Board Wargame Graphics: Likes and Dislikes

ericmwalters

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What kind of board wargame graphics do you prefer the most? The least? Why? Here are the categories:

-- Computer Graphic built map and counters. Typical of this genre were Fresno Gaming Associates (FGA) games and--more recently--the Gamers' efforts. Color and clarity/ease of use are usually are the hallmarks of these efforts; what is sometimes lacking is period color.

-- Hand drawn/painted map and counters. Rick Barber's efforts for Clash Of Arms games--breath-taking visually but sometimes difficult to use. Definite period flavor.

-- Icon counter symbology versus military symbology (NATO-style, German, Soviet, etc) Does the period being simulated matter? I tend to like icons for pre-20th century and military symbology for 20th century and later. Does the scale matter? I can deal with icons more for tactical games and less so for operational and strategic scales.

-- Counter colors reflect stereotype color choices or something a little different. Typical color stereotypes are olive drab for U.S. in 20th Century games, Yellow for Japanese, Grey or black for Germans, red for Soviet, light blue for French, etc. Some games opt for uniform colors/styles (L2's STREETS OF STALINGRAD, 3d Edition, for example...and most of the Clash of Arms games).

-- Charts printed on the map, in the rulebook, or on separate cards? Pluses and minuses any way you go. I'd rather pay for getting seperate cards. I really like having photos of the commanders where it means something (Zucker games usually do this well).

-- Counters--glossy or matte finish? I like the latter as it cuts down on the glare. Same for the mapboards/paper maps.

-- If you had to pick the top 3 graphically pleasing games you've played, what would they be and why? Any recent efforts that you've found particularly disappointing?

--emw
 

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I am a big fan of the hand-painted maps for GCACW series ie. Here Come the Rebels... I also have a great admiration for Craig Grando's work with Against the Odds magazine, he does fine counter art as well. It is always nice to have trooops in uniform pictured on the counters, as Mike Lemick uses for BSO games...or the ones used in Vae Victis magazine. From the old guard, I have always liked Mark Simonitch and Joe Youst's maps... I do like flat colored maps vs. glossy though.
Favorites of late have been Nathan Kilgore's "Iron Tide", "Rise of the Roman Republic" and Mark H. Walkers' "Lock n' Load"... Among the biggest disappointments was the map for PanzerGrenadier "Desert Rats"...
 

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Where to start with this one -- a great question.

A recent map, or series of maps, that I enjoyed greatly are the ones produced for GMT's Gringo! as a combination of research, color schema, and terrain depictions evoke a genuine sense of place. It's unfortunate that some hex numbering errors mar the effort.

And the counters in that one -- superb! Marines don uniforms altogether different from the various volunteer units and the color banding that depicts unit parentage is a real boon.

Some of my favorite maps will be the ASL geomorphic boards. 'Nuff said there.

Agreed on the maps for AP's Desert Rats, which look like someone spilled paint on a stucco wall. A real disappointment, but I understand the challenge of rendering desert terrain in an eye-catching manner. Still, the oversized hexes in that one are a pleasure to work with and the counter art ensures that a Commonwealth player will always be able to tell a Maori unit from a British regular at a glance. Nice and flavorful.

Overall, GMT's maps continue to impress me and could serve as color plates in a high-end history text. Simonitch is an absolute master in my opinion.

-Pete
 
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Originally posted by ericmwalters
What kind of board wargame graphics do you prefer the most? The least? Why?
Gosh, I haven't bought anything since Stonewall Jackson's Way, so I'm out of touch and behind the times.

But back in my heyday, I preferred games with neat-but-realistic graphics.

IMO, AH's D-Day (1965) erred on the side of neatness. A friend loved it because the mapboard was so useful and uncluttered, but I hated how abstract it was.

PanzerBlitz was an in-betweener. It looked pretty good, but it had a strange mix of realistic & abstract components. The maps were realistic enough, but I hated the solid-stripe hexsides. AFVs were realistic-looking, but infantry still had abstract symbols instead of silhouettes.

Some people hate the 1914 map, but I liked it. Liked the Anzio map too (and appreciated the variety of colors among the unit-counters, since I'd grown tired of pink & blue).

But Gettysburg '77 went too far, IMO. It had a great-looking but non-functional mapboard. Since there were many iffy, mixed-terrain hexes, they had a rule which said that if you can't figure out what the dominant terrain is, you should let a die-roll decide. That should never be necessary; a well-designed map should clearly show the dominant terrain in each hex.

All in all, though, I have to say I've never liked board-wargame components. Too much paper & cardboard. No matter how much creative work goes into the graphics, the game always ends up looking cheap to me. Especially if it has an unmounted mapsheet (as almost all games do these days). For years, I've been on the verge of getting into miniatures, mainly because they potentially have a much better look & feel than board wargames (but I'm too lazy to do the work of painting, making terrain, etc.).
 
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I have seen some really good and some really bad maps.

The bottom line is does the map accurately and effectively provide the environemtn and feel for the topic?

Abstraction is alright, provided it adds to game play, particularly in operational and strategic level games. The closer you get to tactical, the more realistic, or practical/ rendering of the environs is important.

One game that I never could get through was SPIs "Sniper". I thought the game was really good. However, rather than work out LOS rules, like SL/ASL did, they morphed the buildings to map against the hex grid. Never got used to it.

Gettysburg '77 had a beautiful map. The one time I tried to play, I found the level of detail made the game confusing.

Panzerblitz and Panzer Leader's boards, along with Arab Israeli Wars, needed to abstract the boards in order to capture enough variation of the most prominent terrain types the existed during that period and area. It needed to be, to provide the flexibility of the game system.

As mentioned, a well designed and crafted game board should eliminate conflicts in terrain based questions.
 

Tom DeFranco

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Re: Re: Board Wargame Graphics: Likes and Dislikes

Originally posted by Patrick Carroll
All in all, though, I have to say I've never liked board-wargame components. Too much paper & cardboard. No matter how much creative work goes into the graphics, the game always ends up looking cheap to me. Especially if it has an unmounted mapsheet (as almost all games do these days). For years, I've been on the verge of getting into miniatures, mainly because they potentially have a much better look & feel than board wargames (but I'm too lazy to do the work of painting, making terrain, etc.).
Okay, Patrick, maybe this is masochistic of me :bang: but I do have to ask why board wargames look so cheap to you? Mounted boards? Avalanche briefly reintroduced and, it seems, just as quickly dropped mounted boards. I'm guessing that for many of us, the mounting is just a needless expense. Maps just as easily tear apart with mountings as without.

Some minis players are happy to throw a green blanket on a table, dip two hundred Napoleonic soldiers in white, another two hundred in dark blue, call them Austrians and Frenchmen respectively, pull out their copy of "Empire" and start playing. Tell me that doesn't "look" cheap. There are ways of protecting your boardgame maps and at the same time not have them look so "cheap". For instance, buy a 24"x 36" picture from from Walmart or buy some plexiglass from Ace Hardware. That should help.

Besides, how could you call the map making efforts by Barber, Essig, Simonitch and Youst cheap looking. I think they look quite nice - but, then, that's just me.
 
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Cheap-looking?

Originally posted by Tom DeFranco
Okay, Patrick, maybe this is masochistic of me :bang: but I do have to ask why board wargames look so cheap to you?
Well, I guess it's just an old snapshot that's still stuck in my mind.

In the summer of 1968, a friend bought the first wargame either of us had ever heard of--Waterloo. For a week or two, he wouldn't let me see it. Instead, he'd build up suspense by saying, "It's so realistic! You won't believe how incredibly realistic this game is!"

He and I had played various board games together for a few years: Risk, Stratego, chess, and some football game he had which had 3D pieces for the players. So, to us, a proper board game had at least a mounted board and 3D wooden or plastic pieces. And if the game was really classy--like chess--it might have a wooden or leather-covered board and hand-carved, polished wooden pieces (or even ivory or something).

So, when I finally got to see Waterloo, the first thing I said was, "You've been gypped! You paid $5.98 for this piece of junk?" He blushed, nodded, and said, "Yeah, I know." Punch-out cardboard pieces were something we'd only seen in cheap children's magazine games.

Somehow I never got over that feeling. Sure, I realize you can fit a lot more useful information on a cardboard unit-counter than on a toy tank or soldier. And yeah, some miniatures games look pretty shoddy too.

Unfortunately, I keep holding chess up as the standard to which all board games should aspire--at least as far as physical components go.
 

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Niko and counter art

If you haven't checked out the links that Niko posted, you ought to. Great iconic counter work. I'm sold on DEVIL'S CAULDRON just by looking at the pieces!

--emw
 
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Re: Niko and counter art

Originally posted by ericmwalters
If you haven't checked out the links that Niko posted, you ought to. Great iconic counter work. I'm sold on DEVIL'S CAULDRON just by looking at the pieces!
And I'm bummed out by the typo on "Guilford Courthouse" (misspelled "Guildford" on the photo). Of course, it's as common a mistake as "Fort Sumpter" or "Fort Donaldson," but well, I notice these things. It's not enough for something to be pretty; it also has to be correct.

I'm guessing this is just a game title superimposed onto the photo, though. I'd hate to think the typo is actually printed on the mapboard.
 

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Patrick said:

Unfortunately, I keep holding chess up as the standard to which all board games should aspire--at least as far as physical components go.
I think that's a pretty fair statement, Patrick. One has but to look at the momentum that miniatures have (all those "Clix" games if one wants to cite a posterchild of commercial success). Note, also, in Brandon Musler's article on Historicon at Wargamer.com where the folks at Lost Battalion Games made a conscious choice to revamp the venerable Panzer rules with miniatures in mind as they believe that it's a more robust market than boardgaming. And, should we even mention the accolades thrown at the feet of Memoir '44?

We're in an age where the PC/console experience is so rich in visual media that anything on the tabletop that seeks to compete for player time must also raise its standards of presentation. Interesting times, in my opinion, as we spend so many hours in front of a PC with work and school that an engaging visual, tactile, and social experience at the tabletop might be seen as a fine, and welcome, alternative to a glowing CRT.

Again, a very fair statement to make, Patrick.

-Pete
 

Tom DeFranco

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Re: Cheap-looking?

Originally posted by Patrick Carroll
Well, I guess it's just an old snapshot that's still stuck in my mind.

In the summer of 1968, a friend bought the first wargame either of us had ever heard of--Waterloo. For a week or two, he wouldn't let me see it. Instead, he'd build up suspense by saying, "It's so realistic! You won't believe how incredibly realistic this game is!"

He and I had played various board games together for a few years: Risk, Stratego, chess, and some football game he had which had 3D pieces for the players. So, to us, a proper board game had at least a mounted board and 3D wooden or plastic pieces. And if the game was really classy--like chess--it might have a wooden or leather-covered board and hand-carved, polished wooden pieces (or even ivory or something).

So, when I finally got to see Waterloo, the first thing I said was, "You've been gypped! You paid $5.98 for this piece of junk?" He blushed, nodded, and said, "Yeah, I know." Punch-out cardboard pieces were something we'd only seen in cheap children's magazine games.

Somehow I never got over that feeling. Sure, I realize you can fit a lot more useful information on a cardboard unit-counter than on a toy tank or soldier. And yeah, some miniatures games look pretty shoddy too.
I don't think I have to remind you that you're being more than a bit unrealistic. With all the time and effort it takes to release a well crafted wargame these days, you've got to ask yourself how realistic is leather as a map material? Not very, I would think. Lets also consider about the added cost to both the game company and the final consumer to use leather as a map material and ivory and wood pieces. Even with paper and cardboard prices have jumped to the point where a game priced at $22 to $25 ten years ago would cost at least about $40 today. Look at the offerings by the new company, L2 (old wargaming legends, though, Dana Lombardy and Art Lupinacci), I don't think they offer a game for less than a c-note - and it's just larger sized paper and cardboard. Then consider that in wargaming the leather maps would have to be painted in order to depict the terrain - imagine that cost! And then, the paint fades or cracks. I also think you're ignoring the great to good artwork already being done by the likes of Rick Barber (maps and counters), Terry Leeds (maps), Dean Essig (both), Mark Simonitch (both, IIRC). Remember that in chess tournaments, and I believe even championship matches, FIDE and the USCF use green and yellow rolled paper maps.

With all of the accidents that occur between gamers spilling pop or getting counters full of grease, I doubt that game companies will ever go the expensive route of leather and wood or marble. The way it is, if you lose a piece and call the company, it is likely that they'll send a replacement for free or a nominal charge - try doing that with a wooden carved or marble piece.

I understand your desire, Patrick, I just think you're being extremely unrealistic.
 

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Re: Re: Niko and counter art

Originally posted by Patrick Carroll
And I'm bummed out by the typo on "Guilford Courthouse" (misspelled "Guildford" on the photo). Of course, it's as common a mistake as "Fort Sumpter" or "Fort Donaldson," but well, I notice these things. It's not enough for something to be pretty; it also has to be correct.

I'm guessing this is just a game title superimposed onto the photo, though. I'd hate to think the typo is actually printed on the mapboard.
Keep in mind that, sometimes dual spellings for the same location were accepted. I'm not sure about Ft. Donelson (I think that really is "Donelson") or "Guildford" vs. "Guilford". Fort Sumter was named for Revolutionary war figure, Thomas Sumpter. At Shiloh, the landing is Pittsburg (w/o the "h).
 

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I will be honest with what I did.

For my birthday two years ago I got the American Civil War from Eagle games from my sister. The map board is very well done. The playing pieces were molded colored plastic. I played the game a few times and liked the system. It was a new system to me but I made a few changes. I would not beat down doors to play the game over and over but I liked the system.

The map to me we very well done and the figure were ok but they were lacking. I took it upon myself to primer and then paint all the figures. I was at a lull in my painting and found a new project. I did a little research and found the right paint scheme. Went onto www.warflag.com and printed out some flags and painted away.

To me, now the game is complete and looks awesome! I have taken the game with me to play with other people and some people have bought the game not realizing how much effort, time and paint I put into the game. They were a little disappointed to see that my handy work did not come standard. I guess what I am saying is this.

The game my sister got me was around $50. If the same game was sold with all the extra added touches that I added it would clearly be up in the neighborhood of $150.

Now here is the real kicker. What if you spend a $150 to get this great looking game and all the bells and whistles and the rules are not to your liking or even worse just plain horrid. There are a few rules that I do not agree with in American Civil and we have house rules to address these issues. I can only imagine the “thunder” you would call down, Patrick if you bought the greatest looking game in the world and the rules were sub par.

I have witnessed the cost cutting that has taken place in the game industry. I remember when EVERYTHING was a wooden blocks. Then came the miracle of plastic. I could go into the great details of plastic because I am a chemical engineer but I do not need to. I can tell you the cost of blow molding a bunch of little army men is drastically less then wooden figures or metal. The only place you see wooden pieces is really in many games made in Germany.

Printing digitally has really changed the quality of maps but it is only cost effective on high volume market places. I print digitally but it is 10,000 sheets a month. You are lucky if a war game has 10,000 units sold in its life time! Therefore I am sure some games are digital but most are ink jet or screen print.

The war game producers have to produce a good game people want at a reduced cost. That is why die cutting on cardboard counters is so popular. I have seen some great counters over the years. The first time I saw Panzer Grenadier and Lock and Load I was blown away. I love the counters for the free games we get with The Armchair General! To me it is better than a good old red “X” like I have with Avalon Hill’s The Longest Day. The counters still work for me but I could try out for a NATO symbol drawer…

I do not think you can have your cake and eat it too in this case. Many great war games exist but they are not the visually stimulating masterpieces everyone would want. There are great pieces and glorious game boards but the game play and rules are lacking. Could an all powerful and might war game be produced at some point in time? Of course, but I do not think the price point would exist to make it marketable. Any business man will tell you if you can not sell anything at a profit long term then do not do it!

I just wonder if we are all looking for perfection in a flawed universe!
 
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Originally posted by jguritza
I just wonder if we are all looking for perfection in a flawed universe!
Not all--just me, probably.

I admit my viewpoint is idealistic (ergo, unrealistic). I don't expect to start seeing wargames crafted like the most expensive chess sets in the world. Even if one were, I probably wouldn't buy it if I could afford to--because I doubt the game-system would match the quality of materials and craftsmanship.

But that, to me, is what's sad about wargames. When I was going to school at UCLA in 1975-76, there was a store on Pico Blvd. called "Chess and Games Unlimited." I used to wander through that store often. The display window and main floor was filled with very expensive chess sets--up to tens of thousands of dollars, IIRC. Way in the back, there were shelves of AH board wargames and other games.

When I first laid eyes on the expensive chess sets, I wondered why. On one hand, I thought it's just a game; who has money to burn on such luxuries? But then I thought, "What a game!" Chess has been around for centuries, becoming widely popular in many different cultures, and today it's one of the most highly respected games in the world. It has generated vast amounts of literature, and the best players devote their entire lives to the game. Few other games would merit such expensive treatment, but chess does.

Then I considered board wargames. When I first got into wargaming, I was sure these games were better than chess. They were bigger, more complex. And since I didn't know better at the time, I figured wargames must be more challenging than chess. So, if chess merits expensive treatment, surely a game that's "better than chess" deserves at least the same treatment.

Instead, board wargames got worse treatment than even silly family games like Monopoly, Risk, Stratego, or Candyland. Operation and the Game of Life had pretty fancy components compared to the two-dimensional punch-out cheapness of Waterloo or Battle of the Bulge.

I wondered why this was so. It seemed unfair to me. In fact, it made me want to go on a crusade and let the world know about wargames--how great they are and how they deserve more attention and better treatment.

But the answer came to me back in 1976, as I was browsing in Chess & Games Unlimited. There, among the high-classed chess sets, was a five-thousand-dollar Monopoly set. It had a leather-bound board and gold and silver tokens. Looked very nice--but it was just Monopoly, just a silly family game.

Suddenly it dawned on me that popularity is everything, and there's no accounting for taste. Chess didn't merit expensive treatment just because it was such a great game; it got such treatment because it's such a popular game that among the millions of players were a handful of rich ones who'd pay for such high-priced sets. Same with Monopoly. But not the case with Third Reich or PanzerBlitz.

I then realized that Jim Dunnigan was right (though I hadn't heard him say this yet): wargaming is a hobby for the overeducated. It'd never be a mainstream hobby. It'd never be as popular as golf or bridge or chess--or even Monopoly. And there were good reasons for that: wargames are too complicated, for one thing; for another thing they're tied to history, thus attempting to mix education with entertainment (and at least partly failing at both).

My estimate of wargames and of human nature both sank in 1976. I was still young enough to be disillusioned then. And I guess I've been trying to recover ever since.

But there's a flaw in my thinking. I've always supposed there's some objective standard of quality (e.g., "chess is absolutely the best board game in the world"). And with that supposition in mind, I've always wanted to believe most people would be intelligent enough to recognize quality when they see it. Thus, whatever is best would automatically become the most highly valued and most popular.

Yet, the truth is, there is no absolute standard of quality. It's a matter of taste. In my view, Monopoly is obviously far inferior to chess--so I was shocked to see the expensive Monopoly set in the store. But to other people, chess is obviously far inferior to Monopoly. I can splutter self-righteously all I want; there's still no way to prove one view right and the other wrong. There's no accounting for taste.

So, realistically, the thing to do is compare apples to apples. Instead of complaining that Memoir '44 doesn't come up to the best chess sets in quality, I ought to compare it to Battle Cry and other such wargames. And I ought to appreciate quality where I find it, at whatever level it's at.

Still, considering the rising popularity of miniatures wargaming compared to board wargaming; the Eagle Games series; Hasbro's changes to the few AH games it has published; the "clix"-game phenomenon; and so forth--I think it's pretty evident that flat paper-and-cardboard wargames are never going to impress as many people as games with 3D pieces and such.

But then again, I've yet to see a published wargame with 3D pieces that's anywhere near as satisfying as SL/ASL or WS&IM used to be to me. The magic is in the game-system and the actual playing. The components are just icing on the cake.
 

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Originally posted by Patrick Carroll

But then again, I've yet to see a published wargame with 3D pieces that's anywhere near as satisfying as SL/ASL or WS&IM used to be to me. The magic is in the game-system and the actual playing. The components are just icing on the cake.
Here's an interesting twist then. Would you be interested if someone took the rules and complexity of ASL and made it into miniatures?

I somewhat can guess your answer. The game system is great for ASL but it is too complex, besides the actual cost would be to the moon.

Popularity is paramount. Look at games like Magic the Gathering. That one card games has spun how many CCG spin offs?

Hero Click is another great example too. Here comes Mage Knights and Robotech and so forth…

The circumstances that Chess was created under and the evolution it went under, I do not think could be duplicated today. Hundreds of years of game play and evolution? How long was Pokemon around for?
 
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Originally posted by jguritza
Here's an interesting twist then. Would you be interested if someone took the rules and complexity of ASL and made it into miniatures?

I somewhat can guess your answer. The game system is great for ASL but it is too complex, besides the actual cost would be to the moon.
Actually, there was Deluxe ASL--an abortive attempt to add GHQ Microarmor as an ASL enhancement. When I was big into ASL, I'd have definitely bought into DASL--if the figures had come prepainted and there had been some "deluxe" alternative to the paper mapboard. But since I had to paint my own figures and use the paper mapboard, I shrugged it off as too much work and not worth the effort.

With Wooden Ships & Iron Men, it'd be a small matter to use miniatures in place of the unit-counters. But again, I'd have to paint 'em myself--and then what would I have? Just some little models in place of the ships printed on the unit-counters and fleshed out in my imagination. And I'd lose the informational numbers printed on the unit-counters, so I'd have to refer to side records.

No, miniatures alone don't make a wargame (IMHO), any more than clothes make the man. Some miniaturists seem to think so, but I disagree.

Then again, if I were a millionnaire, I wouldn't want an expensive chess set sitting in my parlor just as a decoration. Only if chess were my game would I buy such a chess set.

Popularity is paramount. Look at games like Magic the Gathering. That one card games has spun how many CCG spin offs?

Hero Click is another great example too. Here comes Mage Knights and Robotech and so forth…

The circumstances that Chess was created under and the evolution it went under, I do not think could be duplicated today. Hundreds of years of game play and evolution? How long was Pokemon around for?
Pokemon's not around anymore? My, how fast they come & go.

But I have to ask: Why do you say, "Popularity is paramount"? To whom, and for what?

It may be "paramount" to businesspeople who want to make a fortune selling games. But I don't own stock in their companies. Their business is none of my concern.

As a game player, I'd be perfectly content with one terrific game--one that I enjoy so much that I'll never need or want to play any other game for the rest of my life. If I find such a game and get a copy, all the game sellers in the world can go out of business for all I care. Nor do I care if my game is completely unpopular and unknown; because I can always teach it to somebody or even play it solitaire.

IIRC, this thread is about "likes and dislikes"; so I'm just saying what I like and dislike. What the rest of the world likes and dislikes is vaguely interesting, but I can't speak for anybody else.

Yet, for me there's an indirect connection between what I like and what the world thinks of a game. I admire chess, go, backgammon, and other classic games just because they're classics. I think it'd be wonderful if there were a classic wargame, but chess is as close as any classic game comes to being a wargame--and it has become an abstract game of logic that's not really to my taste. So, I have to admire classic games from a distance instead of actually playing them.

OTOH, I can enjoy many wargames, but I can't admire them. Unlike classic games, board wargames are run off the press like pulp novels. When a wargame's flavor wears off, you discard it like spent chewing gum. To me, that alone makes wargames inferior to classic board games. But I know many people disagree--especially people for whom variety is the spice of life.

For example (to bring this abstract discussion down to earth for a moment), lately I've been playing the PC wargame Steel Panthers: World at War. And the more I play it, the more I like it. If I have a free hour in the evening, I get excited at the thought of grabbing a cup of tea and playing a SP:WaW scenario. I've barely made my way past the tutorials and scratched the surface of all this game has to offer, but for now I'm hooked. But even as I'm playing it, part of me is complaining: "Too bad this is a WWII game; not really my period. And the 2D overview has already been superseded by Combat Mission and other games, so this one's outdated. And I can already see a few simulational flaws, so it needs work that will probably never be done. And. . . ."

In short, I'm well aware that SP:WaW will never be "my game"--my one game for life, so good that I never need any other game. It's great fun for now, and it probably will be for a while. But it could be so much more. And in fact, there's already much more available out there, if I seek it out.

But I've had SP:WaW for a week and have read only the tutorial sections of the two-hundred-odd-page manual. By the time I read the whole manual and play half of the thousand or so scenarios (not to mention the campaigns and DYO battles), years will have passed--if the game holds my interest that long. Is the game worth that much study, when I already know it's not my game? That's the trouble with wargames (especially complicated wargames like ASL): you have to invest a whole lot of time & study in them just to find out if they're really your cup of tea.

For now, the answer is yes--SP:WaW is worth the effort, because I'm having fun with it. But I foresee a day when the effort will outweigh the fun I'm having. Then SP:WaW will become yet another has-been game in a long list of them.

As I've said before, I have a sneaking admiration for people like Bobby Fischer, Amarillo Slim, Minnesota Fats, Bill Robertie, Cho Chikun, and others who find a favorite game and stick with it all their life. The very fact that someone's willing to devote his life to a single game makes that game stand out as worthy.

How many wargamers do you know who've been dedicated to the same game for many years? (Hmm . . . good thread topic. Think I'll start one.)
 

Niko

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Yes Patrick you are right, the map of Guilford have fixed that problem with the name, and this will be the game for the issue of September, enjoy!.

In Agust have the IA DRANG game.

Thanks for your words about my work.

Best
Niko
 

Tom DeFranco

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Originally posted by Patrick Carroll
Actually, there was Deluxe ASL--an abortive attempt to add GHQ Microarmor as an ASL enhancement. When I was big into ASL, I'd have definitely bought into DASL--if the figures had come prepainted and there had been some "deluxe" alternative to the paper mapboard. But since I had to paint my own figures and use the paper mapboard, I shrugged it off as too much work and not worth the effort.

With Wooden Ships & Iron Men, it'd be a small matter to use miniatures in place of the unit-counters. But again, I'd have to paint 'em myself--and then what would I have? Just some little models in place of the ships printed on the unit-counters and fleshed out in my imagination. And I'd lose the informational numbers printed on the unit-counters, so I'd have to refer to side records.

No, miniatures alone don't make a wargame (IMHO), any more than clothes make the man. Some miniaturists seem to think so, but I disagree.
Especially when you see some of the ridiculous scenarios that people set up, whether the rules system be DBA, Sword and the Flame, Johnny Reb, Empire or Microarmor. I've seen miniaturists set up lines of troops from one end of the table to the other with no terrain features (save for maybe A tree or A river) and call it an ancients game because they have poorly painted (or, in some cases, well painted) ancients figures. I've seen one character (an Eastern Front treadhead) set up a late WW II Eastern Front scenario with two hundred Tigers against 201 JSIIs. Being pro-Nazi as he is, you don't suppose he's trying to prove a point, do you?


Then again, if I were a millionnaire, I wouldn't want an expensive chess set sitting in my parlor just as a decoration. Only if chess were my game would I buy such a chess set.


Pokemon's not around anymore? My, how fast they come & go.

But I have to ask: Why do you say, "Popularity is paramount"? To whom, and for what?

It may be "paramount" to businesspeople who want to make a fortune selling games. But I don't own stock in their companies. Their business is none of my concern.
Regarding fortune hunting business people in this hobby, that depends upon who you're talking about. Even the richest guy in the wargaming hobby pitches for the Red Sox for a living. He and 99% of the others who produce wargames are not getting rich on that endeavor. In fact, I'd guess that trying to save his favorite game system is costing Curt Schilling more money (and grey hairs) than he is taking in. GMT came within a gnat's breadth of bankruptcy a year or so ago. Clash of Arms produces games on the most relaxed schedule one can imagine. Ed and Charlie obviously are not in this hobby for the wealth building features it provides (being facetious here). Look at Dean Essig. He is one of the few (now "former") moguls who was 100% immersed in the hobby (he's not rich by any stretch - unless you count the many loyal Gamers' gamers who believe in his design philosophy and the way he operated things, like taking a financial hit on glitch filled maps for his GB II game). The only outfit who I think is trying to become rich on the gaming hobby is Hasbro - the guys who own the rest of the hobby. The designers are also not people of great wealth, Dave Powell and Dave Friederichs, who designed many of The Gamers line are not rolling in dough. Trust me, I know this. They do appreciate when one of their games is well received by the game playing public and they seem to take pride when their games mirror history.


As a game player, I'd be perfectly content with one terrific game--one that I enjoy so much that I'll never need or want to play any other game for the rest of my life. If I find such a game and get a copy, all the game sellers in the world can go out of business for all I care. Nor do I care if my game is completely unpopular and unknown; because I can always teach it to somebody or even play it solitaire.

IIRC, this thread is about "likes and dislikes"; so I'm just saying what I like and dislike. What the rest of the world likes and dislikes is vaguely interesting, but I can't speak for anybody else.
As I recall the thread is about "graphics" likes and dislikes.


Yet, for me there's an indirect connection between what I like and what the world thinks of a game. I admire chess, go, backgammon, and other classic games just because they're classics. I think it'd be wonderful if there were a classic wargame, but chess is as close as any classic game comes to being a wargame--and it has become an abstract game of logic that's not really to my taste. So, I have to admire classic games from a distance instead of actually playing them.

OTOH, I can enjoy many wargames, but I can't admire them. Unlike classic games, board wargames are run off the press like pulp novels. When a wargame's flavor wears off, you discard it like spent chewing gum. To me, that alone makes wargames inferior to classic board games. But I know many people disagree--especially people for whom variety is the spice of life.
I disagree here because if you go to a con (And I'm not talking Origins, or GenCon) you'll find people playing older games. I am talking about Homercon and the new monsterCon in Arizona (thanks to consimworld) - people there play games, the hawking is down to a minimum. At Homercon (I was in attendance from 1998 through 2002) the whole thing is people playing games. Sometimes they playtest a new one. Sometimes they play a newly released game. In many cases, they play older games. My first visit there (1998) was spent trying to get as many turns of 1995 release "April's Harvest" (brigade level Shiloh) in as possible. The year before (1997) a couple of guys (Mike Duffy and Will Volny were playing Thunder at the Crossroads 2 (ca 1993). Every year, two guys always play "Hube's Pocket" (1995). There is almost always a couple guys playing "Omaha: The Bloody Beach" (ca 1991)


For example (to bring this abstract discussion down to earth for a moment), lately I've been playing the PC wargame Steel Panthers: World at War. And the more I play it, the more I like it. If I have a free hour in the evening, I get excited at the thought of grabbing a cup of tea and playing a SP:WaW scenario. I've barely made my way past the tutorials and scratched the surface of all this game has to offer, but for now I'm hooked. But even as I'm playing it, part of me is complaining: "Too bad this is a WWII game; not really my period. And the 2D overview has already been superseded by Combat Mission and other games, so this one's outdated. And I can already see a few simulational flaws, so it needs work that will probably never be done. And. . . ."

In short, I'm well aware that SP:WaW will never be "my game"--my one game for life, so good that I never need any other game. It's great fun for now, and it probably will be for a while. But it could be so much more. And in fact, there's already much more available out there, if I seek it out.

But I've had SP:WaW for a week and have read only the tutorial sections of the two-hundred-odd-page manual. By the time I read the whole manual and play half of the thousand or so scenarios (not to mention the campaigns and DYO battles), years will have passed--if the game holds my interest that long. Is the game worth that much study, when I already know it's not my game? That's the trouble with wargames (especially complicated wargames like ASL): you have to invest a whole lot of time & study in them just to find out if they're really your cup of tea.

For now, the answer is yes--SP:WaW is worth the effort, because I'm having fun with it. But I foresee a day when the effort will outweigh the fun I'm having. Then SP:WaW will become yet another has-been game in a long list of them.
Prescription: 1) Find a friend for ftf play. 2) Buy an 18th or 19th Century wargame. (seems to be your forte) 3) make sure you and your friend read and understand the rules. 4) Cut out the counters. 5) Choose a scenario. 6) play the gull-darned thing.


As I've said before, I have a sneaking admiration for people like Bobby Fischer, Amarillo Slim, Minnesota Fats, Bill Robertie, Cho Chikun, and others who find a favorite game and stick with it all their life. The very fact that someone's willing to devote his life to a single game makes that game stand out as worthy.

How many wargamers do you know who've been dedicated to the same game for many years? (Hmm . . . good thread topic. Think I'll start one.)
Re: the names you've dropped, they'd made their share of money at those games. Wargaming doesn't offer such money for playing their games. I've known plenty of people you just play ASL, or Europa, or OCS, or GBoH, or the CWBS/RSS or the AH classics.
 
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Originally posted by Tom DeFranco
I disagree here because if you go to a con (And I'm not talking Origins, or GenCon) you'll find people playing older games. I am talking about Homercon and the new monsterCon in Arizona (thanks to consimworld) - people there play games, the hawking is down to a minimum. At Homercon (I was in attendance from 1998 through 2002) the whole thing is people playing games. Sometimes they playtest a new one. Sometimes they play a newly released game. In many cases, they play older games. My first visit there (1998) was spent trying to get as many turns of 1995 release "April's Harvest" (brigade level Shiloh) in as possible. The year before (1997) a couple of guys (Mike Duffy and Will Volny were playing Thunder at the Crossroads 2 (ca 1993). Every year, two guys always play "Hube's Pocket" (1995). There is almost always a couple guys playing "Omaha: The Bloody Beach" (ca 1991)
Yeah, but I see that as more of a cult phenomenon than a classic phenomenon. Every time The Rocky Horror Picture Show is played at a campy uptown theater, it draws a crowd of die-hard fans who dress up for it the way they did back in the 70s and 80s. Elvis impersonators can draw crowds too. Some people pride themselves on their collections of the old, removable pop-tops from soda and beer cans. But all these things are "cult classics" rather than true classics.

What's the difference? It'd take a better philosopher than me to answer that. All I can say is that to me it seems there's a critical difference between Shakespeare's work and the Harry Potter novels; between Mozart and Britney Spears; and between chess and boxed board wargames. In each example, the former is timeless; the latter is most likely a passing fad for all but a few die-hards.


Prescription: 1) Find a friend for ftf play. 2) Buy an 18th or 19th Century wargame. (seems to be your forte) 3) make sure you and your friend read and understand the rules. 4) Cut out the counters. 5) Choose a scenario. 6) play the gull-darned thing.
Yeah, but . . . 1) It's gotten to where I'm happier with solo play. 2) The 18th/19th century is my favorite period to read about, but I've yet to find a wargame in that period that I like better than the best WWII-era games. 3), 4) I do, but sometimes that's as far as I get. 5) Ideally I shouldn't have to choose a scenario; the presence of scenarios is an indication that it's not a classic game (chess and go don't have or need scenarios). 6) Oh yeah--I always forget that part.


Re: the names you've dropped, they'd made their share of money at those games. Wargaming doesn't offer such money for playing their games. . . .
What's money got to do with it? Anybody who plays games for the money isn't even a gamer in my book; he instantly loses all my respect.

I'm not talking about games as lucrative propositions; I'm talking about games as art-forms, or maybe wargaming as a religion. (OK, I'm exaggerating--but that hints in the right direction.) Games like chess and go are up on pedestals; they're a couple of the most highly respected games in the world, and for good reason. And it has nothing to do with money. Devotees of those games often play just for the love and admiration of the game.

All I'm saying is that for me personally, it's hard to admire PanzerBlitz the way I admire chess. It'd be like claiming Janet Jackson is right up there with Maria Callas.

Sure, you can tell me to stop comparing apples to oranges. But even if I do, I still have to believe one category is superior to another: apples are better than oranges; opera is better than pop; classic games are better than fad games.

It'd be no problem to be bigoted in that way if I really enjoyed chess more than PanzerBlitz. Unfortunately, most of the time, I happen to enjoy PB more than chess. So, I end up feeling like I'm stooping to play an inferior game just because it titillates me on some level. I berate myself for not being a more refined person--the kind who enjoys classy games like chess and go.

Same thing happens when I go to a rock concert. On one hand I'm thrilled to be seeing the Rolling Stones live; OTOH I'm thinking that if I weren't so boorish I'd go to the opera instead (I can't stand opera--but I admire it).

Years ago, in my drinking days, a friend pointed out the folly of my thinking. I'd taken to drinking only Courvoisier cognac--but I'd still drink to excess with my friends. One evening a beer-guzzling friend asked me about it, and I said cognac is a classy drink. He snorted in derision and said, "Yeah, I can see it now. You're lying in the gutter and another bum comes up and sniffs the air. 'Hey, that's Courvoisier!' he says. 'This drunk's got class!'"

Sad but true. I've never been able to shake the desire to bring the classiness I admire together with the things I really enjoy. It's never enough for me to just enjoy something; I have to believe in it. It has to mean something.
 
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