How it all started with Miniature Wargaming or this is how the slide to nerdom began.

My love affair with miniature wargaming began as a five year old. Yes, I was one of those kids who innocently bought multiple sets of these:

instead of these:

and these:

Now, it would be a few years before I would discover SPI and Avalon Hill wargames, so play with these plastic soldiers mainly consisted of setting them on a table and imagining war type things occurring. That is until my older sister, who never knew H.G. Wells wrote the first miniatures wargame rules, presented me with the following simple rules:

Each side takes 100 men and set up on your side of the table.

Each side takes 20 pennies

Each side can move three inches on their turn.

Every turn each side drops one penny at a time from above the table. Any figure knocked over is considered a casualty. For every five casualties one figure is killed and not allowed to set up behind the farthest back alive figure after your bombing is over.

Winner is the side with fewest casualties.

That was it. Simple and perfect rules for kids under ten like us. Sometimes we would increase the casualty count for longer games. Other times shorten it. We played this was for a couple of years until my sister reached a more mature age when playing with your younger crabby brother was like drinking Drano.

Regardless, it was how it all began and to this day, over forty years later, continues unabated.