"Who Got You Started With Minis? A Friend!" Topic

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Who Got You Started With Minis or Influenced You?

20% of the votes: "a friend"
11%: "Donald Featherstone"
11%: "other (explain)"
11%: "Charles Grant"
9%: "a classmate"

Duke Seifried Had a wargame at a mall in town when I was 16 or 17, saw it and started buying and painting.

I guess you could say my father, though he wasn't a gamer. He did supply,me with plenty of army men.

Ny Dad -- he hand-carved fleets of WW2 warships to play a simple game he made up based on the dice game craps. We'd also set up all my plastic soldiers, he had simple rules for movement and you'd roll a d6 on your turn and get that many BB gun shots at the other side's soldiers. Or you could fire "artillery," which was a small rock, but you had to lob it in a high arc to hit.

My parents gave me some Britain figures for Christmas when I was 10. I was hooked on toy soldiers for the next 70 years :)

I played in a simple ACW miniatures game at an International Plastic Modelers Society meet and was hooked when I saw the sergeant stripes painted on one Union figure.

Donald Featherstone books in the local library.

there was an article in the Sunday paper pull out of the Parade magazine with a group doing wargaming with beautifully painted Historex figures. I realized the gentleman lived only 2 blocks away from me. The article said they met every Sunday at his house, so I went over there one Sunday and knocked on the door, they invited me in and let me watch their game and they were explaining the rules to me as they were playing. They gave me an open invitation to join them when ever I was free to do so. I was smitten with the wargaming immediately but decided 54mm Historex figures were too large. So when I talked my older brother to drive me to the Hobby Chest in Skokie, I started out purchasing Kriegsspieler Napoleonics.

My mom bought me Featherstone's "Solo Wargaming". Looking back, I'm pretty sure it was a polite way to tell me to take my board games games and leave my father alone …

I collected the old Heritage middle earth figures but screwed up and gave a bunch away as a wedding present. When I went to replace them I found the line had been discontinued. I visited a wholesale shop that allowed retail purchases. It was like being in a rummage bin. I didn't find any, but I got on their mailing list.

Some months later I got a flyer about a discussion group on ACW unit organization they were planning to host. The guy who did the presentation had brought a 15mm army. Turns out that he too was a protégé of Duke Seifried.

The rest is history.

Me while looking for figures to make a WWII chest set game.

When I started my first job back in 1969, my boss was an 18th century wargamer and it did not take long for me to be recruited into games using 25mm Minifigs and "CHARGE!" rules on his dining room floor.

Donald Featherstone's books in the library and Airfix HO/OO scale plastic figures and vehicles. A combination made in Heaven.

Me.

Saw Ral Partha figures 1980, bought some for AD&D, learned to paint them myself. Moved to Citadel and Grenadier. Rest was downhill. Wish I still had them!

I started playing with plastic toy soldiers at around 4 or 5……. just an evolution in my interests

H G Wells "Little Wars" in the school library started it, but Donald Featherstone turned it into a passion

As a child my favorite toys were toy soldiers (I often got a Marx playset as my main Christmas present) so when I discovered WRG rules & other rules sets it was only natural that I take up miniatures gaming.

My dad also, although he wasn't a wargamer. He and my mom wouldn't even let me have toy soldiers or toy guns for years, when I was recuperating from a dog attack injury, he bought me my first Airfix Waterloo boxes.

First Rules were C.S. Grant.