Well and Hello,
so I finally get around to talk about, what the Hobby even is about.
I often try already to explain my articles in an way, as to have newcomers on board,
but I think, even that might be a bit much for people completely outside the Hobby.
So lets start, shall we?
First of all, yep, its grown up (mostly) men, playing with little Toy Soldier, I mean, honestly, it was cool as kid, why would it be any less cool as an Adult?
But let us start our dive, this is going to be long, to you might prefer to grab a drink now.
First, let me talk about the very basics, which is, Tabletop wargames come in a lot of variants, for example, like Books, Movies, and so on, there exist different genres,
those are (rough cathegories):
Fantasy: I would say, you know the Drill, it has Humans, and elves, and Orcs, or variants thereof, on average an “what the authors assume to be” medieval levels of technology,
which is in itself quite funny, because “the middle ages” where not really one fixed level of technology, but, as someone mentioned recently, “the middle ages lasted from the fall of the Roman empire, to, you guessed it, the fall of the roman empire.
Then you have Magic on varying levels, very technical terms like High Fantasy and Low Fantasy exist, but I don not plan to write an essay about genres and sub genres, so we just say: Fantasy includes more often than not, Larger than life Heroes, Evil Monsters,
different races (as in species) with well developed society.
Science Fiction: In a lot of cases, Sci-Fi Settings tend to be Fantasy settings “but in Space! And with laser!” pure, human focused Sci-Fi is rather rare, but it does exist.
As with Fantasy, Sci-Fi can range wildly in Scope, from “Humans do Things within the Next 3 Solar Systems” to “There is an endless War raging across the Glaxy”
Settings like Start Wars even mix the both themes, the only thing all have in common, is an hilarious use of close combat. What I am trying to say, while fantasy is often about “some world somewhere” Sci Fi requires a bit more suspension of disbelief, because the Settings are going to absurd levels from an modern understanding of technology.
Real World: The, for most people, most problematic Setting, as things like the two world wars, Roman empire, and all the Stuff we humans did to each other because we are who we are, is handled here. You find no Magic, and most people approach Historical in sensible ways, so on average you will not find Fans of regimes proclaiming their (wildly misplaced) love for the darker parts of our history (and if you do find them, they usually run out of people to play with within the first 30 seconds of saying uneducated stuff.)
The Advantage of Historical setting is, you WILL learn a lot about our world, there is an incredible depth of information, people outside history classes and the hobby on average never get to know about. You know like the “short napoleon”.
Alternate History: An, very interesting, but rarely used, setting, which includes terms like “weird wars”, in short: Imagine World War 2, but with Zombies, Gravity shifting Guns, and Giant bipedal Robots. Those settings tend to not find much audience, mostly because they really aim at nobody, Historical players tend to be like “Nah, thanks, I need no Laser in my WW2 battles” and Sci-Fi Fans tend to “not need history in their Sci Fi setting” It’s a bit of a shame really, as the settings tend to explore a lot of interesting (and hilarious unrealistic) ideas, a lot of them being not even to bad.
So, that’s it in short about Genres, if you are interested in Tabletop wargaming, picking your genre (or flavor of Toy Soldiers you want to push across an table) is one of the more straight forward decisions, as different people tend to gravitate towards different settings.
The Setting does have some influence on the way the games play, but not to much.
Fantasy and historical (pre Fall of the Roman empire, no NOT that roman empire, the other one) tend to be “Rank and file” while everything modern and Sci-Fi tends to be coherency based. I explain those terms later a bit more, mark them up for now.
The next thing to know, is, what makes a “tabletop Wargame” into an “Tabletop Wargame” and not into “monopoly”
And yes, finally getting there eh?
So, a few basic ideas are common amongst the different System the Hobby has:
1. As the name might give away, you play on an tabletop. Not on an pre determined board. This means, you set up the table (usually 48” by 72”) as you see fit, Build a city,
or just some rolling plains, Forests? Maybe Haunted Forests? It is really up to you which scenery, and challenges you like (a City is an entirely different thing to approach, than a Forest, obviously) and then it depends a bit, which system you like, Rank and file Games tend to prefer less terrain, while Coherency based systems tend to prefer dense terrain.
Fantasy in general can do with less terrain, while Sci Fi is using more.
Tables can be pretty “bare bones” 2 dimensional terrain elements, up to extremely elaborated (like I am building atm) Villages / Citys including working lamps, and signs, and all you need. This is mostly down to personally preference, System and “play mode”
2. You need the Toy Soldiers (or equiv.) some people start out to test the waters by using simple tokens, which works as well for some games (or you just ask around the local community for a demo and play with someone else’s toys) . And the rulebook / Army builder Rules. As “just bringing a collection of whatever and play pretend” is not making for a very satisfying game.
So, different games, will have different ways to put an “Value” onto different Toy Soldiers,
in very broad strokes this means: You Picked your Setting, and your preference of Faction/Nation/Undiscernible Alien organization, you find a point Value (the rule books will more often than not suggest different values for “Learning, intermediate, Tournament levels” and then compare the Value for the models you like to bring, to the value total, it is, baseline, as easy as: “I want to run a learning game to test this game, and suggested points for it is 500, so I pick “basic troops of my army” which “cost” 100 Points, then I add “something about leaders for armys” for 200 points. That’s 300 in total of the 500 I am allowed, so lets grab “Cool looking elite unit” for another 200, now you have 500 Points selected to bring to the game and you are good to go.
3. Another Human being. Yes in this time and Age, it might be surprising, but you do in fact, play this kind of games, against (and with, there is an surprisingly amount of playing TOGETHER) another Human, sure there is AI and all, and sophisticated scenarios for playing on your own, but honestly, personally, I like the hobby most because of the friends you make along the way and the Storys you create! Someday I might about those two panther tanks which refused to yield ha-ha.
4. Dice and tape measure:
Most tournament players will prefer measuring widgets, like sticks in inch increments of different length, because a tape measure often ends up being a rough guestimate, but honestly, for an beginner that is enough to have. And dice, because as stated, just going by imagination is fun, but not that helpful for playing a “Serious game of Toy soldier battles” so different games use different ways to represent the capability of your Models to do things. In most cases it is as simple as:
You above picked “basic troops of my army” hit things with their weapons on a 4+ (common way to denote a target number) meaning: If you try to have your troops hit opposing troops, you roll Dice, and each 4 or Higher (that’s why it is 4+) will be one Hit.
Most games will have a sequence of rolls to get the final result, like:
Hit roll (can you hit the thing?)
Wound roll (can your Unit hit the thing HARD enough to hurt it?)
Save Roll (does the dastardly evildoer wear armor and shrug off the hit?)
Those things tend to be a simple mathematical equitation in the end, but going about the mathematical details would a) lead to far and b) get me into talking why statistics are not even that important in the hobby.
5. An Activation order, which is pre-determined by the rules, there are games, which use the classical (but falling out of favor) I Go you Go system, where one player does something with all of his models, move them, attack something, and then the other player takes an activation with all of his Models. Other systems are changing the active player after each unit, so, you move one, attack with it, I move on, back to you. Or even more interesting (for me) systems like Bolt Action with order dice (each player puts one dice per unit he has in an bag, and then luck of the draw decides who gets to act in which order)
6. A “mission” games tend to come with Goals, so we know who won, tabletop wargames are no different, and the Goal of games is Rarely “Just remove the other persons via chance” depending on the game you play, scenarios can be as simple as “There are 3 pre-determined spots on the table (Hint, always Pick the mission FIRST then set up your table) have more models on an spot to score points, whoever scored most points after 5 Turns wins. Up to really elaborated Stuff like “Have an model designated a “Hacker” hit some buttons in spot 1, to figure out, which if the consoles in spot 3, 4, and 5, has to be disabled from your model designated an “Engineer”
Or even more complex variants.
Well technically you are there now, after an long winded intro telling you basically “Its dice, and rules, and miniatures, and chance based results” Although, well, this is going to be deeper, far deeper… so bear with me!
This is, where we can start speaking about Tactics. Because tabletop wargames are all about your tactical acumen.
Let us start with what that means:
Reaching a designated goal (the mission), with limited resources (your List) and limited time (Most games have a Turn Limit), against opposition (your Opponents goal, resources and time)
And here, I have to make the first important note: Systems differ a LOT in their focus, there are systems which simply ask “can you figure out the most powerful units your army has access to?” and you win or lose, during building your list, as the “power” of units has such a wide gap, that bringing some, actively removes your chances of winning entirely.
While other Systems, are won “on the table” which means, stats of Models are important, but putting the correct piece into the right place, at the right time, matters most. I prefer those systems, as they very often boil down to your creativity (tactics as a field, are an art, not a hard science)
So, we (yeah, you are in this now too, sorry not sorry) can already draw a few conclusion:
Before meeting for an Game, you pick a collection of resources to reach a certain goal, against an (Known or unknown) opponent, who bring his own collection of ressources.
So, list building is already an interesting aspect, especially when combined with an system which is well written, and where most if not all Units you like are “Viable” (as in can be played without setting you back because of middling rules design) because this gives you an way, to express your personality through your list decision a lot (do you value more offensive elements, because you are a very a person who is very straight forward, likes to make the first step? Or do you value more defensive elements, responding to your opponents’ decisions, flowing along his plans and hindering them at every turn? Yes, while a lot of people might never go this deep, a game between two Humans, will always show your personality, or help you learn new traits and as stated, tactic is an art form, so expressing yourself, and refining, is something which will happen)
Another interesting aspect (for me) is to learn you stay focused. A Game on average, goes on about 2 to 3 hours, so learning to focus, and when to focus, is a nice skill to have, because you cant be fully concentrated for the full time usually.
Although, this should be enough about the personality / social aspect for now, let us finish with Sun Tzu “If you know yourself and your enemy, you need not to be afraid of the outcome of a hundred battles”
So, what other aspect does the Hobby have? Plenty honestly, we are barely scratching the surface here, and no, I will not go on forever here, so in short:
Building models: A Obvious thing, if you want to play a game about toy soldiers, you need toy Soldiers first!
Different games have different variants and different skill levels required, for example Bolt Action (my currently favored system, WW2) has infantry boxes, which come with 5 sprues, each containing 6 Body’s of the selected Nation (Germany, USA, UK, Japan, as examples) and an assortment of heads, weapons (rifles, SMGs and what you know) pouches, little things like maps, spyglasses, so you can build them with a lot attention to detail if you like, or rather “bland” or you build a single unit of 10 standing out, the rest “regular” looking, there is really a lot of freedom in where you go and how much you feel like putting into our list!
Painting models: Personally, I like Arts, I think everybody should practice at least one Art in life. While I am not the most motivated or best painter in the world I at least put some thought into it and get things finished, it is quite interesting, what you can learn about Colors, how Colors mix, how different basecoats entirely change the color you put above it, about shadows, and how they should fall, little techniques about creating artificial light sources, I mean, just google golden demon winner and see for yourself! There are some breathtaking works of art there! Especially when you know, the basic is a grey plastic model.
Drowning yourself in Lore: Depending on how much you like to explore made up (or real) scenarios / worlds you can absolutely dive deep with some games, take Warmachine, there is quite a lot, nicely thought out, lore behind their fantasy setting, starting with the Dragon(s) and how they came to pass, then their system of believe, god(s), social and economic structures of the different Nations and Factions in the setting, you can follow the story of the games Heroes and “Villains” (all a matter of perspective) and read some interesting unfolding (barely staffed off) impending doom because of elvish pride and human naivity.
Bolt action, as a WW2 game, can get you into researching a lot about units, about how we developed our modern ways of waging war, learn something about the very real, people, behind the events which brought Europe disaster, and later, how it got saved from mans madness. Honestly, history, away from “basic stuff for schools” is very interesting and can be incredible surprising in times.
Warhammer 40k (I don’t like the game itself anymore, but it deserves a place here!)
If you want to dive insanely deep into the most thought out fictional universe (“our” world but 40K years in the future) there a so many books, short movies, other games, just to tell a story about humans (and aliens) at the baseline, out will find a lot of historical events repeated under different premises, and a lot of it has an warning, dark, subtone, which includes a somewhat sarcastic view on your world and our nature.
I like especially the Primarch Novels, which basically re tell the story of artificially created “Demi-Gods” and ho they have all to human flaws, you even get a glimpse into different mental health issues, and a lot of deep questions about our own nature as a species.