For me at least, the golden years of board wargaming were from 1979, the year I first discovered board wargames and probably 1991 when the bottom fell out of the board game market.
I believe the writing was on the wall for the hobby with the advent of Dungeons and Dragons in the late seventies and early eighties. This spawned a number of other fantasy type games and some companies sprung up that further enhanced the fantasy role play genre such as Games Workshop. I have to admit that the fantasy genre does not interest me in the slightest and it is hard enough to get people to accept...