L'Art De La Guerre - last two practice games and a personal wargaming nostalgia trip

Stephen off to Cork competition this weekend so final practice session for his Ottoman Turkish army.

I used Catalan and Order of St John against him today so lots of chances to practice evading, shuffling, shooting and generally annoying the enemy that his army relies upon.

Hopefully he good enough practice to do well (he usually does) 

 

Bit of nostalgia now as I came across several images related to old memories from days as a nipper and early wargaming influences.

Action Man (GI Joe) a very early military influence, I had one that 'talked' and had realistic gripping hands no less.

In addition to basic figures one could obtain several specialist uniforms and I had these two as well as several others

Had this beastie 

An early literary influence I got this on 5th birthday

Whilst contemporaries were buying various 'pop' albums this was my first ever LP 

I had of course watched dozens of war films but these two really helped get me into proper wargaming having seen them in cinema and thereafter trying to recreate such imagery in miniature or with board wargames

This led to devouring numerous war related reference books and novels (Sven Hassel) of which this was one of the first

An early Christmas toy that I soon (circa 1969) had to use only inside as 'Troubles' started here in Ulster and deemed too dangerous for young lads to have any gun type toy out in public

I had a ton of these transfer sets all war themed (still some knocking around)

Always lusted over various of these sets which were advertised in US Comics but never took plunge

I had both of these metal Dinky items (still have the cap-bomb that Stuka could drop)

Box set from local model shop from which I still have several of the terrain pieces

Hours spent pouring through this if only to enjoy art illustrations and planning purchases of boxes of 'Midgies' i.e. 20mm figures and kits. Turns out I still have this along with one for Revell and several for Taimya kits.

A very popular kit (still have this) useful for several periods

More Airfix goodness (think just about everyone I knew had this set)

Another Dinky set I also had a 25pdr and a Centurion

One of the cheap as chips low detail models Airfix produced which bulked out many a collection

Another popular kit that has given sterling service still to this day

Another 'play' set a lot of us had

A selection of the intoxicating Airfix box art, what red blooded youth could resist !?

Couple of later Airfix box sets

A big influence in late 1970s was this glossy gem

Which led to reading lots of stuff from these great old school (although they did not seem so at time) wargame types

Charles Grant

Don Featherstone

Peter Gilder in the excellent Battleground TV show. 

Sadly I only got to see a couple of these (no video recording in those days) and especially miffed not getting to see the WW2 episode with Gavin Lyall !!

My first two sets of wargame rules, I played OP Warboard a lot in early wargaming days

In tandem with getting into WW2 miniature wargaming in a big way I also started with board Wargames of which these two beauties were my first purchases around 1977.

First of metal figures I became aware of and kernel of interest in other periods besides WW2

Another very early influence, several early Taimya models built by my Dad whilst a Squaddie in West Germany, photo is from 1972 (I lived in BAOR Paderborn W.Germany for a year)

 

Up in loft other day for better half and found these (which started this nostalgia trip) and I think these are Dragon Models 1/6th figures that my son had when he were but a lad (20+ years ago), several figures but these two only ones I could find almost complete kit for.

A good deal fancier than my Action Men of yore.