"Who got you started with Minis or influenced you" Topic

For me – my father got me started after coming back from a trip to London where he picked up quite a few figures and paints for me from "Under Two Flags"

After that probably the author Wiley Sword and how he wrote about the battle of Franklin – inspired me to get into Civil War gaming

Little green army men.
Though I remember visiting a classmate in kindergarten, who had a set of blue and red plastic American Revolution soldiers. We set them up and shot rubber bands at each other's troops. Great fun!

My dad as well – in his case, the Airfix ACW Union and Confederate infantry sets and those odd red coloured artillery sets

I found a Donald Featherstone book at the Smithsonian giftshop, and lost my mind.

In my youth I was a hard core war gaming board gamer, especially with Avalon Hill and Battleline games. An article in the General magazine showed playing PanzerBlitz with GHQ minis on 3D PanzerBlitz boards. Unfortunately I did not have access to game stores that carried miniatures during that time.
It wasn't until I went away to school and joined the strategy games club that I actually saw miniatures being gamed with. When I was away on an internship I saw my first Napoleonics game being played at the Compleat Strategist in New York City. By then I was fully hooked and buying and painting lots of miniatures

Fred Vietmeyer

Knights and Magic.

Chester at Bonnie Brae Hobbies in Denver, Co. I wandered in. Bought a couple of Dungeons and Dragons miniatures, paints, and brushes.
I told Chester how much I liked doing this. Then he mentions historical miniatures. It was something that has never stopped since the late 1970's. Thank you Chester wherever you are.

The movie "Waterloo" and Airfix Napoleonics.

Just like Gozerius. Two friends, Mark Talbot and Chris Hill) and two brothers. All 5 of us collected green toy soldiers, ACW and cavalry. Mark and I the two largest collection. We each had, right at 1,000 soldiers each. We had MANY a battle, mud forts, ect….

My dad hated when we took over his gardens, built trenches to fight it out.

My boss for my summer job when I was in college told me about miniature gaming. When I went to grad school I met a person whoa actually played. he and his roomate got me hooked.

I got started after playing in an ACW miniatures game at a plastic modelers convention around 1976. I remembering looking at one figure and seeing painted sergeant stripes on one figure's arm. That game got me hooked and I bought my first miniatures shortly afterwards.

One of my relatives on Christmas Eve back in 1966 gave me a Marx Gettysburg play set as a Christmas present. I have been hooked ever since.

1977. Was doing Law Enforcement in the Air Force at Castle AFB and walking through a dorm with another officer who had a drug dog. Saw several guys playing a Zulu miniatures game on the dayroom floor. Watched them while the dog officer went through the dorm. Got to know those guys. David Fitsgerald, Lee Orton and others. They got me doing mini's and D&D. Got 1000's of dollars of that stuff in my basement now.

I'd grown up with various army men figures and later some Airfix figures. Then I came across a Don Featherstone book in the fine arts section of the city library . . .

Grelber

My mother gave me a copy of Charles Grant's The War Game for my birthday, so I could "do something" with my pile of plastic figures. 50 years later I still use those rules for mid-C18 games when I can.

Used to build lots of model kits and got to the point where I wanted to do more with them. It wasn't long before I discovered miniatures gaming.

I started making Airfix kits in the late 1960s, then along came Charles Grants "Battle" and I realised you could play games with them as well.

Had toy soldiers of course, but only a few times played a Napoleonic game of my own making. But started miniature gaming when first got to Langley AFB and crew mate asked
Want to play D&D?

1975. I went with my parents to a 'dinner party' where I got very bored (I was 11). The bloke disappeared into his loft and came back with four file boxes full of fairly well painted 28mm Hinchcliffe Napoleonic figures (1815).

Boredom ceased: I got them out and lined them up for the next couple of hours, amazed by the detailed painting. Then we went home.

The next morning I got up to go to school. I came down stairs and found four file boxes on the breakfast table – the bloke had given me his figures.

I got to school and, at lunchtime, I went to the library to look for books on the Napoleonic Wars and by chance found three books on wargaming (by Grant, Featherstone and Quarrie).

Been a wargamer ever since.

Can't remember the blokes name (he was Mr. something, LOL) but, I did see him on a second occasion when he turned up a year later and we played a game. He was a photographer (in the RAF) by profession.

Played with Airfix and Marx playsets as a young boy. Then Time Magazine did an article on wargaming, a local hobby store had some issues of Wargames Newsletter another toy store Duane's sold TSR rules(Chainmail. Hardtack, Field Regulations) and Edward Hamilton had Charge and Solo Wargaming. I may be off on the sequence but this was the mid 1960's and it's just kept going from there.

I discovered the hobby accidentally when I was about 15 surfing the internet. The person who influenced me the most to stick with it was a history teacher of mine who usually lurks around TMP. We game different periods and different styles of rules but he was always down to talk about it with me.

My friend and I walked into a hobby store in dowtown Cleveland in 1979. We were playing Squad Leader and saw packs of GHQ miniatures on the wall. The light bulbs went off and we bought and painted the minis to put on the boards. Been doing it ever since. I think the name of the shop was Wings.

Got hooked on History by watching the Mickey Mouse Club on our Black and white TV. They had stories like the Swamp Fox (AWI) and the Gray Ghost (ACW).
Then every Christmas my dad would buy me a Marx Toy Soldier set which I excitedly waited for. I would play for hours on the Floor of our tenement Apartment in Chicago's Little Italy. I even developed my very own set of rules for my games. These were my first steps into the hobby before I knew it existed.
Years latter, as a young adult, I walked into a hobby shop filled with toy soldiers, paints, books and scenery and my head exploded! It is still exploding with my love for toy soldiers after 76 years of life.

Back in 1966 when I was 12, I read a magazine interview with Joseph Morchauser and then I got his book as a birthday present: 'How to Play Wargames in Miniature'. I have two copies – my original was getting threadbare. That book brings back a lot of good memories.

I always had toy soldiers and Marx playsets as a kid, but it was my friend Bill Pritchard who introduced me to historical miniature wargaming over 30 years ago. Bill passed away a few years ago and I ended up with his amazing collection."Thank you Bill."

I think it was back in 1975, my dad cut out an article in the Chicago Tribune about a store called Sutler's Wagon, which specialized in miniature wargaming. My friends and I were already playing AH wargames, and we had long played with plastic soldiers, so this really intrigued me. I managed to convince my dad to drive my best friend and I to the store and the rest was history. I don't know if my friend is still active, but I've been active since then and have no desire to stop.

As others have said I played with plastic figures as a child; my big Christmas present for most years was a Marx playset (I wish that I'd kept them (especially the Zorro set), I could sell them now & make a down payment on a new car). For nostalgia's sake, I've considered running a convention game so I've bought a few sets recently.

A friend whipped out some Airfix HO scale 8th Army, then another with the Ghurkas. I tell the tale here: link

My first boss had a collection of 25mm SYW Minifigs, he invited me to a game and, 53 years later, I am still collecting miniatures and wargaming.

Jim Odin sold me my first Minifi 25s at a military collectibles shop in Dallas' old Quadrangle shopping mall. Before that it was all board games.

I had been collecting ROCO minitanks and Airfix figs. Then a friend high school introduced me to board games in the 70s. Around 80 another friend got me into ACW and I have been collecting ever since.

Wargamers Digest (Gene McCoy) that I happened to see on a rack in a games store in the Arlington area in 1975 and had a small add for Potomac Wargamers in the back. I called Wally Simon and the addiction blossomed.

Wargamers Digest as well.

Green Army men and then to a Marx American Civil War playset. From there through Airfix 1/72 figures. Then I walked into a military miniatures hobby shop and got "lead poisoning". No turning back now at age 72.

60's Airfix and Roco tanks as well as models.
70's GHQ and Avon hill games.
80's finally started using rules and never looked back.

So my Dad and college friends.

I should add – before metal minis – I started with first 54mm MPC and Marx figures – then graduated to Airfix HO and Roco – then came mental and Airfix 54mm

Got into minis with AD&D. Met a few historical minis gamers who introduced me to mass battles games. Started collecting fantasy minis. My sons wanted to play with my hand painted minis… I saw they had Army Men toys in their toy collections, so I wrote up fast play rules for those, back in 1998. We are still playing those rules, periodically. We love our Army Men games! Cheers!

As a kid I was painting those old Marx Brothers "Fort Apache" playsets figures and those "Revolutionary War" soldier sets sold from comic book ads years before I discovered "real" military miniatures. That revelation would have been about 1972 and into 1973, when I encountered magazines like Strategy & Tactics and Wargamers' Digest and those reviews and ads led me to miniatures companies of the day (MiniFigs was my favorite and I still have hundreds and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of their castings). Also McEwan, Scruby, Hinchcliffe/Heritage, early Ral Partha … by 1976-77 I'd also discovered D&D and was able to buy early Fantasy minis via mail order or from a few local hobby stores.

Sure, I had those various green (some were blue!) Army Men packs, and friends had Marx sets of Germans and Americans, but I never had many of those and never tried to paint any. But I used those crudely painted Revolutionary War soldiers -- I had multiple sets -- to first reenact "Little Wars" games in our garage and driveway, using the H.G. Wells rules from a reprint book I'd checked out from the school library.

The father of a girl I new, found out I was into military modelling and asked if I would paint some lead figures for some cash.
I was given a tin of old Grenadier Cthulhu monsters & investigators to paint…and was hooked :)

The next stuff he got me to do was a lot of 6mm Napoleonics (Heroics & Ross iirc) I did not enjoy doing those at all!

Played with green army men as a kid, moved to AH games, got into D&D, then fantasy miniatures. Used to play large battle using the D&D combat system. Found Charles Grant's "Wargame Tactics" in the public library at some point. Played my first historical mini game with the TSS lads at the Baptist Student Center in Raleigh NC around 1986. Meet Larry Brom, Ed Mohrman and a great bunch of guys there and am still at it!

Let's see – Marx Playsets (AWI, Vikings and Knights, ACW, WW2), Airfix, Helen of Toy, then Atlantic – Airfix WW1 Americans in Montana hats made great Mississippi Guard ACW. Moved onto 15mm with Editions Brokaw and Miniature Figurines (Minifigs). Also, my father took me to the library, which had the books on Gettysburg, Trenton and the Bulge using miniatures. Dad also took the family to Gettysburg in the 1970s (which is where I discovered Airfix).

Lots of books influenced me, as did the Dragon's Den in Raleigh, NC.

My parents didn't let me play with toy soldiers or toy guns, they believed that they would make me want to be a Soldier. Then when I was recuperating from a dog attack in middle school, my dad brought me home three sets of Airfix Waterloo. When a friend of mine saw them he found Grant's "The Wargame". We played through high school and college, I took a small break as a junior officer in the Army (I guess they were correct).

Still love 1:72 to this day.

I found Joe Morschauser's book, "How to play Wargames in Miniature" in the public library back circa 1966, when I was looking for books about chess strategy. Thus began my lifetime hobby!