Who belonged to a wargaming club?

[lord of the mark]

The old problem with board wargames.

Who to play with? No AI like in a computer game, or MP via internet. So that meant either playing "solitaire" - ultimately unsatisfying - or finding people to play against in real life. Not as easy for these obscure, often difficult games as for say Monopoly or Risk. ( I managed to get one neighbor kid to play Afrika Korps, but I dont think he ever really liked it) So inevitably it meant a club of some kind. At my high school we had a "strategic gaming" club, which met once a week. Hard to learn, setup and play a game and still get home for dinner, but fond memories nonetheless. (and an occasional field trip to SPI HQ, which was not far away)

Your experiences?

[rah]

When I was at Bradley in Peoria, I joined the gaming club at the local junior college. When I went to check them out to see if it was worth joining, I walked into the room and saw a 20 foot x 20 foot area set up with 8 fleets of naval minatures. 8 guys with ranging rulers. I signed up on the spot. It was about 50 guys that played almost every boardgame know to man, every Wed. evening. Avalon hill games were dominent. A lot of minatures also. Some strange poeple, but a great group. A lot of the normal board games also. Risk, rail baron, etc, and a lot of obscure ones. Junta. Escape from Auswitz.

[Urban Ranger]

You could always join the wargaming club at the local university. When I was an undegrad student we had a middle-aged man (40+ then) in the club who ran a game store in town. He's cool and we got along great.

[Jon Miller]

I had one in undregrad

I usually got to play a board game of some type twice a month

Jon Miller

[Standup]

Never been in an official one but we use play on a regular basis before we all headed off to univeristy. Friends parents had a carvan in the back garden which never went anywhere so we adopted it. Third Reich was a favourite and after a year or two we managed to own all the Squad Leader add ons/expansions between about six of us.

There was a roleplaying club but no wargames club at Aberystwyth (deepest, darkest Wales). Just a few old guys (mmh at least 30 y.o) who didn't want to play with us kids in case we damaged their precious games. Never quite understood their attitude although i guess at 18 we were probably pretty annoying.

[rah]

The only thing worse then damaging their precious games, is never using their precious games.

[Jon Miller]

squad leader kicks ass

I haven't played it (or ASL) in over a year though

I have all the SL expansions and about half the ASL ones

Jon Miller

[Stuie]

I have played wargames solitaire for the most part, and was overjoyed when computers advanced to the point that they could provide some sort of opponent.

Beyond that, I had one friend that would play occasionally, but he moved, and my brother would play when he had time (he left for college when my interest began to peak and then moved out right after college).

The "wargame" club at my high school was more into Warhammer than historical wargames.

[rah]

One nice thing about having a twin brother, there was always a skilled opponent. And we could play the Avalon Hill games and leave the board setup for days.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Stuie
IThe "wargame" club at my high school was more into Warhammer than historical wargames.

we were not only into wargames, we even had one or two people who really got into grognard type stuff.

Keep Stuy High!

And that was the old campus on East 15th Street. SPI was on East 23rd St, off Madison Square, IIRC. So I got to actually buy my SPI games over a counter, instead of by mail.

Never met Dunnigan or anyone like that though. Probably should have organized a club event to try to do that.

[Grumbold]

I was introduced to wargames when I was about 10. The school art teacher was a Wargame nut who also had a knack for inventing really simple rules for people to play out a battle in 2-3 hours which still kept the essential tactics true. We played endless Ancients, Napoleonic and WW II battles on 8' x 4' tables using those old plastic figures you could get. No way ere we allowed to touch his personal armies though, those were works of art.

A little while later we got some English Civil War figures and the first D&D and fantasy battle rules started appearing. Not long after that we all started having enough cash to buy some of our own armies and boardgames and the variety exploded.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by rah
One nice thing about having a twin brother, there was always a skilled opponent.

Is this another twin brother that we don't know about?


I used to enjoy a number of different wargames with friends in high school but unfortunately they were on the way out by the time I got to Varsity.
Replaced in many peoples minds with all the latest GW miniatures series. More cumbersome to prepare and less satisfying to play IMO...

[rah]

Originally posted by ravagon

Is this another twin brother that we don't know about?

Not quite.

Our older brother is only 18 months older than us, but monopoly was about the limit of his board playing skils.

[Ming]

And the odds are... he would flip the board if something bad happened...

I was in a "The Strategic War Gaming Society" when I was in college. We played games every Saturday.

Our best accomplishment was playing War in Europe.
We had 20 people playing the different countries with the larger countries with multiple generals. We set it up and took it down each week. It took us over a year to play.

Oh... and the Germans lost... and a year earlier than in real life

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by Ming
And the odds are... he would flip the board if something bad happened...

I was in a "The Strategic War Gaming Society" when I was in college. We played games every Saturday.

Our best accomplishment was playing War in Europe.
We had 20 people playing the different countries with the larger countries with multiple generals. We set it up and took it down each week. It took us over a year to play.

Oh... and the Germans lost... and a year earlier than in real life

That was and still is my dream!!! To play a game such as mentioned above with many people.

It's too bad that things like family, children, and work get in the way but when I'm ready to retire I know what I'm gonna do!

There must have been some serious secret discussions going on during that game. Good stuff