"What will we need to consider ourselves in the Golden Age?" Topic

I often joke that when something unique comes out, that "We must be in the Golden Age of Wargaming!"

But there i always something missing.
What do we need to get closer and closer, like an asymptote, to that goal?

Something silly like 15mm and 28mm Medieval Snowball Fighters? No.
And not in some obscure scale that nobody but you and some guy in Banff plays in.

Oh, go ahead and ask for Philippine Constabulary Winter troops in plastic, if you must. That's for you and one other guy in Mindanao.

No, something USEFUL.

Like …
Hmmmmm….

How about 28mm mounted jaegers in the AWI? Not at all useful in field battles, but quite useful for some interesting sirmish raids.
How about 28mm Hessian jaegers with amusettes?
How about 28mm AWI Brunswick dragoons, mounted, assuming that Breymann got some horses? I don't know how useful they would be, but I would buy them.

How about plastic 28mm houses that one would find on the road from Lexington to
Concord in 1775?
And of course, AWI British fusiliers wearing bearskins.

Nominate something that you would actually BUY, within 5 minutes of seeing it advertised on TMP./b>

A greater variety of 15mm science fiction civilian vehicles, wheeled, preferably, or direct thrust.

Shawn.

A $20 USD 3D printer that engraves with excellent detail, leaving no flash or mould.

I won't be happy until I can do all of the varieties of WWII French in 28mm and their vehicles. And beakie Space Marines in plastic. And 40mm WWII…

THEN it will be a Golden Age…

Ooh look…shiny!

We'll be in the Golden Age of wargamming when I don't feel self conscious about my hobby, when I see it advertised on TV and can buy stuff at WalMart.
:)

A whole pack of Carlist casualties in 28mm. And plastic MKII,III or IV space marines.

10mm and 6mm ancient/fantasy walls, dikes, ramparts and bridges with room for 40mm wide bases. Pre-painted. And cheap.

The return of Man O' War, in inexpensive plastic.

Every conceivable 10mm force for Middle-Earth (including The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales).

Jake Cutter and Jack from Tales of the Lost Monkey in 28mm. Seriously, nobody really makes a suitable miniature for either. Jake wears an unlined, leather Fighting Tigers jacket (no fur or shearling) and a "crusher" cap and no goggles, and carries a revolver (at most). Jack is a Jack Russell terrier with an eye-patch, not a large, hairy dog. Not to disparage the stuff out there— all very good— but they aren't really close to either Jake or Jack.

Huge cheap plastic fleets of spaceships that look like spaceships, not jet planes.

Retro- Flash Gordon spacefleets with a big variety of styles and ship sizes. There are some nice retro ships out there, but the variety is limited, and to my eye the main difference appears to be merely size of the sculpt. I want fleet scale, with Superdreadnoughts all the way down to fighters, and clearly discernible differences among the classes. A battleship is not merely a big destroyer. Oh, and in plastic. And cheap.

And every house is automatically built with a suitable gaming room with ample storage, a painting area, good table space, and a variety of optional decor choices— English pub, Bag End, Elegant Manor, Pirate Captain's Cabin, Dwarven Hall, WWII Officer's Club, Victorian Steampunk Dirigible/Submersible Lounge… something classy and understated like those.

And, yes, miniatures that need no trimming, filing, buffing or whatever because they have no flash and no mold-lines to begin with.

Full ranges available in 10mm for such periods as MAW and Boxer Rebellion.

I'd like some Gold please.

We'll be in the Golden Age of wargamming when I don't feel self conscious about my hobby, when I see it advertised on TV and can buy stuff at WalMart.
:)

Says you. That's when I'll know the hobby is officially dead :)

Never been self conscious of my hobby. Not sure what that feels like actually…

Screw that…
When are we gunna be in 'The Platinum Age of Wargaming"?

Actually, I think we are there now.

I think we are in it and have been for a number of years. However, to make it official, we'd need gold miniatures.

How about 28mm mounted jaegers in the AWI? Not at all useful in field battles, but quite useful for some interesting skirmish raids.
How about 28mm Hessian jaegers with amusettes?

Maybe Jim "Der Alte Fritz" will add these to his Fife and Drum range. He already has a British amusette.

Jim

I agree, never before have we had such choice in both range and scale, and the smaller scales are now so detailed it is really amazing.

That said, I would buy in a minute a Pendraken Army Pack for US Army pre-war infantry (Brodie helmets), complete with M2 medium tanks and the M1 combat car.
Then, as if that wouldn´t be enough, the same set for US Marines, with Marmon-Herrington light tanks. That would be cool! Are you listening Leon?

And every house is automatically built with a suitable gaming room with ample storage, a painting area, good table space, and a variety of optional decor choices— English pub, Bag End, Elegant Manor, Pirate Captain's Cabin, Dwarven Hall, WWII Officer's Club, Victorian Steampunk Dirigible/Submersible Lounge… something classy and understated like those.

What, no Polynesian Tiki bar decor?

M103 Tank in 1/285.

Golden Ages belong to the past, you never know you're in one till it's gone.

In the Civilization computer games you get a notice that "X" culture has entered its Golden Age. When one of those notices pops up when I enter TMP I'll know we are there! ;)

Guess I'll never get there. I just don't do impulse buys. But I'd like some Cossack war wagons with swivel guns. Working on kit-bashing some now. More plastic stuff, from SYW through WWII.

I'd also like to be able to buy 1/2400 ships by the class. So for example all the Trento class cruisers in one package. Doesn't work for Fletchers, but cruisers and up might.

A large variety pack of Somali civilians in 28mm.

Somali vehicle drivers and more gunners and crew.

15mm sci-fi civilian vehicles.

15mm science fiction infantry weapon packs to convert civilians to insurgents and for vehicle stowage (for want of a better word).

28mm Post Apocalypse "cavalry", along the lines of the movie Postman though perhaps less "regular".

Almost there, based the the following:
link for Parzival

I always wanted to play African Exploration & pirate games, now I can. The missing thing I have is modern civis, armed (coming soon) & unarmed (maybe from the same set, coming soon, but I doubt it).

French 37mm Infantry Gun in 15mm. I'd like at least two, please.

28mm Austrian pandour amusette team that are similar in size and style to crusader

or failing that, kneeling pandours that are similar in size and style to crusader.

I'd buy those in a heartbeat. the next closest alternative is to get perry Hessian jager amusettes and convert them. that would be a pain.

28mm Napoleonic Spanish for the "middle" years of the Peninsula War (1810-1812). Currently one can get early-war Spanish (1808 uniform with bicorne) and late (English-supplied blue suits), but hardly anything for the in-between period when they wore French-style uniforms with very bell-topped shakos.

But, of course, no one wants to buy Napoleonic Spanish.

The FOW people really need to get around to doing the Pacific. I suspect it would sell better than Viet Nam.

And of course we need complete lines of figures for the Bicholim Conflict, in multiple scales…

link

link

I think 'Golden Age' is a obsolete term today. Ask yourself 'What is better now than when we started gaming?'.

Terrain availability
'Obscure' miniature ranges
Scale variety
Rules evolution
Hobby communication

That is what affected the hobby for me.

Yes, John I screwed up the punctuation-I will write 'Nebelwurfer 3.14+ times on the blackboard during TMP maintenance:)

The Golden age of wargaming will occur when I can put my figures on a gaming table at home and they will be projected in hologram format to OFM's table in his home in the USA. His figures will be projected back to my table. And we can have a game in real time. And I do predict this will really happen in the next 20 years.

It will be a true Golden Age when we have readily available, cheap, accurate 1/76th scale plastic models of the Sherman I, II, III and V, the Panther A, the Churchill IV and the T-34 1943 model. These are some of the commonest MBTs of the war, and it should not be so hard to find accurate models of them in the original WW2 wargaming scale.

Oh, and fling in a Pak 38 and an M-14/41 for fun.

All the best,

John.

40mm Armies of Winsome Warriors

When I can build an all-plastic Napoleonic army, you can build an all-metal one and neither of us has to compromise on quality or cost.

That said, things aren't too bad just now either.

- 6mm halfling archers
- 1/2400 ships of the Chinese treasure fleet (and what-if later versions)
- idiot-proof single (albeit large) book with colour illustrations for the entire Napoleonic era, including changes over time
- Sikorsky S.16 in 1/300
- Avro Arrow in 1/600 (this one at least has a chance)

Warhammer 40K in 15mm scale. There is a demonstrated demand for it, as quite a few folks scratchbuild or convert proxies, and a few small companies are making not-40K 15mm stuff.

Can I be 13 again, and have nothing to do other than a bit of homework, staring at girls, and playing wargames?

I'm pretty happy as things are.
Maybe a Jacobite army in 15mm, but not much else.

I'd buy 28mm historical (as opposed to the currently available fantasy) female Viking warriors. I'd also be happy to buy four 1919 Schneider 75mm mountain guns or two of the 65mm Saint Etienne 1906 mountain gun for my 15mm WWII Greeks.

Back to the initial question, I believe we owe the concept of a Golden Age to the Ancient Greeks, who believed there had initially been a Golden Age, which was succeeded by a Silver Age as things went downhill, and the Silver Age was succeeded by an Iron Age. So, when various delightful lines start to go away, we will know we have been in a Golden Age.

Grelber

When the lead pile I've been working on for 20 years paints itself one night!

When my wife announces that she's going to paint my Napoleonics for me…

THAT will truly be a golden age.

There are already Hessian Jaegers with Amussettes! Try AWI123 of Perry Miniatures…

My personal golden age would be when I have the time to paint miniatures again, and have the room to setup my own table and collect some of those lovely cabins from 4Ground for a FIW project, and finally make it to Historicon!

The point is, I don't have any desires for obscure, unobtainable miniatures or armies, I would just like more time to focus on what I have, to get more armies done.

MIDN Brady

'Can I be 13 again, and have nothing to do other than a bit of homework, staring at girls, and playing wargames'

What that man said. Still feel thirteen (though I usually say 14), still stare at girls.

Each generation is living in a Golden Age of wargaming. At least since I started in the 70's each decade has had an improvement in figures , rules, scenery, books etc. imho. How long it will continue is another matter.