About Face: Evolution in Preferences

I was wondering if any of you have experienced like I have a change in your own inexplicable preferences in wargaming over the years? I say 'inexplicable' because whilst my likes and dislikes might have some basis, that basis is still a matter of whether something appeals or not which I can't justify. I find this interesting especially when I make a change; when I begin to prefer things which I previously rejected.

How I base my miniatures is a classic. I used to be an aficionado of casualty removal as far back as the 1980s and 90s and for this reason I stuck with Wargames Research Group (WRG) 6th edition over 7th edition. It made the adoption of Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) seamless where each figure on the table-top counts right down to your attack values. After failing your saves, off the figures came.

I'm not sure when it happened but I suspect Black Powder /Hail Caesar brought about a rethink for me as it transitions the game from figure based calculations to unit based games. I still feel it builds logically upon much of WAB. It was and is a simpler version and I feel a more elegant solution. The changes, whilst subtle at first have been more apparent to me over time. So, I now object to casualty removal and single figure basing for my armies when I used to be a fan of it. I'm still making adjustments from how I have built my armies to better adapt to unit based games and change the way I'm thinking.

For instance, I still build 1:20 representative ratio armies by default where I can. I use rules to play with my armies: I do not build armies to play a set of rules. This comes at a higher cost as (for example) I will build a 48 figure unit to represent a battalion 960 strong. In Black Powder rules, all I need to achieve the same relative representation for a 'large' unit such as this would be to field a unit of as few as 36 figures. I could be saving myself as much as AUD36.00 not including postage. They would perhaps not look as impressive so we come back to preferences.

In fact, there is no requirement to field extra figures at all and one could pay in points to upgrade a unit and simply declare it as 'large' if your opponent accepted this. This would and does extend beyond my preference; however, so I draw the line at that similarly to how I prefer a limber model to represent my moving batteries of guns rather than turning the deployed base about-face to represent deployed movement - yuck.

The year 2021 will see me doing much re-basing as I move my most active armies away from their proportions of single bases. This will be a lot of effort for very little gain but it's much nicer to move multiple bases when playing a game. I have a few armies which include some experimental basing systems which I admit are all failures. I don't know what I was thinking with some of them but some of it had to do with mixing multiple bases with the need for casualty removal.

I've also moved to 5mm MDF bases and away from 3mm. They are chunkier and more obvious but allow for a better chance of handling the units by the base rather than grabbing at the miniatures. Again, this flies in the face of a long held and strong preference for 3mm thick bases with chamfered edges to better blend with the terrain. So, what I once insisted on and loved, I now reject. Go figure.

There remain other strong preferences or dislikes that seem likely to persist with me. I only realize they exist when I find myself dismissing popular trends in wargaming as being 'not for me'.

My mate Grant refers to six millimetre miniatures as 'braille scale' and I take his point. It looks to me the smaller the scale the less likely casting can achieve proportionality of the human physique but then in that scale does it really matter? For me, it extends beyond or below the limits of scale where they are no longer toy soldiers. Smaller scales allow for larger battles to be sure and I've seen some lovely lay-outs and impressive demonstrations. Ten and six millimetre wargames are definitely miniature and definitely a wargame and in the face of this rising trend it makes me question what I am doing?

I think the answer is, I like to play with toy soldiers. For me, if I was playing with 6mm armies I'd be wondering why I just don't play a board game. I have one 15mm army and may have more in the future but this is my downward limit and it's essentially 20mm for WWII and 28mm for everything else.

There's an aesthetic element to our hobby and that's where the mystery of personal taste comes into play big time. What I find beautiful you may find ugly. I for one don't like movement trays. I find them ugly and they impose a uniformity of representation which doesn't respond to the terrain. Single figures are best at adapting to almost any table-top features whereas movement trays can't really conform to any. I grant you, shifting big battalions about using trays is very convenient when moving toward the contact area - but at what price to the visual art? Anyway, that's been a Bugbear of mine for as long as they've been around - it's another preference I just have which is neither right nor wrong.

How our miniatures interact with our modular terrain is a consistent challenge and the spawning ground for innovation. I think it's fun - even the failures.

One facet of the hobby is the churn in rules. It seems to me curious how restless many in the community are with the rules they play and a need to experiment with new rules. I myself have changed four times in my wargaming life when it comes to what I use to play with my Napoleonic soldiers. So I do change but I'm slow off the mark and resistant to it when I'm perfectly happy with what I'm already using.

I'm a fan of the efforts from the lads at LittleWarsTV from the US and I'm a fan of their rules reviews. I personally don't care about product support (one of their rating categories) because research is one of my things and I'm not an entry level gamer. I don't need army lists for instance as I can work how how to balance my armies from the texts. On the other hand, currency is an issue and whilst I can continue to happily play games using rules long out of print, availability for new players is an issue and over time adherents to a rule set will fade away. That is a real shame and I'd like some older sets to have their resurgence.

The LittleWarsTV crew also talk about 'historical flavour' and I feel compelled to observe that is as vague a category as is possible to make and I've never heard them explain it's context very well. I think we all have a feeling or an idea but I doubt it can be properly or universally defined. Nevertheless, as irrational as it may be, it's a driver for those following the trends to abandon one set to pick up another.

From what I can observe, no matter how polular a new rules entrant may prove some changes make for a zero sum gain. I have watched rules explanations and several explanatory play-throughs of the recent Too Fat Lardies: General d'Armee by Dave Brown. Their promotion through Youtube is marvelous and you can get a genuine exposure to the rules without having to first invest in a set to see if you like them. Whilst still not the same as playing yourself (like driving a car is not the same as observing) I've concluded that for me, the differences between Black Powder and General d'Armee are insufficient to prompt a change. If I felt the difference in the command system (for example) were significant enough I could always bridge the difference with a 'house-rule'. But that's me ... I like what I have.

Yet I have changed in the past ... it's not impossible. I evolved from pushing my painted Airfix plastic soldiers around to Donald Featherstone in the 1970s, evolving to to WRG 1685-1845 in the 1980s, returning to the hobby with 25-28mm metals with In the Grand Manner from the 1990s to Black Powder for over ten years now - and what a relief it has been. These days I enjoy the games as much as when I started with Donald Featherstone's guidance. Simplicity and elegance is the name of the game for me. When I examine my own behavior I think I am open to change but do not rush in and I do not follow trends. Perhaps I'm conservative but I think it's more to do with laziness and a reluctance to change something I'm happy with.

Hell, I don't even tend to invest is subsequent versions of rules I play. I have yet to deal with Black Powder II (or is it Blacker Powder?) and I never bought WAB Second Edition either. In many cases the supplements seemed to comprise the rules mechanisms I needed for specific theatres and if I didn't have the supplement then I'm guessing I don't need those other rules variations. Also, my mates and I like to use 'House Rules' where we see a gap and don't treat rules like Gospel - we are less rigid like that.

I was never much of an ancients player in my youth - it was all WWII and Napoleonics. I studied Ancient Greek and Roman history at high school and majored in Ancient History, Medieval Studies and Classics at University but I found even WRG 6th edition hard to swallow. I also disliked the convention that armies from different periods of history and geography who never met were somehow permitted to fight one another - like Crusaders vs Middle Kingdom Egyptians. I always felt that the popularity of Warhammer Fantasy wargaming stemmed from the WRG philosophy - becasue the hobby at large was already rooted in unlikely march-ups which were in effect historical fantasy. But then along came Warhammer Ancient Battles.

WAB was more of a game creator than a game changer for me and has spawned several armies over the past twenty years. It was simple, fun and accessible. It also directed people toward more period specific match-ups through their deep-dive supplements such as Shieldwall. I have not surprisingly evolved to Hail Caesar as the unit-based successor but that has been the most recent change and near ten years behind everyone else. Well, what was my hurry?

As teenagers my friends and I played our own rules for WWII conflicts in 1/72 and 1/76 scale (we weren't fussy). I bought WRG 1925-1950 but found it confusing and inaccessible. As such, I didn't play this period at all until about twenty years ago when I discovered Rapid Fire and I've not looked back. I stuck to 20mm when 15mm Flames of War was very much the flavour of the age which people seem to be getting out of now. Of course there are a range of other rules for this period depending on representative scale with different rule mechanisms. I doubt I'll change as I'm happy with RF.

Whilst in WWII another popular practice which offends my peculiar aesthetic sensibilities is overloading the table with tanks. Don't get me wrong, I like tanks too but my games are about supporting infantry nine times out of ten and there's something about tank models moving in close packed lines across a table which looks lesser-than to me. I suppose it's about proportionality like an ancient army with way too many elephants.

But when it comes to rules I can't ignore trends entirely becasue ultimately I need to play games with friends and it's not all up to me. Presently the Too Fat Lardies stable of games seem to be getting lot of traction but I'm unlikely to immerse in them because I don't do skirmish games ... yet. I would only be inclined to skirmish in periods I'm not already into in order to scratch a new itch - so that rules out 28mm WWII. Lion Rampant is a distinct possibility for me for subjects like the One Hundred Years War or a Crusade conflict which I am not yet collecting or gaming in.

I can feel a new preference taking root at the moment and that's how I build and field 28mm buildings. I'm becoming all about reducing the footprint and minimizing the impact a building has on the table-top whilst retaining it's 28mm scale. Funnily enough I heard Sidney Roundwood of Roundwood's World Blogspot and Too Fat Lardies fame speaking of this very thing earlier this year on one of their 'Oddcasts'. I had started applying this method last year for my Williamite Warfare project and blog and was chuffed to learn I was not alone.

Precise scale is not always (even rarely) necessary but rather the impression which most often counts. This will have benefits to storage as well. When I look at commercial products such as Sarissa Precision buildings I find them too big for my wargaming approach and better suited for skirmishing around and inside the models. This means my earlier assumptions and approach to scale modelling my buildings is about to experience a significant about face - yet another one.