Whats your age?

[Amizaur]

35 and few months

[Faelwolf]

When I first saw this post, I thought I'd be the old man at 50!

Nice to know I am not the only geezer in the group

[Doug Ruddd]

55. Been a Grog since Christmas 1970 when I received Panzer Blitz and Luftwaffe. S&T/SPI, GHQ..... and many PC wargames.

[Badger73]

40..50...60....man, I'm only 19!

To be envied then, for having so many more years of great gaming in front of you than behind you, and, like PARA, spending them in very good company here!

[sburke]

In the year 2030 the world non violence governing body will rule that combat and violent oriented games are completely banned and all new personal electronic entertainment platforms will have auto detect of any violent imagery shutting the device down and reporting the user. Historians will look back on the first couple decades of the 21st century as the highpoint of wargaming and will note the large issue of depression affecting those who were only in their teens and 20's during the early decades when their hobby was ripped out of their hands and they were forced to play social relationship building games and spend more time with their dysfunctional families.

Sucks to be young right now.

[mjkerner]

To be envied then, for having so many more years of great gaming in front of you than behind you, and, like PARA, spending them in very good company here!

Yes, and playing these games in holograph form projected right onto your living room floor.

And going to work in your flying cars, and having robot sex.

Edit: apparently sburke is a glass half empty type guy!

[SlowMotion]

sburke: they might even make riding cars illegal, who knows? According to this driverless cars are already allowed in 3 US states

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/11/google-driverless-car-morality.html

Several manufacturers are testing their models currently.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413841,00.asp

[Lanzfeld]

In the year 2030 the world non violence governing body will rule that combat and violent oriented games are completely banned and all new personal electronic entertainment platforms will have auto detect of any violent imagery shutting the device down and reporting the user. Historians will look back on the first couple decades of the 21st century as the highpoint of wargaming and will note the large issue of depression affecting those who were only in their teens and 20's during the early decades when their hobby was ripped out of their hands and they were forced to play social relationship building games and spend more time with their dysfunctional families.

Sucks to be young right now.

They can have my CMBN right after they take my AR-15's and AK-47's. Good luck with that.

[Bud Backer]

I am 60. A lot of the games mentioned, that people started with, bring back lots of nice memories. Anyone remember Dogfight or Diplomacy? My first " real wargame " was Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg.

I still have my boxed version of Diplomacy!

[Ultradave]

I still have my boxed version of Diplomacy!

Played lots of diplomacy, both in person and online (Usenet days).

[Charles Foulkes]

I'll be 30 this year. My 79 year old father is also an avid wargamer, I got it from him =D

[poesel]

Diplomacy is still very much alive. Usually played by email although it's now even on facebook. Go here if you are interested: http://diplom.org/

Played a lot of it while I was a student. I had copied the map on cardboards with pins of different colours and size to keep track of the various games.

This taught me to negotiate in English.

[Father Ted]

i have to really give it to you old timers for playing those tabletop games .... cant rap my brain around that stuff.

Well, we didn't have any choice! My final phase of table-top gaming was in my mid-teens with 1/300 WW2 miniatures. I loved painting the tanks, making the scenics, creating a landscape and setting out the forces, but the actual gaming was often a disappointment. There was no way to simulate concealment (without getting a third party involved), there was all that dice rolling and measuring, and moving...

So when CMBB came out I was blown away - here was proper miniatures gaming! All the immersion-killers are taken care of and you can watch your "model" tanks and men do their stuff. You can even make the scenery!

CMBN (I skipped SF as WW2 is where it's at for me) seems to be moving the series more towards a sim of actual war (at least visually) rather than a sim of miniatures gaming. Of course this is no bad thing, but I did enjoy the charm of CMx1.

Oh, and 47

[Collingwood]

Old school diplomacy - face to face, going off into other rooms to negotiate/threaten... hand written and signed agreements. It was great fun! Panzerblitz was the first game I bought. We ended up calling it Panzerbush because people gamed the rules by hopping across the map via bush/tree hexes. You can't hit them in the open because they always finish their turn in a bush.

We were all so excited when the first Squad Leader came out. I think of CMx2 games as a bit like advanced, graphic versions of the Squad Leader series.

[Ultradave]

Our biggest tabletop efforts - SPI's War in the East. Took a whole semester in college, 3 Russian and 2 German players. Luckily one of the guys had a private dorm room so we had it set up where the roomate would have been (this was a long time ago).

25mm Napoleonics. Massive battles in a conference room on 6ftx24ft tables. Awesome

[Father Ted]

25mm Napoleonics. Massive battles in a conference room on 6ftx24ft tables. Awesome

We tried to emulate "Little Wars" as described by H G Wells. We had the die-cast model cannons (Britain's 4.7" naval gun) and some Airfix Napoleonics. Perhaps not proper wargaming, but a gateway to more "serious" stuff.

[Ranger33]

25 here. Got into CM when I stumbled upon the CMBB special edition in some gaming store a long time ago. Getting that game along with 1000+ mods (with easy to use mod installer software) and seemingly unlimited scenarios all packed into one little box for $25 (I think) really spoiled me.

[The Steppenwulf]

My final phase of table-top gaming was in my mid-teens with 1/300 WW2 miniatures. I loved painting the tanks, making the scenics, creating a landscape and setting out the forces, but the actual gaming was often a disappointment. There was no way to simulate concealment (without getting a third party involved), there was all that dice rolling and measuring, and moving...

I agree with the sentiment re playability, but there was something tactile about die, a dog-eared rulebook and taking your model army to war in a carry case.

25mm Napoleonics. Massive battles in a conference room on 6ftx24ft tables. Awesome

Every wargamer's tabletop dream!! It reminds me of the annual wargaming conference in my home city. The sheer variety of wargaming eras on show, the superlative quality of most of the terrains and models and the scale of some of the battles that were fought out.

Still I like to look forward as well as backwards: So all this talk of the wargaming future, I'm inspired, could I make a realistic suggestion to add to the CM community wish-list for CMSF2 and/or v3.0:- triple monitor support and therefore the possibility for a 180 degree FOV?!?

[Collingwood]

25mm Napoleonics. Massive battles in a conference room on 6ftx24ft tables. Awesome

Yes! I was in a wargames club in my home town that rented a floor of an office building in the city. We had multiple large tables set up: Ancients were big and so were Napoleonics. I think I ruined my eyesight painting all those little men. Mostly we did 15mm Napoleonics, although I started with 25mm.

[Chek]

At 35 I started counting backwards thus making me a not so tender 20.

Eat your heart out Benjamin button.

[John Kettler]

Began standard wargaming at age 12 with AH's Tactics II (Revised Edition) and have been at it ever since. The year I was born, time keeping became unprecedentedly precise and someone survived being hit by a meteor! 58 this year.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Vinnart]

45 here. It is nice to see a wide range, especially the younger dudes choosing an intellectual game as CM. The funny thing about CM is I was reluctant to get in to it for the longest time. I was more of ww2 RTS guy into games as big as 8 x 8 multiplayer. I liked the teamwork it offered and the adrenaline of rts multi.

I had an old army bud keep trying to get me into a game of CM. When Sudden Strike ran its course I finally tried CMAK demo, and really liked the depth, and realism. It had many aspects I wished made Sudden Strike more like it. After my first PBEM, which I won against my old friend, I was hooked on the cliffhanger aspect. It’s like chess on steroids, but you really do use real military tactics. I wish it was around when I was in the military as I can see it’s uses for training in leadership courses. I think it has made me a better tactical thinker. Keeps my mind limber. It has also been very interesting seeing the development of the game from CMx1. Indeed 2.0 is the best to date.

[Stingray]

I will be 66 in March. Started with PanzerBlitz in 1971. I've been a wargamer since then.

Played almost all of them. The best in my opinion are the CMBN-FI series.

Thank you Battlefront for making my dream wargame come true.

[agusto]

Wow, lots of replies in the past 2 days i was away. However the result of that little "survey" is interesting, kinda lets one conclude on what could be the base of BFCs business model for the CM series.

The average CM player is:

- in his mid-40s

- male

- has played wargames since his teens and thus proven his loyality to the genre.

That is probably the customer group every game development company would wish for: very loyal and having its own income to spend on new games.

I think we can expect another ten years of CM games .

EDIT: i came to CM from Arma and Theatre of war. I wanted a game similar to Theatre of war but set in a modern timescale, so i went for CMSF. Il2 Sturmovik was also a combat sim i was really into for some time.

[invernomuto]

I'm 36 years old.

I found CMBO in a store many years ago and liked CM since then.