"Your favorite wargaming subject to gripe about? " Topic

Since TMP rarely disappoints me in sheer scope of expertise this seems a good place to ask this question.

Which wargaming subject is your pet peeve, the one you always return to when everything in the world seems too right to be true?

Apostrophe abuse?
But, that's hardly confined to wargaming.

MY favorite gripe is the grumpy old fart declaring that they would NEVER be caught DEAD!!!!! playing FILL IN THE BLANKS.
Nominees include Empire of all Roman numerals, any points based game, any tournament game, hub to hub tank games, etc.

Yes, I am talking to YOU, you miserable old . You know who you are!

Nothing.

Its a hobby I do for fun.

I save wasting time griping for real stuff. Like work and money.

I'm with Piers. Must be a slow day here?

15mm models, I want them in 6mm. Scale creep. Oversized weapons.

I enjoy the debating the game design topic of realism vs fast,easy play rules.

I'm with the OFM. Becasue those same crusty old s will then, in the next breath, complain about a lack of people to play with.

My other gripe is people who will spend hours putting the lace and buttons on their Bavarian Kettle Drummers, and then throw down masking tape for roads, two trees for a forest, and a patch of brown felt for a hill. Talk about Mona Lisa in a pig sty!

When you introduce a new genre to a club, only for the guy with the money to suddenly buy 'everything' they can get their hands on from that genre and begin to manage how the club plays it.

The fact that Dark Age doesn't have its own "catagory", as its usually lumped in with either Ancients or Medieval.

When everything else fails, my interest returns to Alexanders' Successor armies.
Lots of pikes, Thureophoroi, thorakitai, (armoured)elephants and cataphracts!

People who use the word calvary when referring to the mounted arm.

You humans are amazing and such fun. We don't have these questions on my planet. Let's see…er, no.

Nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really matters,to me. BONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!

Effective ranges!

Glossy rules costing an arm and a leg that actually have very little substance because you just know they are going to produce endless expensive glossy supplements that drip-feed extra rules

@David Manley,

Bingo!!!!

Pat

That one guy in your club who insists on talking politics (in my case, it's a 'tea party' right-winger) during an otherwise enjoyable wargame.

I agree with DWilliams. Being unable to separate politics from gaming would be obnoxious.

People who get a little too excited about playing Nazi's.

First one to come to mind;
how many rules have cavalry melees all the time and where they sort of destroy each other.
History says it is more of a cats' fight with not so many actual contacts.

No scales

Space problems and the end of the world syndrome (which is as we all know rectangular).

Over priced anything.

The amount of time spent over-analyzing base width down to the MM but then being completely fine with the other 1000 things that we simplify that have just as much impact or more.

The fact that I have never lived in a place that had anyone interested in minnie gaming

I just LOVE it when someone picks up a unit and moves it forward, then changes their mind and moves it back to a place that is somewhat (but not really) close to where it was. AMAZINGLY, they measure and find that said unit is now within charge reach of several of your vulnerable units.

Also people who complain bitterly about a company, then buy all it's products religiously any way.

This hobby is my escape to sanity in a insane world.

More like…"Those chips suck! Who brought them?"

I'm with David Manley – I want rules – preferably simple, playable and reasonably realistic – not eye-candy!

My other gripe is the idea that the quality of a wargame is directly proportional to the standard of modelling and painting of the figures and terrain, and that the aesthetic appearance of the playing pieces is the most important aspect thereof.

Other gamers. We gossip like old women.

The fact that there is no agreed scale and "28mm" figures can vary in size so much as to be unusable with each other.

Lack of realism in the representation of the behaviour of penguins. Nothing ticks me off more than not understanding the importance of historical accuracy in flightless bird activities like waddling, swimming, sliding, and sitting on eggs. Ooooh! sitting on eggs! How many games properly represent this important logistical activity? Yeah. You can't name one. And yet, here we are turning a blind eye to it and just playing on. Like it didn't matter. Really? Where do you think the next generation of penguins is coming from?

Along this line, but not nearly important is the rash of inaccuracies in beak length, feather count, and the shape of the ridges on the feet. I mean, really … do some research. But then again, we have to accept some compromises. I guess.

All hail the Emperor!

When someone posts a question about the hobby and fails to mention the scale.

DWilliams got it spot on!
No politics during games!
And please paint your miniatures or
at least try!

That you can get a lot of cool things is 28's you can't in 15's.

Can I add a few more?

The word "faction" – especially when applied (as seen recently) the the RAF, Luftwaffe, USAAF, etc.

Extreme fans – people who demonise you if you don't support their favourite ruleset 100%, and especially those who top it off by blanking out any constructive criticism of a game or rules and effectively say "I don't care what they produce, I love the game I'll buy anything".

Panzerporn, or its equivalent in other historical periods.

I would have to take David Manley's second one- Extreme fans- people who demonize you if you don't support their favorite rules set 100% and will not slavishly accept their friend and designer of that set as a god on earth.

This is nothing but the adult edition of the High School "Kool Table in the Cafeteria."

This is a silly hobby of adult men playing with toy soldiers.

Guys who always show up to play, but never organize or host themselves, and then complain that "None of my favourite games ever gets played".

Clutter on the game-board.

Its incredible how much time gamers will spend painting up beautiful units and scenery, and then ruin the whole spectacle by placing all manner of flotsam on the table.

I'll still be happy to join in their game though. Life is too short to turn my nose up at people who share my enthusiasm for gaming, even if it does look a bit ugly.

etotheipi, wrong photo…

Mine is the people who complain about being persecuted for playing the most popular games and then with hardly taking a breath heap scorn on those that do not play their game. Often managing to do both in one sentence no less.

I was going to say that it's manufacturers who don't make exactly what I want, no matter how obscure, but now I realize it's penguins…

Plastics.

Dear Phil

Oh Phil, that's going to take in about 90% of the wargaming public. We had one guy who wanted to play "Game X" . We said to him…

Us: "Well you can bring it in and we'll gladly play it.

Him: "Oh I don't have any figures or terrain for it."

Us: Well why don't you get them?

Him: Why should I be saddled with the expense and trouble of doing that?

Us: "Huh well why should WE?"
but he literally expected everyone else to buy the figures, make the terrain and put on the game for him. When we said "Well, you could bring in

On that note, I know a guy who will talk about getting some gaming started.

I'll offer "hey, I got piles of random miniatures, we can knock something together over beer this week"

"nah, I'd like to play War Machine"

"okay, but neither of us own any War Machine figures"

This'll repeat every 2 week or so.

Bounds! What the freak is a bound? That's something kangaroos do, right? Who is the moron who decided to call a "turn" a "bound". It ain't a bound, chaps, it's a turn. Oh, I've been waiting for years to get that off of my chest. Oh, wait, that doesn't make it my favorite gripe, does it?

Okay, I'll go with nobody makes Cape Buffalo in 15 mm (or a troop of baboons!) and nobody makes 15 mm early and pre-contact Polynesian civilians similar to the Bounty movie with Mel Gibson (and,no, I don't care how you feel about Mel Gibson, I care about the scenic effect)

And penguins? Don't get me started on those frozen feathered lizards. Arrgh-errr!

(hey, how'd I do?)

1) Old gamers whose mission in life is to drive away new recruits.

2) That guy with the bald spot and mullet. Not a regular, "I think it's 1987" mullet. A "my barber hates me like Kim Jong Un's barber hates him" mullet. Hands up if you've seen him.

This one ?..

People playing with fully unpainted and partially assembled miniatures. Bleech! Oh, and grown men who cannot control their tempers.

People who lose their temper is a peeve of mine in general society but if you're older than 6, you're expected to hold your **** together for a friggen toy soldier game.

Calling a horde a hoard. Where for were. Loose for lose. And the growing inability of the general public to use apostrophes correctly.

Skirmishers as represented in some rules. In particular when a bunch of kids are told to throw a few sticks at the opposition and then proceed to carry out carefully executed fighting withdrawals and keep returning to throw yet more sticks, instead of running for safety as soon as the enemy come within 10 spear lengths of them.

I like griping about people who gripe about silly things in wargaming ;-)