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Go into any FLGS these days, or trawl the 'net for longer than 10 minutes and you find yourself spoiled for choice in a way that I've never seen before.

Literally hundreds of companies are making minis at all scales, for all settings (real or fictional), to suit all tastes and all budgets. An increasing number of companies are giving us choice of rules, paints and tools, terrain, gaming aids and more. Board games and RPGs, long-time cousins of wargaming, seem to be crossing paths more as companies expand their IP to give us different ways of playing in their universe.

How did this happen? For me there are 3 reasons:
1. The Internet - setting up a business operating in a niche market is now not as risky when you can reach the whole world in an instant. A good idea and a few intriguing pictures in the right places and people will beat a path to your door.
2. Casting technology - as this has grown it has become easier for people to sculpt and cast their own minis, and more importantly to make them special.
3. Games Workshop's rise and fall - yes, the beast is not yet dead (although it is slowly going downhill) but it serves an extraordinary function in introducing people to gaming, then hacking them off until they find what else is out there. It could be that its the most important thing they've ever done for the hobby


So what do you think? Have we as gamers never had it so good?

I would agree with you on all accounts. Really not much more to say...

...actually, I wouldn't necessarily say that we have more options than ever before, just that we have more accessible options than before. There have always been countless minis and rulesets available, recently we have seen an increase in availability because the internet has made it more accessible. In the past most offerings were limited to mail order catalogs (you had to know where to look) and local area sales, and weren't widely distributed. The internet has made for more knowledgeable consumers which in turn makes for more demand which results in greater accessibility.

I would have to guess as am still a gaming spring chicken, but would concur

There are plenty of good, nay excellent, sculptors
improvemnts in casting techniques and materials
(Finecast arguments aside)

PDF quickstart rules available to tryout games

TBH it makes my head spin there are so many goodies to lust after.
So little time and cash are the limiting factors

Chimera, you have hit the nail firmly on the head mate.

I was thinking about this exact topic only the other day and was going to bring it up somehow.

I walk in to Maelstrom twice a week and I still get overwhelmed with what's on offer. I like Chibi am a spring chicken in comparison to a lot of gamers and even a few of my friends. However everyday I seem to find a new site with awesome terrain on or a great new game. The problem is trying not to let it envelope you. In the last few months I've tried Flames, Infinity, Malifaux and soon I will be trying Relics. Before that it was just 40k. It has really opened my eyes but in some ways I just hope our hobby doesn't get to watered down with choice. Too much of a good thing?

I still have loads of fun with 40k but this new golden age has really shown gaming in a different light (Namely Infinity as it effin' rocks)

It's pretty much what it has always been.

There has always been a huge choice of minis and rule sets - well from the mid/early eighties onwards.

Really?

I can believe that but I don't believe it was as accessible. Unless you were in the know how.

marielle wrote:It's pretty much what it has always been.

There has always been a huge choice of minis and rule sets - well from the mid/early eighties onwards.

I agree that the alternatives have been there, but awareness of alternatives is at an all-time high. How many of those games back in the 80s and 90s had to shut down too soon that would have thrived in this current climate?
I think in the next few years the challenge will be finding a single game out of the dozens everyone in your group has an army for or interest in, rather than just finding a way to enjoy the games your already invested in as they change.

I'd have to agree. In the 80's and 90's there may have been rulesets, i just didnt see em. White dwarf was a good read, (about to subscribe to the creeper, it has content), GW had much better sculpts.
nowdays? GW has cartoon sculpts with more skulls. White dorf is no read. I think now is the best time for gaming.....There are so many SUCCESSFUL game companies about i have to change my pants everytime i see a new sculpt.
Things coming out of spain make me froth my knickers atm. Some of the fantasy football minis are also good.
I love infinity, i love reaper, i love some of wyrd, i love pulp city!.
Miniatures golden age? OMG yes!

I can believe that but I don't believe it was as accessible. Unless you were in the know how.

Before the internet, people had things called magazines - Miniature Wargames, White Dwarf, Wargames Illustrated, Practical Wargamer etc - which were readily available at newsagents.

And those magazines carried advertisments. If something took your fancy, you sent a SSAE and they would send you a catalogue, and usually a sample figure if you cellotaped two 10p's to your letter.

Some of those magazines also had lists of clubs, with contact telephone numbers, so you could find somewhere to play.

And they also had advertisments for various trade shows and conventions, so if you were of a mind you could go and spend a day looking at figure ranges, trying out rules etc.

Not to mention that back in the dim and distant past, before Tesco and shopping centres, most towns had model shops, many of which stocked wargames figures and rules alongside Airfix Spitfires and Hornby Trains. And some town even had wargame shops.

As for the internet, this very morning I noticed someone on another forum asking if there were any wargames clubs in SE London. Which I found odd, because there are two of the oldest clubs in the UK in that area, who also organise two of the largest shows in the UK - and were we back in the old, inaccessiible, pre internet age they would have easily found this information.

Wargaming is still, and will most likely always be a minority. Most kids see it as 'Un-cool', and 'Geeky'. Most Adults see it as 'Interesting, but I would not play it, or a little child's spaceman game'.

Sure there are 100x's more stuff out there for gamers to look at, learn, buy, sell, etc. But wargaming generally will never be 'Big'. People argue that it brings in a lot of money every year, and even if that was true, the reason being is because...for example...GW charging 80NZD or 40 pounds for one flipping model.

I love wargaming, It will always have a place with me, I'll spend an insane amount on models without even thinking, I love playing with plastic and medal toy soldiers.

I agree that the alternatives have been there, but awareness of alternatives is at an all-time high. How many of those games back in the 80s and 90s had to shut down too soon that would have thrived in this current climate?
I think in the next few years the challenge will be finding a single game out of the dozens everyone in your group has an army for or interest in, rather than just finding a way to enjoy the games your already invested in as they change.

In truth most of the figure ranges and rules are still available. The companies may have changed hands, the figures might be really old sculpts, but they are still there.

As for the hobby dividing this is something that has always been a problem for gamers. Those buying into system games - GW, PP, Battlefront, Malifaux etc - are protected to some extent, but in the wider world of wargames it has always been a matter compromise.

I agree with the OP. However, it is not just the internet, but the community which has developed in the last decade.

Forums such as Dakka; Blogs/Plogs; and companies that actually listen to what the marketplace is saying (Im looking at you BitsPudlo, Chapterhouse and friends) have made it possible to turn our ideas, dreams and crazy notions into reality.

I agree with OP.

As someone who was mostly dependent on mail order and catalogs/magazine advertising during the 80s and 90s, I find marielle's post as far from my actual experience as possible. Ordering and getting an overview of what was available was not easy, especially not when you were in your teens and had limited resources.

Yes, we might well be heading into a golden age.

AvatarForm wrote:I agree with the OP. However, it is not just the internet, but the community which has developed in the last decade.

Forums such as Dakka; Blogs/Plogs; and companies that actually listen to what the marketplace is saying (Im looking at you BitsPudlo, Chapterhouse and friends) have made it possible to turn our ideas, dreams and crazy notions into reality.

I agree with this. Both factors contribute to making this, what I would consider, a golden age. Miniatures look better too, a lot of the ones I saw growing up were simply fugly.

As a long term wargamer (37+ years) I well remember the good old bad old days when you had to scour the classifieds in Military Modelling, send off a stamped addressed envelope and await a cheaply mimeographed catalogue from which to choose your figures.

Unless you were lucky enough to live in London and could visit the Minifigs store in Victoria.

The process is very well described in Harry Pearson's Achtung Schweinhund.

Totally disagree. 1998-2003 made the current gaming era look like a pile of poop.

*GW was a fun place to game
*FLGS required fully painted armies everywhere
*Pokemon card games were not profitable as wargaming so everywhere you went wargamers got the entire store all day, every day.
*Figures were cheap.
*GW GTs were awesome.
*GW had RTTs which were well done.
*GW outriders shared the hobby
*I could pick my own metal bitz by weight
*Troll magazine allowed every plastic sprue and metal bit to be bought individually
*GW battlewagon driving around!
*Internet discunters roamed free and unobstructed with being allowed to sell GW on the net
*People sculpted custom figures for the sake of making a unique army, not to make a quick buck and not immediatly sell everything so no armies are unique.
*WD did not suck
*Chapter approved expanded the game monthly and gave us niche chapters like Kroot Mercs and feral orks. *Forgeworld was just starting and gave us cheap models.
*World-wide campaigns where games impacted an evolving storyline and were fun to play in

No... today is not a golden age... it is a shadow of its former self. The only thing that is 'better' now is the growth of the independent tourney circuit. I find the quality of casual gaming in FLGS abysmal compared to what it was due to the growth of alternative games like pokemon which get higher billing due to the customers buying product and the entitlement and lazyness of gamers out there who don't pay where you play. I also don't find 'the internets' as much of a benifit or growth as we had Portent.NET which was everything Dakka is... I actually find the internet as a whole has de-evolved in quality and the way people act since then so I would say the current wargaming 'internet' is worse off than it was 10 years ago.

When I had 5-6 FLGS and GW Battle Bunker all thriving 7 days a week, that was the Golden Age.

If you're just focused on GW, then it's definitely not a golden age.

As far as wargaming in general goes, I haven't been this happy with things for a long time.

Could it also be possible that the overall quality of the available games has risen? I'm not talking in terms of sculpts or rulese playability necessarily, but rather in terms of the volume of available sculpts and the "production value" of the game and its supporting documentation. For example, the presentation of games such as Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars is heads and shoulders above similar niche games, from what I've seen of older products at stores (a couple of local stores have stocks going back to the late 1980's!). Many of these older games use black and white books that look like they were photocopied at the library...

nkelsch wrote:Totally disagree. 1998-2003 made the current gaming era look like a pile of poop.

*GW was a fun place to game
*FLGS required fully painted armies everywhere
*Pokemon card games were not profitable as wargaming so everywhere you went wargamers got the entire store all day, every day.
*Figures were cheap.
*GW GTs were awesome.
*GW had RTTs which were well done.
*GW outriders shared the hobby
*I could pick my own metal bitz by weight
*Troll magazine allowed every plastic sprue and metal bit to be bought individually
*GW battlewagon driving around!
*Internet discunters roamed free and unobstructed with being allowed to sell GW on the net
*People sculpted custom figures for the sake of making a unique army, not to make a quick buck and not immediatly sell everything so no armies are unique.
*WD did not suck
*Chapter approved expanded the game monthly and gave us niche chapters like Kroot Mercs and feral orks.
*Forgeworld was just starting and gave us cheap models.
*World-wide campaigns where games impacted an evolving storyline and were fun to play in

No... today is not a golden age... it is a shadow of its former self. The only thing that is 'better' now is the growth of the independent tourney circuit. I find the quality of casual gaming in FLGS abysmal compared to what it was due to the growth of alternative games like pokemon which get higher billing due to the customers buying product and the entitlement and lazyness of gamers out there who don't pay where you play. I also don't find 'the internets' as much of a benifit or growth as we had Portent.NET which was everything Dakka is... I actually find the internet as a whole has de-evolved in quality and the way people act since then so I would say the current wargaming 'internet' is worse off than it was 10 years ago.

When I had 5-6 FLGS and GW Battle Bunker all thriving 7 days a week, that was the Golden Age.

Ok. Have you seen that whole debate about 'The GW Hobby vs. the hobby in general'? You have 16 points as to why we aren't in a 'golden age' of gaming, but 11/16 of the are GW centric. Expand your horizons a bit, and you'll see:

-Games with interesting new mechanics and ways of playing (Malifaux, Infinity)
-Plenty of online retailers who sells a mind-boggling range of games, from new to old (just look at FRP Game's 'War Game and Miniature' tab)
-We have community run events that far outclass anything a single company could run (Historicon, Adepticon, Gencon)
-Privateer Press runs their Shattered Grounds campaigns, which are worldwide events were players organize over the forums to generate strategic moves in order to capture the best territories
-We have Press Gangers and (of course, now I forget what Wyrd has, but I'll remember what it's called and put it here later) have replaced Outriders
-More and more companies are posting either full version of their rules, or trimmed up version of their rules, over the internet for free

You say that the internet has de-evolved in quality. I would have to disagree. Places like Dakka might have its fair share of Trolls, cookies cutter spam, and vitriol, but community like the Privateer Press, Battlefront, Corvus Belli, Tactical Command, and Wyrd forums are full to the brim of helpful, delightful people who would like nothing more than to shove a near metric-tons worth of information at you when you merely type, "I'm interested in playing, but..."

nkelsch wrote:Totally disagree. 1998-2003 made the current gaming era look like a pile of poop.

*GW was a fun place to game
*FLGS required fully painted armies everywhere
*Pokemon card games were not profitable as wargaming so everywhere you went wargamers got the entire store all day, every day.
*Figures were cheap.
*GW GTs were awesome.
*GW had RTTs which were well done.
*GW outriders shared the hobby
*I could pick my own metal bitz by weight
*Troll magazine allowed every plastic sprue and metal bit to be bought individually
*GW battlewagon driving around!
*Internet discunters roamed free and unobstructed with being allowed to sell GW on the net
*People sculpted custom figures for the sake of making a unique army, not to make a quick buck and not immediatly sell everything so no armies are unique.
*WD did not suck
*Chapter approved expanded the game monthly and gave us niche chapters like Kroot Mercs and feral orks. *Forgeworld was just starting and gave us cheap models.
*World-wide campaigns where games impacted an evolving storyline and were fun to play in

No... today is not a golden age... it is a shadow of its former self. The only thing that is 'better' now is the growth of the independent tourney circuit. I find the quality of casual gaming in FLGS abysmal compared to what it was due to the growth of alternative games like pokemon which get higher billing due to the customers buying product and the entitlement and lazyness of gamers out there who don't pay where you play. I also don't find 'the internets' as much of a benifit or growth as we had Portent.NET which was everything Dakka is... I actually find the internet as a whole has de-evolved in quality and the way people act since then so I would say the current wargaming 'internet' is worse off than it was 10 years ago.

When I had 5-6 FLGS and GW Battle Bunker all thriving 7 days a week, that was the Golden Age.

I agree with every said here...pertaining to GW.

As far as every other gaming company, I would agree that this is a Golden Age.

infinite_array wrote:Ok. Have you seen that whole debate about 'The GW Hobby vs. the hobby in general'? You have 16 points as to why we aren't in a 'golden age' of gaming, but 11/16 of the are GW centric. Expand your horizons a bit, and you'll see:

-Games with interesting new mechanics and ways of playing (Malifaux, Infinity)

No one plays these games in my friends circle or near me... IE: they might as well not exist.

-Plenty of online retailers who sells a mind-boggling range of games, from new to old (just look at FRP Game's 'War Game and Miniature' tab)

I sometimes buy these models to paint as part of my like of painting minis, but again, if no one plays them then the wargaming world doesn't exist.

-We have community run events that far outclass anything a single company could run (Historicon, Adepticon, Gencon)

I dunno... GW GT was pretty great. I said I liked the current tourneys.

-Privateer Press runs their Shattered Grounds campaigns, which are worldwide events were players organize over the forums to generate strategic moves in order to capture the best territories

Again... no one plays it. I cannot walk into a random gameshop with my model case unannounced and find dozens of people playing the same game I want to play. I have to if I am lucky, schedule to find a place that has a rotating game night that happens to play the game I want to play after a 25 mile drive only to find 2-3 other people playing the game.

-We have Press Gangers and (of course, now I forget what Wyrd has, but I'll remember what it's called and put it here later) have replaced Outriders

Yeah, being a shill for a game for a company that is by no means anywhere close to the popularity of GW of 1998-2003. Congrats press ganger. I have never even met or heard of such a person... How is that supposed to convince me there is a golden age of gaming? maybe for a new start up who didn't exist and in the dismal current environment it is a 'golden age' for ONE company like Privateer press, but like you said, one company does not make all wargaming.

-More and more companies are posting either full version of their rules, or trimmed up version of their rules, over the internet for free

I am not convinced "the internet is the free exchange of other peoples ideas" is a good thing that has grown out of the past 10 years. It is one of the ignorant attitudes of entitled internet users that pirating and infringement are 'ok' because they get what they want. I don't particularly find a problem with paying for rules and I don't have a particular problem with rule delivery and FAQs VS Living rulebooks.

You say that the internet has de-evolved in quality. I would have to disagree. Places like Dakka might have its fair share of Trolls, cookies cutter spam, and vitriol, but community like the Privateer Press, Battlefront, Corvus Belli, Tactical Command, and Wyrd forums are full to the brim of helpful, delightful people who would like nothing more than to shove a near metric-tons worth of information at you when you merely type, "I'm interested in playing, but..."

But... No one plays these games... FLGS barley have any gaming space or time allocated to wargaming in general so regardless of what game you play, you are having a degraded experience to the way things used to be. If there was a place that had 7 nights a week and all day weekends of PP press with 10-20 people at all times playing, sign me up. That doesn't exist and will never

The only way I have a feeling I will ever get a real chance to enjoy anything PP makes is to buy models, sit in my basement painting them, reading the rules and pretending to learn how to play then jump in the deep end and go to a tourney. While Tourneys have increased in availability, FLGS and quality of FLGS and the people who play at them have not.

Luckily for me, I got deep in to 40k before the FLGS basically died and became a horrible place to game so I can stick to tourneys.

Actually, if you want to enjoy playing PP and get other people into the game, become a Pressganger yourself!

All you need to do is have 2+ painted Starter Battlegroups/Warpacks (they have to be within the same game system), and a picture of yourself. Basically, you demo the game to people, and Privateer Press will help you out by sending things like prize support.

I think another problem is where we game. I have 3 FLGS within a 25 minutes drive of where I live, and they're full of gamers with regular 40k, Privateer Press, and Flames of War days, which to me is completely insane. They're also expanding their inventory - carrying Infinity starter packs, Warmachine models, and Malifaux models.

Sad that gaming is so limited in your neck of the woods.

No one I know plays these games either.
But the universe does not revolve around me.
The likes of Dakka and BoW have info on plenty of good stuff, suggesting that gaming is diverse and in a very healthy position at the moment, in terms of systems and the quality and models

I would hazard a guess at the gaming community being larger than it ever has been with bigger turnouts at conventions, tournies and other events. Another aspect that has probably improved, but am not qualified to comment on that.

@nkelsch - its sad that gaming is so limited where you live, but that does not mean that its representative of 'gaming' as a whole.

If you're really happy with GW then great, if not, why don't you decide on something you prefer and persuade your gaming buddies to give it a go?

Most games have a much cheaper buy-in than GW and you can always sell-on stuff if its not your thing.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:@nkelsch - its sad that gaming is so limited where you live, but that does not mean that its representative of 'gaming' as a whole.

It's not entirely representative, but it's also not uncommon. It's far less common to find communities where there's dozens of games being played or such huge stock ranges like Mikhaila's shop.

If you're really happy with GW then great, if not, why don't you decide on something you prefer and persuade your gaming buddies to give it a go?
Most games have a much cheaper buy-in than GW and you can always sell-on stuff if its not your thing.

Speaking from experience...this is far, far, far more difficult than you can imagine in many gaming communities.
Especially when your gaming community consists of people old enough to be your parents(and I'm 23 turning 24 this week, this is the case in my personal community here). I've tried introducing everything from Infinity, Secrets of the Third Reich, Starship Troopers, and Warmachine...none of them took.

The only thing played outside of 40k here is Flames of War.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Go into any FLGS these days, or trawl the 'net for longer than 10 minutes and you find yourself spoiled for choice in a way that I've never seen before.

Literally hundreds of companies are making minis at all scales, for all settings (real or fictional), to suit all tastes and all budgets. An increasing number of companies are giving us choice of rules, paints and tools, terrain, gaming aids and more. Board games and RPGs, long-time cousins of wargaming, seem to be crossing paths more as companies expand their IP to give us different ways of playing in their universe.

How did this happen? For me there are 3 reasons:
1. The Internet - setting up a business operating in a niche market is now not as risky when you can reach the whole world in an instant. A good idea and a few intriguing pictures in the right places and people will beat a path to your door.

This is the key; just look at Dakka's News and Rumors section, and you will find threads spreading information about new releases from:
-Hobby Link Japan,
-Reaper,
-Mandragore Minis,
-CoreSec Engineering,
-Dark Age,
-Blight Wheel,
-Ramshackle Games,
-Infinity,
-Privateer Press
-Dreamforge
-Bitspudlio
And the list could go on and on and on (it could be twice this length just from the first page of News...), and that's just Dakka.

Whether this is a "golden age", I cannot say, but stop and ask yourself, when you first started looking at minis, did you imagine you might source bits from Poland? Or that the best "titans" could be made by one guy who posts on Dakka?

People mentioned the age of magazine; but this forgets the limited distribution of magazines, and the hurdle that still has to be crossed in getting someone to pick it up. Beyond that, there is the bang for the buck issue: no more does a tiny start-up have to wonder if their ad will be seen by anyone, in the internet age you can advertise to your niche, even if they aren't in your own country, or own continent!

Chimera_Calvin wrote:2. Casting technology - as this has grown it has become easier for people to sculpt and cast their own minis, and more importantly to make them special.

So true... companies like Raging Heroes and Mantic are pushing technologies that only a few years ago where either exclusively the province of the big boys (which in minis is... GW I suppose), or technologies that would simply be sci-fi at that time.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:3. Games Workshop's rise and fall - yes, the beast is not yet dead (although it is slowly going downhill) but it serves an extraordinary function in introducing people to gaming, then hacking them off until they find what else is out there. It could be that its the most important thing they've ever done for the hobby

It's funny, but this is so true: it reminds me of an observation about McDonalds. Not that it's in a similar financial state (since they are constantly probing their consumer base), but that McD's is the largest managerial training program in the world: millions of people get their start there, but they don't stay, they go out and start new businesses.

GW is doing that, with former workers at GW behind the scenes at Mantic certainly, and the people that are introduced to table top gaming go onto the internet, to places like Dakka... and they see the list above, they see what other people are sying about games, they find forums to set up games in other places, with other systems...

But GW opens their eyes to these things, and then, like smacking a baby on the bottom, sends these gamers out to other, (IMO) better pursuits.

Buzzsaw wrote:

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Go into any FLGS these days, or trawl the 'net for longer than 10 minutes and you find yourself spoiled for choice in a way that I've never seen before.

Literally hundreds of companies are making minis at all scales, for all settings (real or fictional), to suit all tastes and all budgets. An increasing number of companies are giving us choice of rules, paints and tools, terrain, gaming aids and more. Board games and RPGs, long-time cousins of wargaming, seem to be crossing paths more as companies expand their IP to give us different ways of playing in their universe.

How did this happen? For me there are 3 reasons:
1. The Internet - setting up a business operating in a niche market is now not as risky when you can reach the whole world in an instant. A good idea and a few intriguing pictures in the right places and people will beat a path to your door.

This is the key; just look at Dakka's News and Rumors section, and you will find threads spreading information about new releases from:
-Hobby Link Japan

Not trying to pick an argument, but Hobby Link Japan didn't make that model kit.
They aren't, as far as I'm aware, producers of models. They're distributors who stock a large amount of kits that you can't find otherwise.

From my understanding, they're like Squadron Shop.

I most certainly agree with you.

nkelsch wrote:

*GW was a fun place to game
*FLGS required fully painted armies everywhere
*Pokemon card games were not profitable as wargaming so everywhere you went wargamers got the entire store all day, every day.
*Figures were cheap.
*GW GTs were awesome.
*GW had RTTs which were well done.
*GW outriders shared the hobby
*I could pick my own metal bitz by weight
*Troll magazine allowed every plastic sprue and metal bit to be bought individually
*GW battlewagon driving around!
*Internet discunters roamed free and unobstructed with being allowed to sell GW on the net
*People sculpted custom figures for the sake of making a unique army, not to make a quick buck and not immediatly sell everything so no armies are unique.
*WD did not suck
*Chapter approved expanded the game monthly and gave us niche chapters like Kroot Mercs and feral orks. *Forgeworld was just starting and gave us cheap models.
*World-wide campaigns where games impacted an evolving storyline and were fun to play in

That totally hit me with a wave of nostalgia. How far they have fallen.


"Golden Age" is a retroactive term. For example, as nkelsch described it 1998-2003 was a golden age for GW, but only because of the perspective we have now. You can't properly decide whether we are in a golden now, until this period has ended. Will today seem like a golden age in say, 10 years, when GW has been bought by Hasbro and there are 30 companies producing all plastic ranges?

Variety is a good thing and I'm happy we have choice AND high quality miniatures. For me, that's all there is to say. The future is looking bright for the small start-ups.