A Re-Introduction

[Kirk]

Hi, I’m Kirk Hoffman. I’ve lived in Huntsville, AL since 1997 but prior to that called St. Louis home for 18 years. I grew up in Chicago though so all my favorite teams hail from The Windy City.

I’ve been an avid wargamer since the early 70’s, starting out (as many of us did) with Avalon Hill products. One of my first games was Richthofen’s War, and I still have fond memories of it. So much so in fact it still rests on my game shelf, and I drag it out every once in a while to get that nostalgic feel.

My gaming these days centers on a number of wargames such as Advanced Squad Leader, GMT’s Battles of the American Revolution and Glory series, and the aforementioned AH products. I’m also an avid sports gamer and have played Strat-O-Matic baseball, football, and hockey just as long as wargames. In fact, I led a group that produced a set of SOM football cards for the 1965 season (a very good year for Da Bears) that the SOM folks eventually bought and now sell as their own.

In the late 90’s I bought Dawn Patrol on eBay and tried for a while to find local opponents, but didn’t have any luck. I had some e-contacts from my work on the SOM cards and one of the guys was familiar with VASSAL and so volunteered to create a Dawn Patrol module. Once that was done I tried to gather interest from the face-to-face DP crowd, but met with little success. A couple years later I tried again and this time we got a small group of folks to play occasionally (plus the DP VASSAL module was updated with new maps and counters), but it wasn’t a large enough group to guarantee four players on a given evening. At that point once those games fizzled out I gave up on ever playing DP regularly. Then a month or so ago I thought I’d give it one last try and lo and behold what should I find but a large gathering of online DP players!!! So I’ve been on cloud nine the past few weeks, playing more DP than I ever thought possible. Now that it seems I’ll be able to play fairly regularly I sent in my check to FiTS and can’t wait for someone to teach me the secret FiTS handshake and cool stuff like that.

Currently I have two non-driving teens that need constant chauffeuring, but eventually someday I’d like to be able to take a long weekend drive and play this great game against real people on a real table with real counters.

[Author]

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