"Should skirmish gaming get its own Board?" Topic

I am just wondering it Boards dedicated to skirmish gaming, where one figure on its own base, should be treated differently than games where one stand represents a discrete unit, rather than an individual man.

Sure…they are very different.

Yep!

I don't see any need for it.

Do you mean like an Ancients Skirmish board, a Medieval Skirmish board, etc.?

Or just a Skirmish board under General?

What about games where a model is a vehicle, but infantry is represented by stands of figures?

I would define it as individual vehicle and figure/character. Otherwise you're in Squad Leader territory(the boardgame).

Most skirmish is half-miniatures battle, half-roleplay.

I think it's a great idea

Oh good lord no. Nay. Nix. @[!! way.

I think its a stupid idea for TMP as it exists today. Perhaps if we could filter by tags, but as described this is like some unholy marriage of lumping and splitting … Lets lump every single-figure game in any genre at any scale into one board. Why on earth? Seriously.

That is to say, I do not think we need this board you have suggested.

NO!

YES!

I (we) meant a General skirmish Board. However a Poll may determine differently. I am just throwing out an idea.

I guess Flames of War COULD be considered a "skirmish" game, but the stands are not individual men but squads or whatever. So I say not but YMMV.

I would not want to see this too restrictive. But then again…..

No on a general one. Sword and sorcery shouldn't be with moderns. Do it by period or not at all.

I would prefer to keep games, regardless of size, with their respective time period.

No, it's too broad a description to define, and better covered under the appropriate time period

John, If you keep this up, I am going to drive across that never ending state of yours, and sing Buckeye fight songs to you, until your head explodes. Then I will glue it back together and start over.

not necessary.

No. How would you define it? IABSM uses individually based figures, but it covers the same ground (reinforced company) as FoW, which is definitely not skirmish. Extreme example I know but this would crop up all the time.

So the OFM is advocating Board Proliferation?

As the president of the "No More Boards" political party, I feel I must reiterate our policy on more boards:

No More Boards.

That is all. There'll be cupcakes in the lounge.

Except a 19th century Colonial board maybe?

We are a party of stern, resolute principles, uncorrupted by big money and holding true to the visions of the internet as laid down by the founders of this country.

We feel that relenting on one board is only a slippery slope to relenting on all of them.

It might help people interested in skirmish games primarily find relevant posts, and those not interested to avoid them!

I think a general skirmish board would do.

No.

We have decided that some evaluation of principles is in order, to keep with a rapidly evolving demographic.

Provided we can get 90% the audience of TMP to agree on the definition of "skirmish" gaming, we would support the creation of such a board.

Is cross-posting here really that difficult?

Let's see, don't mix S&S and moderns? OK post your S&S skirmish mechanic to S&S and cross post to skirmish. If you're an S&Ser, you won't see any modern posts, just the S&S ones. And the Moderners won't see S&S posts, either, unless they decide to go to the skirmish board looking for skirmish mechanics.

Honestly, functionally, it is the same thing as tagging. In fact, I would bet TMP has a database of posts and only constructs the post list with a query when you click the board link, which passes a filter to the db engine. Very Heisenbergian.

And, yeah, you have to know the boards to cross-post right. But you also have to know the tags to tag right. If you're tagging things Victorian and others are tagging things 19th Century British, then never the twain shall meet.

How about a Junta board? I've always thought it would be cool to make Junta into a wargame and fight out the coups on the tabletop. Of course, my unarmed student rioters going up your 1st battalion might not seem that much fun as first glance but you never know…

So the OFM is advocating Board Proliferation?

No.

I would be interested in a Skirmish board.

I feel that sometimes discussions of rules for certain-sized engagements can be assigned to specific (narrow) historical periods, when there are general tactical principles that may apply to a wider variety of eras.

It could be a useful area for those generally interested playing smaller encounters.

Cheers.

No

Skirmishes for which period? or all periods?

Great idea!
Preferably on another website!

But, if it has it's own board, then the lazy sods who play skirmish wargame, rather than paint a decent amount of figures for a proper game, will spend their time on it, and paint even fewer figures!

Madness, I tell you, madness.

John

I would be for it. I think there are aspects of skirmish gaming that apply across the board regardless of genre (not time period!), and it would be beneficial to cross-pollinate.

Then again, I am an advocate of cross-posting, so I would expect to see a fantasy skirmish post on both boards (assuming it had enough relevant content to contribute to both), a WWI skirmish post on both boards (see above caveat), and both on the skirmish board.

I think people are (or should be expected to be) rational enough to handle the idea that specific content might apply to multiple domains. If we handled this with orthogonally management, it would actually reduce the number of boards.

I don't particularly buy into the "how would you define it" problem as it applies to every board, really. Spend some time on the Pulp board to see this in frequent action.

I don't think tagging would be better, as functionally tagging and cross-posting are the same thing. At the implementation level, they are probably much more similar than a non-programmer would think.

I acknowledge that the current cross-post mechanism is a bit clunky, however, I don't think it is a bad thing to require effort (and potentially thinking) when categorizing your posts (honestly, look at how most tagging systems corrupt when you make it easy to tag this and that).

There'll be cupcakes in the lounge.