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No problem I'm always happy to help people with their hobby.

I'd actually recommend getting some miniatures and paints first. The hobby really is about the models and the spectacle, if you don't enjoy them as objects you probably won't enjoy the rest. Pick the models you like the most and go from there. Also literally a table cloth with some boxes on is enough to have a go at most game systems, so I wouldn't worry too much about terrain for the time being.

In terms of game system it sounds like http://www.boltaction.com/ might be the ideal game for you, it's pretty easy to pick up, well supported by warlord games (they do global campaigns for it which is very cool), you don't need a ton of models and it's very fun and popular. I'd pick up maybe a box of infantry (or a starter army if you're willing to make the investment) and the rule book (warlord books are beautiful). I'd also recommend r/boltaction, it might be worth posting a question there. Warlord games also has their own forum http://www.warlordgames.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=48&sid=88c53ccceabba7211bf08b6ef18c67a6 where you can ask questions, a good place for beginners. Also use youtube, it's become an excellent resource for wargamers, you'll be able to find introductory videos, battle reports and all sorts.

I wouldn't buy that paint set, paint's are expensive and they rack up pretty fast, I'd buy the paints you need for the models you have. Get vallejo paints, they tend to be the best for historicals. After you've decided what models you want to buy I'd post a question there asking exactly which paints to get to paint them 'correctly'. Some historical gamers are very finnicky about uniforms being perfect, I'm not one of them, but it is nice to be broadly accurate. If you want to be perfect check out https://ospreypublishing.com/store/military-history/series-books/men-at-arms these books are like the painting guides for historical models. Many are even designed based on their art.

Brushes; this is an area that I believe it is worth spending a bit more money, good brushes will last (provided you maintain them) and will improve your painting experience enormously. Although I occasionally paint commissions so my perspective is a little different. I'd recommend Windsor Newton Series 7 brushes (better for detail) or Raphael Kolinsky brushes (better for blending, harder to get though). To start with just get one for normal painting (windsor newton size 0), and one for fine detail (windsor newton size 0 or 00) should do. I'd strongly recommend getting http://www.amazon.com/General-Pencil-Company-Masters-Preserver/dp/B001TNR7VM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450981902&sr=8-2&keywords=masters+brush+soap to keep your brushes clean and to help maintain their point. These are natural fibre brushes so after cleaning it's a good idea just to dip them in some hair conditioner so prevent them drying out too much, then rinse them clean. I use this stuff http://www.dickblick.com/products/weber-turpenoid-natural/ The beginner synthetic brushes most people use are frankly a waste of money. The best tip I can give you regarding painting though is to always thin your paints, either with water or Vallejo Glaze Medium. Also don't forget to spray prime your models, citadel or army painter sprays are good for this, most people use black. Look up zenithal priming if you want to get fancy.

Terrain's broadly split into 2 categories, static terrain, and moveable terrain. Static terrain is usually what you'll see in magazines, dioramas in museums etc. An entirely modelled board. When done well it looks incredible, the pinnacle of the hobby. http://miniscaping.com/miniscape/preview/248#active-gallery one of my favourites, the British siege of Badajoz in 1812 during the Peninsular Campaign. http://www.matakishi.com/TH%20table%202%20600.jpg a medieval conflict.

The only problem is when it's your table and you play most of your games on it, playing in the identical village/farmstead can get a bit dull. Also storing static terrain tends to be really hard. So we move onto moveable or modular terrain, which what most people use and I'd definitely recommend. This consists of having buildings, forest etc on bases that you can move around to mix up your games. It's also very cheap generally, e.g. take a beard trimmer to a doormat, and voila, you now have a ploughed field, spray/dye some towelling material green and you have great looking grass. An example http://imgur.com/a/EGvpK

I still use pasting tables as my table, they are 6ft x 2ft, fold away and are very cheap, I'm not sure what they're called in the us but this is what I mean: http://www.homebase.co.uk/en/homebaseuk/hardboard-top-folding-pasting-table---1780-x-560-x-740mm-027611

Get 2 of those. Then place 3 4x2 plywood sheets on them, cloth on top of that, and there you have a cheap, good 6x4 starter table that is fast to set up and put away. Then populate it with terrain, model railway terrain is great for things like trees and much cheaper than specialist wargame terrain. You can always upgrade to more complex modular boards later using the plywood you bought.

Anyway sorry if that was a bit in depth, hope it was useful.


To recap:

1. Buy some miniatures, preferably a box of infantry or a starter army, choose the models you like best. Get the bolt action rulebook.
   
   
2. Post a question on r/boltaction or the warlord games forum asking for which colours to use, get those ones. You can worry about basing them later. Get some good brushes and some cleaner.
   
   
3. Get some cheap folding tables, some plywood, and some fabric of your choice (depending on where you want to be fighting, snow's my favourite) and some model railway trees.
   
   
4. Get things together, and have a crack at the game with your friends!
   
   P.S. beer and wargaming are a good combination.
   
   P.P.S. look for wargaming clubs in your area, there are a lot more than you may think, and are great places to meet other gamers, try different systems and get advice.

I'm both a tabletop and a PC (war)gamer. I've played lots of wargames but enjoy videogames in general. My current favorite PC wargame is Unity of Command.

For me the tabletop has a tactile approach. I enjoy the hobby aspect -- collecting, assembling, kitbashing and painting -- as much or even a little more than actually playing.

Many PC wargames are indeed too convoluted and with difficult UIs (again, my favorite Unity of Command has a very streamlined UI). I've come to a point where I don't want to fight the UI or read a large manual to play a PC game. Videogames to me require almost instant gratification.

I was going to say "conversely, with tabletop wargames..." but actually, it's the same. My patience and spare time grow thinner as I get older. I really cannot stand convoluted wargames. Following the guidelines from Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames, I believe good wargames must be fast-play, simple, practical, and value gameplay over needless details and rules. This is why games such as Crossfire appeal to me: it's a tabletop wargame where the rules "melt away" as you play. Conversely, I was reading about Fistful of TOWs 3 400+ page manual and immediately knew it wasn't the wargame for me.

As for aesthetics: I value them in both PC and tabletop wargames. It's just that for something to be beautiful it doesn't need to be "realistic". Wooden blocks and a colorful map look beautiful to me. Still, I prefer miniatures in tabletop games.

Oh, awesome! I'd be interested in just about anything you felt like passing on - my brother and I have been wanting to try out 40k (or Fantasy, or really any solid miniatures wargame?) for ages (which is why we picked up Dust in the first place, as a middle ground between wargames and board games), but I'd be willing to swap for just about anything you were looking to get rid of that felt fair to you - we play a whole host of geeky games. Our Dust box is at his place - I'll swing by there and get a full list of what we've got, but looking at my Amazon order history, I pretty sure this is everything:

Dust Tactics Revised Core Set


Light Panzer Walker


Axis Gorillas


Grim Reapers


Light Assault Walker


and the Terrain Tile Set

All the minis are unglued and unpainted, and we really only played a handful of times. We'd been pondering trying out Dust Warfare, but have both been distracted by other things, so I'd love for them to have a good home!

The Waterloo Companion. Lots of in-depth and structured history with lots of colour plates of uniforms. It sounds like what you are looking for.

For just the French uniforms I would recommend "Les Uniformes de l'Armee Francaise de 1660 a 1845" by Charles Vernier and Colonel Paul Willing. Covers a greater period than you want but the plates of uniforms are fantastic (and much better value for money than the Osprey Men-At-Arms series which I think are rather over priced).

That's the scale. It can get confusing. Generally, the scale in millimeters is the distance from the ground to the eye of a grown human male.

Most popular games are in 28mm, so a human male trooper mini is about 32mm tall from foot to head. Another popular scale is 15mm. Then Dropzone Command had to be different and are at 10mm scale.

The smaller the scale, the smaller the minis. That also means they are cheaper, faster to paint (less detail) and you can fit more on the table at once. A smaller mini may be less sastisfying to play with for some people, because it's harder to see all the little bits and facial expresions, etc.

As far as getting started, many games have a two player starter box. They usually come with the rule book, and 2 small forces - enough to play a game, anyway.

For example:

• 40k Starter - $92
  
• Warmachine starter - $67
  
• Dropzone Commander starter - $86

In this second of two parts, I finish talking about one of my favorite aspects of my D&D campaign world - wargaming alongside my D&D gaming in the same campaign world! I share how I set up my campaign and the tools/books I use to help me.

Links from this episode:

Setting Up a Wargames Campaign by Tony Bath

Solo Wargaming Guide by William Sylvester

Berthier Campaign Manager by Tony De Lyall

My Wargame Campaign Rules and Guide by Chgowiz

Thanks, man. They come pre-painted, but I added on some flocking and stuff around the edges so they would blend in with the table a bit better.

Here is a link to the craters I used:

http://www.amazon.com/Pegasus-Hobbies-Prepainted-Crater-PGH5215/dp/B002EZKEO6

Zones of Control

Or, since he was also into early RPGs:
Playing at the World

There are several books about the creation of D&D/biographies of Gary Gygax, my favorite is Empire of Imagination

I bought these legs for making a board game table

http://amzn.com/B001DT5HMS

I used some 3/4" plywood, contact cement and staples with speed felt on top, used 2x3's to make a 'box' underneath the table for support, and then screwed these legs on the corners. The table was 32"x56" - basically to fit Advanced Squad Leader historical module maps - but the legs can be half removed with an allen key wrench - so I would call it 'semi' portable, but the folding table legs would work decently.

Good question! My new go-to background music is this collection I stumbled upon on Amazon. The 99 Darkest Pieces of Classical Music. It's appropriately dramatic and unobtrusive at the same time.

Fantastic! He writes about his game Tanktics in his book On Game Design and I thought that was a very old interesting way to combine a boardgame with electronics. Obviously a bit of an evolution of the concept in that article, but using a simple microcomputer, and also it had AI opponents. You input your actions and the computer would tell you about the computer moves and the results of combat. He claims it was the first commercial computer wargame, and I think it quite possibly was?

In addition to TMP, look up John Bobeck he wrote a book full of rules for toy soldiers.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Games-War-Treasury-Soldiers/dp/1434330281

There's a lot of ways to do it. The most basic way is to actively play both sides, exactly as if you were playing a two-player game. The main problem there is that without additional effort, you always know what the other guy intends to do. Using things like numbered blinds can help with obscuring the placement of units on the table, and allow you to suspend disbelief a bit. I play IABSM this way a fair bit and it's pretty fun. I think it's best if there's a defined scenario like "hasty defense of a village" since even in a two-player game both sides would have a pretty good expectation of what the other side would do, and so having that "inside knowledge" isn't as helpful.

The other approach to solo wargaming involves you actively playing one side, while the other side's actions are determined by any number of randomization mechanisms, so that you really can't predict what "the enemy" is going to do. One approach that I've been working on is basically an incursion scenario where my force is infiltrating a known hostile area with intent to capture some objective, but without an understanding of the exact forces I'll encounter. When each unit advances, I roll some dice to determine whether I encounter enemy unit(s), how far away they are, and what they are (all enemies are unseen until they attack, and then they stay on the board). There are modifiers to that roll based on how stealthy I'm being, how close I am to major objectives, and how vigilant the enemy force is. Once an enemy unit is encountered, a single round of combat is fought between that unit, any units it has in support, and the enemy. I use IABSM as my base rules, so my units are activated randomly, and there are variable turn lengths. I can also modify this mechanism to incorporate reconnaissance by having a unit do a recon check which basically means, roll for an encounter but don't force a round of combat.

This seems like a reasonably elegant way to justify using a more or less random dice roll to determine whether I get in a fight, otherwise it just feels like I'm fighting waves of zombies. I think I can adapt it to other scenarios like fixed defense as well, again using my proximity to the objective as a modifier.

Sorry for going on and on. I really love solo wargaming, although my wife says it makes me the loneliest nerd in a hobby known for lonely nerds. Donald Featherstone has a really good book about solo wargaming, I'd recommend checking that out as well.

EDIT: [Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming] (http://www.amazon.com/Donald-Featherstones-Solo-Wargaming-Curry/dp/1409260119)