I always enjoy reading about the influences different game designers bring to the table, so I thought I would discuss some of mine as well especially since I fit into the "middle age" of tabletop gamers: I didn't have the primordial inspirations of Grant's gaming books, airfix figures and reading Conan books but I still started gaming pre-internet. 

Miniatures gaming

My first exposure to miniatures gaming as such was the Hero Quest and Space Crusade board games from MB. Hero Quest probably requires little introduction. Space Crusade was essentially the same concept but for Warhammer 40.000 (it even had a pretty good video game adaptation) and was released primarily in Europe it appears. 

When it came to "proper" miniatures gaming, the first real rules I ever played (other than little games I had devised myself, usually based on computer games I played) was the 4th edition of Warhammer but it was the 2nd edition of Warhammer 40.000 that really blew my mind. Pawing through the books as a teenager was pure and utter magic: It felt like a whole new world opening up. It's fair to say that we pretty much lived in that game world for several years. We would go on to binge-play many of the classic GW titles (Necromunda, Blood Bowl, Inquisitor and Epic 40.000). 

We would eventually expand into Warzone (2nd edition at the time) and from there the ball started rolling and the group sort of separated into two "factions": One that would only play the games they already knew and one that would play anything we could get our hands on. The internet was a big factor here when it arrived as we (usually I) could simply download games people had written from the internet. We played a ton of online free games: NetEpic, Slammer, Tactical Strike (which I think completely vanished) and I really going doing my own rules during that time. We also dabbled in Void and Vor during this time though neither succeeded in really becoming the next big thing.

If I was to pick out the sci-fi games that really influenced how I think about gaming, I think it'd look a lot like: 

Warhammer 40.000 2nd edition.

Warzone 2nd edition.

Necromunda (original).

Inquisitor.

Stargrunt 2nd edition.

5150 (original one book version)

As you can tell these are all skirmish oriented games and I think they all had a certain outlook on things, leaning towards the grittier end of things by and large. 

My introduction to historicals was a free game published by the Wartimes journal called 1916. I had gotten an early fascination for the first world war through reading All quiet on the Western front as an impressionable youth, along with the old Blue Byte computer game Historyline 1914-1918 and being able to actually play a WW1 game on the table was a big deal for me. 

The most played historical games for me must have been Crossfire and Nuts.

You will notice a general absence of fantasy games on that list. We generally played very little fantasy gaming at the time and it was generally reserved for RPG campaigns (though even there we had a preference towards contemporary or scifi settings). We did dabble in Mordheim for a while but few in my foundational groups collected any fantasy miniatures beyond the mandatory Blood Bowl team.

Next time, I will talk about my RPG inspirations. In the meanwhile, why don't you leave a post discussing your own early mini's games and what inspired you?