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My club seems to be busier, shows seem to be busier, and there's a lot more casual interest going on, so I'm pretty sure TTG is up from last year.

My priorities have changed though, so I'm not buying much new stuff and only playing a game every 3 or 4 months.

I've noticed a huge shift away from GW in particular over the last few years - almost anything GW sold well in flea markets, now it seems to hardly shift. In my gaming club at least, almost everyone has a new main game, with 40K being a fall back / common game for new matchups. Board games and X-Wing are much more popular now.

I've been pretty much the same for the past few years. Consistently gaming almost every other thursday with my gaming group. My hobbying/painting/building has been fits and starts for the last few years, so virtually no change for me.

My little club is a bit smaller than we were 2 years ago. 3-4 members a week now vs 4-6 back then, but I have really no idea what the community-at-large's interest level is.

For what it's worth I'm pretty much in agreement with Davout about board games vs miniatures, but I think that there's a mid-range for game with a board and minis. I'd call it a hybrid or a miniatures boardgame.

Even though I use it, the term "wargame" is really too vague to be used for miniature wargaming among folks who aren't miniature wargamers. Boardgame fans think of wargamers as folks playing war-themed boardgames. You really have to specify Board Wargaming vs Miniature Wargaming.

Speaking personally my overall interest in wargaming is probably as high as it was this time last year. I spend a huge amount of time reading wargaming forums and rulebooks and browsing manufacturers websites. However in the past year I think I might have actually played a wargame maybe 2 times. Most of my gaming time for the past year or two has really been board games and RPGs (Shadowrun for a bit and now starting D&D 5e). I think a big part of the reason for this is it's simply easier for everyone to bring a pile of board games to the club and select 2 or 3 games to play in an evening rather than sorting out everything needed for your average wargame. RPGs are even easier to sort out just set a regular night and away you go as long as the GM is prepared and the players have their dice (and ideally a mini for their character).

There have been two other big killers for my personal wargaming. The first is that I have been struggling to find rulesets and periods/settings that interest me long enough to sustain a project (I don't like playing with unpainted minis). To an extent this has been solved by me finally checking out the various rules released by Osprey Publishing, there's a lot of nice games in that range. The second problem is actually getting any painting done. I've posted elsewhere about my struggles this year with depression, anxiety and gender dysphoria (yes I'm trans if you've got a problem with that keep it to yourself please), a big effect of that has been a total lack of motivation to actually do anything hobby related. Still things are getting better in that regard, I started taking anti depressants in the past month and my desire to paint minis and be more involved in general with the hobby has slowly started to return. I'm initially keeping things small to ease myself back into things, I started by painting a mini for my D&D character (a gnome cleric, taking things a bit too literally there ) and in the past week or so I've started painting some of the Anvil Industry regiments range so I can play some games with Osprey's Black Ops rules. I'm about a quarter of the way through that project and half way through the first batch of minis that I've bought. If this goes well I'm seriously considering getting something together in the new year for another Osprey ruleset, Dragon Rampant.

So yeah, this year has been bad for me and wargaming but assuming my various personal issues keep getting better I see no reason why next year shouldn't be a good one.

 Nick Ellingworth wrote:

So yeah, this year has been bad for me and wargaming but assuming my various personal issues keep getting better I see no reason why next year shouldn't be a good one.

It sounds like it's looking up at least

Nick Ellingworth: I can speak very highly of the Osprey rule sets. I've got Frostgrave, Lion Rampant and Dragon Rampantm and I've got Rogue Stars on pre order.

All great fun games with a low miniture count point of entry but they can scale up if desired. I'm planning on re creating the Fall of Bugmans Brewery campaign that was published in the old, old White Dwarf using Dragon Rampant rules. I've had a ton of fun writing up lists and building units with the "tool kit" that is the rule book