FPW in G. Minor

German minors, that is...

Out from the painting desk today are two battalions from the German minor states of Baden and Wurttemberg.  Each of the 16-figure battalions are from Lancashire Games.  Both were sent as samples from Lancashire Games provided I paint them up.  I have now fulfilled my end of the bargain!

As has been the case with the other mid-19th Century infantry from Lancashire, I really enjoy painting these figures and think the sculpts terrific.  Thank you, Allan, for the figures!

First up is a Baden battalion in picklehaube.  The only noticeable difference between these Badeners and the Prussians is the Badeners carry their greatcoat rolled around the backpack.  Prussians carry their greatcoat wrapped around their torso.  Nice figures.

Next up is the Wurttemberg battalion.  These fellas march into battle wearing the feldmutze.  Again, nice figures.

Still a few more FPW Germans working their way through the painting queue before something else pops out from the production line.  What will that be?  Well, something for another expansion.

With the days shortening and the temperatures dropping, time to get serious with cleaning and priming enough figures to carry me through winter.  Before I get down to serious figure prep, I must decide in which direction I want my painting efforts to take me over the next three or four months.  This is always a tough decision since there are so many choices and so much to paint.  Where will I begin?  

Having pulled the Reconquista boxes down and emptied many of those boxes out onto the gaming table in preparation for game, of course there is a draw to pushing some more of these figures into the painting queue.  More FPW almost certainly will see some action as will Biblicals.  What else?  More SYW/WAS, for sure, and perhaps even FRW Russians for the 1799 campaign. Since the FRW Russians have yet to see any action in battle, I ought to assess whether these fellas are in sufficient strength to bring them to the table.

For those in the northern hemisphere, what will you be working on over the dark winter months?

Now, back to the painting desk.

Paradox of Modern Wargaming

The paradox?  Speed vs. Journey in the Digital Age.  

As the Palouse Wargaming Journal passes its thirteenth anniversary, these anniversaries often bring up a time of reflection on the past.  Reflections this year saw a return to one particular post I wrote more than two years ago on how battle reports are read (see Reporting from the Front: How are Battle Reports Read).  Besides a perceived change in writing and reading battle reports, has the underlying wargaming landscape, likewise, undergone change in how we participate?  For these reflections, I refer to these perceived changes as "modern" wargaming.

The modern wargaming landscape presents an interesting paradox that hits at the core of wargaming's identity.  We dedicate months, sometimes years, to painting armies, researching historical uniforms, and crafting detailed terrain.  All of these time-consuming preparatory activities result in bringing the efforts to the gaming table in a game that frequently can be completed in under an hour.  This contradiction raises fundamental questions about whether we've lost sight of the journey in favor of quick results, and whether the very tools meant to enhance our hobby experience have inadvertently diminished it.

Rise of the Quick-Play Culture
The trend toward quick-play wargames and rules has become undeniably to the fore in recent years.  This reflects a broader shift in gaming preferences, with players increasingly gravitating toward games that can be completed in two to three hours or less.  The Great Wargaming Survey supports this notion with only 17% of respondents saying that a game longer than three hours is preferred. 

The market has responded accordingly.  Wargames designated as "small footprint" and games designed to be "quick play" have proliferated.  Systems like One-Hour Wargames or the many One-Page rules promise battles that only take about one hour to fight to conclusion. This compression is not only limited to casual, pick-up games.  Even complex historical scenarios are being redesigned for rapid consumption.

The Commands & Colors Revolution
Perhaps no single system better exemplifies this shift than Richard Borg's Commands & Colors series.  I have introduced a number of gamers to historical miniatures gaming through Commands & Colors.  The appeal is clear.  These games provide the feeling of playing a mass battle game while allowing players to refight the entire historical battle in relatively short time.  Often, we can complete four or five games in a single three-hour gaming session.

The genius of Commands & Colors lies in its ability to deliver satisfying tactical decision-making within a streamlined framework.  Players experience interesting tactical decisions despite rules' simplicity.  This combination creates a perfect melding of boardgame and wargame.  Rarely are two games played the same.  With the success of this system, countless other designs have followed a similar path.  Adding miniatures into the mix makes a solid system even better.

The Attention Span Crisis
This shift toward game length brevity may reflect broader changes in human attention patterns.  Research suggests a significant decrease in focused attention.  Decreased attention span is not confined to gaming but surfaces across all digital platforms.  The digital age creates environments where stimuli constantly compete for our attention.  This competition leads to frequent task-switching and cognitive overload.

The push toward shorter duration games leads game designers to create experiences that captivate players without overwhelming them.  Designers must create a balance between engaging gameplay and the brain's need for managing cognitive loads.  This reality suggests that the trend toward shorter games isn't merely preference but an adaptation to fundamental changes in how our brains process extended engagement.

The Painting Paradox
The most striking contradiction in modern wargaming lies in the seeming disconnect between our dedication to army preparation and actual gameplay.  While game size has decreased with an increased tendency toward skirmish games, wargamers continue to invest enormous amounts of time to painting.  Some paint hundreds or even thousands of figures per year.  As supported by the Great Wargaming Survey, for many, painting is the hobby and represents their primary source of satisfaction.

Yet this same community increasingly seeks games that can be completed in a fraction of the time spent preparing armies for battle.  Have the visual and creative aspects of painting and building armies become more important than the gaming experience itself?

The Tournament Mindset
With a move to decreased game length and simplified rules, have we all become tournament players without realizing it?  The emphasis on quick resolution, standardized rules, and efficient gameplay mirrors competitive tournament formats.  Traditional narrative gaming, with its emphasis on story development and immersive experience, requires time and patience.  These attributes seem increasingly scarce.

The tournament approach prioritizes clear winners, efficient mechanics, and reproducible results.  While these aren't inherently negative qualities, they represent a significant departure from the storytelling and narrative-building traditions that historically defined miniature wargaming.  The question becomes whether we're losing something essential in this transition.

Historical Perspective and the Path Forward
Looking at this trend historically, it's worth questioning whether our time constraints are genuinely different from those of previous generations. Wargamers of the 1970s and 1980s faced similar challenges of limited time and competing priorities, yet they typically maintained longer, more involved games. The difference may lie not in available time, but in our expectations and attention patterns.

The solution isn't necessarily to reject quick-play systems.  Many of these innovations represent genuine improvements in accessibility and enjoyment. Rather, we need to consciously preserve space for deeper, more involved gaming experiences that justify the enormous investment we make in army preparation.

Perhaps the answer lies in recognizing that different types of games serve different purposes.  As mentioned about Commands & Colors earlier, quick-play systems excel at introducing new players, providing weeknight entertainment, and exploring new periods or rules.  Quick-play systems, however, should not completely replace the longer, more involved games that allow armies to truly shine and narratives to develop naturally.

The wargaming hobby is broad enough to accommodate both approaches.  What we must guard against is the unconscious drift toward speed and simplicity at the expense of depth and immersion.  The months we spend painting and preparing should lead to gaming experiences worthy of that investment.  We should foster experiences that prioritize the journey as much as the destination, and that create lasting memories rather than merely efficient outcomes.

In the end, the choice between quick results and meaningful journeys isn't binary. Diverse gaming communities will likely embrace both, often in harmony.  I enjoy both types of games and each has its place.  The purpose of the game and available resources should determine the choice of gaming system.  Our beautifully painted armies deserve nothing less than this thoughtful balance.

Ten-Year Lookback

Having taken a three-year lookback at the demographics data in an earlier post to highlight relative data stability (see On Reliability of Data), I was asked to open up the time window and look a bit farther back into the Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy's Great Wargaming Survey (GWS) annals.

Motivation

While recent changes over the last three years demonstrate relative stability in the demographic variables, what if we look back ten years instead of the most recent three years?  Past surveys have seen a lot of variation in both questions asked and data capture format so not all of the surveys are directly comparable.  Most of the survey years, however, do provide the basic demographic variables but some recoding and transformation are required to make direct comparisons.  Rather than transform all of the older datasets, three years will be selected from a ten-year period for comparison at roughly equal intervals.  This study looks at survey results from 2016, 2020, and 2025.  Will results show similar stability with a shift toward older gamers or will these data suggest more movement in the underlying times series?  If there are swings in demographic tendencies over these ten years, can any of these changes be explained?  

Total Counts

The graphic below illustrates the dramatic drop off in responses in 2025.  With only 5,005 responses, 2025's counts are roughly half of counts seen in 2016 and 2020.  Even in 2023 about 10,000 completed surveys were collected.  Was this reduction in surveys spread uniformly across all demographics or were certain groups targeted more than others?  Hopefully, examining the other demographic attributes can shed some light on answering this question. 

Prior Survey Indicator

While the percentages of those completing more than one survey remained similar for the 2023-2025 study, from 2016 to 2025 the percentages have practically reversed.  That is, in 2016 about 65% of respondents answered the call for the first time.  In the 2025 survey, about 63% of responses have taken the survey more than once.  Seeing the cadre of repeat respondents increase over the years suggests that completing the survey has become an annual event for many.  

Location

The mix of respondents' home countries has remained stable over the ten years from 2016 to 2025.  USA/Canada and UK/Ireland each make up about a third of responses.  Continental Europe/Scandinavia hovers around 20% with Australia/New Zealand coming in around 7-8%.

Primary Interest

Over the ten-year study period, the decrease in participation of those respondents claiming a primary interest in Fantasy/Sci-Fi grouping is undeniable.  Both Historical and Mixed categories picked up share of totals. In 2016, 31% of respondents listed Fantasy/Sci-Fi as their primary interest to only 22% for Historical.  By 2025, non-historicals as a primary interest fell to only 15% with Historicals coming in at 31% and Mixed increasing to nearly 54%.

Given past analyses have shown Fantasy/Sci-Fi interest is age-dependent (or at least correlated with age), will Age Group statistics confirm this shift away from gaming purely non-historicals as a primary interest?  Are those claiming a purely non-historical preference migrating to either the Mixed or Historical categories in subsequent years or dropping out of the survey altogether?  Is this tendency to shift away from non-historicals brought about by the survey sample or a shift in the interests of an aging wargaming population? 

Age Group

When examining age demographics, the ten-year statistics reinforce the tendency seen in the Primary Interest graphic.  That is, as sampled age increases, the proportion of gamers with a primary interest in non-historicals decreases.  

Survey samples show age increasing with each year's snapshot.  In 2016, less than 25% of the respondents were 61 and over.  By 2020, the percentage increased to about 35%.  In 2025, the 61+ cohorts made up almost 48% of total respondents.  Each survey reinforces the notion that older cohorts tend to reduce their exposure to non-historicals.  Now, we must ask if this is due to sampling bias or representing an actual greying of the wargaming hobby. 

Duration

After seeing Primary Interest and Age Group graphics, what would one expect to see from Duration or years in the hobby?  Given the earlier graphics, Duration results should come as no surprise.  The percentage of gamers having been in the hobby for 31 years or more showed nearly a 30% share in 2016, nearly 39% share in 2020, and a whopping 46% in 2025.  Again, are these shifts in longevity due to sampling or the result of the actual passage of time?

Final Thoughts

Well, final thoughts for this analysis.  This exercise raises a number of questions that are difficult to answer in a series of two-way summaries of select demographic attributes.  One question that pops into mind relates to the top wargaming period tallies.  Will a shift away from fantasy/sci-fi as a primary interest result in other historical periods climbing up the chart and dislodge some of the non-historical periods?  We will see.

Perhaps digging deeper into these data using multi-dimensional analyses or more longitudinal studies will shed light into some of these questions regarding possible shift of preferences and demographics.  Even without definitive answers to these questions, follow-on analyses with deeper exploration may provide interest and insight.  I, for one, find these studies both interesting and insightful.  This longitudinal study will stay in mind as I continue working through the 2025 survey results.  Many new and interesting topics remain to explore.

FPW Work Continues

Work continues on expanding the Franco-Austrian War project into the Franco-Prussian War and even the Austro-Prussian War.  Since the beginning of September, almost all painting work has been focused on mustering out FPW units.  That trend continues today with Bavarian guns rolling out of depot.

Today's offering features four Bavarian guns and crew.  Artillerymen are from Lancashire Games while the guns are from Freikorps 15's.  As an aside, I read today that QRF figures seem to be once more back into production.  Their return is a positive result since I use their limbers and guns for this project almost exclusively.

Still more FPW units to emerge from the painting queue before I turn attention to something else.  This diversion may be a brief one but who knows?

After my recent, long delayed, hostage situation with Irish Customs from my August Lancashire Games' order, I was delighted to see a box of lead drop onto my doorstep in record time from Newline Designs.  Goods are flowing again!

Hanau, Hanau...

There's a battle ahead, many battles are lost...Hanau, Hanau, don't dream it's over.

OK, OK.  Perhaps I carry the homophone a bit too far in paraphrasing Crowded House but we know they won't win.

Scott sent a text late Saturday morning saying a buddy was making the drive north from Moscow for a boardgame session at 2pm and asked if I wanted to join in. The plan was to tear the plastic from Legion Games' La Bataille de Hanau and give it a run out on the table.  Well, without much hesitation, I replied that I would be there to watch the action as they worked through both rules and scenario.  I hopped into the car and off I went to Coeur d'Alene for the day.

Scott recently bought Hanau and Dale has the game on order.  Me, I had never seen it before although I have another in the series, Le Retour de l'Empereur from the Vive l'Empereur series.

Now, I have never played my game or even read the rules, so this is all new to me.  The Hanau game is a single mapper with only a few handfuls of units in play.  Perfect situation to use as an introduction to the system in a group learning setting.

The Hanau map.

Scott commanded the French while Dale commanded the Allied Army of Austrians and Bavarians.  I looked on.  In this scenario, the Allied task is to block the road to Frankfurt as the French Imperial Guard comes pounding in their direction.

Scott carefully studies Dale's moves.

After several hours of play, Scott managed to break the Allied Army and claim a Sudden Death victory.  Interesting situation and interesting rules.  Can the Allies pull out a victory on this field?  I hope to find out one day.

Anyway, that is how I spent the second half of Saturday.  Good fun!

On Reliability of Data

Data from Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy's 2025 Great Wargaming Survey (GWS) has arrived and the annual ritual of teasing inferences from these data begins!  Following Excel file conversion and recoding variables for more efficient data analysis, the process of addressing some of the survey results kicks off.  First off, a word about data reliability.

Addressing Data Reliability

Questions about data collection methods and reliability often arise, so I frequently provide select meta analyses to address these concerns.  The GWS relies on voluntary responses from anyone who completes the survey.  Without random sampling, responses are based upon convenience sampling.  In convenience sampling, respondents must know about the survey, have access to it, and be interested in wargaming, which naturally limits the dataset to this group.  Each annual survey includes all valid submissions in a cross-sectional study, capturing data from many participants at a single point in time. Non-random sampling can introduce bias, meaning the sample might not fully represent the broader wargaming population.  Any significant bias could potentially lead to misleading inferences.

While the possibility of sampling bias has been a recurring concern from readers over the years, is this concern justified? Does collecting a large sample size per year help mitigate this risk of bias introduction?  How large of a sample is required?   Can reasonable insights still be drawn despite potential issues?  What about sampling the same target population repeatedly but drawing different samples?  Annual survey analysis like the GWS rely on repeated cross-sectional studies, allowing analysis of changes over time even with varying samples.  To build confidence, each survey should draw similar samples from the population.  

A quick initial review reveals one immediate surprise: participation dropped significantly over the last three years.  After 9,282 responses in 2023, the 2024 survey garnered only 5,995 responses.  In 2025, total responses dropped yet again to 5,005 responses.  Reasons for the continued fall off in responses are unclear but reports suggest that only 78% of respondents beginning the survey completed it.  Many of these dropouts were due to failure to click "Submit" once finished.  Could this participation reduction skew upcoming analyses for the 2025 reporting cycle?  Speculation aside, data might offer clues on bias.   As the first in the 2025 reporting series, this post examines data reliability and compares select demographics from 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Prior Survey Indicator

With a decrease in responses in both 2024 and 2025, the percent of those repeat survey respondents falls from about two-thirds in 2023 to roughly 60% in 2024 and 2025.  Still, overall percentages are similar across all three years.  

Location

The mix of respondents' home countries remains relatively stable from 2023 to 2025.  Fewer respondents originated in USA/Canada and Australia/New Zealand in 2025 to the benefit of UK/Ireland respondents but no significant change in the overall distribution.

Age Group

When examining age demographics, a shift in age cohort emerges.  In 2025, the 61+ age groups saw a marked uptick in responses.  Outside of a heavier weighting to the older cohorts, 2023 and 2025 distributions look similar.  For age distributions, 2024 looks like the anomaly.  As past surveys demonstrate, older cohorts tend more toward historical wargaming.  Will the survey confirm this inference? 

Education

Highest education level attained remains consistent across all three years.  No significant difference with respect to education.

Primary Interest

With an age group shift to the 61+ age cohorts as noted above in Age Groups, we might expect a corresponding shift toward historical wargaming as primary interest.  These data suggest that may be the case.  This is exactly the result that the breakdown of primary interest shows.  Fantasy/Sci-Fi primary interest grouping lost ground in 2025 to both Historical and Mixed classifications.  Historicals gained about four percentage points from 2024 to 2025.  Fantasy/Sci-Fi lost five-and-a half percentage points from 2024 to 2025.  Why this shift and what effect (if any) will this hold for following analyses?

Duration

Finally, when examining responses to how long a respondent has been wargaming, the results are not surprising given the age and primary interest shifts seen above.  The percentage of gamers having been in the hobby for 31 years or more increased by 7.5 percentage points from 2024 to 2025.  Notice that 2025 results follow the distribution pattern seen in 2023 more so than the pattern seen in 2024.  Again, was 2024 an anomaly?

Insights on Reliability

Despite a non-scientific approach to survey sampling, the GWS demonstrates again that sampling tends to remain consistent year after year.  I return to the topic of data reliability frequently to help mitigate concerns about bias (and usefulness) of these surveys.  Even with a move toward older gamers, cross-sectional, repeated sampling, in this case, seems to produce a stable sample from which to investigate inferences.  With fewer responses again this year, will established trends hold?  Some may and some may not.  Watch as results and analysis of the 2025 survey unfold.

There are a few new questions this year and I look forward to exploring these results.  I would enjoy seeing your thoughts on why fewer gamers completed the survey and/or the demographic attributes of the GWS Class of 2025.

Clash Course in Flower of Chivalry

As an alternative to a Monday Paint & Chat session, Reject Richard gathered a collection of Postie's Rejects for a remote game.  Richard pulled out a 30-plus year-old Medieval ruleset for the session's entertainment.  Richard converted these old rules to hexes, made some amendments, and gave the rules a couple of solo playtests.

The rules that Richard dredged up from his vault are Flower of Chivalry by The Canadian Wargames Group and Bruce McFarlane.  Now, I have had this set of rules filed away on my shelves of wargame rules since about the date it was published in 1993.  Since I only recently became interested in bringing Medieval warfare to the gaming table, McFarlane's book sat on my shelf mostly unread.  Certainly, the rules, themselves, were not give much consideration.  Coming in at only four pages of the 76 page book, they were easy to overlook.  This is especially true since the rules are quite terse with ambiguities at every paragraph.  With four pages of rules and a number of interesting concepts and mechanisms, cramming everything into such a small space would be a hard task.  The game uses card draw, percentile dice, D10s, Orders, Leader Aggression and Command Ratings, Personal Challenges, Army Morale, Variable Actions, and a concept of Battle Lust.  As for brevity, for example, Morale and Melee explanations are only given one paragraph each and short paragraphs at that!  After a quick read, I envisioned sizable holes to be fill.  I explored no further.

Figure photos courtesy of Richard.

This is where Richard comes in armed with multiple pages of custom designed QRS' and the knowledge to lead us all through the basics of the game.  Since Richard will almost certainly provide a more comprehensive battle report (see My Wargaming Habit), I provide a simple, captioned overview of the action from my few screenshots.

The battle opens with a French column caught on the march by an Imperialist Army.  The battle begins!  Since I commanded the French van, my brief recap focuses on that wing almost exclusively. 

Imperialists interrupt the French march.
Imperialist Right heads for the high ground at charge rate.

Dual cameras showing the battle from each side.
The French turn to face the enemy.

All three French Battles deploy as the Imperialists approach.

On the French Left, crossbow crossfire drives off the

Imperialist MAA causing significant damage.

Having destroyed the enemy Landsknechts at the bottom
 of the hill through firepower, alone, French Center attacks.

As the French Center goes crashing in to clash with enemy pikemen, 
the French Right sees its commander cut down in a personal challenge.
  They are leaderless for a turn.
French Gendarmes continue fighting arquebusiers over the hill
on the left in a protracted melee. 
Gendarmes should have made short work of these fellows!

Against the French Left, Imperialist MAA charge to the hill.
With no remaining actions, the horsemen stop.

With Imperialist MAA hampered by the hill,
French Landsknechts move into contact.
French Center makes progress against the enemy center.

In one turn, the Imperialist Left and Center collapse.
This battle is over!

Decisive victory to the French!  A battle well executed by my French comrades Ray and Dan.  Game lasted about three-and-a-half hours.

The game provided a lot of interesting play with some uncertainty and careful decision making.  With only one game in the books, I look forward to more opportunities to give Flowers of Chivalry a bit more exercise.  On exercising, a review of these rules along with my thoughts and a compare and contrast to Basic Impetvs and my more recent work for the WotR might be interesting.  At least, to me, perhaps!

Thank you, Richard and the Rejects for a very entertaining gaming session!