Why I play Full thrust and my gaming origins

Now I have to Apologize upfront for earlier posting unpainted Full Thrust Lead and tempting poor Timbo74 with new things to clog up his painting table, given he's got lots of Luverly Tumbling Dice stuff to do for Bag the Hun..

His poor wallet's vibrating like one of Sauron's Rings!

The SSD above is why I abandoned StarFleet Battles and Starfire and sought out the Oasis of Full Thrust and why BTH is so appealing to me!

"Play the period, not the rules"  a revolutionary sentiment and not before time!

I started gaming in 1982 with RPGs like D&D and Traveller - which I'm
still fond of, especially the GDW boardgames of all genres, like A house divided and Imperium.

In 1983 I put an ad in a local games shop to play Star Fleet Battles
with someone and I met someone with whom I found a Club, The Knights
of the Square Table.
that person didnt stay the distance but I did and the club played more
games and periods than I knew and was my first experience with
miniatures (WRG 6th) and
serious boardgaming, Civilization, Diplomacy, Risk, Empires in Arms,
Starfire, Kingmaker, Machiavelli, Blue Max, Railway Rivals/Dampfross, A
house divided, Imperium, and panzer pusher games like Europa as well
as beer and pretzel games like illuminati and Naval War, Settlers and
great Euro games like Shark, El Grande etc

We also played a great campaign of "En Garde" now published by paul
evans at engarde.co.uk.. hybrid RPG/semi boardgame lots of fun.

my boardgamegeek.com profile is at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/gurubob

these days I mainly played two player boardgames(house
divided/Imperium RAF:1940) as players and time for large multiplayer
ones are hard to find.
If I have time for a boardgame, I'd rather it was a "wargame" and not
a family one unless its settlers of catan

I loved Blue Max and anyone willing to teach me Wings of War will hae
an opponent.

I only ever did 15mm..I had a small Republican Roman Army (lost or
stolen long ago) and have Austrian an Prussian Seven Years War Armies,
which have seen all sorts of rules come and go,
WRG 6th, 7th, DBM, now DBA on the one hand and WRG 18th Century Rules,
Age of Reason and im looking to perhaps get back into Seven Years War
with Sam Mustafa's
"Might and Reason" for which a friend in Melbourne is a playtester and
contributor. I'm a terrible painter!

My first miniatures were for Star Fleet Battles and I guess as my dad
was in the USN as a kid the naval thing stuck and I also got a few
1/1200 scale Sailing Ships for !8th century and Napoleonic periods. with those I played with S.Burnie's "action under sail" from Navwar, Heart of Oak rules were
around but not played.

We did a few carribean pirate campaigns..
it wasnt until 5 years agoI found Rod Langton's eautiful ships and his
great rules, "Signal Close Action" and "Fast Play" I havent looked
back, Though I will be checking out Toofatlardies, Kiss Me Hardy.

I recently began looking at Pre-Dreadnought Naval battles in 1/3000
and have bought small German and US cruiser fleets from wtj.com to use
with David Manley's "Fire when Ready" and "Perfidious Albion" rules. perhaps also DBSA!

As SFB and Starfire got too complex and expensive, I was looking for
fun and I certainly found it with "Full Thrust", I have quite a few
fleets and unpainted lead too.

I ran a few SFB and Full Thrust competitions in the 90s in Melbourne,
but now play Full Thrust with GZG fleets and also some Babylon 5
fleets too.

Space/SF gaming is a love and Imperium from GDW was my first, I play
"Stars!" an old 4X computer game by email and love the old Microgame,
"Warp War" and "Stellar Conquest", along with Travellers "Trillion Credit
Squadron" and "Fifth Frontier War" are great inspirations for
Spacefleet campaigns.

I play "Diplomacy" occasionally on one of the many internet servers
and am trying to learn to play GO with my fiance.

At the time I began, in 1984 the KOST club rented a house, one person
lived in it and it was a riot! after those great days in the 80s we
changed venues a few times and KOST moved from a high school to two
scout halls and became the NSGA.
The club split and folded in 2007 when some idiot agreed to let LAN party games in and they didnt pay their way.

A few wandering years and one of our number, a greenskeeper,
relaunched KOST early last year at a local lawn bowls clubrooms, as
social bowls members, we have a bar and nice tables,
although not the plovely purpose built ones the Spieltrieb has. in
Australia, Melbourne Anyway, no club has exclusive permenant rooms and
tables apart from DBA tend to  be ply/chipboard 6' by 4' tabletops painted green on top of any suitable table over which blue/black/green cloth is thown if someone
has it.

The club I play at in Melbourne is the Knights of the Square Table.
to get an idea of the scene back in Melbourne, have a look at
http://homepage.mac.com/sfinlay/australian_clubs_vic.htm.

http://conquest.asn.au/ and cancon http://www.cgs.asn.au/index.html
are the two conventions I played at.

Bag the Hun by Toofatlardies has grabbed me as has the Tumbling Dice 1/600 miniatures and the 1/285 Raidens sold by Dom's Decals.  I also splahed on some Leading Edge Boulton Paul Defiants and Dornier Do17s sold by Museum Miniatures.

The new BTH2 rules are fabbotastic!

more unpainted lead!