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What is TMP?

The Miniatures Page

Basically, think 1998 Geocities style forum. You have to dig to find the good content.

Yep that's it. Currently 260 message boards, and 5,154,603 total messages.

Handy place if you're a historical player... if sometimes hostile.

Is TMP still using that stupid only paying members can post and only certain "trusted" paying members can create new threads system that the admin introduced after he attacked a good portion of his user base and they responded by spamming the place with demands that he step down?

TMP may be a great source of information and inspiration but the hostility there starts at the very top. It's not a place I like to view unless there is no other source.

Going to the topic of the thread. From what I can see both skirmish and mass battle games are doing well at the moment. Certainly skirmish games are seemingly more popular within the science fiction and fantasy genres but with a few notable exceptions mass battle games are as far as I can tell anyway the more popular style of historical game.

I have to be honest though I don't like the skirmish and mass battle way of telling games apart. All that really tells me is how the miniatures are based and how they move. Skirmish games tend to use individual bases and the miniatures will be moved independently. Mass battle games usually either use multibasing or movement trays and as a result miniatures move as a block.

Sure for most games that works but there are always outliers. I much prefer to think in terms of squad, platoon, company, regiment and so on. I find that gives a far better impression of just how big a game will be. Obviously fleet and aerial games would use different terminology but the same idea applies.

I personally prefer games around the platoon size. Larger games are fun too but honestly I find building and painting that many minis a chore even at smaller scales. Of course such attitudes aren't uncommon and I think that might lead to the perception that larger games are less popular but there are loads of gamers out there either willing to paint 200 plus minis or that have a huge collection built up over decades. Those sorts of people are the ones keeping large games going and I think there are a lot more of them than people realise.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Skirmish scale games are certainly more popular at the moment but they're not going to kill off the big army games for a couple of reasons

1.New Shiney Syndrome:

One of the reasons that large scale games hold onto their players is that people have invested significant amounts of time/money/effort in getting set to play, so they say loyal far more than players of a skirmish game where you can dump when something new comes along so they tend to have more stable communities and so attract more new players, skirmish games are much riskier as they burn hot briefly and then fade out

This is only true because gamers are massive adherents to sunk cost fallacy. They'll stick with a game they might not even enjoy anymore because after putting over a grand into the models, well, might as well play with them.

The other side of that is attracting people willing to put a grand into an army, and then accept they're putting even more in as time goes on. That's a lot of money compared to skirmish games.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
2. OMG most of our players own everything (they want):

Skirmish games tend to grow in size with every new version of the rules as companies want to keep selling stuff but after their initial burst of growth has happened find players are less interested in buying more stuff unless there's a reason to, so game size tends to rise

(resculpting is the other antidote to this but can fall flat unless the new is clearly better than the old)

This has nothing to do with scale and everything to do with game design. If you design future units in such a way that they don't do something new, people won't buy them regarless of if they're playing an army scale game or a skirmish game. If you design a new unit that does something new, people will more than likely buy it. Skirmish games have an easier sell - when it's $20 for a few more models you only need to buy once, it's easier to swallow than $100 for a new tank you might want three of.

FYI Nick it's never the been the case that only paying members can post or start threads on TMP. I'm not a paying member myself and have been doing both regularly for at least 15 years. Becoming a paying member is purely voluntary. Never been stopped, never been asked for money.

If you want to buy/sell/swap you do have to become a supporting member though.

In any event, there are some very helpful and knowledgeable people there. It is an exceptional resource/source of advice for wargamers (particularity historical gamers) in spite of the bad behaviour occasionally encountered there.

It is what it is.

pessa wrote:
FYI Nick it's never the been the case that only paying members can post or start threads on TMP. I'm not a paying member myself and have been doing both regularly for at least 15 years. Becoming a paying member is purely voluntary. Never been stopped, never been asked for money.

If you want to buy/sell/swap you do have to become a supporting member though.

In any event, there are some very helpful and knowledgeable people there. It is an exceptional resource/source of advice for wargamers (particularity historical gamers) in spite of the bad behaviour occasionally encountered there.

It is what it is.

Fair enough, I'll be honest I was going off second hand information there, either way the hostility puts me off unless I can't find the information from anywhere else.

 Nick Ellingworth wrote:

pessa wrote:
FYI Nick it's never the been the case that only paying members can post or start threads on TMP. I'm not a paying member myself and have been doing both regularly for at least 15 years. Becoming a paying member is purely voluntary. Never been stopped, never been asked for money.

If you want to buy/sell/swap you do have to become a supporting member though.

In any event, there are some very helpful and knowledgeable people there. It is an exceptional resource/source of advice for wargamers (particularity historical gamers) in spite of the bad behaviour occasionally encountered there.

It is what it is.

Fair enough, I'll be honest I was going off second hand information there, either way the hostility puts me off unless I can't find the information from anywhere else.

Yeah for sure, I now what you mean. A lot of it comes from socialisation/nationalism. Even on Dakka, if someone's favourite sci fy faction is besmirched in some way, sometimes things can get heated. But when you're talking about real history, people can get really combative and angry if the view of others (often from other countries and traditions) don't confirm to their deeply held beliefs. I've never understood it to be honest.

But I guess if someone got on TMP started to downplay the role of the ANZAC's in both world wars I might get a bit silly and upset too!

The Napoleonic's boards are particularly bad for some reason ...

I think a big part of it is scale, like others have said anything beyond 30ish models ie platoon is an awful lot of work at GW/PP/etc scale, plus you run into rules quirks with groundscale where guns have absurdly short ranges for 'balance', even rank and spank games like KOW seem a bit misplaced at 28mm

Whilst blame is too strong a word GW are partially responsible, WHFB was very much an adaptation pf pre-existing historical games, the majority of which tended to be 15-20mm, and of course the bloat of 40k from Platoon(ish) level to 28mm scale Epic

Given advances in production 10mm/15mm should be the scale for big armys but apart from a few exceptions it doesnt seem to have caught on with the sci-fi and fantasy crowd maybe that'll change if/when GW redo Epic

I feel that the skirmish games have numbered days- there's just so many of them that picking one, or trying to find one that others play is a bit of a nightmare. I'm in the process of gradually selling off most of my Malifaux as a few players fell off the radar and the local scene died quickly after. It's there, but it's quite difficult to line up a game. 40k/AoS (and bolt action) however, have a thriving community. Player density is a big factor as not everyone lives in a city or populated area. Sometimes it's a matter of sucking it up and picking up what's being played.

Personally I believe that the longevity of a game, be it skirmish or company-size is dependent on both the company's willingness to support it and the density of the playerbase.

I have been with 40k for 20 years now, but I love skirmish games because 99% of the time I need to host all the minis and rules for any game I play as I live in a gaming dead zone and only have the wife and a couple of buddies to game with. For the price and time investment of a 40k force (of which I admittedly have several), I can buy and paint 4-5 skirmish forces of 10-25 models.

Right now I am pushing hard for my small group to play with the One Page Rules games, as they have come a long way since One Page 40k. The plus side being they are completely free and have both army-scale and skirmish-scale games of both 40k and Age of Sigmar.

https://onepagerules.com

Skirmish rulesets have to be chosen carefully for quality just the same as armyscale games especially with the glut of them now (just as it used to be a glut of army scale games up til now). The especially bad risk of armyscale games is that you typically have a much bigger force to commit to before finding the rules to be lacking. Skirmish games also benefit much more from being company agnostic, whereas Kings of War is really the only main army-scale game where you can blatantly use all sorts of companies' models without major backlash from other players.

It's not like army games are dying out, though. i can probably think of 5-8 supported army scale games right now, which is probably the same amount as the main (publicly supported) skirmish rulesets.

40k
Age of Sigmar
Gates of Antares
Bolt Action/Konflict
Maelstroms Edge
Mutant Chronicles
Kings of War
Runewars

Probably several more.

My all time favorite tabletop miniatures game is Mordheim - out of print for over a decade, and we still play. (Soooon.... Soooon it may come back....)

Others are still playing Necromunda,

Our biggest Deadzone group has players that play both Necromunda and Deadzone. (Pretty sure they bought Deadzone to use the terrain in Necromunda....)

I hear good things about Frostgrave - but it is having a hard time in my group, because people are still playing Mordheim (and, yes, buying Frostrgave plastics and using them in Mordheim).

So... kinda doubting the New Shiny syndrome, at least in part.

The Auld Grump

Auld brings up a good point - where I think skirmish games with deeper story/narrative/campaign options are far more likely to have players gaming them for 10-15-20 years than larger games.

Also, the purchase scale is often identical. It might be a skirmish game, but plenty of people will buy EVERY warband option, etc...in the end spending just as much as they would if they were doing an army build, etc. I still on occasion play Mordheim, Necromunda, Warhammer Quest, etc.

I am often surprised at the importance of playing a game quickly. I hear this often cited as a major reason to sell a game.

I consider table top miniatures gaming to be a deep and engrossing pastime. From rules, studying army lists, collecting, assembling and painting it is a slow process.

I don't necessarily look at skirmish games for their 'fast play' potential- although that's not really an issue. I could play a game of 40k for 2.5 hours, or I could play three consecutive 45 minute games of One Page Fantasy. With the effort it takes to get a game in as a working parent of two, I'm sure as hell not gonna play for 30-45 minutes and then be done.

I like skirmish games because of their focus on a smaller, more intimate warband. Whereas a Age of Sigmar Stormcast army is made of a faceless horde of quickly removed troops, a game of One Page Fantasy or Song of Blades and Heroes using some Stormcast lets me field 5-8 models that I have heavily converted to all be characterful individuals, who can usually stick around for several turns doing cool things rather than see half of my lovingly painted models get removed before I even get to use them.

kenofyork wrote:
Quickly finishing my preferred pastime so I can get back to chores? Not a selling point.

For me it is often the difference between playing something and playing nothing at all. I get maybe three or four hours a month for face to face gaming so if we can get a couple of games in so much the better. I have noticed a pond difference when it comes to new rules, UK rules are showing a definite trend towards quick and small to match our decreasing room sizes and loss of leisure time. US rules are still often big table, big battalion style games that can be played over many hours or even days if required. To be honest the range of styles is great, it means that the traditional barfiers to entry into the hobby are minimised while those who have the time, space, resources and inclination can find the game to suit their preferences.

Yeah, until I get the upstairs in my new house done, if it cant be played on one of the 2x3 halves of my 4x6 combo table, it's just not gonna see playtime. But smaller does not equal shallower.

Playtime depends. I like having a meaty game, but I can't really have several meaty games. I'll just never really get to explore or appreciate them. I can, however, get in a quick game of Arena Rex before/after my Warmachine game on game night and if for some reason we have an odd number, I can get in 3-4 different game systems to keep things fresh.

Essentially, its not that I don't like 2ish hour games; its that starting one requires that I give up an existing one. 1 hour games though? I can just keep adding those to the bag and play whenever someone is excited about the new shiny.

kenofyork wrote:
I am often surprised at the importance of playing a game quickly. I hear this often cited as a major reason to sell a game.

I consider table top miniatures gaming to be a deep and engrossing pastime. From rules, studying army lists, collecting, assembling and painting it is a slow process.

It's less "I spent 1 hr playing X instead of 3 hours playing Y, so I'm done for the night" as it is "I spent 1 hr playing X so I can play it two more times in the time it would have taken to play Y." Or "I can't block off a whole evening/weekend afternoon/whatever to play a 4 hour game, but I can find an hour to whip through a skirmish."

So the factors are "more games in the same time" and "a game when no longer game was possible" rather than simply wanting to play less time for the sake of it.

There's also a reduction of the common scenario where e.g. a game takes a long time to set up and play, but it's possible that the game is a foregone conclusion by the midway point. When the game takes a long time to play out, you might spend the rest of the evening on something which is already over, which sucks, and it's very likely that you won't be able to have another go - whereas if you're playing a game that takes an hour, then even if it's clear at the 30-45 minute mark that one side is going to win, there's not much time left before you're done (and can potentially play again).

And if you put in actual time constraints, even in a large scale game, you significantly raise the pressure, and sometimes the enjoyment, of the game.

Until Kings of War, the idea of using a chess clock to limit the time for each player separately had never occurred to me.

And it is an excellent change - without that constraint I can end up way overthinking a turn. (Which does not translate to using better tactics.)

With that constraint, I tend to be one of the fastest players, and end with time left over. And I think that I win more often than I do without that constraint.

I may well use something like that in Mordheim or Vanguard, next time I set up a campaign.

The Auld Grump

 Nick Ellingworth wrote:

pessa wrote:
FYI Nick it's never the been the case that only paying members can post or start threads on TMP. I'm not a paying member myself and have been doing both regularly for at least 15 years. Becoming a paying member is purely voluntary. Never been stopped, never been asked for money.

If you want to buy/sell/swap you do have to become a supporting member though.

In any event, there are some very helpful and knowledgeable people there. It is an exceptional resource/source of advice for wargamers (particularity historical gamers) in spite of the bad behaviour occasionally encountered there.

It is what it is.

Fair enough, I'll be honest I was going off second hand information there, either way the hostility puts me off unless I can't find the information from anywhere else.

Been on TMP for the better part of 2 decades. It can get wierd sometimes and it definitely has alot of grongonards and "patriots", but I don't find the hostility to be bad. Certainly on the hostility spectrum it's much closer to Dakka than it is to Frothers. I'd highly recommend checking it out yourself and not relying on second hand information. One thing about TMP is that I often get more replies and interest there than anywhere else for my posts on unusual games, minis, etc.

One other thing. First thing you do when you join TMP is -unless you like his stuff- to "Ignore" the user "Tango01". He's not necessarily a bad guy but he spams TMP with so much stuff (mostly one-line links to every concieveable wargaming post on the web) that topics you wish to revisit will be bumped off the front page too quickly.

I love Dakka but if you're interested in games that aren't big or popular -especially historicals but also post-apoc, odd sci-fi and fantasy, etc- I highly recommend joining TMP and Lead Adventure. Good forums that focus mostly on the non-GW/PP end of things. It will go a long way toward broadening your hobby horizons.

Lead Adventure, all day. Easily my favourite forum by miles. I come on Dakka for the 40K silliness (and the general mayhem and teeth-gnashing).

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
And if you put in actual time constraints, even in a large scale game, you significantly raise the pressure, and sometimes the enjoyment, of the game.

Until Kings of War, the idea of using a chess clock to limit the time for each player separately had never occurred to me.

And it is an excellent change - without that constraint I can end up way overthinking a turn. (Which does not translate to using better tactics.)

With that constraint, I tend to be one of the fastest players, and end with time left over. And I think that I win more often than I do without that constraint.

I may well use something like that in Mordheim or Vanguard, next time I set up a campaign.

The Auld Grump

Time is certainly an issue when it comes to gaming. Sadly, gone are the days of my keeping the local GW open until I wanted to go to bed. The joys and privilege of Key Time Staff. But it’s also changed on a personal level. I now work in London, which involves a lengthy commute.

So smaller scaled Games I can start and wrap up in an hour or two are most welcome. Yet I still crave the full 40k experience. A 2,000 point game with no time constraints. We start at a set time, and finish up when we finish up. That’s something I really miss.

As a result, I’m slowly working on a home board. Not only do I then just need an opponent, but if played on a Saturday, it’ll keep me out the pub for a few hours. Well, until victory drinks are called for!

Whilst larger scale games aren’t always practical, there’s no denying they’re an experience no skirmish game can ever properly replicate. It’s one thing to be over and done in an hour, but it’s an inherently poor imitation of hours of gaming, leading to a hard fought victory.

Thats my issue. Skirmish games are fun, but I don't get 25% of the enjoyment out of them that I do with a proper large scale battle.

Some of my favourite gaming memories stem from hours long affairs, where neither party was rushed for time.

For my 18th, during 2nd Edition my brother and I painted an entire company of Dark Angels, 20% of the Scout Company, 40%ish of the Ravenwing, and around 50% of the Deathwing. And our local store let us have an ‘us vs everyone’ game.

We had people on our side helping out of course, otherwise we’d never have got beyond the first half of the first turn.

Man, what a game. I remember a particularly cheeky Scout with a Lascannon (yep, they could take them back then!) pulled off a truly spectacular shot. Hit a tank in the turret (either a Predator or an Immolator), which cause it to spin off, clocking a Dreadnought. That Dreadnought then exploded, and set off a chain reaction. I’d say that one plucky Scout, with a single shot, accounted for something like 10% of the enemy force. Because Second Edition!

We didn’t have it all our own way. Some wag with a Lifta Droppa latched onto our sole Land Raider (salvage job that, proud of it too!) and dropped it onto our commanders. All went squish, Landraider went boom. Lifta Droppa promptly swarmed by Scouts.

No joke, that was a five or six hour game. But what a game. What an experience. Think Apocaylpse before Apocaylpse was. And without any ridiculously big guns to speed things up.

Another highlight for me was our Eversor Assassin taking out a whole bunch of Space Wolves, including Ragnar Blackmane in a single combat. So much Carnage! But like bottling lightning, it’s not something I can ever truly replicate.

Can’t do anything like that with Skirmish level games. Not to be fair would you particularly want to. But even now, near 20 years later, that game remains one of my Hobby pinnacles.

Those that stick solely to Skirmish scale will never know such abject fun and nonsense. And that’s why Skirmish will never fully replace larger scale.

Man. At risk of going OT, one of my favorite things was 2nd edition damage tables for the Russ.

Their turrets had like 25 armour, and then when you got through you rolled on the damage chart and I think on a 1 or a 2 you just...
...

...

... hit more armour YAY

Those that stick solely to Skirmish scale will never know such abject fun and nonsense. And that’s why Skirmish will never fully replace larger scale.

That may be true for those of us that have some awesome experiences with larger games, but I'm finding current culture doesn't care about that.

I hear in our local facebook daily how people would rather play 2 or 3 games of infinity over one game of 40k. That more games is better than just one game in a day.

I don't think it is "either/or" for most people that I know. For most it is "both/and". It's horses for course. Sometimes small and quick is appropriate, other times long and slow hits the spot!

My favourite all-time game is LotR/the Hobbit SBG. That's a game that hits the sweet-spot at around 500-800 points with maybe 40/50 individual models a side - so classically a skirmish game. However, I have taken part in massive linked all-day campaigns with something like 25,000 points per side (yes, you did read that right!) with hundreds and hundreds of models per side.

I also love KoW, which is really effective at everything from 500 points up: so we are talking multi-based with 100-200 models potentially per side. But then I have played fun games at <500 points with MSU armies.

Given I am an adult in full-time employment with 3 teenage kids I have a limited time budget and more calls on my financial one than I would like! I do get the opportunity for those larger games, but more often short and sweet (<2 hours) hits the spot.

That's not to say I prefer long over short. To be honest, I enjoy long games, but find them like Christmas Dinner. They are enjoyable, but I haven't the energy or inclination to have one every week. Smaller games are like spag bol or egg and chips. They are nice enough most of the time, and are very nice thank you, given the available options, but every so often it is nice to have a treat and splurge out on something a bit more ambitious when you have the opportunity!

 Eilif wrote:
I agree with Elbows, Skirmish gaming the way I do it requires a not-insignificant investment in terrain. However, that's lessened alot by the fact that my terrain sets see use over a variety of games.

That is one of the reasons for Skirmish games being more popular, that coupled with the time it takes to play a game vs large scale. It is much easier to get a few people to meet to play for 1-2 hours, than it is to meet for 2-4+ hours.

Skirmish games are cheaper to get into for rules and models. That means games tend to be faster. It also means it is easier to get new people hooked on the game and playing, because it requires less early investment to play. It is much easier to talk someone to spend $50-200 than $500-1000 before they can even really play. And if htey start playing and collecting but decide their play style doesn't match what they picked, it costs more to switch unlike Skirmish Games.

Yes, they tend to rely on terrain, unless you are playing a space game like X-Wing. However terrain doesn't factor into it because of multiple reasons. If you have a group of friends, then one person doesn't have to buy all the terrain. The amount split among players becomes very manageable. This also lends to buying and playing "other" skirmish games because once you have terrain, might as well use it for other games. I spent about $600 for two tables worth of various terrains but I also play six different skirmish games with the combnation of the terrain, making that cost really $100 per game so it isn't factored a huge investment into one particular game.