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Monday, April 3, 2023

The Changing Tide of Wargame Interest

One of the long-running questions on the Great Wargaming Survey asks respondents to gauge where they find themselves along the wargaming spectrum.  Are you mostly an historical wargamer, a fantasy/sci-fi wargamer, or somewhere in between?  Genre is the term I use for identifying this wargaming spectrum.  The Genre Scale runs from '0' (Entirely historical) to '6' (Entirely fantasy/sci-fi).

For the 2022 survey, a follow-up question was added.  Since the question above captures only a snapshot in time, I wondered if wargaming genre preferences are static.  The follow-up hopes to address the question of whether this snapshot in wargaming preference changes over time.  Does a wargamer's preferred game genre adapt with time or do gamers remain solidly in one camp over their hobby lifecycle?  Movement along this continuum may hold insights into the future of the hobby.

Today we take a look at this question and responses.

From the survey results, about 65% of respondents marked that their wargaming preferences have remained consistent over time.  Almost two-thirds!  Nearly 25% say that they started playing more historical games while about 10% say they are playing more fantasy/sci-fi games.  With hobby undertones suggesting that historical gaming is on the wane for a variety of anecdotal reasons, it may provide some solace that more than twice as many wargamers are increasing their gaming in historicals than those playing more fantasy/sci-fi games.
Table 1
Preference Changes by Gaming Genre
Breaking the totals down by Gaming Genre along the seven-point scale, do any patterns emerge?

Figure 1 illustrates that wargamers choosing the extremes of the spectrum (Entirely historical or Entirely fantasy/sci-fi) remain remarkably consistent in their selections.  Almost 93% of Entirely historical gamers remain as such.  Similarly, nearly 98% of Entirely fantasy/sci-fi wargamers remain purely fantasy/sci-fi wargamers.  Even the next step on the ladder ('1' for historical gamers and '5' for fantasy/sci-fi gamers) continues to show consistency.  Those wargamers situated somewhere in the middle ('2','3','4' on the scale) maintain consistency in gaming genre for about half of the respondents.
Figure 1
For example, a respondent selecting a ‘2’ on the Genre Scale with “yes, starting to play more historical games” could have been a ‘3’ or higher in the past.  Notice that for all of the genre classifications, a wargamer is more likely to start playing more historical games than playing more fantasy/sci-fi. In all but the Entirely fantasy/sci-fi genre, those starting to play more historicals outpace those starting to play more fantasy/sci-fi by at least two-to-one.  Surprising?  It is to me.
Figure 2
When the totals are aggregated by Primary Interest as in Figure 2 ('0','1' for historicals; '2','3','4' for mixed; '5','6' for fantasy/sci-fi), does this tendency change?
Figure 3
Aggregating the results as shown in Figure 3 demonstrates that primarily historical and primarily fantasy/sci-fi wargamers tends to stick to their genre (consistent preference is 86% for fantasy/sci-fi and 78% for historical).  About half of all gamers having a Mixed interest tend to maintain their chosen interest combination.  Notice that in all groupings, gamers tend to start playing more historicals to fantasy/sci-fi over time.  In particular, 36% of Mixed gamers tend to play more historicals than in the past.  Does this tendency to migrate toward historical wargaming over time bode well for historical miniature gaming?  What if these data are disaggregated by age group?  Does this tendency remain?

Preference Changes by Age Group
From past analyses, survey results illustrate time and again that the younger age cohorts tend toward fantasy/sci-fi wargaming while the older age cohorts tend toward historicals.  Do these younger wargamers migrate toward historicals in later years?
Figure 4
Figure 4 suggests that this may, indeed, be the situation.  For wargamers age 50 and under, roughly 30% of wargamers in each of the age cohorts claim to have started playing more historical wargames.  Starting to play more historicals outpaces starting to play more fantasy/sci-fi by at least 3:1. What do you make of that?

Given your current status along the genre spectrum, has your gaming choice remained consistent over time or are you migrating toward playing more historicals or more fantasy/sci-fi?

Does your individual experience align with the larger survey results?

72 comments:

  1. Interesting analysis. I think my own gaming preferences have remained static for a number of years. I'm primarily a historical gamer but also dabble in sci/fi fantasy gaming. I do put more effort into historical gaming where as with the scifi stuff it is more of pick up and play to have a bit of fun on a club night. I also think attending a club provides opportunities with both genres. Our club philosopy is we will always try a game once.

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    1. I thought the results interesting as well, Neil. Your point about being exposed to a wider variety of gaming through club membership is a good one. Do clubs typically have a mix of genres? Having never belonged to a formal wargames club, I have no idea.

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    2. I think I'm lucky that my club has a good mix and everyone is prepared to try different games

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  2. Very interesting report Jonathan. Regarding age, my experience as a history teacher has led me to generalise that as people age their interest in the past increases. Perhaps because they have more personal history and can relate to events gone by, a sense of family history develops, and being increasingly released from educational and early career and life burdens. So, your findings do not come as a surprise.
    Do younger gamers "migrate" to historical or do they enrich their gaming portfolio?

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    1. Thanks, Richard!

      Given your background in teaching, your observations should be noted. You make an interesting hypothesis on migration vs enrichment. How would we test this hypothesis? Perhaps the step change difference in genre scale could provide a clue? If a wargamer moves from a '5' on the scale to a '4', maybe that is an enrichment. If that same wargamer moves from a '5' to a '2', perhaps that is a migration?

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  3. Hmmm yes interesting stuff as usual Jon. Starting with my own experience/preference - it's always been historical and I have never owned any fantasy/sci fi figures, although very occasionally, I have played the odd game of both genres. Having made that claim, however, where do we place Pulp and my recent (ish) collection of 1930's style figures of no fixed abode, genre-wise - is that historical or fantasy?? Plus, I just realised, I DO have some Frostgrave figures and have played a few games of those rules with Andrew, so I DO have some genuine fantasy figures!
    For the more general questions raised, my gut feeling would be, as you say, younger gamers probably start with Judge Dread or 40K etc (I never did but I know a few people who have that history) and gradually get exposed to historicals either through a club or possibly even through the wargaming press? So, if 70% of players start out as sci fi or fantasy (made up statistic) that means there are more of them to potentially move to historicals over time, as opposed to historical gamers going the other way. The fact that those "starting to play more historicals outpaces starting to play more fantasy/sci-fi by at least 3:1" may simply reflect the fact that new gamers start in the hobby via sci fi/fantasy by the same ratio? IE for every 4 16 year old gamers, 3 of them are playing sci fi/fantasy?
    I was thinking about this just the other day after looking at one of the blogs where guys collect genuine "toy" soldiers of yesteryear - Britain's, Timpo etc. These types of toys are not that common nowadays. When I was 6-12 years old, a box of toy soldiers was a pretty standard choice for a boys birthday present - if I had school friends come to my house for a birthday celebration at primary school, chances were, I would get at least a few 54mm plastic soldiers (including cowboys and Indians in that category) Likewise, my mum would often buy the same type of thing for me to take to a mates birthday. But these are not common now, certainly not the middle range priced ones I had in the hundreds when I was young. I don't really know why this has happened either, I don't think there was any left-wing conspiracy to get rid of "war toys" or anything like that, it just seems like most young boys, in western countries anyway, are no longer as interested in army/military history/playing with toy soldiers, as they used to be? Maybe its this lack of childhood foundation that will eventually lead to the death of "grown up" wargaming?

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    1. Keith, you always provide terrific insight into your own wargaming history and the GWS topic of the month.

      Good point about the number of younger gamers moving toward historicals at a 3:1 ratio. Makes sense to me.

      On Pulp, when I performed statistical cluster analysis in the past, Pulp gaming tended to cluster among the non-historical groupings. I thought that an interesting result. Based upon that work, I would bucket Pulp into non-historicals.

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    2. Thanks Jon...I would agree that Pulp is non-historical...it is fantasy, just a different type of fantasy!

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  4. A very interesting set of statistics. I would have to say my preference is mixed as I happily send Brits in Pith Helmets against the martians.
    I wonder if the trend from SciFi to historical is due to Games Workshop being the most likely entry point for most new gamers. As you and your hobby matures you may start to look around at or become aware of the other options.
    Difficult for me to judge as I am old and came to the hobby via a different route before GW existed.

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    1. Thanks for your comments, Ben!

      Knowing almost nothing about GW, your hypothesis that GW is the gateway into the hobby cannot be argued by me.

      How did you enter the hobby?

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    2. I am just suggesting GW because of their Fantasy and SciFi focus.
      I guess I entered because of my big brother & Airfix.😊

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    3. You were lucky having a big brother lead the way.

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  5. I certainly fall into the 'plays both ' category. So do many of the people I game with. My very regular group all started in board games 50 plus years ago. Now we're playing whatever we want to in a world where new choices come every day. Is an imagination campaign considered historical or fantasy ?

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    1. Thanks, Joe! I started from the board wargaming route too. Did you rate yourself somewhere in the "Mixed" classification in the '2' - '4' range?

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    2. Yes, with Pulp, steam punk, imagination nations I couldn't call myself all history nor all fiction based gaming. Anyway I always thought WRG games pitting my Ottoman forces against ahistoric enemies rather an fantasy based.

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    3. I agree. Ahistorical match-ups are fantasy.

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    4. Aargh, no, I don't agree at all. Different uses of the word "fantasy". Fantasy is a literary genre in itself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_literature), and fantasy wargaming derives from that. Simply putting 2 ahistorical opponents against each other does not make it fantasy wargaming.

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    5. Ok. I need to clarify…
      “Fantasy” in the sense that battles between ahistorical opponents have no grounding in either history or reality.

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    6. Of course, I got that ;-) But it's something that's a pet peeve of mine ;-) Whenever fantasy wargaming is mentioned, someone invariably says "all our games are fantasy" or something along such lines. Different definitions of the word "fantasy" ;-)

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    7. Right! There is a distinction between ‘Fantasy’ and ‘fantasy’.

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  6. I'm 56 now. When I started miniature wargaming in the 80s, my interest were only SF/F. However, over the years, I have slowly migrated towards historicals. I still have an interest in SF/F, but I would not say this is currently the majority of the games I play.

    One of the things that slowly led me away from SF/F is that SF/F doesn't really have a "stable base" in terms of either background or rules. There's a re-invention of the genre every so many years, and I guess the new universes/gaming worlds/backgrounds are tailored towards the young. As an older gamer, I can't be bothered anymore to delve into the newish SF or F universes. When I still play a SF/F game, it's mostly using miniatures that have been in my collection for a long time using settings that younger players probably have never heard of ;-)

    Historicals are more stable. History doesn't change, so you don't have to re-immerse yourself in a new setting every so many years. The rules might change, and the figures in one's collection are updated/added/replaced over the years, but Napoleon is Napoleon and WW2 is still WW2.

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    1. Thanks for the insights into your hobby progression and transformation. Good to see that non-historicals provided an entry for you and that your preferences evolved into historicals over time. Interesting thoughts on "stable base" as a move toward historical wargaming. Perhaps what you describe is similar to music preferences? My tasted have remained quite stable over the years and I seem mostly stuck with the music from my younger days when I listened to (and played) a lot of music.

      Given your interest in wargame mechanisms, I am surprised I saw no comment from you on my Double Jeopardy post.

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    2. Now I have to look up that "Double Jepoardy" post. :-) I will, promised.

      It's just there are so many blogs on my reading feed, and sometimes I don't read them all but just browse through them. So it's easy to gloss over some interesting posts that way ;-)

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    3. Thanks, Phil! I will help you out. Here is the link:
      https://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.com/2023/03/double-jeopardy.html

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    4. W.r.t. wargaming: I do think there are different markets in wargaming. SF/F wargaming is very much geared towards teenagers and youngsters with plenty of time to study army lists, to buy the correct models, to red up on the background ... it's exactly that mix that attracted me to wargaming so many years ago as well. But once you've been in this hobby for so long, it's all a bit "been there, done that" for much of the commercial SF/F wargaming. Historicals - less sensitive to sudden marketing changes due to the nature of the period - are more suited for a "mature" wargamer.

      But I'm really guessing here ...

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    5. Good follow-up! One trend I have noticed over the years of studying this survey is that the EU (continent, that is) tends to generally see more interest in SF/F wargaming combined with a generally younger participant population. Is that what you see on the ground?

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  7. I think I’ve been constantly 80% historical 20% sci fi for the last 40 years. Never done fantasy or D&D. With the sci fi my interest is limited solely to Star Trek (biiiiiiig fan) but on the historical side I’ve recently begun to branch out into new periods so there’s a lot more room for growth. I can see my interest in sci fi remaining the same but my actual gaming and modelling involvement becoming closer to 95% historical in the future.

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    1. Mark, you appear to me a model of consistency. With an 80/20 mix, where do you place yourself on along the genre spectrum? Would you rate yourself as a '2' or '3' for the past but as a '1' today?

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  8. Lots of stuff to think about. I'm 60 and started playing wargames (boardgames actually) in 1980.

    I was co-founder in 1983 of a wargaming club in Madrid and discovered D&D and Warhammer Fantasy, which I played extensively together with historical boardgames through to the early 90s. From there I moved to historical miniatures only, consistently (although adding new periods and changing rule sets) until the pandemic.

    I returned to boardgaming (historical) via VASSAL during the lockdown period; and, after returning to play face to face from mid 2021, I'm combining both boardgaming and wargaming but only historical... buuut now The War of The Ring boardgame has crossed my way... likely returning to fantasy gaming for a while at least.

    Conclusion: wargamers are butterflies

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    1. Good! Happy to provide a little food for thought!

      Like you, I began with boardgames (mostly SPI and TAHGC) back in the early '70s but miniatures gaming followed quickly with Airfix figures.

      Your conclusion is spot on! Wargamers are butterflies!

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  9. I fall into the group that's playing more Fantasy/Si Fi. I never played Fantasy until the LotR movies and figures came out. Now I game with someone who has an extensive collection a Fantasy so occasionally we'll play. Another friend was involved in a company that produced Si Fi figures so we did a few games of that. So 8 years ago I didn't play either of those genres now it's probably 2-3 games out of about 25 per year.

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    1. Thanks, Dan! Where do you place yourself on the Historical to Non-Historical spectrum qualitatively today?

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    2. On the third chart I'd say I was in #1 which is consistent with my age group of 61+

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  10. Hi Jonathan- Currently I play Fictional - Imaginations based around the 1880s to 1923. Previously I played Fantasy ( Warhammer) and some Historicals (Indian Mutiny etc). My reason for going Fictional-Imaginations is mainly that I only need a few figures for a game (42 figures a side) whereas if I went Napoleonic Historical it would be way out of my affordability range. I'm 66 years old and still enjoy the sculpting and scratch modelling that our great hobby offers. Regards. KEV.

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    1. Hi KEV! I have been following your adventures in figure sculpting and production. This has been an interesting process to follow as have your forays into Star Trek and slot cars. I have not seen slot cars out on your blog in a long time. Are you still racing?

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    2. Jonathan- Last year I sold my entire collection of slot cars - all to afford the casting of my 28mm MYSTIC HORIZONS Project. Cheers. KEV.

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    3. Oh! Say it isn’t so. I enjoyed seeing your enthusiasm for that hobby and your track building and model collecting.

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  11. I wonder whether part of the self declared are truly being self aware when they describe themselves as steadfastly sticking to what they have always done.

    I would declare myself as a historicals player, yet I have no issue with Sci Fi - I enjoy Sci-fi movies and see a lot of narrative potential in sci-fi games ….. yet, I don’t play them, but I think the only reason is that I am so over faced with historical content and opportunity, that I don’t have the spare time to even take a sniff at Sci/fi - it gets squeezed out.

    To further embed this notion, I don’t have the time to even play half of my historical stuff and yet I truly call myself a historical play, which of course references only only half my collection - so the half that isn’t played might look to me from where they sit on the shelf, judge me and declare me a non-historicals player :-) In truth I am actually a player of both genres, it is just that I never get to a sci-fi game …. or for that matter Guderian’s War, Cobra or Musket & pike!

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    1. Hi Norm! Unless we poll each person individually, we will never know if the self-declared are self-aware. That is a good line!

      I certainly can relate to your dilemma of having many interests and not enough time (or energy) to get it all into regular rotation. If you looked at my boardgame closet, you would be shocked at the number of wargames present. Most have been unplayed for many years. Some never! My miniatures' collections are not much better off although remote gaming sees collections in rotation much more regularly than before.

      Always good to see your insights, Norm. Thank you!

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    2. I have considered setting aside a month (say) for a particular game / series / subject and just concentrating on that to get some better gaming out of rules, but that would see just as many unplayed games and bigger gaps between those that I like playing regularly. I know Steve W. tried this a few years ago, scheduling games / periods for future months, but I don’t think it survived contact :-)

      I suppose we are lucky that such opportunity abounds …. rather than it being a curse :-)

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    3. Having both opportunity and time is certainly a blessing rather than a curse. On Steve W., I think you are correct. In fact, he has been rather silent of late altogether.

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  12. You've put in a lot of work again Johnathan to attempt to understand wargamers. I class myself as a typical wargamer of the 1970's/1980's genre, ie historical. However as Ive got older Ive drifted to faster play rules and also smaller and quicker games that use interesting rule systems, ie Lion Rampant, Billhooks and now Xenos Rampant which are sci fi. I have enjoyed putting together small armies and the rules are pretty straightforward. But I still enjoy bigger games based on historical personalities. So am I an average wargamer?

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    1. Robbie, when you enjoy the process, it is not so much work, is it?

      Being of a certain age cohort and entering the hobby at a certain point in time, I reckon many of us may look back on the rules from the '70s/'80s will horror at the seeming unnecessary complexity. Like you, I enjoy fighting big battles and refighting historical battles the most. Still, smaller games with simpler rules offer a nice respite.

      Are you an average wargamer? You are anything but average Robbie. You are definitely singular!

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  13. Gosh, where to start Jon! Looking back into that dark and dim depths of the early 1970's when I started wargaming, it was a real mix of Fantasy and WWII, with some Ancients thrown in. Ruleswise it was D&D, Thane Tostig, Airfix WWII rules, Chainmail, Sword & Sorcery and Tunnels & Trolls. Well those are the ones that I can recall, but in all honesty we played very little as we didn't belong to a club and just got together at weekends and holidays as time allowed.

    Fast forwarding to University and it was historical board games as we could easily store them and hit the ground running, given we had no time nor money to buy or paint miniatures.

    Post Uni and there was a big pause in gaming due to entering the World of work, probably at least 10 years. Things kicked off again with the release of Mordheim that led me to joining a local wargames club, which in turn re-introduced me to WWII wargames and historical wargaming in general. I found that I much preferred bigger battles than skirmish games and in a sense never looked back.

    So today as would give myself a score of 1, as I am by and large a historical wargamer (and I include ImagiNations in this as they are historically based) but still dabble with the likes of the recently released Xenos Rampant rules. The latter really just an excuse to use some of my favourite 'toys' and to game something a bit 'different'. Variety is the spice of life and all that!

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    1. Thanks for the hobby history, Steve! You are a fine example of a wargamer migrating from non-historicals to historicals. At a '1', I expect you are in good company with the readers here.

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  14. I have never really been one for role playing but still have some LOTR figures packed away somewhere. I could be tempted to get them out again but the group I game with remains fairly fixed on Ancients, Renaissance, Napoleonics and a bit of WWII. Given that the group's interests have remained fairly static over the past fifteen years then so have mine as I now tend to mainly collect and paint armies which I know will get a game.

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    1. Thanks, Lawrence! I suppose if your local gaming group is the driving influence on your gaming and it has remained static, it would be surprising to see you drift off in a new direction. You fit into the "consistent" bucket.

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  15. Very interesting I’m still mainly historical but dabble in sci-fi and fantasy ( middle earth and HOTT) looking at my local club the vast majority of members are under 35 and I would say when the club started they were all Sci-fi and fantasy gamers. Over time they’ve dabbled in historical but I personally think that’s largely down to game systems that are ‘simpler’ to engage Black powder, Bolt Action and or requires a smaller play area/commitment - Lion Rampant/Billhooks. On top of that I’ve seen quite a few players try systems such as Blood and Plunder, SAGA, WildWest ( historical?) So maybe it’s the diversity and accessibility to the games that is helping?

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    1. A fair point Graham. When I started a box of Airfix figures and a few tanks would tick all the boxes for us, or a few figures at most of D&D. My old club was similar in the sense that the teenage and 20 somethings mainly played Sci-Fi, which required up to maybe 20 figures at most. This was what drew me to Mordheim, along with the brilliant background story.

      Accessibility of 'historical' rules certainly aids the crossover from Sci-Fi cum Fantasy, with low figure counts, relatively little scenery etc required. However it's not the sort of thing I often see pushed in the wargames mags (maybe it's changed as it's been a while since I bought one).

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    2. Interesting Graham that game systems drive the genre. I wonder if others see that tendency too. The rules you list certainly reinforces what the survey suggests is a move toward skirmish gaming.

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    3. Steve, if the trend is toward more skirmish gaming (and the survey suggests it is), I am surprised that this type of gaming does not make more appearances in the wargaming mags.

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  16. Considering that my gaming focus has been primarily historical (WW2) these past few years, I still don't consider myself to lean more toward historicals per se as I have plenty of fantasy and scifi projects on the go, just not my primary games/projects. Right now.

    And I don't think that's changed much as I age. At least not for the past 10-15 years.

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    1. Thanks for the feedback, Dai. You are consistent but what rating would you give yourself on the '0' (entirely historical) to '6' (entirely fantasy/sci-fi) scale?

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    2. As things stand, probably a 2 or 3 by that scale.

      I think also my focus(es) depend on available opponents for games/projects too.

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    3. Thanks! One can get a good measure of a wargamer by where he (she) places the marker.

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  17. My genre preferences have been delightfully consistent for close to 15 years. I’m married to historical games but I have a little sci-fi action on the side. 😀😀
    It’s really never changed. And at this point I kinda have all my favorite genres in some form or another. It’s just getting them to the size I want is the key. 😀

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    1. Sounds like you have it all figured out and almost exactly as you like.

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  18. Interesting stuff Jon, my very first figures and interest were historical, after a number of hiatus’s (not sure what the plural of hiatus is) I got back into actually gaming through fantasy. I enjoyed this massively although it is the strong narrative nature of these games that attracted me rather than the ‘gaming’. Now a days I think I spread across 0-6. LOTR at one end and perhaps SYW at the other. The majority of the rest of my gaming and collecting is obviously historically inspired and based. But I don’t think I will be selling my Chaos Ogre army any time soon 😀

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    1. Thanks, Matt! Looks like you have never found a genre or period you didn’t like. Sounds like you are smack in the middle at a ‘3’.

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  19. I have joined in non-historical gaming at the club, I only have one sci-fi game myself, but none of it grabs me the way historical wargaming does and especially big battle wargaming. But each to his (or her Reg) own.

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    1. I am with you, George, although I am building small Star Wars forces to do battle with the grandson. Other than that, it is historicals for me.

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  20. I'm 90% + historical gamer with a lot of fantasy/ scifi that I don't currently play with,I started off post plastic airfix ACW and Napoleonics with metal 25mm Fantasy D&D gaming, so that would be the first miniatures gaming, after that decades of 40k collecting, painting and not much gaming, like Phil I came to historical because the background can't just change, plus I'm more of a bibliophile than gamer to be honest and the research is a really big part of the hobby for me. Both my nephews I introduced to wargaming and both started as 40k/warhammer players and are mow predominantly historical players. I think airfix has been replaced by GW as the entry level now in response to Keith's point. My club is predominantly GW with some mantic Fantasy but bolt action is popular which while historical has lots in common with 40k, so I guess the transition is easy?
    Best Iain

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    1. Excellent feedback, Iain! So, 40K is the gateway into historicals through Bolt Action? This is interesting!

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  21. Obviously an engaging subject. Like several others who have commented, I started before D&D, "fantasy" and "sci fi" wargaming took off and for that matter before wargaming had "historical" tacked on. (One of the early wrg ancients rules even had a 1 page fantasy section tacked on.) It was the heyday of my army vs your army with "historical refights" being rare special events, and of fielding the armies of what are sometimes called "Imagi-Nations " now.

    All of that left its mark on me as did my 1st 2 wargaming books, one by Featherstone who played games in an historical settings, and Charge! which played historical wargames in fictional settings.
    So I have done and will again, play any genre from historical to scifi and fantasy to be sociable, and the occasional historical refight but my usual, for some decades now, is historically inspired 'armies' and interesting "scenarios" or "tabletop teasers".

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    1. Excellent Wargaming history, Ross! Surprising how many began the journey in non-historicals and moved on to historicals. Today, where do you place yourself on the 0-6 scale? A ‘3’?

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    2. No, more like a 1 or 2. The SciFi/fantasy are 1, maybe 2% and in the last 10 yrs, mostly to be sociable. How does one count a scenario based on an historical engagement but fought out with soldiers with the same weapons and tactics but in different uniforms?

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  22. An interesting post Jonathan, personally I class myself as a historical gamer. I've never painted any SciFi or Fantasy figures to play games with. I have painted the odd figure, just for the fun of it, I have played a couple of Zombie games that I secretly enjoyed, Shhhh, don't tell anyone.
    It's purely historical for me though.

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    1. An historical purist. I like that! No one will know of your Zombie gaming.

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  23. I started with Warhammer 40K because, while I had discovered the classics of historical gaming, there was none of it where I lived and lots of 40K. So that was all I had for a decade or more, and it wasn't until several years after I moved to Florida that I discovered the local historical gaming group which (according to the ad pages in old magazines) has been around since approximately the month I was born!

    So I reverted to the historical games I'd always wanted to play, but fantasy and the mildly-SF 40K still have their appeal. I'm planning to run some Warhammer and 40K at work, in part because Games Workshop actually have free support for schools and libraries now, so am oscillating back...

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    1. Thanks, Jennifer! Great to see you dropping by and leaving a comment.

      Reading comments and seeing the survey results, it is encouraging to see many wargamers first stepped into the historical wargaming hobby through non-historicals.

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