"Year you first played a minis campaign?" Topic

We know campaigns in wargaming go back a bit in the hobby, but how common were they?

Curious when you first minis wargame campaign was? Please include the country (and if you are comfortable the region) as this will likely have a big impact.

Thank you.

A campaign, not just a single scenario or game? I think around 1981 while I was active in the UMass Strategy Games Club

Circa 1974 we played a published campaign system that had a geomorphic map on cards about 4" square. Can't remember the name. We used Tractics for the tactical battles.

Like myexmail about '81. I was in someone else's massive TYW campaign and started my own Napoleonic Peninsular campaign (in Greater London). Both were PBM (with tabletop battles) and eventually folded under the pressure of staffwork – keeping track of everything is so much easier with a PC!

Mid 70s, WW2 naval using my brother's 1/1200 collection

Probably 1970 or 1971; our local Central Florida CLS group followed the lead of Fred Vietmeyer and the Midwest Napoleonic Wargaming Confederation by linking historical scenarios from the same year. There was a subtle campaign flavor achieved by carrying forward a captured artillery piece into the next battle.

Rick

1970 – a simple one on one campaign. That was soon followed by quite a few more using Warplan 5/5 and 4 players, and another with home drawn maps on hex paper.

Around 1971 at the University of Florida. The faculty advisor to the then new U of F war game club had put together a simple campaign using the old Avalon Hill Afrika Korps game for the strategic moves and used 1/300th micro armor to play out the battles. Really was more a play test of the campaign concept.

Mid 1970s. I had a small part in Bruce Douglas's "Known World" campaign and ran a 1066 campaign.

78….a simple "this is my country, that is yours, here is the ocean, this is a mountain range" made up kinda stuff.

Late 80's. Played several. Prior was more 'ImagiNation' style not linked but the same opponents

Late 70s or early 80s, French and Indian War.

Late 70s Florida

I guess the first would have been White Box D&D in the mid 70s. I liked the idea of wargames campaigns but could never get it organised. First would be a linked scenario Napoleonic one I set up in the early 1980s when I was at University in London, we also did an Ancients one, WW1 and a Traveller/Striker campaign (which we played with 6mm microarmour).

1970 all those airfix figures need to get at each other. Primarily American Civil War on my own homegrown maps.

1975.

1966. A solo ancients campaign while I was attending college and should have been studying instead.

You're kidding. US. Probably 72-75, but might have been 79-83. Worst thing that ever happened to miniature warfare.

1974 or thereabouts. Our history teacher organised a napoleonic campaign based on a late 18th c map of Glasgow and its southern approaches. Our local area.

1976 to 1979. War of the Roses using the original pre-AH Kingmaker game as board greatly enhanced with historical research. Players controlled the noble families, the church, the office holders etc. Actual live player parliament held following the rules of government back then. Commons was a wild group of non-players, including wife's. Monthly written moves, some pages long. Spies, disease, the grim reaper miniature, battles on the tabletop, overseas affairs of state and players going to Constantinople (Jasper Tudor). Since the player's army size was based upon titles held (miniatures that is) and lands, all the players hit UCLA research library for the family birth and death records, property ownership etc. Thus we had almost all the major noble families, and their bastards in play. We added in Scotland and Ireland with the same level of historical background. Players typically had one Scottish noble, one Irish (anglo-irish or Irish), and several English or Welsh nobles. Several wives played the Church nobility. Then… there was the actual princes and making of the King…. York vs. Lancastrian. Weddings between families, shipping, trade and of course income (in coinage of the times, shillings, pounds, etc. and business / banking to pay for the warfare and bribes (influence). The by mail campaign game had and needed three game umpires just for the paperwork each monthly turn. I was COAT#2 or Creator of All Things #2. John Greer Coat#1, Jim Mann #3. All before the days of computers, spreadsheets, and email. All the painted 25mm miniatures (thousands) since unpainted wasn't allowed on tabletop and you had to field your basic army units of knights, bill-men, and archers for your family title (baron, earl, duke, prince etc.
Highest player count….. 42 players involved in the game. The tabletop battles…. real life treachery abounded. Players for miniature battles had a "player faction" look. That player couldn't be on your side… he might turn his flank and stab you in the back… or just hold back his battle to see how the battle is going. Real Bosworth like on the tabletop. Pirate raids or those French… The Grim Reaper miniature at Chester, randomly "tapping" a unit and miniature death removal representing the plague card pulled at Chester during a miniature battle)… the memories).
Still have the map and lots of the game mechanical paperwork. But never again would 42 players be available for that massive campaign. Will never be topped, not in SoCal again.

Coat#2

A whole campaign? Never, unless talking about RPGs.

About 20 years ago – Napoleonic campaign; I played the Austrians

I have always wanted to, but the group I game with jump around from period to period and can't focus on any one period long enough. I have enough figures and terrain to do a F&I war, AWI, SYW,or a Napoleonic campaign, and will still never do a campaign.

Mine was in the early '70's in the DFW metroplex, Texas, with either Ancients or ACW. Around then I started an 1870's period Imagination campaign using an Avalon Hill game map that had 2 major countries & some minor states & islands with 6 or 7 players; the rules were "Rally Round the Flag" & "Ironclad". It amused me that 1 player would give me very detailed orders & would detach portions of a figure (the rules scale was 1 mini=20 "real" men) to a hex. Another guy would give orders like "I move the needed troops to the best areas to insure my victory".

Once, in the 80's

First campaign was in the early 80's in the US. It was a Napoleonic era, using WS&IM for naval and System 7 for land combat. It included economies for generating combat units as well as up keep, merchant ships, fishing fleets, spies, development and a unique system of balancing leadership roles in different forms of government. It was run by a local history dean and his son. Turns were based on a month and took about a month. After about 20 turns it was ended. The work and paperwork must have been over whelming. It is what got me into miniature war gaming.

1966. The group had a WW2ish imaginations campaign based on a map of Montana. Each of us got a county and were assigned a WW2 army organization to base our armies on. Due to time an personality conflicts the campaign died with only a few battles fought.

The one positive outcome was that Greg Scott and Jim Clark, dissatisfied with the small number of tanks you could get on the table with Minitanks, began modeling efforts that led to GHQ microarmor.

The first campaign was one I ran. It was in 1`977-8 while I lived in Knoxville, TN. The campaign produced 7 battles, some small, some too large of the rules we were using (a home brew adaptation of the Terrible Swift Sword rules). Dropped it after people stopped turning in their moves. Memorable moments included the Confederate supply train going in the opposite direction of the rest of the army due to an error in the written orders (it did exactly what it was ordered to to do), a Confederate infantry brigade ambushing a Union cavalry brigade while it was strung out on a mountain road in pursuit of a Confederate cavalry brigade, and that same Confederate cavalry brigade leaving the mountains and encountering a Union supply train.

1968 a 'home and home' series of 4 Napoleonic games
between Larry Brom and I, 2 games at each of our homes.

The objective was for the French to cut off and defeat
a Russian/Austrian force while fending off a seaborne
invasion by British and Portuguese into Flanders.
No naval combat.

We used an early version of Before I Was a Marshal…

rmaker

Full transparency, I was asking to validate a hypothesis that your group in the Twin Cities was unique in playing campaigns so early on and so frequently, usually with concurrent campaigns within the club.

Cheers,
Michael

Malchor, I don't know how unique we were, but we did indeed often have more than one campaign running. Which probably helped lead to their collapse when nobody had the time to devote to any of them.

ACW campaign in 90 or 91

1979 I was part of the Austrian team in a Napoleonic campaign

rmaker, Ha. Too much of a good thing.

All, the above is not say other wargame groups, especially those from the 50s–early 70s, were not unique in their own ways too—they absolutely where!

1979 – first miniature wargames I ever played, I was just shy of my 14th birthday.

I contacted a club that was next town over, found them in the back of a copy of "Wargamers Digest" from Gene McCoy (who remembers those? That magazine was my introduction into the "lifestyle"). I was the youngest player and these guys had been together for years.

They were refighting the Eastern Front from W.W. II in 20mm with home rules. Each turn was 1 minute, each figure was 5 infantry and each tank was an individual tank.

Yes, the entire W.W. II Eastern Front at that scale.

They started the campaign on the set date of June 22, 1941, I joined the club 5 years later and they had made it to mid-August 1941.

Roughly 5 years to play 2 months of the campaign.

So, at basically 46 months to the war from June '41 to April '45, at 1 month every 2.5 years, they will have come to a conclusion in…………115 years or in 2090. Rough numbers.

They should be at Jan. '43 now, unless a Stalingrad type fight slowed them down even further.

I thought this was the only thing for wargaming out there, so this is what I played for over a year.

Then I went to a convention at 15.

Came back and kinda dropped out of that club.

The question means played a campaign that was designed to generate tabletop battles played out with figures?

1974.

Rarely indulge that 70s preference these days as historical material is now so widely available my choice is to generate battles out of historical narratives.

That said, I have been a regualr player in NQM Chris's Eastern Front campaign for at least 20 years now. For what it's worth, the Germans are long since in retreat (but regularly initiate spiteful counteroffensives that make it feel like it isn't over yet!)

Phil

Probably around 1975 in Jack Scruby's "Ourworld". This was organized as a series of challenge matches between participants with territorial gains by the victor. Not really map maneuvering with logistics, but it was fun.

I only "discovered" this hobby about 3 years ago. I am retired, was rummaging around the internet, saw a massive battle table with beautiful terrain and miniature armies and was smitten. Many hours later, and many books and blogs later, I am having fun learning and playing as I go along. I play solo. I started just learning battle rules for tabletop games. It was fun, but I thought there had to be more to it. I again rummaged around and found Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming book. I loved the idea of a campaign, and have searched for discussions about them. I realized no matter what you find, you will want to tweak it a bit or a lot and "make it your own". So that's what I'm into, and have posted my efforts on a blog I created (to learn how to do blogs – still learning).

The short answer is …. not nearly as long as most of you :)

1974. A guy in the group I gamed with had written a set of Seven Years War rules. He put together a campaign and off we went.

I was Austria. Since none of us had complete armies painted there was a lot of "the Swiss Guard will be Polish militia for today."

Thank you all. I feel young.

'82 or '83 with some guys in middle school using Chainmail in what would now be called Imaginations – Medieval Eastern Europe.