"Oldest and youngest here" Topic

No surprise that only 1:50 is under 40 !

66. Marx boxes back to elementary school, Avalon Hill from age 12 and Column, Line and Square from 15-16.

53. Been playing with toy soldiers since at least 2, but with dice, rules and whatnot since 1978 so 11 or 12.

More nostalgia nonsense here:

link

56 and started with Airfix when I was 11, I think.

58. Think I was 14 when I got hold of Tractics for WW2 games and Tricolor for Napoleonics…

Great to be 65 and still be seen as almost an "inbetweener"….well not at either extreme anyway!

Wow. I'm 37 and always feel old xD You bunch of geezers! :)

-Wayne

51 and been a gamer since I can remember- 5 years old? Started with army men (and firemen) and played games like the really old Battlecry (not the later one by Richard Borg) at about 6, which got me hooked on historical gaming. Bought a copy of SPI's Soldiers at around 10 years old at KayBee toys for .99 cents on their close out rack and never looked back (still have that game).

78 and first games with Marx boxes at age 11 – home
made rules…

54 and been playing with toy soldiers since I was aged 11.

69 in December. Been playing with toy soldiers as far back as I can remember. Organized wargaming since the late 1960s.

34, almost halfway to 70, which is baicly the same as 70 and once you've reached 70 you're basically 150.

So 150, I sniffed at 40km when I was 11/12 but started real wargaming when I was 23.

71

Plastic army men and Marx Fort Apache stuff when I was a small kid; miniature ships made out of clay, toothpicks and paper; discovered A/H around age 12/13. Discovered and embraced miniature gaming around 1970. Proud alumnus of Dick Bryant's New England Wargamers along with Skeeter.

B

Born in '57 so age 62. Started using rules with my figures sometime age 8/9, discovered AH at age 12 so that's 1969. Been gaming in one form or another ever since.

56,been tabletop gaming since mid-late 1980's.

43.

Starting to feel young in this crowd. 😀

63. Lots of toy soldiers as little shaver. AH games as teen. 1/1250 ships and Seapower II with brother by late teens. First organized game about 1980. 15mm Stones River.

57 Played with toy soldiers as a youngster. First "game" was late 70s board games AH, Rand, SPI. After my stint in the army I was introduced to minis, mid 80s. Been great fun ever since.

55. Started when I was twelve with AH's Battle of the Bulge. I was a model builder long before that though.

74 and started with Green Army men at 10 then to AH at 15 and miniatures at 25.

55 in three weeks. I started "real" wargaming with my older brother when I was around 11, using some Charles Grant rules that my dad picked up at some surplus book sale.

46. Warhammer 2nd ed. got me started. Took a 20 year hiatus but back in action for the past 5 years.

Looks like one harsh winter might see the end of hobby wargaming.

61, started with Avalon Hill and SPI board games in 1970. Did a little minis gaming in the late 70's but not much until Games Workshop pulled me in in the early 90s. Blood Bowl, Space Hulk, and Necromunda. Finally, WFB.

49, and losing ground fast…

I got my first (Grenadier fantasy) minis for my 13th birthday (by request), messed about with Battletech & homebrew silliness, but Warhammer 3rd, Blood Bowl 2nd, and Rogue Trader really kicked it off.

59 for another month and a half.

Hard to say when I started wargaming, as I have been "playing army" since the day after I saw the premier of Battle of the Bulge at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood in 1965.

1/76 Airfix plastic soldiers and 1/87 Rocco Minitanks were daily features of my boyhood playtime. Basic table-top games from Avalon Hills became common as I grew older.

But I recognize PanzerBlitz, which I received on my 13th birthday (1974), as a turning point. Not so much for the game as packaged, but because I quickly started replacing the cardboard game pieces with GHQ micro-armor tanks. Within 6 months I was on to WRG Armor and Infantry miniatures rules, and I have never recovered from the addiction that followed.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Tell you now.

If I was about to invest my money in a wargames figure manufacturer and looked at the demographics of all of us…

and was thinking about long term investment….

We are getting on a bit. Are the kids into GoTs (or is even that passee after the last awful closing series) still?

The kids who watched LoTR are now producing their own kids.

Games Workshop seems to be doing better than most high street UK stores however.

I turned 75 a couple of months ago. Been playing with toy soldiers since I got my first Britains in 1950. Started "official" war gaming with column line and square in 1967. First war game convention MFCA in 1968. Recruited Divk Bryant to the hobby in October 1968. Started New England wargamers association in December 1968. Dick and I started the predecessor to the Courier in January 1969. Been collecting wargame figures and playing games ever since.

When is Dick posting here, he's 10 years older than me, at 85 he must be the oldest on TMP.

My grandson is one of the youngest gamers at seven. We play Dba. But he doesn't post to TMP :-)

65. Have officially miniature gamed (not counting Avalon Hill and such before hand) since 1969. First rules I played were Fletcher Pratt.

Just turned 40 three weeks ago!

My first experience was Battletech at age 12…bought some plastic 1/72 guys at Bridgetown Hobbies and my dad ordered a few from Michigan Toy Soldiers for me as well. My first gaming experiences were with friends using homebrew rules (didn't know there were other rules at the time) and eventually a copy of Command Decision found it's way to me.

I have a thirteen-year-old who is starting to show interest in the hobby – so not all is lost, fellas!

60. Been playing since grade school, about 1970 or so. Needless to say, my older brothers are to blame. That and a serious lack of athletic prowess.

55, started wargaming in 1979 with Tractics

58
1st memory is getting Napoleon captured at Ligny in the old AH Waterloo when I was 8.

39

73

I got my first Fort Apache playset when I was 8 years old.
Started 15mm miniature Napoleonic wargaming in 1982 with the Fire & Steel rules.

Remember these playsets by Marx? My boyhood buddies and I spent many hours playing with our "men." Dad loved stepping on them barefooted in the middle of the night.

Fort Apache playset by Marx

69. As my grandmother used to say of anyone 1 year or more younger than her – a bunch of young fellas.
I think my first wargame was AH Battle of the Bulge.

25. Yeesh, I figured there'd be at least a couple other people close to me; but this is a self-selecting survey of folks on a primarily historicals forum.

39 and have been gaming for 47years ;)

57. Is this age demographic for TMP indicative for the whole of wargaming I wonder?!? Both my friends I wargame with are over 45. However, as Levi states, this is primarily a historicals forum and a fairly small snapshot I suppose.

60 in November, bought my first metals (minifigs) in 76 but had many affix plastics priory to that.

"Looks like one harsh winter might see the end of hobby wargaming."

That is damn funny……

51 next month, started with Airfix plastics and Dinky Toy artillery to knock 'em down…….'82 was shown Avalon Hill and SPI board games and some micro tanks in 1983…..

Is this age demographic for TMP indicative for the whole of wargaming I wonder?!? Both my friends I wargame with are over 45. However, as Levi states, this is primarily a historicals forum and a fairly small snapshot I suppose.

IIRC, the Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy survey has found that the crossover point from primarily fantasy/SF gamers to primarily historical gamers amongst respondents was early 40s (i.e. were in the 1973-8 range).

I'm 66. I received my first two sets of Britains lead soldiers when I was five and had various plastic figures before the.

My eldest brother, who also collected Britains, began 54mm wargaming making up our own ruleset at about the same time.

35. Started around 8 with homemade games (an ancients war-game that used handmade cardboard chits and a carefully made grid on a big slab of cardboard, soon followed by a game that used green plastic army men, kleenex box houses, a tank made from an empty box of bank checks and the dice from a parcheesi box). Don't know where the idea for the first game came from (the rules in any case were never quite clear, despite great ambition), but the second idea came from grandpa's and neighbor's stories of WW2.

I'll be 65 on Saturday and been playing with "toy soldiers" as long as I can remember.

OK so of 87 disclosed ages above

- the average is 58.2
- the median is also 58.2
- the mode is 50.

What a lot of old gits we are!

Hey guys don't forget your only old as you feel. Age is just a number .I am fitter than when I was in my 20s and currently look 10 years younger than what I am ( still not disclosing! ) Eat well, exercise and keep taxing your brain and you will be fine. The sofa is a killer my Doctor has told me and his is right.

I'm 40. I started wargaming when I was around 24.

Mark 1 could be my twin brother from another mother even though I'm six months older. The only difference is that Squad Leader was the board game that started me down the path to GHQ and WRG.

I just ordered a couple of hundred dollars of minis from GHQ taking advantage of their summer sake (15% ends today).

I love to collect, paint, parade and roll dice against others.

56. Started when I was 12.