About myself

A bit about myself. My name is Kyrylo, I live in Ukraine in a small town near Kyiv.
I've been interested in wargames and war history since my childhood, but as I grew up in the Soviet Union, western wargaming systems weren't available for me for a long time.
When I myself had a little son, I came back to the idea of tabletop wargaming and was trying to compose my own rules loosely based on the Rapid Fire system using 1:35 figures and mixed-scale vehicles. I played several games with my wife, as my son had been too small, but that gaming process hadn't satisfy me... Here's how it looked like:

And then, in January 2012, I first got to know about the Art of Tactic WWII game system. At first glance I realized that it was the very thing I had been searching for!

So, since then I've been an Art of Tactic gamer. I even noted the date of my first AoT game—March 11, 2012. Here's a photo from it:

My son was then only 7, so at first they played against me together with my wife (many thanks to her for supporting my hobby).
A year later, in 2013, I found like-minded gamers in Kyiv and the idea of setting up an AoT club appeared in the air. My first "away game" took place on January2, 2014 in Kyiv against Alex aka Xelanizul, who is a fan of various tabletop games and a great fan of modelling.
The beginning was successful, and on January 12th, 2014 there was the biggest gathering of AoT wargamers Ukraine has ever seen since. Eight people including me and my son got together in a library (!) to play and communicate:

That was cool!

But the idea of the regular AoT game sessions couldn't be implemented: Maidan Revolution entered its hot phase, Russia invaded Crimea and set Donbas in a blaze, so we all had much more important things to care about...
I had also to put on hold my home games. The thing is that in 2012 I had another son born. While he was too small to reach the tabletop, we could play. But when he became two he started breaking every model he put his hands on :)
Our home wargames had been only sporadical until the end of 2018 when two events brought me back to active wargaming. First, my younger boy became six and finally started to understand there are things he can't play with and break ;) Second, my elder boy was 14 already—much more competent and inventive opponent than he was at 9 or 10.
Moreover, I've got two nephews, 10 and 8.5 years old, who are also showing interested in the game. We tried two play a couple of games 2x2 with them, and it was fun. I presented one of them the Tank Combat kit to his tenth birthday—let's see, maybe two more wargamers will grow soon :)
Also, I've significantly extended my collection of AoT units lately. Alex I played with in 2014 shifted to other games and has been selling his enormous collection, so I bought a whole lot from him.
Now I have an almost full-fledged Wehrmacht infantry division, a Red Army rifle brigade, about 30 armored vehicles, several aircraft, eagerness to play and, as most of the adult gamers, too little spare time...

As I'm a copywriter and translator by profession, I hope to combine my professional skills and my hobby in this blog.

Staying on comms, yours K.J.