"How Wide is the Hobby: Virtual Miniatures" Topic

How do you define miniature wargaming? How inclusive is your definition?

Are games which use miniature wargaming-style rules, but which do not feature actual miniatures, included?

Is a "map game" part of miniature wargaming?
Or playing a boardgame that uses plastic playing pieces in a common scale?
Or playing with counters substituting for based figures?

I would include discussion or map games. I have played naval and rpg games via the e-mail – no minis involved.

On this, I am a purist. My goal is to have tabletop games that look like Charles Grant's. No maps, no plastic playing pieces, whatever it means, no counters, no unpainted miniatures, and possibly some realistic terrain.

To be miniature wargaming you need to have miniatures. You can augment it with any element you want from cards to computer programs but there still needs to be miniatures on the table.

Conversely, you can expand other games, like an RPG or a map based or board game, into a miniature wargame by introducing miniatures into that game. 4th Edition D&D is essentially (and to it's detriment, imho) a skirmish wargame while some hex-based miniature games are obvious hybrids of board and miniature gaming.

To me the fun is constantly combining all of the elements we have available to us to come up with fresh and exciting games. I enjoy the gamut and don't particularly care if miniatures are involved or not…but to call it miniature wargaming it must, by definition, include miniatures.

If the map based system is used to enhance the miniature experience then Im all for it. But I feel, the miniature part of the hobby should be the focal point……

Wargaming is pretty inclusive, and my tastes run the full scope of what you mention. When I play Risk, I consider that "wargaming."

But I have to say that "miniatures wargaming" is a bit more restrictive to my mind— it really should include the use of miniatures. That could include a boardgame structure like Memoir '44, but that's a thin edge there. I think the miniatures at least need to represent at least an approximation of the troop type they depict— that is, a tank is a tank or unit of tanks that behaves in game terms more or less as a tank does— that is, as mobile armored artillery. It's not just "a bigger army" as would be the case in a Risk-style game.

Does that answer your question?

No x 4

No to all.

But I happily do all of them and live with the shame…

1. No – you have to have miniatures. Is a card game that doesn't have any cards a card game?
2. What's a "map game"?
3. The boardgame would need to be ruled on a case-by-case basis. Space Hulk – yes. Most of the Fantasy Flight games boardgame line – no.
4. Playing with counters… you mean the game is designed that way? See #1. If the players are using counters in a game that is otherwise designed for use with miniatures then this doesn't change the nature of the game itself.

I'm with Parzival on it.

We now play our Pathfinder games on a table we custom-built with a 42" monitor set into it under glass… All our minis for that have been replaced by icons.

I just call that "gaming" now, rather than "miniatures gaming", though.
-Kle.

Yes
Yes
Yes

because I'm a wargamer, not a miniatures gamer.

if I was strictly miniatures I'd say

No
No
No

No
No
No

but hey, each to their own.

Klebert – that sounds _very_ cool. Any chance of some pics?

Wargaming has to be about a real war, if it's fantacy of sci-fi it's not WARgaming, it's fantacy gaming or sci fi gaming.

It also need miniatures this can be any miniature, use army men if you like

It has to be on a table.

Miniatures gaming has to include a degree of simulation. Counters aren't going to cut it. (Personally, I'm not even a fan of the papercraft standees, but that's another argument.)

Wargaming has to be about a real war, if it's fantacy of sci-fi it's not WARgaming, it's fantacy gaming or sci fi gaming.

I too disagree, war is armed conflict between nations or countries.
They do not need to be real countries to be gamed.

On a similar note about real wars, if you play a historical battle and it does not exactly mirror the real life one, then surely it is fiction as the real historical battle you just gamed never happened like that?

If Napoleon won your campaigns then that is not real…
He was defeated.

It is all wargaming to me, real, fantasy or somewhere in the middle.

I don't like to use the term 'wargaming'. I prefer 'gaming'. This way, I can include boardgames, minis games, rpgs… in my description.

My first miniature wargame was BattleTech, a game I still praise.

I played BattleTech with counters, cardboard standing mechs and later, as I had some ca-ching, miniatures.

It is the lack of tactile qualities that makes this game with counters no better than abstracted boardgames like Risk or Axis & Allies. While I enjoyed the cardboard standing mechs as a teenager I would no longer play that way. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say the cardboard standing mechs version was not a miniature wargame. It was, but just one with inferior tactile qualities.

[Good topic(s) BTW.]

Interesting what different people see miniatures as.
To me a miniature would look real if made less miniature.

For example – get a 1/300th miniature of a tank and make it 300 times bigger and it will (in theory) look like the real thing.

But get a cardboard counter of a tank and make it bigger, it will just look like a big cardboard counter.
You will not convince people it is an actual tank, being flat will not help for starters..

I view a miniature as something that is smaller than normal, not an abstract smaller version of the normal sized thing.

If you get what I mean…

'Miniature Wargaming' to me requires miniatures – thats the definition of it, mini sculptures of some kind used exclusively to represent specific fighing forces in a conflict driven system that involves some form of combat with a playing surface representing the field of battle at a level that is coherent with the forces represented.

'Wargaming' to me is however a very wide subject including miniature wargaming, board wargaming, pbm gaming, pbEm gaming, hexes, squares, free movement, tokens, figures, flats, tiles and counters of any kind. THe important part here being the resolution of conflict.

There are some refinements to that basic stand however, as there are and will be grey areas me to the definition. One refinement would be the requirement that the forces on the playing area are supposed to be represented at a basic level pretty much solely by miniatures – so Axis and Allies boardgame fails to be a miniature wargame, due to the loads of discs used to represent actual fighting units, whereas TFL's blinds (and here we startto hit those hit definition edges) don't fail because they are used to enforce a Fog of War rather than being the default representation of specific fighting unit.

I cannot require free movement as a definition of a minis wargame (for myself anyway), simply because I play Bag the Hun on hexes and to me its clearly a miniature wargame – as is Roman Seas on hexes, but how about SFB if you buy miniaturesand play it – there is this perspective thing that I am simply using minis to play a counter game rather than it being a miniatures game that I simply cannot shake from my brain, yet I am quite sure people would say at that point its a miniature wargame, and I cannot really argue the point because frankly I cannot illectually see an argument but my brain is still going to overlay 25 years of SFB playing with counters onto any miniatures version I see.

Similarly Lost Battles/Strategos are to me miniature wargames because despite being simple squares and abstractions of a terrain map they do include such considerations, and use a playing surface to match the scale of play and importantly were set up to play with figures. However, the new edition seems to use flats – is it then not a miniature wagames if played that way. I think I would consider it still a minis wargame but probably because I first played it with miniatures and so my perspective is that playing with flats departs from the norm. A new player may have a different perspective.

Commands and Colors also does this sort of thing – its clearly a miniature game ported to blocks, the designer tests it and plays it regularly with miniatures as a quick search on google shows, but I first played it with blocks so I would class it as a board wargame, rather than a miniatures game. But it could quite easily be a miniatures game and blocks stood up with stickers of images of troops falls into a weird area – they are 2D but kind of 3D so which is it? Is it just a flat, well no because its a 3D playing piece, but clearly its a 2D imageand there's these pictures of the designer using minis knocking around in the back of my head. So does a 2D image that is sophisticated enough ever be, or come close to being a miniature?

The use of a single ruleset in multiple game forms that some people instantly look at and see miniature wargame and others look at and see a board wargame due to their personal background and introduction does blur the boundaries or require a game to have multiple definitions based on the current form being used.

So while I think the bulk of games can easily be classified with general agreement, I think player perspective and history will have a lot to do with where people draw the line. This extends in part to the interest – I'm really in this hobby for the gaming so to me the bit of the phrase I'm interested in is the Wargaming bit, but others the Miniatures side of the term will be the attraction.

Ultimately I think the answers to this will be individual, and there will be no simple definition that pleases all of the people, all of the time (we all know no-one can do that after all :) )

Miniature wargaming is a subset of wargaming. The latter includes Kriegsspiel, map games, committee games, board games, TEWTS, Command Post Games, simulators, and of course games with toy or model soldiers. But Miniature Wargames don't, almost by definition, include the other gaming varieties.

once again, All the Above.

'Miniature Wargaming' as a term is used to denote wargames which have a combination of characteristics – with some having more weight than others:

- use of miniatures (with the associated stuff such as painting and modeling);
- rather freeform w.r.t. setup and scenarios (contrary to most boardgames which have a fixed scenario)
- continous measurement
- visual appeal (scenery, decent paint jobs)
- large gaming table (as opposed to a fixed gaming board)
- no stringent connection between rules, miniature manufacturer and other paraphenilia; you have to put together your own game.

Any of the above are part of 'canonical' miniature wargaming. You can deviate from any of them, but if you throw out all of the above, it would be hard to classify whatever you have left as 'miniature wargaming'. I use the term 'miniature wargaming' to denote a hobby and related activities, not to pin down a single game.

But in the end, it doesn't really matter what you name your game. All sorts of wargames which are hybrids between various forms do exist. I consider that a good thing.

Klebert – that sounds _very_ cool. Any chance of some pics?

Maybe, working on it.
-Kle.

If I play Kriegspiel, for example, I would certainly consider it a wargame, but not a miniature wargame. No little men, no miniature wargame.

I have often played hexed-based miniatures. The ones I have played so far have qualified.

Risk doesn't – ten people do not turn into an artillery piece.

Klebert – that sounds _very_ cool. Any chance of some pics?

Here you go:

link

-Kle.

Ditto to Phil Dutre…my thoughts in a nutshell.

In my view, games with maps, or counters for the most part fall into the "wargaming" category, but not "miniature wargaming".

Oddly, I'd consider counters in place of miniatures fair game, as long as you are using a miniature wargaming rule set. Every once in a while I'll play a game on the road and don't have access to my miniatures, but I'll carry cardboard stands with unit marks on them.

I'd also consider "virtual tabletop" games to be miniature wargames, as long as they used established miniature wargaming rules as well.