My first shop

[Nick]

Games Workshop in Nottingham - but back in the early 80s when they only had 2 shops in the country and were a proper independent games store. Bought a set of WW2 skirmish rules "Tactical Commander". Still have them on a shelf somewhere.

regards,
Nick

[Colonel Kilgore]

Nick - they were one of the first "proper" rules I bought!

There was lots of narrative included, which had me hooked. I never worked out how to do the machine-gun firing, though!

Simon

[Jimmy James]

Merv's Models in Bicester - an old-school model and hobby shop with lots of interesting bits and pieces and an array of second-hand kit. A young lad, I bought some Warhammer 40K space marines for a couple of quid and got stuck in. Merv himself was an...interesting fella, always got the impression that the shop - and customers! - were a bit of an inconvenience really, and he would rather have just been there with his models and his railway layout.

Characters, eh?

Jimmy

[simmo]

My first wargaming purchase from a shop would be from a model shop in Scunthorpe about 1969? Amongst the magazines in his shop were copies of Miniature Warfare John Tunstill's magazine. It had a picture of ACW figures on the cover. I had already started playing naval wargames having borrowed a copy of Featherstone's book from the library. But once I read this mag there was no stopping me. I reckon I must have bought 13 Airfix panthers alone from this shop. This shop got all my hard earned paper round money.
Martyn

[Nick]

Nick - they were one of the first "proper" rules I bought!

There was lots of narrative included, which had me hooked. I never worked out how to do the machine-gun firing, though!

Simon

I enjoyed playing them at the time. It was the first set of rules I had ever seen. I had plenty of plastic Airfix figures and tanks to use!

Nick

[Colonel Kilgore]

Nick - they were one of the first "proper" rules I bought!

There was lots of narrative included, which had me hooked. I never worked out how to do the machine-gun firing, though!

Simon

I enjoyed playing them at the time. It was the first set of rules I had ever seen. I had plenty of plastic Airfix figures and tanks to use!

Nick

So, how did the machine guns work - you dice for every figure within the "cone"?

Simon

[martin goddard]

Cones of fire.
I remember those.
Charles Grant had one in BATTLE.
I believe a lot of Napoleonic rules favoured them for guns.



martin

[Ben Waterhouse]

1973 The Stamp Kiosk (?) Wakefield, 6 x Hinchliffe PN14 Prussian Landwehr in a lovely blue box with purple tissue paper. My paper round pay for a week.

[Nick]

Nick - they were one of the first "proper" rules I bought!

There was lots of narrative included, which had me hooked. I never worked out how to do the machine-gun firing, though!

Simon

I enjoyed playing them at the time. It was the first set of rules I had ever seen. I had plenty of plastic Airfix figures and tanks to use!

Nick

So, how did the machine guns work - you dice for every figure within the "cone"?

Simon

Yes, I remember making cone templates out of Overhead Projector acetate sheets. I think there were circular ones for mortars too.

Nick

[Colonel Kilgore]

If only I'd known 35 years ago... 

Simon

[Stewart 46A]

My first was about 1970
Airfix figures from Woolworths in Walkden, Manchester

Stewart

[Smoking gun]

My first wargame purchases, as opposed to model kits, were from Dave Hewins Models and Hobbies in Grimsby. This was in the early 1980s when I was in my early thirties. The shop at this time was quite large and had plate glass windows either side of a central doorway. It sold model railway, plastic kits, radio control, diecast models and wargame figures. He stocked Wargames Foundry, Games Workshop, Hovels (based in Grimsby), Essex, SHQ, Milicast, MMS, Grenadier, FAA (MLR, Hotspur) there may have been others that I cannot remember. The shop space is now a restaurant as shown in the photo below:



Dave owned a "block" of retail property and moved the shop into a smaller premises down the passage (note the signs) nearest the camera in the photo above. This picture shows the new premises:



Dave was a traditional shopkeeper in the Arkwright mould, but he did give a discount to the local wargames and model railway clubs. I remember one Saturday a couple of teenagers wanted to enter the shop, Dave stood in the doorway and asked them how much money they had, after they replied Dave told them there was nothing they could afford and closed the door in their faces.

Dave died in November 2016, most of the stock was sold and the door closed soon after.

The premises are now Grim Dice a gaming store with a smaller range of product, mostly 28mm from GW, Warlord Games etc. board and collectable card games plus a good range of paints from G.W., Army Painter and Vellejo. It is run in a different style but the staff are friendly and are happy to order product in for you if they can get it. During the pandemic they offered free home delivery.

Best wishes,
Martin Buck

[Leman (Andy)]

I bought my first wargame figures in 1965 from the toy shop in Craig-y-Don, Llandudno. They were Airfix ACW boxes. I later went on to buy many more Airfix boxes including Romans and their fort, Robin Hood and the Sherrif's castle, French Foreign Legion and the Desert fort, World War I British, French, Germans and Americans. Even at that age I couldn't understand why the British and French were 1914, the French 1915 and the Americans 1917, but without helmets. Later I bought some Napoleonic boxes but purely for doing conversions, 1914 French cavalry, Gun limbers and  1st Virginia cavalry. The shop was owned by the father of a schoolfriend, but unfortunately it closed in the mid-70s.

[Colonel Kilgore]

I could never find Airfix ACW boxes, and didn't know they even existed until many years later.

I was also slow on the uptake on the different WW1 infantry eras... 

Simon

[martin goddard]

I used to visit HOBBY LOBBY  Southampton.  Commercial road.

Nothing to do with the US Hobby Lobby series of stores.
A big wall of MINITANKS  1/87th. Blister packs with orange/blue header cards.
I used to regularly buy three or  four models each time I visited. 1973-1983? Then it closed.
One could buy some useful tanks such as PZ III and stug but no WW2 trucks (they later added a  blitz). The allies got M10 etc but no British tanks early on.
Infantry, just a few odds and ends.
The models were wonderful for wargaming. Clean, sharp and robust. The models worked fine with early British combat group and Heil Hitler Germans.
We used the Charles grant battle rules.

Hobby lobby had the full range of Humbrol enamel Authenti-colour too. Brown Bess , lovely.



martin