"How Old Were You?" Topic

First attempt, early teens I think, with a friends copy of Newbury's ACW rules and Airfix plastic figures. It was a dismal failure as at that age I found the rules way too complicated, I think my friend may have felt the same. Second attempt a year or two later using F E Perry's First Book of War Gaming (A "Little Wars" variant) was far more successful. By then I had been playing RPGs and a few board wargames for a while though.

13. Started with Seekrieg I. I still have a tattered copy of those rules on the shelf. That's been roughly 4 decades ago.

Probably about 7, due to a combination of the Marx Fort Apache set and Airfix ACW figures

About 21.. gamed boardgames before that & played with green army men as a child.

11 or 12. I read an article about it in TIME and realized that's what I was doing.

Fourteen. My sister gave me Joe Moreschauser's "How to Play War Games in Miniature.

14 via friends at school using WRG 6th Ancients and then Tractics. I left the fold for many years to play multi-player boardgames but even then, as now, still always considered myself foremost a miniature wargamer.

39 or 40, don't remember the exact year. I would play a miniatures game before then but would not buy any minis.

Late 20s. It's a very niche hobby in Indonesia.

14 – picked up an old Wargames Digest magazine at a hobby store because the front cover photo looked cool. Sherman tanks fighting MkIVs.

Read about wargames and saw there was a club the next town over.

First game is free, kid. Hook'd ever since.

Had played a couple of board games before, but not many.

7, in 1974. airfix napoleonics and I still have them….but I didnt collect Naps at all after that..

13.

Proper wargaming started when I was 10 or 11 – I'd had Airfix figures and models, but never really for formal games. Then I found that Minifigs-Skytrex had opened up nearby and I got my first copies of Battle for wargamers and that was it….I was off.

And I've never looked back. Although strictly speaking I get very nostalgic for old games and figures so really I look back all the time – but you know what I mean.

Toy Soldiers? Maybe 4 or 5 – and they were always the coolest toys! Miniature Wargamer (like rules and stuff) about 12 with Airfix, Mini-tanks and The Armchair General!

Played with my toy soldiers from about age 6, discovered Featherstone's wargaming books in my local library aged 11, joined my wargames club aged 20, still going strong 30 years later.

9,when in 1975,I made my fther to buy me my first three Airfix sets.They were British Artillery WW1,Waterloo Highlanders and Robin Hood's Merry Men.

Around 12, after I discovered Don Featherstone's book on Naval Wargaming at the library and realized I could actually DO something with all of those scratch-built ships I have made.

About 5 yrs old. Dad used to sit at the kitchen table and pour lead into a hand mold he had with five soldiers in it. He would make a batch of soldiers then give half to my older brother and me and him would keep the other half. we moved everything out of the kitchen and build two forts with Lincoln logs on either side of the kitchen and put our army men inside. The battle would then begin as me and dad would shoot dart guns and send wind up tanks at my brothers fort and he would do the same to us. Whoever had all his soldiers knocked down first lost. Found memories and I haven't stopped playing with toy soldiers since. I guess that was about 1951.

12, Chronopia, yes I'm young compared to most folks here ….

I played with my 1/72 and 1/35 WW II models in the back yard when I was 12-16, and got into D & D (with figures) when I was around 18, but I didn't consider myself a miniatures gamer until around 31 when my buddy introduced me to 40K.

mid-20s

15 or so, give and take a little bit.
Though I had been making up my own board games to play with legos a few years prior.

15, though I'd had a fascination with miniature gaming since earlier. When I was about 11, a classmate (who had no interest in the hobby himself – his interests lay more in being a wheeler-dealer who knew how to turn a profit on anything) sold me some painted figures in terrible condition that he'd acquired from someone else. They were 10mm-ish ACW figures and 25mm Ral Partha fantasy adventurers. I'd often look at them with mystified fascination, not really understanding the hobby to which they were intrinsically linked. Having acquired them in a way that didn't bring me in contact with the wargaming community, it took me a few more years to discover there were such things as rulebooks and magazines (even the existence of pen-and-paper RPGs was something I was only barely familiar with). When I did, it was WHFB that first materialized before my eyes and became the focus of my initial forays into the hobby.

28, but painting miniatures from 16. Mostly 54 to 90 mm.

At the age of 5, my dad took me with him to visit Jack Scruby's Quanset hut in Salinas. I joined in a CLS game but didn't really understand it then. Around 8 years old I started gaming with Wally Simon and by the age of 10 I had my first army (Seleucid) painted up and entered a WRG tournament. Just played with that army just 3 weeks ago.

Hmmmmm……..I think different ages for different forms of gaming.

5-6 loved toy soldiers. Even had the back of the Comic book Helen of Toy American Rev and Roman soldiers.

9-10 Airfix made it's appearance.

14 read the Wargame.
Became a boardgamer.

15 walked into the Tin Soldier in Centerville, Ohio and saw a Custom Cast LOTR massive battle going on. Immediately fell in love and bought my first figs. Been a Miniature gamer for 38 years now and will be till I pass on.

My oldest son Sean, started at 9 thanks to Dad. he played with my figs before that. But started at 9 in a The Rules with No Name Old West game I ran at a local show. His character Wild Bill is still going strong in those games almost 12 years later.

At six or seven I wanted better ways of playing with my soldiers, but it was ten years later that I found Tony Bath's Ancient rules.

Pretty sure I was in my twenties.

Wasn't til then I realized you could enjoy battles of toy soldiers without using fireworks.

Doug

16 or 17, when I talked my dad into stopping at The Tin Soldier on Salem Ave. in Dayton, OH and bought some 15mm Panzertroops. Still have the figs and use them.

It would be 12/13… 1970, Waterloo, Airfix Highlanders, first issue of Military Modelling.

11. It was 1978.

I'm a wargamer? I thought I was a military enthusiast.

:-)

10. It was the long hot summer of 1977.

Early '60s. I was just starting junior high when I saw my first set of Airfix miniatures in a drug store, of all places. Then I discovered ROCO Minitanks. My life has been one long downhill slide since.

LT

About age 10, 1967. Precipitated by reading three books, in this order – The Campaigns of Napoleon, Morschausers "How to Play Wargames in Miniature", and "Miniature Wargames du Temps de Napoleon" (John Candler).

12 or 13. One box each Airfix HO/OO US Marines, Japanese Infantry, and British Commandos.

One of Featherstone's books, borrowed from the Old Bridge NJ Library.

Early 1970's.

Duck

About 10 or so. I had just gotten "Task Force" from Helen of Toy Company, and I was thinking about how to make a game with the minis.

So I drew a big map of Normandy and added a square grid. I then applied a Chess-like system of "move and take." The tanks could move one space in any direction and the pillboxes could only move straight, not diagonal. Can't remember what the other pieces were.

But then a year later, a friend of mine introduced me to AH Gettysburg, and I was a goner.

6
Thank you Marx Battleground!

When I started with those little green plastic figs in grade school.

1981 at the age of 33. I had other related hobbies but really started using minis when i found a game store in Utica NY. Been friends with Skippy ever since.

I started playing and even trying to make games for toy soldiers when I was 6-8 or so.

However, the question says "Knew you were a miniatures wargamer" and I didn't know what miniature wargames were 'til 11 or so when I bought my first gaming minis.

33. I played with soldiers, planes, ships and tanks from a young age, but never played an actual war-game with rules, dice, painted figures and so on till I got tenure at Portsmouth. Unless we count D&D. I was one of the first people in Britain to play it, so that would be 19 or so.

1984, I was 12 when my dad first bought me the Heritage "paint and play" set of Merlin and King Arthur. It had minis, paints, a brush and some rules.

Later that week, I bought my first cassette tape, Last In Line by Dio and started painting my figures. 80s metal was perfect for that moment.

The following week I played my first D&D game with the older kids in the neighborhood. They let me and one of my classmates in to their gaming gang simply because I had "painted" figures. While I loved D&D, it never replaced my love for miniature wargaming.

I've had toy soldiers of one sort or another around me all my life (I'm 64), from green Army Men to Britains. In High School I found Airfix and Minitanks. In college I finally discovered that there were folks who played actual, organized games with miniature figures, I was hooked for good.

Played with toy soldiers since I can remember, but first efforts to turn this into 'proper Wargaming' began in August 1977 with a copy of Battle for Wargamers from WH Smith in Staines. I was 11 and two months!

I still have the magazine….

I have always loved toy soldiers, but as far as miniature wargaming proper, about 20 when I realized that it existed.

21

I played with toy soldiers as a kid (Airfix plastics were my favorites), but didn't learn about table top wargaming until I purchased a magazine at the local hobby store. It had articles, photos, and discussions of rules, and I was hooked. I was about 14 years old at the time (about 1976). Spent every penny of my paper route money ordering metal miniatures from that point on.

25 when I bought my first second hand painted Romans and Greeks in 1980. Previously I had flirted with wargaming in Colchester during the mid '70's, thanks for the inspiration guys, and only took it up when I moved to London. Luckily, MiniFigs/Skytrex was still in Victoria so my armies gradually grew.

14, thanks to a friend at school who introduced me to the hobby via Donald Featherstone books.

"in the beginning", 8 or 9 playing against my best friend in a 6x6 sandbox with the Marx Battleground set(1950s version) and a few additional items from other brands.

left them alone until about 25 or 26 with Airfix 1/72.

Did not actually start considering myself an actual gamer with printed rules until about 30, using modified Tractics.
Was 43 when I really became a die hard gamer.