How did you get your start into War games?

rtroha

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I started with Panzerblitz around 1975, then SL, then ASL as soon as it was released.

I started teaching my my oldest son ASL when he was around 11 or 12, but Magic the Gathering stole him away never to return. Now he is good enough at MtG that he travels around the country playing in Grand Prix events and sometimes facing pros. He also runs a popular MtG web site called draftsim.com.
 

tripvm

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A friend introduced me to Tactics II when I was about 12. Shortly after that I picked up Panzer Leader then expanded from there. I had Squad Leader by the time I was 13 or 14.
 

rtroha

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Does anyone else remember that Avalon Hill shipped Beyond Valor before they shipped the ASLRB? I remember looking at the new stuff on the counters and there was not yet any rulebook to explain it all.
 

Jeffrey D Myers

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Watched a lot of the TV series Combat! as a kid. My first wargame (other than Risk/Battleship/etc.) was SPI's Barbarossa in 1972, after seeing an SPI advertisement in Boy's Life magazine, which led to a Strategy & Tactics subscription. Worked through the starter kits to full ASL about five years ago....
 

R Hooks

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Watched a lot of the TV series Combat! as a kid. My first wargame (other than Risk/Battleship/etc.) was SPI's Barbarossa in 1972, after seeing an SPI advertisement in Boy's Life magazine, which led to a Strategy & Tactics subscription. Worked through the starter kits to full ASL about five years ago....
I used to like "Combat" too, but I'm pretty sure if I saw one today it would be like watching a singing cowboy show, outdated.
 

Jeffrey D Myers

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Season 1 was the best, with Seasons 2-4 losing bite a bit with Gene Levitt as the sole producer.... I binge watched the series a few years ago.
 

Kijug

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Does anyone else remember that Avalon Hill shipped Beyond Valor before they shipped the ASLRB? I remember looking at the new stuff on the counters and there was not yet any rulebook to explain it all.
Yep. Also, my rulebook (1985) didn't have the Glossary (but had the index and intro pages). So I'm reading the rules and trying to figure out things...references to the Glossary, etc. I finally contacted AH and got a copy. That made things WAAAAY easier to understand. Heh.
 

Paul M. Weir

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Hmmm! Some thing is lurking in the depths of my memory. One US division, can't rightly remember which, quite possibly 2nd Armoured, did issue camouflage outer layers in time for the D-Day or immediate post D-Day landings. That was abandoned within a month or two because of the risk of being mistaken for SS units. While the uniform pattern was standard US Army, the colouring was the same as USMC camouflage.
 

Gordon

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Yes, I recall reading about that as well. No source handy.
 

NicosRex

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When I moved up to secondary school (as a scholarship boy) there was a plethora of clubs and activities to choose from. Amongst these was the Montgomery Military Modelling and Wargaming Society (Monty had attended the school and had used the school premises as a quiet location to carry out his part of the planning for D Day - his map of the beaches had been donated to the school and adorned one wall of the meeting room named after him).

I joined the club for the modelling activities as I made indifferent dioramas with Historex and Tamiya models. This led in easy steps to miniatures war games of various periods, including on one memorable occasion using the school’s playing fields for a vast Fletcher Pratt WW2 naval game using heavily converted Airfix 1/600 scale models.

Somewhere along the way AH and SPI games started to make an appearance at club meetings and the first of these that really sticks in my mind is Panzerblitz. SL followed when it was first published and the rest is history!
 

Old Noob

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Got my start in high school circa 1975, I started playing Panzerblitz at the cafeteria table (as well as Tobruk). Later branched into D & D, but stayed true to
boardgames. 1977, in the service found a curious game Squad Leader. Stayed true since then.
 

Eagle4ty

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Hmmm! Some thing is lurking in the depths of my memory. One US division, can't rightly remember which, quite possibly 2nd Armoured, did issue camouflage outer layers in time for the D-Day or immediate post D-Day landings. That was abandoned within a month or two because of the risk of being mistaken for SS units. While the uniform pattern was standard US Army, the colouring was the same as USMC camouflage.
An airborne outfit, I believe 507th (but don't quote me on it) or a battalion of it, made cammo uniforms for D-Day made by a mixture of painting and dyes. The Guys hated it as it chaffed the skin and became a literal nightmare to put up with after a few days in the field. I do remember one of our old guys from my VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) post had been in the 505 PIR and said they always chided the guys from whatever outfit it was because it had turned their skin kind of a black-green striped look. Most of the guys from the unit quickly got rid of their Airborne "baggy pants" and blouses for the more traditional G.I. fare ASAP whenever possible foregoing the airborne look for some modicom of comfort or at least relief from the miseryof its wear. Someone, perhaps Atkinson, had mentioned this in one of their books as well (too lazy to go looking for it).

BTW my dad had a similar experience while in the Pacific theater. He served with the 32nd "Red Arrow" Infantry Division as an FO from Buna, Papua New Guinea until they accepted Yamashita's surrender on Luzon in the Philippines. Somewhere along the line they also used dyes on their uniforms to approximate some kind of cammo. However the dyes soon bled through and with the continued effects of taking atribine tables it turned their skin a kind of orange-yellow color; so much so that they started calling themselves the American Japanese army.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Hmmm! Some thing is lurking in the depths of my memory. One US division, can't rightly remember which, quite possibly 2nd Armoured, did issue camouflage outer layers in time for the D-Day or immediate post D-Day landings. That was abandoned within a month or two because of the risk of being mistaken for SS units. While the uniform pattern was standard US Army, the colouring was the same as USMC camouflage.
Yes, you are right that it was 2d Armored (not 2nd Armoured :) ) that did this - specifically one of the armored infantry battalions and I believe one of the engineer units.
 
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Michael Dorosh

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To answer the main question - it was this that hooked me, about age 8


Our school library had this, I really liked it, mom bought it for me, and even cut out the counters after gluing them to coloured construction paper and colouring them with pencil crayons.
 
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