Strange to say DB but my Wargaming career started because of something similar.
When my Gran died we found among her things an old note book written by my Great Great Grandfather. At first glance it looked like a receipts book for deliveries he had made from his shop and payments from customers. There were some blank pages after his last entry, and I was about to discard it when I noticed that the last couple of pages were written on with addresses of family members who had emigrated to the States and most notably New York. At the side of one was a cryptic note that said “Last seen on the Battlefield at Cold Harbor." This got my two sons interested, so I did some research and we decided to do a Diorama of the most interesting part of the field using Airfix soldiers. When completed it was about 4 ft x 3. We made a Perspex lid for it and it was placed at the end of my workshop on a table. Sometime later a friend who taught History at the school where I worked popped in to get a little job done for him. He was teaching the ACW at the time and asked if I would loan it. They placed it in the school library and each class was taken in during the history lesson where he and I talked about the battle. After that it just went into the workshop again until Mrs. K. came in one day and said we should do something with it. She had seen a book on Wargames in the local Library by a chap called Livingstone, and promptly bought it for my birthday. The diorama was soon dismantled and a series of AWC games went into action on the living room floor. Later this developed into the Napoleonic wars still with Airfix plastics, and then D&D followed by Warhammer as that emerged onto the scene. Not long after that Captain Kiwi and I started the School Wargames Club. Duncan McFarlane the Editor of Wargames Illustrated found out about the club and invited the boys to put on a game at Partisan as he was trying to encourage more young people to take up Historical Wargaming.
We went on to do shows all over the country culminating in three years at the World Championships at Derby where we came runners up in the Demo Games one year, and even had our own show at school for five years which mad the club very well off because all the facilities were supplied by the school including the meals done by Cook Supervisor and Captain Kiwi's good lady who gave of their time freely. We made more money on the food than the gate receipts and the Traders stand charges combined.
There was always an element of background history for every game and a series of display board with maps and pictures of the action. Captain Kiwi refined this with a magnetic display board with coloured magnetic blocks and arrows to depict the action as it took place on the table to compare it with the way that the actual action had evolved on the maps on the display boards.
A great time was had by one and all. When the 350th Anniversary of the commencement of the ECW came along in 1992 we did a large Wargame of the ECW in the school hall over a period of three days with each class being brought in one at a time to see the action. At breaks and lunchtimes the hall was packed with kids trying to catch up with the action. This was to be the clubs swansong, although we did not know it at the time. When the cadre of the founding members left for University, their younger siblings tried to carry on for a while but after a while more and more went over to Warhammer, and the Last few shows we did were run by myself the Captain, my two sons Mrs K. and a dog. At salute that year we decided it was not viable anymore, and with a new headmaster in situ who was not in favour of Orcs, Goblins, and death Knights invading his school, sadly the "Fife and Drum" Wargames club sadly folded, although somewhere I still have my club badge, but not the tee shirt which did not fit my more apple proportions any more. I will try and dig it out DB.
Rob.
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Originally Posted by Bligh
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