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.

Some of the results of the Great Wargaming Survey are coming out. The first was about how many wargamers also dabble and engage with board games. I think the results are interesting:

https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/en-us/blogs/great-wargaming-survey-blog-wss-magazine/gws-2024-do-miniature-wargamers-play-boardgames?utm_source=pushowl&utm_medium=campaign&utm_campaign=2964900&pn_source=campaign&pn_source_id=2964900&subscriber_id=298103486

A key take-away is that many middle-aged and older historical wargamers are more likely to cross-over into board gamers. Younger and sci-fi/Fantasy wargamers are less likely to cross-over. In addition, the wargamers more likely to play board games seem to play board games as much or more than miniature wargames, if I read that correctly.

So, how many of us indulge in board games as well as wargaming? Which do you play more?

In my personal experience, it is easier to find board game groups who occasionally indulge in wargame like board games than it is to find miniature wargamer groups. I have not had great success crossing board gamers over to miniature wargaming though.

My hierarch for ease of finding games:
1. Easiest- CCGs
2. Board games
3. Role-playing games
4. Sci-fi/Fantasy Miniature games
5. Historical Wargames
6. Hardest- Naval wargames

Honestly? I'm a Gamer. Not a wargamer, not a Boardgamer, not an RPG gamer, etc - just a Gamer.
Currently I'm pretty evenly split between mini-wargaming (all genres), board gaming, & RPGs.
And have been since 2006/2007.

I guess I started off as a boardgamer way back as a kid. We always had a variety of board games - Clue, Risk, Monopoly, axis, assorted Parker Bros/Milton Bradly junk, etc.
Then about when I was 10? Dad decided that my brother & I were old enough & introduced us to some of the easier Avalon Hill bookshelf games he had since his army days.

Then Christmas 1980 I became an RPG player with the D&D Basic set.

Over the next few years the quest for more D&D stuff led to finding BattleTech.

BattleTech (and eventually having a car!) led me to discovering a semi-local hobby shop - and I came into contact with Star Fleet Battles & WHFB 3e....

Flash forward to '93/94 & add MTG & other CCGs to the mix. MTG & other CCGs were pretty much dropped about 2001. Though I still have a couple of ancient decks & a few boxes of singles.

About 2003 or so is when I started adding more Euro style games.

Board games come in so many sizes and shapes, themes and mechanics that it is actually pretty hard to never find a board game that fits one's preferences. Wargames are much more homogenous in this respect, for example if somebody's preference is for determinism and no randomness, the entire genre might as well not exist at all, and there are a lot boardgamers with such a preference.

So any wargamer should be able to easily find multiple interesting board game titles, whatever type of games they are looking for, but not necessarily the other way around (board gamer looking for miniature wargames filling a specific thematic/mechanical niche).

I generally enjoy board games well enough, but I'm not a fan of free for all multiplayer politicking so its not something I actively seek out like I do minis games. Happy to participate with friends though.

I've also gotten to where I prefer more abstract boardgames and leave my miniature heavy stuff to wargames.

I enjoy most games, as long as I am told up front on how long it's going to take to play it.

I played Twilight Imperium for so long, I got my car towed.

Also, you need the right frame of mind to play some games. I witnessed a friendship implode during a game of Diplomacy .

Aside from the usual kid board games, I started off on Avalon Hill wargames before getting into RPGs, then back into board games with Star Fleet Battles and Battletech, then into miniature wargames.

Some time ago I started this thread:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/807987.page

to look a bit at this overlap among Dakka users. Feel free to add to that thread, even if it's a tad old now There are a few very interesting answers there but not that many. I also have a feeling that the scope of games for surprisingly many people here is extremely narrow (just a single sub-genre or even just a single game!)

I think WSS has such a particularly (don't say inbred, don't say inbred, don't say inbred) narrow readership it's pretty non representative as a polling population.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I think WSS has such a particularly (don't say inbred, don't say inbred, don't say inbred) narrow readership it's pretty non representative as a polling population.

Perhaps, but it is the best data we've got publicly.

I play all the game types on Easy E's list. Although it's been a while for CCGs and RPGs.

I have two nerdy friend groups. One I do video games and boardgames with, and the other miniature games and occasionally boardgames.

WSS tends to spam their survey across social media so I think they probably draw in a wider miniature gaming audience than their magazine readers.

I mean, you can do/ have some board games wihout actually making it a hobby. We have Dominion and Settlers of Catan of the more complex board games at home, but I wouldn't consider it on the level of my wargames that take up most of my freetime.
Board games are probably more like Videogames in that they're very approachable and don't need a lot of investment. But you CAN go all e-sport or buy all expansions of wingspan or what's it called.
Why am I saying this? Because I'm a wargamer first while playing the occasional board game with friends or family.

I love both wargames and boardgames equally. But they feel almost like mirror images of each other.

With a tabletop miniatures wargame, I spend about 10% of my time actually playing, and 90% of my time thinking about playing. Figuring out army lists. Making terrain. Coming up with background for the army and characters. Assembling and converting models. Painting. The list goes on.

It's the other way around for boardgames. 90% of my boardgaming time involves actually playing the games. We take it off the shelf, open the box, set it up and away we go. It's a great way to spend a few hours with friends or family away from a screen. Dice are rolled, cards are dealt, occasional swearwords are sworn. Then we pack it up and forget about it until next time. Now and then I'll make a few custom cards or look up rules questions online or ponder my strategy for the next game, but only about 10% of my enjoyment comes from that.

On paper, the convenience of a boardgame seems superior. Almost everything has already been done for me. All I need to do is sit down and play. Why devote so much time and effort to a miniatures wargame that I hardly ever get to play, when I could rely on the prepackaged experience of boardgames instead?

But that's the thing: when it comes to boardgames, there's not all that much 'hobby' to lose myself in. There's not much to do outside the game. It's all contained in the box.

If I need to de-stress after work, I can spend a couple of hours painting spaceship models or planning a Mordheim warband or reading an old Warhammer army book and so on. Even if I never, ever have the chance to play that particular wargame again, it serves its purpose. A guy with a vintage car in the garage might never finish tinkering with it or actually go for a drive in it, but he doesn't have to. The tinkering is its own reward. And of course, on the rare occasions when I actually finish an army or a project, having taken it all the way from bare metal and plastic to A Fully Painted Army On A Dedicated Wargaming Table (TM), it means much more to me than a bunch of fancy pre-made bling that came in a box. I pick up my old Epic Orks and I feel the time and effort that went into them.

A boardgame just sits there dormant until there's an opportunity to play. The 'hobby' side of things boils down to... deciding on another boardgame to buy.

Some 'lifestyle' boardgames are an exception, of course, such as chess or Go. But a lot of boardgamers have massive collections of games, into the hundreds or thousands, many of which never get played. The equivalent of the pile of shame for miniatures.

I never got on with the X-Wing miniatures game, because it fell between two stools. It was too prepackaged for me to get much wargames hobby time out of it (prepainted miniatures and all). But with its list-building and measuring and so on, it needed slightly too much forward planning and wargamery thinking to suit the 'crack it out and pack it up' style of a boardgame.

I think especially with the older historics folk, they are playing games that take a lot of time but don't themselves have a lot of time.

So boardgames comfortably fit that 'game in an evening' niche.

Younger and sci-fi gamers are playing quicker games and have more time, so rarely need to find something quicker.