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

[J6A]

Let me join the crowd. I'm Joshua Gottesman and I'm 50 years old (for the next 31 days, at any rate). Way back when, my ex-wife was in a cosplay group and whenever I'd enter the room, they'd all yell out "Joshuaaaaaa" with a very long "ah" sound. So, for a while my internet name was Joshuaaaaaa. After a while, I got tired of typing that all out, and shortened it to J6A, which is also sometimes JaySix or JaySixA or just J6. So, there's the origin. By trade I'm a CPA although these days I do more consulting than CPA work, and especially enjoy "CFO-to-go" situations.

When I was about 14, I was over at my cousin's house and he had a copy of Tactics II set up. I was instantly fascinated by it. It also turns out he was college roommates with Brad Hessel, then working for SPI. So, I learned more about the hobby and decided I wanted in. My first game was a choice between 1914 and Afrika Korps, the only 2 in the gift shop near my house where I was going to buy a game. While I knew I'd have to get the Nazi issue past my parents (being Jewish, they always frowned upon overtly German stuff, so I never owned Panzerblitz or Luftwaffe or Bismarck, among others), I was really taken by the storyline cover of Afrika Korps and got that game. Who knows if I would have even stayed in the hobby if I had started with 1914. I loved it, and from there I purchased Blitzkrieg and Richtofen's War (I don't remember which was #2 and which was #3) and a lifelong hobby was born.

Eventually, I fell in with the Avalon Hill crowd through some friends. I was in the AH Football Strategy league for a bunch of years as the Chiefs, and started doing playtesting and blindtesting for AH. I hung out with the guys (I was the junior member of the group), went on Las Vegas junkets with them, and helped out in the office sometimes. We used my house for playtesting, as I had a big ping pong table and we could leave stuff set up for months. However, in 1994 I moved to the DC area and started seeing them less frequently, and in 1995 I moved to New Jersey and barely gamed at all. In fact, I was convinced that computer games were going to totally supplant board games and before I moved out to Las Vegas in late 1996 I sold off the majority of my collection. More of it got sold after I moved here and I did virtually no gaming until 2004. That year, my ex and I went to Gencon and I saw that the hobby still existed. My first purchase back in was AP's Soldier Kings, although I ultimately never played that. I also picked up Settlers of Catan because a friend had told us how neat it was...and then, never played it. I found boardgame geek then, and saw someone had posted about Las Vegas gaming and sent him a geekmail. However, soon thereafter my ex had some serious health problems and I forgot about gaming again. In 2007, for unknown reasons, I googled Don Greenwood. I think it was just a matter of "I wonder what he's doing these days", and the google search took me to his listing on BGG. Lo and behold, I had a geekmail or 2 waiting from the guy I had written to in 2004. It turned out he lived about 3 miles from me and was still gaming with a regular group on Saturday mornings. He invited me over, and I quickly became part of the group. However, my marriage was in the process of collapse, and from late 2007 until mid-2008 I was an emotional wreck and barely showed up. These guys were almost exclusively Euro gamers, so I still wasn't wargaming. One of them told me about a game group at the local shop, and I went over there with him one evening. There were maybe 8 boardgamers there, playing Euros (as an aside, we now get 20+ every week, and may soon hit 30). As I'm perusing the shelves, I decide that I want to do more wargaming again. I missed it. They had a copy of EFD on the shelves, and it looked really neat. Plus, with 100+ scenarios, I knew it would keep me busy for a while. I bought it and instantly thought it was cool, although, being me, I didn't play a lot. However, it started me on the road back into wargaming and into AP, and from then on out I started collecting (among other things), PG, GWaS and SWWaS. I played a lot in 2009, then got busier with the Euro guys and getting back into train games, and mostly put it aside. AP's troubles also put me off a bit in 2010/2011, so I was mentally boycotting them. However, this year I forgave them and have been playing a lot more PG, and really enjoy it and see no reason to stop anytime soon!

So now, I'm still single (and looking), living with my dog and 2 cats. My house is really bigger than I need, however it gives me the luxury of having a dedicated game room. I can generally keep the cats out of that. I also do gaming on my dining room table, however that often gets destroyed by cats, so I mostly do short things there.