Re: simple rules for non-gamers

>> I guess a lot of us fall into this realm. My first wargame was
_Panzer
Leader_, the same system (pretty much) in the Western theatre. I
eventually
picked up a used version of Panzerblitz.
>
>My first wargame was the old Metagaming pocket game, Chitin:I. I had
>ordered OGRE, but Metagaming sent me the wrong item. Instead of getting
>all buggery and sending it back (being all of, what, maybe 13?), I
opted
>to just check it out. I liked it, and re-ordered OGRE (and Melee), and
>go what I wanted the second time around. I decided I liked gaming so
much
>at that point I saved my precious $$ up to buy Arnhem: A Bridge Too Far
>and Basic D&D. The rest, as they say, is history...

Heh.  These "back in the day" stories are fun - it's interesting to see
how
people got into it all...

I *thought* my first experiences with wargames were with OGRE/GEV (with
those nifty little black plastic containers that never closed properly,
counters, etc), CarWars, and games like Risk, back around junior high. 
But
just this weekend I was in a store with my S.O. and saw some
cheapie-plastic green army men.  They reminded me of my collection of
Britains (Britain's??) cowboy and indian figures from when I was 5 or 6.
My dad had a box full of wooden blocks, offcuts from carpentry, odds and
ends of paneling, etc., that he got from a friend who was a carpenter. 
We
would both set up "forts" facing each other about 6' apart and set up
our
figures (I was always the cowboys, of course).	We had a set of plastic
toy
guns that shot little suction-cup darts.  We would each take shots at
the
other's figures until someone had none left, and he lost.  Ahh, the good
old days :)   Certainly a simple game...

My dad even created a "real" wargame (tanks, apc's, infantry, etc) using
counters, gridded maps, even cusomized dice (made from a section of
pencil
with writing on each of the six sides).  I don't remember anything about
it
other than what the map looked like and the little pencil-dice things.
That would have been around the same period - when I was 6ish.	Geeze. 
I
forgot that until I started writing this note.	I'll have to remind him
about it - he looked at me a bit funny when I got into wargaming with
miniatures.....

:)

-Adrian

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Adrian Johnson
adrian@stargrunt.ca
http://www.stargrunt.ca

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