1000th Blog Post!

 Blimey, who would have thought it, 1000 posts! Particularly given some very fallow periods over the years since I started blogging in 2008. 2011/12 seemed to be particularly poor years for some reason, but I found my feet again in 2013.

Now I'm retired my 'job' is apparently creating content for the blog, so many many thanks to my loyal readers over the years and particularly those who comment. It is much appreciated. 

I've been doing some nostalgic stuff recently, what with re-visiting WRG 1925 to 50, (re) buying Traveller etc so I thought it might be apt to review some of my personal wargaming milestones. 

This is what kicked it all off for me, Charles Grants 'Battle'. I would only have been about 10 or 11 when I got these, and prior to that I'd just been pushing around Airfix figures with some very notional 'rules' which me and my friends had made up.

I was just entranced by the concepts, the presentation and the various illustrations. The 'Programmed Instruction' approach was of course formalised by Squad Leader late in the decade, but this is where it happened first.

The account I loved the most was 'Reconnaissance in Force', as although I did manage to both the smaller scenarios from the book as well as ones I designed myself, I never had enough kit to tackle this one.

The introduction of 6mm figures was a boon for a cash strapped kid, and although we tried a number of rules for the 6mm which came out in the early 1970s, this was the set which stuck. What a fabulous set of rules and they felt a lot more serious and grounded in reality than some of them. 

The 20mm stuff was put aside and we played lots of games with these instead.

Similarly with Napoleonics, we started with Bruce Quarrie and Airfix figures but rapidly moved on to the WRG 1685 to 1845 set with 6mm figures. My friend David and I took it in turns to host games, and we both perfected means of safely transporting our 6mm armies by bike from one end of town to the other.

Here is the hand drawn area campaign map I did for an Imagi-Nations campaign in the late 1970s between Hofenburg and Norvonia, who bore a strong resemblance to Britain and France in terms of their troops if little in terms of geography.

And a load of pre-generated battlefields using the WRG terrain generator to go with it. Blimey, the industry of youth.

As the 70s wore into the 80s I became increasingly distracted by boardgames, RPGs and later on, computer games. Having left University and with work and a young family, computer games were a much better fit for my lifestyle and although I still hung onto a lot of my old figure and boardgame stuff, they didn't get played.

There was a long figure gaming hiatus from the mid 1980s until the late 1990s when I discovered this....

Command Decision (yes I know these are the Army lists, the rules are in the loft). Many thanks to the Mansfield Wargames Club for switching me on to the possibilities of more modern rules which were both realistic but allowed me to fight the battalion+ sized engagements I'd aspired to when I first read "Battle" 25 years before.  

In fact CD2 was rapidly superceded at Mansfield by Spearhead, an even more streamlined set which allowed for even greater megalomania. I  became more aware of the concept of 'design for effect' as a result of playing these and I still think the command system hasn't been bettered for grand tactical WW2 gaming.

Eventually, dragging over to Mansfield became something of a chore and I bit the bullet and managed to find some like minded people at Sheffield Wargames Society (you know who you are!).

One of the big things at the time was the newly released AK47 Republic, and along with being good for modern African games, they allowed me to scratch my long standing itch to play the Spanish Civil War using my 'Mexicanski 36' variant, which proved surprisingly long lived. 

I've been a member of SWS and Wargames Developments for over 25 years now, longer than the period between reading 'Battle' and 'Command Decision' and figure gaming, rules and scenario design now seem to be a permanent fixture of what I do. 

I greatly enjoy recording what I've been doing on the blog, it helps me keep tabs on things and I hope at least some of it is of interest to people out there. One thing I'm not very good at is keeping the rules and scenario downloads section up to date, I just seem to prefer doing game and modelling reports. I'll have a look at what is in the other sections at some point. 

Anyway, thanks for reading, and we will see if I make it to 2000 posts before Google decide to replace blogger with some AI abomination.