Over forty years ago, a friend invited me to play my first miniatures game, Panzertroops, published by Heritage Miniatures. The game came boxed with 15mm WWII American and German miniatures, but the local shop didn't carry much of the line beyond the boxed game, and we opted for the cheaper, and slightly more readily available 1/72 kits and plastic figures at the time.
This resulted in my fielding M3 halftracks, Stuarts, and Lees against Panzer IIIs and Jagdpanthers for the most part. I don't remember ever winning a game, but on one or two occasions, I did manage to get a bazooka shot on Jagdpanther, which was just about as good.
Panzertroops gave you the tools to add stats for additional vehicles and weapons not included in the rules, and we expanded the game accordingly. After a couple of years, we moved on to other rules and scales, and shortly after that, I began writing my own rules.
Though I never owned the boxed game, I do still have my bad photocopy of the rules, and recently, I stumbled onto an original copy of the rules on the web. Eight pages include all of the rules and painting guides for the US and German figs that were included in the box.
As it happens, I did eventually get into 15mm WWII miniatures in the late 1980s, via Quality Castings, which happened to be an expanded version of the old Heritage line. So, when I finish my current big non-hobby project that's sucking up all of my time, I plan to finally play a WWII game of Panzertroops rules, and with the 15mm miniaturess for which they were intended.
I wish that we had taken a couple of photos of one of those early games, played on a small table in Mark's basement on terrain constructed of paperback books with a couple of HO scale apple and pine trees from my model railroad stuff.
I'll be sure to take a couple of pics this time around.
