"Your Proudest Moment in Wargaming" Topic

None of us enjoy blowing our own trumpet (ahem) but laying aside all humility (false or otherwise) what is your proudest moment in your time in this hobby.

Could be a book you wrote, rules you made, an amazing game changing tactical action, an impressive report, a massive armyy painted and finished, introducing someone to the hobby who became a lifetime member of the community, a special gift to another member, an amazing gamemastering moment in a rpg, letting another newcomer win a game, sound advice given at your own expense?

Let us know what's your crowning moment

Inventing green orcs.

Catching you cheating to help Shaun in our PBEM game!!! ;)

Starting my blog and keeping it populated with batreps from various, ongoing campaigns. But particularly when a fellow Wargamer writes to me that he's been inspired to go and do something based on something I've posted.

The blog is also kind of an odd historical artifact that maybe someday my children can find, and see how strange their father was, perhaps give them a little insight into who I am and what makes me do the things I do.

V/R,
Jack

Celebrating 50 years in gaming and still enjoying myself

It was a WAB game of the Trojan War, put on by Scott of Pictor's.
I was the charismaticslly challenged Agamemnon. Who ever roots for him? Certainly not his wife…

Anyway, I had a unit of 5 chariots. What's a Greek hero to do but charge? Going in, I lost two of them. In front of me was a gap that was not wide enough for a full unit to fit through, but wide enough for three. Suddenly I was behind the entire Trojan line! I suppose I COULD HAVE hit some Trojan unit in the rear, but there was the walls of Troy ahead of me. Gates open.

Being a Hero, I routed the gate guards, and also Artemis. Not as badass a god as Apollo, but a goddess nonetheless.
Helen was mine!
I suppose I should have returned her to my bro Menelaus, but she is HOT.
We took a slow chariot to Tyre, rewriting the post Iliad histories in the process.

Probably sitting on a floor with my son across from – a thousand or so Marx, airfix, mpc and conte WWII figures a few tanks and cannons. We were armed with tennis balls and aclot of laughs…

Commanding the Mexican Cavalry in a Maximillian Adventure game. By the end of the game my command had NO figures left, except the Commander. BUT! I had stopped the FFL in their tracks and bought valuable time for my allies attacking the Austrians. We were using a variant of Fire and Fury, my command was 3 brigades of cavalry (@ 25 stands)

A simple skirmish game with my 5-year-old son, 12 Lego Star Wars figures and one dice.

I was taking part in a large, multiplayer east front game and was tasked with holding a village with a handful of Russian troops and only a couple of tanks. I was dug in and ready and had begged most of the Russian Artillery to cover my frontage. I had called down several 152 and 122 batteries just to the front of the village (They had not yet landed) as the German's were charging in with a whole Kampfgruppe. No way I could hold, the German player had deployed smoke and he was going to move to assault just before my barrage landed. As he was moving the first unit through the smoke I just said "you realize I'll get to shoot at you with opp-fire". My chances of actually hitting him with opp-fire were ridiculously low and I had no chance of stopping the mass assault but he thought a second and then proceeded to move the first unit back and deploy everything to the back side of the smoke… right under my incoming mass barrage. At the beginning of the next turn as the smoke cleared all that artillery landed right on his head and utterly destroyed the attack. It was a beautiful sight.

My friends still refer to it as the Russian Mind Trick….my best use of Psyops on the wargaming table ever.

Henh. A long time ago. A big multi-player Gettsyburg game at a convention, Stars 'n' Bars rules. I'm Sickles in the Peach Orchard.

The game starts. McLaw's entire Confederate division walks straight up and punches me in the nose. We roll for melee, and I barely win. He checks morale and fails. Fails really, really badly.

McLaws entire Confederate division, then and there, surrenders. Game over on turn 1.

We all just looked at each other and babbled for a few minutes. No one could believe it, least of all me, but we rechecked the rules three times and found no error in our play.

Then we racked 'em up and started the game over. He didn't try that again.

Waterloo with Napoleons's Battles rules. Had a brigade of French light cavalry and was told to slow down the Prussians. Won multiple breakthroughs and completely stopped the Prussian advance as they had to form square or rally. It was a good day….

When I received the first printed copy of the first set of my rules to be published

Watching an eight year old DOM clean up in a MechWarrior tournament against people at least more than three times her age.

Very first article published in Practical Wargamer was a pleasant moment.

-The one month my last wargaming rulebook was #1 on Wargames Vault.

A CLS game at a convention, maybe 20 years ago. I heard someone comment--not to me--that "attacking one of Robert's defense lines is like feeding a pencil into a sharpener."

Not that good today. Not sure I was that good then. But it's one of those moments I take out and hug on the bad days.

Maybe mine was inspiring Just Jack to start playing some games. But that would be big-headed of me :-) Or maybe Jack just told me that so I would read his batreps in the early days of his blog :-)

Maybe when someone else actually used some rules I wrote.

Starting my blog and still keeping it going after 6 years is an achievement I guess I am most proud of. Weird word that "proud" as I guess I do these things for my enjoyment and happy when other people enjoy what i write/do, but never really feed proud; just happy.

Seeing your name in a magazine or – better – on a book is good. But in an odd little hobby, being recognized by people you admire is the best thing. So I'm very happy when I recall selling Sudan scenery to Peter Gilder's son, getting a cheque for a book from Jack Scruby, and sharing a pint with Don Featherstone as we talked about Kipling.

Colonial Afghan game. I was pretty new at wargames. The ref reminds us we could be attacked at any time. I put unit into square. The other players are appalled that I would do such a thing. Just then, all the Afghans in the world appear. My unit, in square , survives the attack handily. The other
British,not so good. I go from doofus to genius!

Shaun,

Nah man, it's a fact. Your blog with the 6mm WWII stuff, using your homemade rules, in the drawer, Brigadier General (commented above) and his 6mm Republic of Prussia, and a Frenchman named Ronan playing Spanish Civil War with singly based 10mm troops, using Force on Force, were my inspiration to start a blog and start gaming on a regular basis.

I was very near giving up wargaming as my father, who was my weekly opponent, had just passed away. Seeing the fun you three were having playing and posting the batreps, and doing it solo, changed my whole outlook on things.

And Mexican Jack Squint brings up something I'd totally overlooked: seeing your name in a book. I've been extremely fortunate in that several gentlemen offered me the opportunity to assist them with rule sets and /or scenarios, and so I've been blessed to feel the pride of seeing my name in a few books now. It was my pleasure, glad to have been of service!

V/R,
Jack

AAAAND Mexican Jack reminds ME of my shortest-lived proudest moment,years ago,when I was selling some figures I'd painted,in a con flea market.

"Ken Bunger bought some a while ago!" (chest swells).

"Yeah,he buys anything" (chest collapses).

(BTW--nice seeing you again at Historicon, MJS!)

Just the other week, when we took a moment before we started to just look at and take pictures of our beautiful game. Everything on the table was painted to a high standard. It was like playing on the tables you see in the rulebooks.

When I was awarded a Best Painted Army in a tournament. It had took me ages to finish my figures and I was as suprised as delighted when they gave me the award.

I remember one WW2 game where I drove my Soviets onto the objective, avoiding the Germans in their built up defenses. You should have seen their looks of shock and amazement, "You're not going to impale yourselves on our defenses?!?!?!?!? We're going to have to move?!?!?!?!"

The victory was absolutely glorious!

Picking up the trophy for Best Presentation game at the Nationals in Liverpool in 1981.

It was especially important for my club as we had planned from the previous year to go and win it and win it we did.

Then I had to rush out as the club coach was waiting outside St Georges Hall with everyone else on board as we had a long drive back to Edinburgh.

My club is the South East of Scotland Wargames Club and we run Claymore, Scotlands Premier Wargames Show next Saturday 6th August 2016.

link

Seeing my two sons go off and play each other on their own in games I had taught them. I think they were 7 and 10 at the time. I was more entertained by just watching them than playing.

Having a series of articles published in Slingshot, and crushing my opponents and hearing the lamentation of their women.*

* ok, relatively infrequent.. not the crushing, but their women caring..

My club did an Invasion of Malta game of multi-player Flames of War (we liked to do historic setups) for a Texas convention, with the typical FoW fallschirmjager landing by parachute and DFS gliders, then we added my papermodel gotha GO-242 medium gliders carrying larger support elements, and the cherry on top was a 1/100-scale ME-321 Gigant I had made from pictures… the look on the British faces was classic.

And the cream of the jest was that just like the playtest, when the Gigant landed it crashed into the hangers and caught fire and all its cargo was lost.

Hearing my then seven year old son declining his mate's offer to play Minecraft at his house because he wants to thrash his Dad's Yorkist scum playing Impetus.

Proud moment that.

:-)

Organising the French attack at Borodino at the Wargames Holiday centre. This is a video of the game (although not the game I played). The table is 27 feet long and 15 feet deep.

YouTube link

In our game I persuaded my team (the French) to delay the attack for 3 moves to soften the Russians up with artillery fire. When I sent the the Imperial Guard forward, all they had to do was march over the bodies of dead Russians. Total victory to the French.