The Official --( Introduce Yourself )-- Thread!

[Fenrir]

Ollo, Fellow Panzergrenadieristas!

I lurk unseen most of the time as I have little to say other than a few comments hither and thither.

My Name is Matt Garretson and I haunt 36 1/2 St. in Minneapolis, MN, USA.

I am somewhat of a gaming recluse and really don't game socially. Wargaming is really just an extension of my childhood hobby of playing with plastic toy soldiers. .....Nowadays I also enjoy some history content in my play.

I'm 43 years old and married to a clever and attractive woman that tolerates my hobby and it's odd needs such as a 4' x 8' gaming table that takes up a large portion of our furnished basement and the hundreds of games piled about.

I susbscribe to numerous military history periodicals and read....mostly history....a lot.

I began gaming in 1981 when a chum showed up at my house with Dungeons & Dragons. I was hooked! A few years later Panzer Leader showed up one Christmas and a slowly growing interest in board wargaming was born. Throughout the 1980s I explored Ogre, Car Wars, any of the Microgames I could locate, Battletech, Traveller and later, Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. I was a cook and had limited means so I put my wargaming experience to use and made all of my own "miniatures" for the tabletop wargames by just drawing and painting emblems and designs on cardboard squares and playing the games with 3D terrain....a sort of 2D/3D hybrid. All true minature gamers look upon this with suspicion, but I was able to field massive and diverse armies limited only by my time and paint supply. I still have them all and occasionaly pull them out for a go....

I play PG, GWAS and Infantry Attacks. I really enjoy the small clever games coming from Victory Point Games. The States of Siege series, in particular.... I played Squad Leader for a while and waded through CoI and CoD but no further. ASL seemed obnoxiously expensive and it looked like it was the realm of rules lawyers and plano-wielding OCD patients from where I stood. I play and really enjoy ATS. I think it's a remarkable game engine and I really got into the Berlin game and module. I was thrilled to find a tactical treatment of that apocalyptic urban gotterdammerung. I subscribe to S&T and have a stout collection of back issues/games many, if not most, are unplayed....for now. I also enjoy the small but potent games put out by Minden Games in Panzer Digest.

After 12 years of providing contracted office services specializing in shipping & receiving for corporate customers as an employee of Xerox I was layed off following the recent economic downturn. My lack of college degree and narrow field of experience made the job hunt a somewhat futile search.... After some soul-searching and mid-life crisis-ing I made the radical choice of re-imagining and re-inventing my old career in the Culinary Arts. I'm enrolled at a local Culinary Arts academy and cultivating the mentorship of a few truly remarkable individuals hoping that hard work and sheer moxie will make a career for me. Needless to say, my disposable income for games that cost $50-100 each has dried up. Luckily, I'm one of those fools that pre-ordered hundreds of dollars of games from Avalanche Press over the last 5 or 6 years and hopefully that absurdly slow trickle of incoming games will keep me sated.

I will now resume my lurking......