I guess I went down the same route as most people Airfix models/playing with soldiers, reading Battle, Warlord and Victor comics, Commando weekly etc However, the moment I progressed to 'wargaming proper' is still fresh in my memory. I was about nine of ten years of age. It was the BBC TV series in the mid 1970's, 'Modelworld'. I'm sure many people here remember the series. One episode featured wargaming and from what I can remember a particular game set in the AWI with a young Arthur Harman I believe. After that I wrote my first set of rules and my best mate and I played our first wargame (with dice!) two days later. Apart from a gaming blip when I was at Uni I haven't looked back since. Now looking forward to passing the gaming torch to my new son in a few years, I hope.

Due to contact with veterans of WWII and other wars(Stepdad & his father, mum and a lot of Polish allied soldiers that I delivered papers/ran errands for) had a love of history and huge collection of Airfix figs and tanks. Wargaming proper came about when my older sister married a guy who wargamed and gave me an introductory game. Immediately went out to the library and borrowed as many wargaming books as I could and read them avidly.That was about 1976 I think.

I've always had an interest in history & modelling & in childhood it was toy soldiers on the floor - Airfix, Timpo, Britains etc'. Probably the first quasi historical games were between the Airfix French Foreign Legion & Arabs on a brown sheet over books on the floor, at about the age of 8 circa 1973. (I had the boxed 'Fort Sahara' set). Then my mother got me a copy of John Tunstills book (different cover to Stavkas) & I've had an interest ever since, although with varied degrees of activity.

Fort Sahara played a big part for me - being the centre of multiple battles in the back garden involving a mish mash of airfix napoleonics, acw, foreign legion, awi and cowboys (all at the same time) using a set of rules that my dad wrote (no idea what made him do that since he has no interest in gaming) Got into boardgames after being bought a book as a present that had a number of games in it (from memory pacific war, battle of britain, d-day and eastern front i think) Started playing proper games after a friend at school introduced me to Middlesbrough wargames club - my first proper game there being a 1/72 ww2 battle hosted by a lad with seemingly hundreds of tigers (he played germans of course)

Lots of airfix troops. Military Modelling had a wargaming section. Either Bruce Quarries Airfix WW2 rules or a booklet about wargaming which was in a series about mainly sports and chess if I recall. The series was called Play the Game. Soon after it was Featherstone books etc

As a nipper I remember trying to buy everything in the Airfix catalogue. I would play for hours with my unpainted plastics. Then one day I went to a cub scout fun day and some of the older scouts and ventures put on a wargame with loads of Hinchliffe, Minifig and other Napoleonic miniatures, in the middle of a field on a table tennis table. Anyway, as the afternoon drew on my mate and I were enthralled and consequently missed tea due to the spectacle. I was hooked and wanted to wargame properly. I even started a wargaming club, of sorts, at my junior school. A few years, many books and miniatures later I moved on to secondary school and low and behold there was a wargame club in one of the old air raid shelters behind the science block. There I spent many a happy break and lunchtime pushing models around the tables and perusing copies of Military Modelling, Airfix Magazine and Battle for Wargamers. I think I had every wargaming book on almost permanent loan from the local library, that was in the days when libraries used to have books on their shelves. from that point I have not looked back and am still gaming many years later. Even my wife accepts the hobby, more so when I used to paint for a shop and actually earned a little money to fund my hobby. Over the last weekend at Rampage I also met one of my youngest daughter's teachers who was playing in the competitions, which she found embarrassing to say the least. :)