Gidday, hi me again
Thanks to Tankred, Olivier from the Spieltrieb Tellus fro Frankfurt and chris6 from Butzbach and Rolf in Mainz for taking the time to send a message of welcome.
I\'m here for the winter every year for the next few years until I move over, my fiance is here studying and I\'m nearly done with
my degree in Melbourne so I thought as I\'m going to be a resident in a few years I\' d say hi and meet a few faces while I am here.
I\'m Bob Blanchett, 41, an IT worker/system admin/teacher and am from Melbourne Australia.
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, Ble 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/gurubobthese 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.
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
http://web.archive.org/web/20071231170020/http://www.nsga.org.au/ 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 KOST and we chat at
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/fbcwar/to get an idea of the scene back in Melbourne, have a look at
http://homepage.mac.com/sfinlay/australian_clubs_vic.htmhttp://conquest.asn.au/ and cancon
http://www.cgs.asn.au/index.html are the two conventions I played at.
I\'m looking forward to meeting fellow gamers and club members present and future in Frankfurt and Surrounds and thanks again for making me Welcome.
Cheers and Vielen Dank,
Bob
