I'm happy to be a new staff writer on the board.  My focus is the old-school, the dusty relics and chestnuts you might remember playing in high school.. or know from your parents' tales of high school and college gaming.

But these aren't my memories.  I was born in 1974, and by the time I'd started gaming, SPI was on its way out.  So these games are new to me, and what would be a trip down memory lane for others is a voyage of discovery for myself.

So I hope you'll follow along with me, and I'd love to hear other folks' reminiscences as I open the time capsule and pull out consims of the past.

You can find my first article here: http://wargamer.com/article/3209/the-retro-grognard-the-birth-of-the-wargame

Gideon

Gideon, what do you currently have on your tabletop?

Is there a large community of old board wargamers out there?

Where would one find these old board wargamers?

This month, I'm going to be trying SPI's "Lost Battles," an operational game of the Eastern Front designed so that one could model a number of scenarios (though few were ever actually created).  I've been going through SPI's early games in order so I can see all the various evolutions and evolutionary dead ends along the way.

In my experience, the wargame community is divided into three groups:

1) The original grognards, all guys, in their 50s, 60s, 70s.  They fondly remember the old games, but they don't play them anymore.

2) The New Wave, in their 40s, mostly guys, who grew up with Dungeons and Dragons and wargames in the 80s.  They have played some of the old games, but they don't play them anymore.

3) The current crop, in their 20s and 30s, mostly guys, mostly miniature gamers, who have hardly heard of the old games.

I'm an anomaly the wargame community in that I'm not exactly part of it.  Instead of finding fellow gamers, I've tended to create them by bringing them into the hobby.  This means that the people I game with tend to be younger than me, in large part female, in their teens, 20s and early 30s, but they play what I like to play, which is the old stuff.  Don't get me wrong--I buy new titles too, sometimes, but the mainstay of gaming in my group is the older games.

So, if you're just some random person in the world, you probably won't find anyone nearby who is playing a classic game.  You'll have to turn to VASSAL or something, or turn somebody onto classic gaming who hasn't done it before.

But if you're in North County San Diego, well, there's lots of us.

Originally Posted By neopeius (19 JUL 2012 8:09am)

 

.....

In my experience, the wargame community is divided into three groups:

 

1) The original grognards, all guys, in their 50s, 60s, 70s.  They fondly remember the old games, but they don't play them anymore.

 

2) The New Wave, in their 40s, mostly guys, who grew up with Dungeons and Dragons and wargames in the 80s.  They have played some of the old games, but they don't play them anymore.

 

3) The current crop, in their 20s and 30s, mostly guys, mostly miniature gamers, who have hardly heard of the old games.

.....

 

Funny that none of your three groups are playing the old games at all...

This is mostly because IMHO the more recent games are just better games in general; and they should be, having learned what worked and what didn't from the games of the past.  Take old AH CRTs from the 60s for example.  Brutal things with mostly dead or alive results.  Entire games can be won or lost on one die roll. (AHs Afrika Korps for example, often comes down to one critical die roll at Tobruk).  More recent combat resolution is often much more realistic, with results that "feel" less arbitrary and more "real"; step loss, and "disrupt" being common at low odds.     

The old games I still play are mostly from the 80s;  AH's Russian Campaign, Yaquinto's Ironclads, AH's Squad Leader, GDW's Eylau, GDW's Red Star White Eagle,...etc.  But frankly the games I enjoy the most are mostly from the last 15 years. 

Originally Posted By ArizonaTank (9 AUG 2012 5:12pm)

Originally Posted By neopeius (19 JUL 2012 8:09am)

 

.....

In my experience, the wargame community is divided into three groups:

 

1) The original grognards, all guys, in their 50s, 60s, 70s.  They fondly remember the old games, but they don't play them anymore.

 

2) The New Wave, in their 40s, mostly guys, who grew up with Dungeons and Dragons and wargames in the 80s.  They have played some of the old games, but they don't play them anymore.

 

3) The current crop, in their 20s and 30s, mostly guys, mostly miniature gamers, who have hardly heard of the old games.

.....

 

 

Funny that none of your three groups are playing the old games at all...

  I think I am actually probably between group 1 and 2, and I don't often play the old games either (at least those made in the 60s and 70s), although I have many of them. 

 

This is mostly because IMHO the more recent games are just better games in general; and they should be, having learned what worked and what didn't from the games of the past.  Take old AH CRTs from the 60s for example.  Brutal things with mostly dead or alive results.  Entire games can be won or lost on one die roll. (AHs Afrika Korps for example, often comes down to one critical die roll at Tobruk).  More recent combat resolution is often much more realistic, with results that "feel" less arbitrary and more "real"; step loss, and "disrupt" being common at low odds.     

 

The old games I still play are mostly from the 80s;  AH's Russian Campaign, Yaquinto's Ironclads, AH's Squad Leader, GDW's Eylau, GDW's Red Star White Eagle,...etc.  But frankly the games I enjoy the most are mostly from the last 15 years. 

 

That's understandable and not a bad thing at all.  I have not been very excited by any new games, but I'm sure good ones are out there. 

That said, I think there are plenty of old games which are a blast to play, and they've just been forgotten.  And it's also nice to see where you've been so you understand where you've gotten to.

Decent Coverage of Anzio, though you really ought to have included how long the game actually takes to play.