Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Nowadays, I mostly play historicals and have to say, I don't really notice much of the exact accuracy bit. Of course, real uniformisation is a pretty recent thing and it's actually pretty hard to even know exactly which colour pre-industrial armies wore. Before modern dyes, there would have been a lot of variety in tones and the like. And on campaign, that would only have been accentuated.

Of course, almost everyone paints their minis to be unrealistically clean because honestly, most battlefields would just get you a bunch of dirty grey and brown figures. It's much more popular to paint them more in a parade uniform.

My own focus is further in the past and there, we know basically nothing about the exact colours and the like. Sure, we might know the heraldry of the King of Bohemia, but there is no way to know what the regular footsoldiers were wearing on a medieval battlefield. For Ancients it's the same. We don't exactly have many tunics or shields from which we can deduce the colours they wore.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I was hit by BattleTech era play.

It wasn't that my units were painted incorrectly, it's that I invested heavily in the Dark Age & Republic of the Sphere Eras.

Here, they don't play those eras, so my mechs sit on the shelf, unable to be played.

(I was a servant of St. Jerome Blake and and follower of Devlin Stone)

Yeah, that is a problem in BT. A lot of 'classic' players really hated 'ClickyTech' and Dark Age. Using the HeroClix mechanics for BattleTech simply was not close enough to the game they wanted to play, and the Inner Sphere had just come OUT of a centuries-long dark age of destruction and technological loss called 'the Succession Wars' a mere 50 years before. Having ANOTHER Dark Age that soon destroyed their interest in the background just as thoroughly as the change in mechanics killed their interest in the system.

But that's a taste thing, and as the saying properly goes "In matters of taste, the customer is always right." It's just an uphill battle for fans of unpopular eras in BT.

To answer the OP's question though, any tabletop miniature gamer is old enough for historical wargaming, but it is a personal choice.

I started when I was a teenager. It wasn't a problem for me to enjoy historical miniature gaming in a local group while still playing D&D, Warhammer, and Warhammer 40K with my teenage friends.

Lots of historical groups provide the miniatures for their games so all you need to do is play. Treat their toys as good or better than you treat your own.

The easiest entry points to historical gaming are probably games by the Perry Twins or Warlord Games, since they tend to be more readily available, use some mechanics similar to GW rules, use six sided die, and have plastic miniatures, often in 28mm scale.

The Dark Ages is one of the easiest periods to try since the games are often skirmish level, Vikings are popular now, and there are lots of easy and often free rulesets. Kids can easily understand many of the rules.

I have played a variety of historicals and enjoyed most, to different levels.
Some were fun to participate in, others, I enjoyed the model side as well.
Napoleonic era, I have never wanted to make armies.
But I enjoyed the heck out of Fire & Fury Regimental rules, American Civil War.
We played with 28mm Perry minis that looked amazing. A friend had enough for both sides.
But I could never get into painting that many samey looking models, despite the minis.
I had one box of Perry infantry & ended up giving it to a friend.

Flames of War and Bolt Action are solid rules for their respective scales.
The FoW were simple to paint rapidly, but I sold my Germans in a move.
Bolt Action models are decent plastics. I currently have a U.S. Airborne force with some Recon elements.
Fun & easy to paint, IMO. I did it in stages.
Primed OD first, and played that way. It was like using green army men.
Then I block painted in the webbing, boots, and faces. Sealed and played another few months that way.

Saga from Tomahawk Games is pretty popular as a skirmish game.
Adepticon always has a few tournaments, which is where I learned to play.
Model counts are pretty low. My Viking army is only 43 models.
There are also supplements for various eras from Ancient Egypt to Late Crusades, including an Age of Magic.

There are many other rules to look at, from breezy to crunchy.
I have played DBA (De Bellis Antiquitatis), Fields of Glory, Hail Caesar, among others I have forgotten the names of.
The Barons' War is a mid-late medieval that is just coming from Wargames Atlantic with model support.
Lion Rampant, and its fantasy counterpart Dragon Rampant are cheapish to get into also.
Two Fat Lardies has a plethora of game rules to check out as well. I rather enjoyed Nuts! as a WWII skirmish sized game.

Most eras of historicals now have amazing options.
Between 3d prints, Victrix, Gripping Beast, Warlord, Perry, and Wargames Atlantic, plastic is pretty well served. Metal options are still around. One piece casts are nice at times.
A special mention of Medbury Miniatures on MMF, if you have a printer. Great sculpts with variety, and very useable as LotR proxies.

I am a 35 yr veteran gamer - started with historical board games like Cry Havoc, plated Rogue Trader and 2nd Ed 40k as a kid and WHFB. Played both historical and GW games.

My sense now is that both attract similar people - most very chilled and keen to have fun, some will be utter d*cks. For every "you have the wrong historical army list" rivet counter, there is a 40K "but historically there were no female custodians" loser ready to whinge about something that doesn't matter.

GW core rules are very much a 1980s shell - updated, but still at its dark core a 1980s dice heavy construct which reflects the legacy at the time and is now an unkillable monster on the annual 3yearly new edition cycle. The thing is, 40K is actually a truly awful ruleset in so many ways now (said as a 2nd Edition lover of skirmish gaming who sees L Shaped building covered tables as a reason to cry).

Historical games used to be rules heavy (hello Challenger 2000). They're much lighter now - look at Hail Caeser, Black Powder and Bolt Action by Warlord as good examples of this. There is also so much more imagination in the rulesets as well - Muskets and Tomahawks, V for Victory, Lion Rampant, Saga, To the Strongest etc - the sheer variety of fun, playable and well designed rules that don't need a vast bookshelf to play is great.

The figures are increasingly good - most modern plastic sets are ideal for what you want them to be at a fraction of the cost of GW models - £22 for a box of 40 - 50 well designed dark age models I can use for multiple rule sets - yes please!

GW does great rules - LOTR, Kill Team and Necromunda are all brilliant, but 40K is a bloated wasteful monster that needs to be killed and rebooted to make it half as tidy and efficient as modern historical rule sets.

I started wargaming with historical in high school.
Ancients and medieval using DBM with 15mm figures.

In general; historical wargaming tends to assume that you are interested in some part of history and wargaming. Enough so that you will pursue and figure things out, rather than a game "system" that tries to grab your attention.
Choosing the scale, miniatures and which rules you like is up to you.
Though I would a advise anyone starting out to go with what your local group plays at the start.

Historical wargaming groups can be hard to find, but there's usually a group near you somewhere.
I'm pretty sure there will be a small group playing DBA somewhere even after the apocalypse.

Ahtman wrote:Is DBA not a thing anymore? Is no one getting their DBM on? What about Warmaster Ancients?

It is. DBA is in version 3. It still seems to be the ubiquitous second choice of almost every ancient and/or medieval wargamer.
While there are still a few people playing DBM, the even more Phil Barker style of fiddly detail DBMM has largely taken it's shrinking place.

DBM/M has been largely supplanted by Art De La Guerre (ADLG) and Mortem et Gloriam (MeG). Which appear to be equally popular and fans of both seem to think that theirs is the best. Each seems to appeal strongly to a different kind of player, with ADLG favoured by more tournament players.

Honestly if I was going to do historical wargaming, I'd do my best to be as accurate as possible with equipment, paint schemes, etc. That's part of the fun of it, although it might not be fun if I'm tearing my hair out trying to determine exactly what shade of green those WW2 soldiers are supposed to be wearing. It's like a marriage of scale modeling and wargaming. But I wouldn't gatekeep like that, others might have a different approach.

Honestly with certain sci-fi/fantasy stuff I'd probably be the same way. The Horus Heresy game seems like a cross between historicals and the rest of Warhammer, so I'd try to follow established schemes for whichever legion I ended up running. I already do that somewhat with my Dark Angels in 40k, as I do like their official colors.

I'm 36 now so definitely have a growing interest in historical Wargaming and spend plenty of time drooling over nicely painted and customised armies in magazines!
I think it's less necessary to leave behind the childish Sci-Fi and Fantasy gaming and pretend to be a responsible adult these days as well, which is nice because I'm still a child at heart XD

I still need to figure out where to dip my toe into Historicals yet though, and find a period that is both exciting to me and also has some chance of generating interest in an opponent!
The closest I've got is the Epic scale ECW stuff Warlord released recently, they looked extremely cool and I have a stand on my painting table at the moment. I just need to figure out how to paint buff coats...