I still have a box jammed full of the 1/72 stuff. The latter were based on cut-out 1/144 scale precoloured card models bought and built en masse for an earlier 'dabble'. This was to have been Ardennes 1944 and I acquired quite a set of 1/76 kits to represent a Panther tank company (improved Matchbox models, mainly) with various supporting weapons and a Panzergrenadier company in Sdkfz 251 half-tracks made from card. Another joint enterprise wargame with a work colleague (Ray) had fallen flat. One conclusion I quickly reached - this would be about 1970 - was that the ideal was a wargame with what would today be called an artificial intelligence foe. One you could play against entirely in your own time, without reliance on anyone else.įast forward to the 1980s. Sadly, we never got around to playing the wargame - not the last time such an enterprise foundered, as it happened. I think I still have a school jotter filled with the movement, spotting, gunnery and damage tables I laboriously copied from the book. World War 2 was our chosen period. I obtained some Tri-ang Minic diecast warships and made some flat balsa representational hulls to flesh out my fleet. This was based mainly on rules designed for naval warfare, from this schoolmate's 1960s book (which I stumbled across and picked up a couple of years ago in an Oxfam second hand bookshop): In sixth form, I was part of a foursome (yes John H, John W and Mervyn, if any of you are reading this) who arranged to fight an imaginary world war, in a world of our own devising where we each ruled an island country. Wargaming I dabbled with most of my adolescent life. Which brings me to the subject of this piece, not so much a mission report but a bit of admittedly self-indulgent reminiscing about two battles fought with 1/300 'micro armour' on the desk of a former home on summer days long gone now, what seems a lifetime ago.

The wargames I like much better although I dislike those ones that simulate wargaming, rather than war. RTS I don't like mainly because of the pervasive God view and the small scale. I'm not a fan of so-called Real Time Strategy games and have only ever bought a few PC wargames - those from the second two titles in the title, if you get my meaning. I like aircraft and tank combat sims, primarily.

In whatever fashion, in whatever period or part of the world and with whatever weapons we like to create virtual mayhem, there's at least one combat simulation product for us. Life before Combat Mission, Graviteam Tactics and Wargame: European Escalation

Best 1/285 modern tanks