A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step

If your reading this, then hello and welcome to my first blog post. I've been toying with the idea of starting my own blog space for a while, and now I've decided to start this to coincide with the new year 2013. Yes I know its still 2012, but only just and this is just the intro.

I have been a wargamer since age 13 so that means I've been playing with toy soldiers for 39 years. I started playing Napoleonics using the old WRG rules after reading Donald Featherstone, and Bruce Quarry, and watching the Waterloo film and the BBC TV series of War and Peace, whose military adviser was the late great Dr David Chandler and starred a very young Anthony Hopkins.

       

 

In the late 70s I went with a friend to stay at the first Wargames Holiday Centre in Pickering, Yorkshire, run and hosted by another great character, Mr Peter Gilder. This really opened my eyes to what wargaming could be with that amazing expanse of table space covered in great terrain and figures. We were privileged to watch the great man give a painting clinic, spend time watching the Battleground series on video, and leafing through Peter's great book collection. This in a pre-internet period when all the fantastic resources available to our hobby were not readily accessible. I still treasure those memories today.



Part of my WWII collection - Juno Beach landing

Blurred phone/camera shot of Napoleonics for Napoleon at War 

 

Recent run out of my WWII naval collection - GHQ HMS Exeter under fire from Graf Spee

My AWI collection using Maurice

 

I still play Napoleonics today and plan to use the blog to illustrate some of my current plans for future games with my growing collection of 18mm AB/Fantassin figures. However since those heady days of my youth I have built up other collections for WWII, land, air and sea, AWI, Age of Sail Naval.
In addition I have followed Peter's example and built a large collection of wargaming/historical books, and have just finished reading The Peninsular War by Jac Weller, and have finally got around to reading David Chandler's Campaigns of Napoleon, that has been sitting on my book shelf unread for too many years.

I am a regular contributor and founder member of the Devon Wargames Group one of the oldest clubs in Devon, and many models in my collection are on show there.
http://devonwargames.blogspot.co.uk/
I am thanks to my lovely wife the fortunate possessor of my own wargames room and permanent 9x5 foot table which needs more games to be played on it and which I hope to report about on this blog.

So the blog, what's that all about? Well when I think back to all the great games and great times I've spent with friends playing a hobby that has meant so much to me, I felt it was sad that the majority of that time has gone unrecorded and I can't look back except in my memory. So I now plan to use this blog as my personal Wargames diary, littered with occasional pictures and stuff to help illustrate. In addition I hope others might find my little corner in cyberspace interesting and entertaining.