. I was also developing my own set of ACW naval rules and playing colonial skirmish games using a homebrew set of rules and the new plastic 20mm figures that Esci were making.

Also boardgames.

In 1986 i was collecting Platoon 20 and hinchcliffe 20mm WW2, and starting my 15mm 7YW Austrians. Those were the days…

1986 – first year after University, met and moved out with my girlfriend (who became my wife and am still with 28 years later). So, after the year before playing boardgames 2-3 times a week and 20mm ww2 once every few weeks, things calmed down. I still played boardgames once a week, almost always multiplayer such as Pax Britannia, Empire of the Middle Ages, Civilization. I also got in the occasional 20mm ww2 with Tractics. 1986 was the year of the slowdown that ended in a near stop a few years later, not to restart in earnest until 2009.

I think I was re-painting my 15mm Heritage Napoleonettes Prussian army. But I was in grad school, so I wasn't getting much done.

In 1986, I think I had just been exposed to D&D. No wargames until about 1990 when BattleTech ruled with an iron fist. Some Risk, Axis & Allies and a few computer strategy games also got played in that era.

I was 21 and playing WRG 6th edition ancients. I wish I still was. Playing 6th edition Ancients that is, I wouldn't want to be 21 again.

My two main board games at that time were B-17 and Ambush!

I was also playing a lot games on my Commodore 64.

Some similarity to Murphy above…. stationed in the UK, finishing my Political Science degree, emphasis International Studies with a lot of Middle East and Soviet focus…. (saw it coming dudes).. and playing Quarrie and Grand Manner Napoleonics. Also some house rules with guys I played with over at Milton Keynes and another house set with some Air Force buddies. I was 10 years into the hobby by then. Still at it with General de Brigade.

Paul/Houston

ACW with 15mm figures by (oh, the horror!) Peter Laing!

I'm afraid zero for me as I was in a Marine Rifle Company on Okinawa that year.

In actual gaming, 1986 was a bit of a lull, as far as I can recall. I didn't have a regular group for face to face rpgs, so I was running a RuneQuest 3 game on CompuServe, and thinking about Traveller without playing. I was involved with a group writing "theater" LARPs, and I had an extensive AH and SPI board game collection. In miniatures, it was a year before I got back into historicals, although I think that I was working on a batch of Ral Partha Byzantines I'd picked up cheap at a Baltimore Origins. My miniatures game of choice was Knights and Magick from the recently defunct Heritage, which I still play sometimes.

As far as what I would do today in a 1986 recreation experiment, using Knights and Magick with mostly Ral Partha figures wouldn't be much of a hardship. I've linked a 1986 Partha fantasy catalog, and a 1985 Historical catalog. I've still got a lot of those figures in my collection.

PDF link
PDF link

I hadn't played the Sword and the Flame yet, but adding that to the fantasy, and doing some historical K&M with the Byzantines and enemies would give a fair variety of miniatures games. If I was going to do 1986 for several years, I'm currently doing Charge! with Prince August homecast figures. The newer Wild Geese range wasn't available, but the older Erikson 40mm semiflat molds were, and would allow recreation of that project…if you could find a copy of Charge before reprints and internet used book dealers.

Add some (now Classic) Traveller and some AD&D for variety.

It would be fun…

1986 was the year that my best mate and I discovered a 'proper' wargames club (the Wargames Association of South Pembrokeshire, in Pembroke Dock). Until then we'd been playing 'Charge!' with 1/72nd plastic and home-cast Prince August metal Napoleonics, as well as 1/35th WW2, using my Tamiya models and our own home-grown 'rules'.

We saw the wargames club open day mentioned in a flyer for the Pembroke Dock carnival week and persuaded my mate's mum to drive us down there (it was 15 miles away). We had an absolute blast playing 1/300th WW2 with WRG rules, even though the two main players spent 95% of the time arguing with each other (hi Martin and Ade! Some things never change…).

The next week we played an amazing 25mm Napoleonic game (WRG again), using Minifigs that were older than we were. The week after that we played Seastrike (Yup, WRG…) and we were utterly hooked. Then we went on the club bus-trip to 'Armageddon' (as 'Colours' was called then) and had a fight with CND crusty-juggler protestors… what a fantastic hobby this was!

Orders went off to Heroics & Ros for 6mm WW2 and to Warrior Miniatures for 25mm Napoleonics (we only did that once…).

1987-1989 was then spent frantically expanding our 1/300th WW2 and getting into 15mm Napoleonics, 20mm Spanish Civil War and Warhammer Space-Wombles, while juggling school, exams, cadets, flying and trying (mainly unsuccessfully) to cop off with lovely young ladies who didn't mind an unhealthy obsession with DPM, aeroplanes and the strange combination smell of turps, Humbrol, AVGAS, Parade Gloss and cordite…