'Battle' Practical Wargaming by Charles Grant

Wonder how many of the older BOW/OTTERS out there started with above?

@warzan talking about his and Lloydy’s start in gaming brought back memories .

I remember  finding it up a corner in Beechdale library when I was about 12 , little did I know it would begin a 50 year journey into gaming. Starting of with the mountain of badly built Airfix kits and the soft plastic HO .

About a year later  I was lucky in that Sgt Major at my Army Cadets started one of the 1st wargames club with Wilf Upton who ran the model shop it Wolverhampton St. Walsall where I was intoduced @torros to 1/300th micro tanks and WRG 1925 to 1950 rules, though none of us younger members could afford a full set so we just had a couple of copies of certain pages and we only got those because Wilf was an ex printer and still had friends in the industry . A member from Aldridge worked for Leicester micor models (pre skytrex) and brought down a selection of WW2 tanks at 5p a pop or 10p for Tiggers . Infantry was an interesting concept but we had a fair supply of Artillery , AT guns and various transports.

It was all historical as Sci fi/fantasy  not only was unknown but little more than a distant glimmer in someones eyes. In fact it was about 4 years later that one my current group probably brought the 1st copy of D&D (the 3 little books) in West mids from some little gaming shop in Lichfield or Burntwood. Which was played with Medieval figures mainly as nothing fantasy was available until Citadel miniatures appeared.

Everything was mail order, unless you went to odd show , which meant sending of for a list with a SAE in it for the return. You read list endlessly and hoped it might have  the odd grainy picture (Lloydy you have problems with little pictures on line) ,  with no real idea what was going to turn up at end, some would be good, some would be a vague model of what you’d ordered ,not much more than budgie grit in many cases.

Occasionally a TV show would appear on Wargamming , but generally on at obscure times or on other areas of ITV than I got and was show rather than ATV today, although it did appear in Callan and the movie of it at times.