Wargaming Then and Now - An Aging Gamer Reminisces (complains???)

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Paradigm Shaft

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Something that bothers me about the current state of wargaming is that a lot of it isn't fun anymore. I can't decide whether it isn't fun because I am older or if it is another reason altogether. I can pretty much buy any models I want these days, so the possibilities open to me are almost infinite. Or another reason may be that I just do not have the kind of time I did when I was younger to play or read or engage in the hobby. Most likely it is a combination of those things. But I want to talk specifically about one particular game: Warmachine. I will talk about this game in the context of my life. It came out at a time when I was very poor and the Games Workshop juggernaut was very expensive (although hindsight being what it is, everything essentially cost breadcrumbs back then).

I walked into Adelaide's only gaming shop at the time (though now the city sports several) and found the first edition of the rulebook and some Menoth models. They were cool as fuck and cheap as well. The robots could do cool shit like pick up dudes and throw them into water. The rules were simple and not complex, but there was a little depth in the strategy, placement and resource management that was very neat. It was fun. The fluff was over the top. There was a page that said something about testicles and I liked moving my guys around the table. Privateer Press was an interesting company that grew very quickly because it offered something that other companies did not - cheap and fun wargaming. A good community. Good enough models. And then the company expanded, and all this is documented elsewhere quite well. They added new units, new lore, shitty new rules and the game still grew and then the last edition of it killed it. But after that first edition, it wasn't really fun anymore to me and I kind of followed it based on some kind of nostalgic inertia.

Anyway. There is still some fun out there. Blood Bowl continues to be cool. I think some Warhammer can be interesting. But that thrill of picking up a book, being enthralled by it and inspired by it, picking up models and making them yours? And then playing a game that lets you do cool, stupid stuff? I don't have a lot of that feeling left anymore. I think my experiences with Warmachine encapsulate it really well. It is something that works as a bit of a timeline describing my relationship with wargaming in general. It started off fun and wacky and ended up mired in its own rules and lore, absolutely trapped by it. I still buy and paint models, though I rarely play. Maybe that's it. Maybe I am aging out of the hobby. Maybe.

I don't know what this is for, actually. I guess I just wanted to get it out there. Maybe it's something. Maybe I just needed to say it out loud in text form.
 
I think everything you're looking for is somewhere out there in the world of indie wargames right now. Most are in PDF publishing, though Osprey puts out a lot of one-and-done rulebooks by a multitude of authors, and a few series of books. Solo/coop wargaming support has never been stronger, and if you look hard enough in Wargame Vault, you're likely to find a retro-tribute to any older game at any stage of its development you're jonesing for.

The trends you're describing are mostly present in the "big" name companies publishing Their Game Systems that use Their Models to showcase Their Lore. Poke around all the miniature-neutral small/indie publisher rulesets out there. You can find something of interest, whether it be larger like Frostgrave or Oathmark; medium like Five Leagues from the Borderlands or Five Parsecs from Home; or tiny, like Space Weirdos or Brutal Quest. We've never been so rich in options for "I want a small game that does this one thing with the flavor I want."
 
Yeah, I remember a time when Games Workshop was vibrant and exciting and Warhammer was fun. I never did Warmachine. Not much for Steam Punk I suppose. Still, I think you're right that something was lost on the way to the golden age. To my mind it's creativity and room for personal creativity. Companies don't want you doing your own thing and the rules tend to be rigid and tournament oriented.

I blame Mantic because Kings of War is so tight and fast, yet so flavorless and they got there first but everyone else seems to have followed suit.

If you want something fun and oldschool try Rick Priestly's Warlords of Erewhon or maybe Fantacide (which is a lot of silly fun) if you can find it. 15mm sf and fantasy are well supported but there's also great stuff like Chaos in Cairo and the various Song of Blade and Heroes games. We really are living in the golden age but I think Warmachine in particular offered something offbeat and unique both in terms of playstyle and setting.
 
One thing that does tend to be different with the small, indie, cottage games of whatever period/scale/ratio/genre is that there isn't as much of a concept of simply buying one's own team/army/squadron/gang/posse/crew ad then playing against other folks, with little to nothing else to pick up.

It's generally a very different sort of vibe (even with stuff like Frostgrave or Stargrave or similar), where the cost are in lower dollar amount chunks but there's effectively no end to how much you may accumulate over time. And you'll probably do it happily.

Similarly, a lot of these games aren't quite as competitive in the style of play. On the downside, this also means often any point value systems are more like starters or guidelines than the stuff (theoretically) produced for meet up competitive play.

Then there's stuff that sits very close to RPG-with-minis play. Some of it is so close it's hard to really say where the fuzzy borderline is drawn, especially if GMs making scenarios are present, even if the players are competing(ish). Games like Astounding Tales, .45 Adventure, the GASLIGHT series of games. Outlaws of Sherwood, Where Sten Guns Dare, stuff like that.

They really are just silly amounts of games out there which truly do get away from the Big Company model of selling and playing.
 
The best balanced (and most boring) game I ever played was Canadian Wargames Research Group's Legendary Battles which had the points values balanced by a massive number of computer simulations.

Kings of War is mostly pretty solid, they keep adding in gimmicks and I hate gimmicks but the balance is decent and the gameplay is fast and fluid. What it lacks is the tremedous character of a Warmachine or Warhammer. I have been thinking about messing around with FGU's Space Marine, a very oldschool game but it's got lots of classic science fiction hardware in it. RRB has brought back the whole miniatures range.

One thing you have to consider once you move away from GW is buying two armies so you can play with people who don't have one.
 
One thing you have to consider once you move away from GW is buying two armies so you can play with people who don't have one.
At minimum!

I really do mean it as a warning, but some of these games are a bit like being a minis-using GM in an RPG, in terms of what you will likely collect over time.

I've found that, for some of these games, it's good to choose something that could feasibly pair up with stuff people already own.

For example, if you have a decent Bolt Action WW2 scene where you live, choosing pulp-y/horror stuff will pair well.

Minis agnostic stuff like Oathmark (semi-tolkienish fantasy) or StarGrave (somewhat Star Wars-ish SF. Maybe. Sometimes.) has pretty broad possibilities as well.

Other times, these games are an excuse to branch out into something entirely new. Mad Dogs with Guns is there to encourage 1920s American mafia beer wars.
 
They're more like 1/43 though. Man I wish I'd gotten the old dinky cars from my grandparent's house.
 
Those are just such lovely miniatures. One thing I do think worth mentioning with the "need an army for everyone" issue is that for something like Mad Dogs with Guns that means 20 or so miniatures for three players.
 
Those are just such lovely miniatures. One thing I do think worth mentioning with the "need an army for everyone" issue is that for something like Mad Dogs with Guns that means 20 or so miniatures for three players.
Oh yeah, some of those games use a truly small amount of minis for a "gang".

For Rangers of Shadow Deep, each player needs about 5, but there are of course the monsters too (and the author and fans positively encourage reskinning and interpretation/substitution for stuff you already own with all of those games).

For the *Grave games, it's usually 10ish minis per player and only a few NPC/Monsters.
 
For gladiator games, you maybe need 10 for everyone and a board possibly nicked from Spartacus.
 
Yeah, I'm with Psychopomp Psychopomp I've had a lot of fun with Zona Alfa (basically the Stalker universe on the tabletop), where making your own vision of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, scifi alien horrors and your crew of ex-military, no-hopers, scientists, cultists and Adidas-clad scumbags is a ton of fun.

The weakest of the 64-page Osprey books are simply incomplete, but hey, you only spent £12. The best (like the above) are laser-focused and tight rulesets dripping with atmosphere.

Plenty of minis companies are still little more than garage setups doing their own thing. Mark Copplestone is one of them.

My favourite minis, the metal Grenadier Fantasy Warriors and Future Wars (more Copplestone!) lines are still available through Mirliton Miniatures, eM-4 and Forlorn Hope. The old Warzone minis are sold by Prince August, Scotia Grendel has the Vor lines. Asgard and Denizen Miniatures from the 80s are still going. Old Glory an Irregular never went away.

Plenty of great boutique companies doing beautiful character minis -Hasslefree, the 3D printing arena.

I personally get a lot of pleasure converting cheap toy tanks and restoring battered old GW vehicles off eBay.

Games-wise, there's a ton of GW knock-off rubbish, but also plenty of unique and engaging rulesets. Lion Rampant is very light, but very solid medievals. Spectre Operations and Black Powder, Red Earth do ultra-moderns as a fast and brutal spectacle; Chain of Command gives WWII encounters room to breathe, allowing for probes, feints, flank moves and several reversals of fortune. It has a great campaign supplement too.

The retro gaming scene is bigger than you'd think. Warhammer Fantasy (3rd or 6th edition), 40k 2nd edition. Rules are often wonky, but dripping with flavour and funny, memorable events. Every 2nd edition player has a story about how their character punched a tank and it flipped over, crushing them.

Tons of fun skirmish+campaign games out there, and the way that games have (broadly) moved to modelling effects/outcomes rather than concentrating on, say, the physics of tank-armour penetration, has been a huge step forward.

GW in particular is in unknown territory - they're in a position that no other minis wargaming company has been in. They're well aware of how TSR ate itself in the 90s, and WotC-era D&D ended up described inside the company as "half an hour of fun in a four-hour session". They're aware that learning huge rulebooks or painting is a burden to many, and see themselves in competition with board games and video games - both allow almost instant starts. Short rules, contrast paints, "metas", cycling rulesets and model lines, the eSports angle are designed to grab you then keep you coming back. Their rules are about Playing With Your Minis (where traditionally, wargame morale rules, for example, are very much Not Playing With Your Minis).

Plenty of gamers burn out on the GW churn too, and want something slower, more engaging and, well, cheaper. You just need to dig a little more to find them - I found two of my closest gaming buddies on Lead Adventure Forum over ten years ago.

What you want is out there.
 
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I've always been drawn to the hobbyist end of the hobby... the stuff that felt more open, more DIY. Even GW used to have some of that... in early Warhammer and 40K (deoderant grav tanks for the win!).
There is a vibrant life there that corporate suits cannot replace with algorithms and/or big sacks of marketing folks. It's also why I like the OSR stuff for RPGs... despite it being D&D focused. It feels more personal and doable... not chasing after the dream images some catalog (White Dwarf).
So, in general, I'll stick with the smaller games and companies... Ground Zero Games, Goalsystem, Gruntz, Two Hour Wargames. Stuff that's made for hobbyists rather than faithful parishioners and tournament kidz.
 
Just wanted to add to the playing solo bit....

It's easy to just get into one side fighting the other to the last miniature, but maybe if you start coming up with your own story as to why and see where things go, that could be pretty cool. Playing solo lets you focus on what parts of the game make you most happy.

Another one to add to the indie games- Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare, really good stuff.
 
One major innovation that was already developing in wargaming thanks to the 1+ player boardgame boom was wargames designed for solo or coop play vs a rudimentary AI system, as opposed to being a 2+ player game with solo rules tacked on. That got a massive boost during the pandemic, as those early games were suddenly very popular for obvious reasons, and the concept got further refined with more releases.

Games like Five Parsecs from Home and Five Leagues from the Borderlands are more about giving you a structured system for you to make up your own stories by playing a campaign using the miniatures you happen to have because you wanted them, not about pushing you to buy the minis a company wants to sell you. And since they're solo games, if you decide to tweak a chart, or make a miniature that's become a nemesis through random rolls so far a bit more sinister with extra rules or abilities...you don't have to worry about balance or running it past an enemy. It's just you, your toy soldiers, and getting the chance to use them the way you want.

Those two are just examples I picked because my hardcopy of Five Leagues 3e finally came in after a long customs delay and I'm finally really reading through it now. There are so many small games out there now, especially if you have a tablet or some other means of making reading PDF rules comfortable for you. Hell, Space Weirdos is a 2 player vs game with a robust solo-play add on, and both files together are somewhere around $8 USD and are designed to print and staple yourself into a 12-page 'zine format, and the game provides a solid (and popular) 40K Rogue Trader retro experience. (I just backed the Kickstarter for Sword Weirdos, the fantasy version, and I'm very much looking forward to it.)

Solo/coop or versus play, small skirmish or large company level, whatever genre, a good first start is to go to Wargame Vault and just poke around. You don't even have to buy anything, just skim around and look at what's out there beyond the bubbles of "This Company who makes This Game you play with Their Miniatures Line" gaming. Another great way to get exposed to a lot of new rulesets and games that might interest you more is to lurk on the Lead Adventure forums, which is the best non-specific-game wargaming forum I've found out there so far. Fun games that make you happy to use your favorite miniatures - rather than making you feel obligated to buy new miniatures someone's game tells you that you need - are out there, and they're not terribly hard to find.
 
Co-Op versus AI play is tons of fun too. It's a bit like the goodness of minis wargaming plus the goodness of basic RPG play.
 
Something that bothers me about the current state of wargaming is that a lot of it isn't fun anymore. I can't decide whether it isn't fun because I am older or if it is another reason altogether. I can pretty much buy any models I want these days, so the possibilities open to me are almost infinite. Or another reason may be that I just do not have the kind of time I did when I was younger to play or read or engage in the hobby. Most likely it is a combination of those things. But I want to talk specifically about one particular game: Warmachine. I will talk about this game in the context of my life. It came out at a time when I was very poor and the Games Workshop juggernaut was very expensive (although hindsight being what it is, everything essentially cost breadcrumbs back then).

I walked into Adelaide's only gaming shop at the time (though now the city sports several) and found the first edition of the rulebook and some Menoth models. They were cool as fuck and cheap as well. The robots could do cool shit like pick up dudes and throw them into water. The rules were simple and not complex, but there was a little depth in the strategy, placement and resource management that was very neat. It was fun. The fluff was over the top. There was a page that said something about testicles and I liked moving my guys around the table. Privateer Press was an interesting company that grew very quickly because it offered something that other companies did not - cheap and fun wargaming. A good community. Good enough models. And then the company expanded, and all this is documented elsewhere quite well. They added new units, new lore, shitty new rules and the game still grew and then the last edition of it killed it. But after that first edition, it wasn't really fun anymore to me and I kind of followed it based on some kind of nostalgic inertia.

Anyway. There is still some fun out there. Blood Bowl continues to be cool. I think some Warhammer can be interesting. But that thrill of picking up a book, being enthralled by it and inspired by it, picking up models and making them yours? And then playing a game that lets you do cool, stupid stuff? I don't have a lot of that feeling left anymore. I think my experiences with Warmachine encapsulate it really well. It is something that works as a bit of a timeline describing my relationship with wargaming in general. It started off fun and wacky and ended up mired in its own rules and lore, absolutely trapped by it. I still buy and paint models, though I rarely play. Maybe that's it. Maybe I am aging out of the hobby. Maybe.

I don't know what this is for, actually. I guess I just wanted to get it out there. Maybe it's something. Maybe I just needed to say it out loud in text form.

hmm, well first off I'd say take a look at 7TV. It sounds like it might be right up your alley...
 
hmm, well first off I'd say take a look at 7TV. It sounds like it might be right up your alley...
I've seen the free demo rules for &TV, but I've always wondered how it played.

I don't mean at the mechanical level, but more on the themed campaign/TV series level.

How does that work? It seems a bit more than the usual PvP Gangs and post-battle casualty rolls sort of thing.
 
Fun is, not to put to fine a point on it, whatever it is you want to do. Cast off the burden of what you used to do, or what you think you should paint, and just do what you think will be fun. Better for everyone.
 
I've seen the free demo rules for &TV, but I've always wondered how it played.

I don't mean at the mechanical level, but more on the themed campaign/TV series level.

How does that work? It seems a bit more than the usual PvP Gangs and post-battle casualty rolls sort of thing.

It began as unofficial rules for a Doctor Who miniatures game (before NuWho came around), and once Dr Who returned, it was redone as a more "generic" mini wargame ruleset for playing out classic TV-like or pulp adventures, primarily focused around 60s-70s British media (like Avengers, Blake 7, etc). The conciet of the game is that you are playing out actual episodes of an ongoing TV series, with ratings, casting, etc. So the campaigns tend to be very narrative (not in a "The Forge" sense, as it is a miniatures game not an RPG)
 
Those two are just examples I picked because my hardcopy of Five Leagues 3e finally came in after a long customs delay and I'm finally really reading through it now. There are so many small games out there now, especially if you have a tablet or some other means of making reading PDF rules comfortable for you. Hell, Space Weirdos is a 2 player vs game with a robust solo-play add on, and both files together are somewhere around $8 USD and are designed to print and staple yourself into a 12-page 'zine format, and the game provides a solid (and popular) 40K Rogue Trader retro experience. (I just backed the Kickstarter for Sword Weirdos, the fantasy version, and I'm very much looking forward to it.)

If someone had Five Leagues 2e, do you think the upgrade to 3e is worth it?
 
If someone had Five Leagues 2e, do you think the upgrade to 3e is worth it?
Yes. It's a significant overhaul, adding lots of features, including more PC options, more robust support for dungeons, and lots of enemy Threat lists to pick from when setting up your region. And the layout is cleaner, pretty, and makes the information easier to read and parse.

Much like Five Parsecs, there's a significant upgrade with the new distribution version.
 
It began as unofficial rules for a Doctor Who miniatures game (before NuWho came around), and once Dr Who returned, it was redone as a more "generic" mini wargame ruleset for playing out classic TV-like or pulp adventures, primarily focused around 60s-70s British media (like Avengers, Blake 7, etc). The conciet of the game is that you are playing out actual episodes of an ongoing TV series, with ratings, casting, etc. So the campaigns tend to be very narrative (not in a "The Forge" sense, as it is a miniatures game not an RPG)
I love the basic conceit, I'm just trying to figure out how the hobby and battle sides of play work.

For example, I see they have lots of starter boxes that look a bit like a starter gang/warband/posse/team, but it doesn't seem like the sort of thing where You buy your team, I buy mine, and we bash against one another in various scenarios for eternity, like (a very basic interpretation of) something like Necromunda.

There seems to be a bit more buy-in and hobby effort required, but it also seems a bit like there is or can be more story arcs, with the various episode/series guides for their individual setting premises.

Of course, I also think some of the more RPG-ish GASLIGHT variants seem very cool as well, especially the cliffhanger serial variant, which still mostly requires a core ref/episode starter person.
 
I love the basic conceit, I'm just trying to figure out how the hobby and battle sides of play work.

For example, I see they have lots of starter boxes that look a bit like a starter gang/warband/posse/team, but it doesn't seem like the sort of thing where You buy your team, I buy mine, and we bash against one another in various scenarios for eternity, like (a very basic interpretation of) something like Necromunda.

There seems to be a bit more buy-in and hobby effort required, but it also seems a bit like there is or can be more story arcs, with the various episode/series guides for their individual setting premises.

Of course, I also think some of the more RPG-ish GASLIGHT variants seem very cool as well, especially the cliffhanger serial variant, which still mostly requires a core ref/episode starter person.

when I have some more time after Finals I'll try and give a complete rundown of 7TV's campaign system
 
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