My first exposure to table top gaming was the Avalon Hill board game Gettysburg. My mom bought it for me shortly after it came out in the sixties. She had no idea how complicated it was. I skimmed through the rules, but didn’t get far. Other than moving the chits around the map I never actually played the game.
Years later I came home from the Air Force and started hanging out with a couple of younger high school friends, Jim and Gerald. I joined them in their activities of building and launching model rockets. I think we broke every safety rule with the exception of using metal parts. We also built model ironclads using balsa wood and thin aluminum sheet armor, and then had battles where we shot at them with BB guns.
Our most elaborate endeavor was trying to replay the naval war in the Pacific in World War II. Our mastermind, Gerald, was using the SeaPower II rules and 1:1200 waterline models made by Alnavco. To supplement our meager (and expensive) metal ships, he cut out and glued together an balsa wood fleet of everything from battleships, carriers, and cruisers all the way down to destroyers and submarines.
Using ships in 1:1200 scale is not something you play on a table top. I've seen photos of scenarios that were played out on the floor of a gymnasium. We played in my mother's living room. With the time needed to setup, movement, measure ranges, refer to gunnery tables and recording hits and damage of multiple targets, not to mention air battles of opposing carriers, the battles would literally take days to play. Thankfully the room was not used for entertaining a bridge club and Mom was forgiving of the mess. It all ended after the US Navy (me) was soundly defeated in a battle in which all of the American carriers were sunk and the American admiral (me) threw a fit.
That didn't end our friendships. We are still close in spirit although we are separated by time and space. Gerald went on to build wind tunnel models. Jim and I both became teachers. We all have families and lives that have separated us from our youthful endeavors.
Somewhere in my attic there is a box that contains the few metal waterline models I own. Waiting for another battle.
