For my two pence (three cents) worth I've been a wargamer since ever I can remember. I started off as a child on the ruins, parks and woodland that surrounded where I lived doing what grown ups now call live action role-play we called it "Cowboys and Indians" or "British and Jerries". Then our local post office shop got some aeroplanes and. ships by Eaglewall, Landberg and eventually Airfix. The coming of Airfix was the crucial factor soldiers, tanks, artillery, aircraft, ships everything really. From there it was a short step to inventing "rules" that had more to do with comics and films than reality - so here I was going through the hypothetical and fantasy phase. Dan Dare toys appeared and were incorporated as well as "Stingray", "Fireball XL6" and all sorts. At University I made friends with a fellow student and after a few weeks bumped into him in a model shop in Edinburgh. Neither of us had talked about our "toy soldiers". He played Napoleonics, I did WW2. Then we found a few others. So we started a club. No differentiation then - they were all wargames. It did not matter if they were on boards, terrain or on paper. We played "Diplomacy", "Risk", "Campaign", "Buccaneer" amongst others as well. I saw a few films - "55 Days at Peking", "Zulu", "Gunga Din" hooked me on colonials. Others reinforced or started interest in other peiiods. Books too. I'm reading the King Arthur trilogy by Bernard Cornwell and resisting (only just) starting yet another period. Incidentally my Martians (of John Carter ilk) have just been reinforced by a purchase of Parroom Station figures. I now have literally thousands of models, mainly 20mm, 25-28mm. for land warfare, some 1:72 WWI and WW2 aircraft (to support the land troops), 1:1200 ships, sci fi figures, fantasy figures in periods from prehistory to the distant stars. I've played almost every mixture imaginable. Mainly because the people I game with have different collections and we each take turns in organizing and providing the models. Maybe we are an odd bunch (our partners tell us we are) in that we all dabble and collect in a variety of periods and genres. All that is except one (there's always one!) who only does French Napoleonics. He plays anything but only collects Frenchies. Maybe we need to get "single period/genre" gamers to join in other things with us. And dare I say it - us with them? The biggest influences on me were not films or books but the people I gamed with. I'd never have played "Judge Dredd", Napoleonic Naval, Traveller, WWI in East Africa or the Seven Years War without other people setting up interesting games. I did not collect any of these - but I do have some Fantasy Armies, Ancients, AWI, Science Fiction and South American pre-dreadnoughts as a result of playing games and enjoying them. Win the hearts and minds and we and can all join in. So what do others think? Back to Dispatch March 2002 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com