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 Easy E wrote:


I agree. It is not new. Howevert, it FEELS (icky word!) like board games have been growing rapidly, and been dragging wargames reluctantly along with them.

I'd agree with that. Advanced/Hobby/Euro/Custom/Whatever boardgames as a hobby have been exploding. Exactly what their relationship to the wargaming hobby and community is seems up for debate, but it does seem to be like both hobbies are growing and in some ways helping each other.

I've said it before, but even though I think all these strands have been with us for decades this is the golden age for all kinds of games.


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 Sqorgar wrote:
[qYes, but the majority of those games were by Games Workshop. The rest were either marketed as toys (Heroscape, Battlemasters) or used cardboard standees or chits (Legions of Steel, Battletech) and were sort of more in line with the Avalon Hill type wargaming experience. At the time, I think board games were either seen as toys or a super niche hobbyist market like D&D or wargaming, and it's really only been in the past decade or so that board games have sort of crossed the threshold and become their own separate entity. Dudes On a Board has always been a thing, but now it is not only explicitly a thing, it is perhaps the most popular genre of board games, going by Kickstarter successes (I don't think they even make Ameritrash board games without miniatures anymore).

Basically, as manufacturing has gotten easier and cheaper, it has allowed board game manufacturers to create products that come closer to what has traditionally been an exclusively hobbyist market - so much so that CMON and FFG are creating miniature games using their board game development processes, while Games Workshop is creating board games using their miniature game development processes. Depending on how you squint, the Dudes On a Board genre can be considered either wargaming or board gaming, and sometimes both simultaneously. This has changed the market and the expectation for how wargames are created and presented to the players, and I think the popularity of this hybrid approach threatens to overshadow wargames as a separate entity.

I mean, what is the difference between a Dudes On a Board game and a miniature wargame these days? Figure assembly/painting, measured movement, and... ?

Many were by Games workshop, but not all, and as seen by the nostalgia which which folks greeted Heroquest and Mutant Chronicles, lots of wargamers crossed those boundaries.

As for the chits, that's a faulty argument, Some Editions of BT as well as some games like Legions of Steel and Firefight might have had chits in the starter game, but these were stand-ins for games that were fully promoted as being minaitures games with a huge range of minis being made for them. Recall that over half of the battletech boxed set editions had miniatures in them. Most folks playing these games were using miniatures.

I do agree with you though that the quality of minis in board games is going up and the lines may be blurred a bit. In a world of prepainted minaitures you can no longer divide wargamers from boardgamers simply by who's using painted figures. Still, I don't think tabletop wargames with terrain and user-painted minaitures are going anywhere the number of games continues to grow as do events to support them.

I love that there are so many more options in war gaming, especially terrain wise. I think there could stand to be a whole heck of a lot more options on top of what we are lucky enough to currently enjoy, too.

That said, I do think there is a DIY side of the hobby that can be incredibly fulfilling. I am not talented enough to sculpt my own stuff or even to extensively convert figures. However, making terrain is a super forgiving exercise in craft and creativity.

It's also fun to write up your own scenarios but of course the issue is these need to be playtested to hone them into something that really works well and that is just not how a lot of people want to spend their hobby time. But some of friends do exactly this, to create cool scenarios they can run at conventions for strangers.

 Eilif wrote:

Many were by Games workshop, but not all, and as seen by the nostalgia which which folks greeted Heroquest and Mutant Chronicles, lots of wargamers crossed those boundaries.

As for the chits, that's a faulty argument, Some Editions of BT as well as some games like Legions of Steel and Firefight might have had chits in the starter game, but these were stand-ins for games that were fully promoted as being minaitures games with a huge range of minis being made for them. Recall that over half of the battletech boxed set editions had miniatures in them. Most folks playing these games were using miniatures.

Growing up in the 80s... which was an increasingly long time ago, the availability of many of these games were just not the same as they are today. I could get the games sold at toy stores and there was a comic book store which had a FEW of the more complicated games, but the majority of that stuff was mail order - especially the miniatures. I could get Battletech (and did) with the standees, but the miniatures were nowhere to be found. I remember going to Disney MGM Studios when Star Tours was new and their Star Wars themed gift shop had the miniatures for the WEG Star Wars Miniature game and I was blown away. Though I owned an issue of White Dwarf in middle school, I didn't see a game of Warhammer being played until I moved to LA after college and visited a Wizards of the Coast store in the mall.

In stark comparison to today where these things are readily available. I can buy X-Wing miniatures at the local bookstore. The local comic book store has more board games (and Warhammer) than comic books. The internet communities sure beat the fanzine-based ones of the 80s. It's like the wargaming community existed largely in spite of the obstacles preventing niche gamers from finding each other. That difficulty is no longer there, the communities are easier to find and participate in, and the time commitment for something as simple as buying a single miniature has dropped from 6-8 week to two day shipping. When I was a kid, I wanted to be part of the wargaming community but it was impossible (and I guess I'm making up for that now).

That is not the case now, and I think rather than wargaming coming to meet the people, it is more a case of board games (which have always been at least somewhat familiar to the mainstream, even if just Monopoly and Uno) has moved to meet wargaming. Board games don't have multi-colored pawns anymore. They have miniatures, with names and unique abilities. The board isn't just a series of squares in a line, like Candyland or Life. It is now a map, and modern board games resemble Risk more than Trivial Pursuit - even many of the Eurogames (Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, Small World).

I do agree with you though that the quality of minis in board games is going up and the lines may be blurred a bit. In a world of prepainted minaitures you can no longer divide wargamers from boardgamers simply by who's using painted figures. Still, I don't think tabletop wargames with terrain and user-painted minaitures are going anywhere the number of games continues to grow as do events to support them.

I don't think user-painted miniatures is going anywhere either, but it is really strange. It is something that a lot of hardcore board gamers can't (or won't) handle, and yet I see people painting their Imperial Assault and Arcadia Quest miniatures all the time (usually by following a YouTube tutorial). As wargaming gets absorbed into the Dudes On a Board game genre, painting miniatures will be seen increasingly as optional - more of a "pimp my game" than a fundamental part of playing. It's already rare to see Warmachine painted (so much so, they started coloring the plastic in faction colors), and it doesn't use tabletop terrain either. I think that is going to be the blueprint of wargaming going forward.

I mean, with so many options available, painting everything is impossible. I actually have a policy that I won't even consider painting board game miniatures until my wargame miniatures are painted - and I've still got a backlog of a few hundred miniatures.

Yeah the 80s and 90s were pretty different. By the time i got into gaming in the 90s game shops were much more prevalent. You could find a wide variety of games at at least 4 shops in easy driving distance of me.

Ah the fond memories of long walls of blisters and boardgames side by side. Not too say such stores don't exist today but they don't seem quite as common.

 Eilif wrote:
Yeah the 80s and 90s were pretty different. By the time i got into gaming in the 90s game shops were much more prevalent. You could find a wide variety of games at at least 4 shops in easy driving distance of me.
Ah the fond memories of long walls of blisters and boardgames side by side. Not too say such stores don't exist today but they don't seem quite as common.

Nowdays you get told to move over to make room for MTG card players.
I think now more than ever board games, RPG's, tabletop and collectable card games have us all spoiled for choice.
With so many varied items for leisure time, it is harder to find people playing the same thing rather than finding players and a venue.

I am still trying to wrap my brain around "Wargaming Getting Too Easy", spreadsheets are pretty portable lately if I really have to do scary math.
Isn't the whole purpose is to have a blend of "game" and simulator?
This is like pining for the good old days of the slide-rule or abacus, I just narrowly avoided being in that generation.

I mostly dont like the minimalist approach that GW has taken with their last two (8th ed and AoS) the games just feel lazy and unfinished, like they couldnt be bothered to actually make a full game so just tossed it out and went "meh, good enough". other companies are making "simple-ish" games but they seem to be doing a better job of making them feel more complete. I do like their LOTR/Hobbit games (and not just because I am a fanboy., but that too)

 thekingofkings wrote:
I mostly dont like the minimalist approach that GW has taken with their last two (8th ed and AoS) the games just feel lazy and unfinished, like they couldnt be bothered to actually make a full game so just tossed it out and went "meh, good enough". other companies are making "simple-ish" games but they seem to be doing a better job of making them feel more complete. I do like their LOTR/Hobbit games (and not just because I am a fanboy., but that too)

The games are not really that simple. The majority of the rules are kept on the units themselves, with the core backbone of the game being relatively simple and straightforward. But in a game with 15 different unit types could have 60 unique rules, just for one match.

 Stormonu wrote:
for every single title that is held up as a triumph there's ten to possibly a hundred similar games whose horrid ruleset has been expunged from memory.

Sturgeon's Law!

The GW games are pretty simple IMO. They are very abstract and have heavy board gaming and CCG elements within them.

Putting the rules on the units is fine. But the stripping away of movement, terrain interaction for the most part, and being able to do stuff like shoot in and out of combat with no repercussions because its easier and abstract are issues that I have with the games (for AOS anyway).

 auticus wrote:
The GW games are pretty simple IMO. They are very abstract and have heavy board gaming and CCG elements within them.

Which miniature games aren't? (Not accusing, genuinely curious)

Putting the rules on the units is fine. But the stripping away of movement, terrain interaction for the most part, and being able to do stuff like shoot in and out of combat with no repercussions because its easier and abstract are issues that I have with the games (for AOS anyway).

I think that was at least partially to make the game simpler, but also partially a change in focus. In AoS, the unit is more important than the individual models within it, and this is reflected in how the rules are designed and what the player has to pay attention to. For instance, if you can see one model, you attack the whole unit. A lot of the choices in AoS were a deliberate attempt to put the majority of complication into the interaction between units and not models, and as such, simplified the latter.

 thekingofkings wrote:
I mostly dont like the minimalist approach that GW has taken with their last two (8th ed and AoS) the games just feel lazy and unfinished, like they couldnt be bothered to actually make a full game so just tossed it out and went "meh, good enough". other companies are making "simple-ish" games but they seem to be doing a better job of making them feel more complete. I do like their LOTR/Hobbit games (and not just because I am a fanboy., but that too)

I can't speak to 8th or AoS as I never played them. As for LOTR, I've only played it once but LoTR SBG struck me as a very solid and well-written game. Not a suprise though since the main author was Alessio Cavatore. There's good and bad ways to write streamlined games and Alessio does a very good job. Consider that he also wrote Kings of War which -though not to everyone's taste- is a very well-done, deliberately streamlined ruleset and one of my favorites.

 Yodhrin wrote:
The answer to you question is a simple one: post your thoughts on the discussion forum you want to discuss them on, rather than trying to drive clicks to your blog.

Typical friendly dakka response fail. I’m so glad you feel the need to let people know you disapprove.


Joes blog is interesting. I do more work a game, prep more stuff and home build more than I’ve ever done. The more you put in, the more you get out.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
The answer to you question is a simple one: post your thoughts on the discussion forum you want to discuss them on, rather than trying to drive clicks to your blog.

Typical friendly dakka response fail. I’m so glad you feel the need to let people know you disapprove.


Joes blog is interesting. I do more work a game, prep more stuff and home build more than I’ve ever done. The more you put in, the more you get out.

Yep , it's simple building your own stuff is much more satisfying but takes longer, but there is clearly space for both worlds to exsist.

NICE friendly response as well, like you said.

I would say there are more options for new players to give them an easier introduction the war game hobby.

Those that want to move onto more time consuming and complex options are free to do so.

So to answer the OPs question.No wargaming can be what you want to make it.Simple quick games , or a more complicated and time consuming hobby if that floats your boat.

its all good IMO.

 Eilif wrote:
I can't speak to 8th or AoS as I never played them. As for LOTR, I've only played it once but LoTR SBG struck me as a very solid and well-written game. Not a suprise though since the main author was Alessio Cavatore.

The main author was Rick Priestley. The first book, Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring rulebook is "by Rick Priestley" with Alessio down in "Game Development" with a dozen other people. If he became the lead author in later editions, he didn't change much.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
I can't speak to 8th or AoS as I never played them. As for LOTR, I've only played it once but LoTR SBG struck me as a very solid and well-written game. Not a suprise though since the main author was Alessio Cavatore.

The main author was Rick Priestley. The first book, Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring rulebook is "by Rick Priestley" with Alessio down in "Game Development" with a dozen other people. If he became the lead author in later editions, he didn't change much.

Actually, yeah, by the time of SBG 4th edition, quite a bit had changed. Alessio shaped SBG into a ruleset that would endure. Adam Troke is head of SBG dev right now, with 6th edition around the corner.


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 auticus wrote:
My issue with "wargames" today is not really that they are getting "easier" but that they are getting more and more abstract and don't reflect the stories or movies that some of them set out to try and emulate.

They are becoming too board gamey.

I agree with this. It says volumes that three of my absolute favorite rulesets are heavily thematic - SBG, SST, and T:G are all rulesets that are not only just simply fantastically written and elegant in their execution but match the source material perfectly.

What's T:G, because I agree that SBG and SST are both fantastic games. SST is especially underrated.