GAMING BACK IN THE DAY: MY FIRST TRUE WARGAME...

Image Copyright Games Workshop used without permission

When I was a teenager, I was heavily into role-playing and other tabletop games, but miniature wargaming wasn't yet on my radar. I used minis for RPGs, and loved the tiny plastic figures in games like Axis & Allies, but the time, expense, and space needed for miniature wargaming back in the mid-80's, were well out of my reach.

That all changed in 1987. I stumbled across a hardback tome in my friendly local game store, with the image pictured above wrapped around the cover. As I perused its contents, my eyes were opened up to a whole new (and very British) world or art, fiction and game-play concepts that really grabbed my grey matter. I snapped it up, and a few packs of miniatures to use with it, that day, despite the fact that I knew I'd be eating extremely light that week because of the expense.

That game was Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.

Funny thing was, I had already been primed for the purchase due to a multi-page ad I had seen earlier in Dragon Magazine. It was a fantastic ad for many reasons, but this is the bit that hooked me initially:

You don't need a ton of minis? Check! Science fiction mixed with fantasy? Check! And the miniatures? Check out these beauties:

Check! Check!! Check!!!

Unfortunately, the times being what they were (before the internet made acquiring anything, anywhere, at anytime, a dawdle), the chances of me actually getting my hands on the game were pretty darned slim. So when I say that my stumbling across this book in a small FLGS in Richardson, Texas convinced me that this game and I were meant to be, you know I mean it.

My first collection of models were eclectic, to say the least. There were no real army lists, and I pretty much just picked whatever I thought looked cool. My initial collection had renegades, eldar, orks, and a Zoat, IIRC (it's been over 3 decades, since). But from that small group, a lifelong hobby grew, and from that point on, I purchased everything GW that came my way.

I can also say, without fear of contradiction, that I kickstarted the GW Hobby in my neck of the woods. My initial find (quickly followed up by WFB 3rd edition), was introduced to my buddies in high school and they took to this fascinating new game with equal relish, and spread it outward from there. My best friend Richard quickly took to the Space Marines (he became a life-long Dark Angels fanatic, with a massive army only matched in size by his World Eaters force), another friend became obsessed with Chaos, and I just kept mixing it up, creating 'renegade' armies of various miniatures I found cool and purchased in individual blister packs, or had gathered from the various boxed set games released throughout the late eighties (this DIY attitude being positively encouraged in the original RT rules).

I only settled down and created a standard army when they introduced the new Eldar rules in White Dwarf, and the miniatures appeared in a store down at Red Bird Mall (a 30 minute trip which required an epic 2 hour series of bus rides to complete). Again, I forwent eating to purchase an entire army of aspect warriors, which came 5 to a pack for $5, with a Farseer and a (tiny) Avatar to lead them.

Today, that Farseer is still in my collection, leading my Blood Bowl Dark Elves as coach and team wizard, but the rest of the models from that era are long gone. Oddly enough, I still have that original ad. Not the Dragon mag it came in, just the ad. I'm not sure how it has come to survive the many, many moves and purges over the decades, but I think I know why: it was the start of a very long, and wonderful hobby relationship that influenced the designer I am today...