"What's Hot?" Topic

What do you think are the Top Five trends in our hobby today? A particular ruleset? A genre? A technology?

From what I see played both at cons and stores:

Warhammer 40K

Napoleonics

Skirmish gaming of a variety of sorts

Flames of War

Bolt Action

Kick starters as a way of funding product.

From what I see at UK shows and events …

1. DBA V3 (still selling out just about everywhere)
2. Clever things in MDF
3. Italian Wars/Renaissance/Landsknechts
4. Lion Rampant
5. Generally a rise in historical wargames

Good trends, mostly !

Phil
Ancients on the Move

Cross-genre of the Star Wars vs Nazi Zombies ilk.

Not counting anything GW:

Kickstarters
Laser-cut MDF and card
Infinity
15mm sci-fi
Song of Blades and Heroes

Some other things that don't make the top 5 for me but are still worth suggesting as poll options:

"Oldhammer" (which I don't count as being "anything GW" anymore)
Osprey skirmish rulesets
Warlord Games
Spartan Games
Post-apoc
Dreadball

I'd like to come up with some historical period that's currently trending the way 17th/18th century pirates, the Old West, Darkest Africa, 30s gangsters, Border Reivers etc have trended at different points in the past decade or so, but I'm honestly drawing a blank. I'll defer to Phil on the Italian Wars/Renaissance/Landsknechts.

Multi-part hard plastic 28mm figures.

More dang F&IW skirmish rules than I've ever seen.

Even more ancients skirmish rules.

Two more that "also ran":

Miniature/board game hybrids (Super Dungeon Explore, Star Wars Imperial Assault, the upcoming Conan and C&C WW1 games, etc)

Reaper Bones

15mm Sci-Fi

I don't know about Hot, but it looks like Blue Moon 15mm/18mm has given new life to that scale, and I'm glad. Richard

American Revolution.
Seriously.
It's really churning along. Lots of new rules, lots of new minis.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY…. Plastics.

OK maybe not a top 5 trend, but I am surprised at the GW LOTR figure prices going up, up and up. Not the new stuff, but the older, original LOTR metals that are now commanding some serious prices. I started buying up LOTR collections in 2005, when no one wanted them anymore. I filled out a nice collection, but I certainly didn't have every single piece. To fill in gaps today, runs more than entire collections did 10 years ago.
There are still quite a lot of SBG players out there and more than a few figure collectors. Nobody wants that fincast crap, so metals are all the rage. Trending up.

Top five is probably

Tomahawks and Wargamers---F&I War
Lots of people moving to smaller scales. Big trend.
E-Zines, which will eventually replace glossies.
Small scale wars and battles like Maori Wars or Pulp games.
AWI, of course AWI. It's the best.

laser cut buildings
3D printed miniatures
Martians (They're the new zombies!)
PDF rules
hard plastic miniatures

X Wing
Wings of Glory
Chain of Command
Pointless feuds between wargaming internet fora

Alright, a case of my not seeing the forest for the trees: trending historical periods/settings right now are Dark Ages Europe and Feudal Western Europe (along with the Crusades in the Middle East). Dark Ages probably being somewhat over the hump in the bell curve, and Feudals still not having quite reached the top of the hump.

And now that others have mentioned it, I guess I do see the AWI being somewhat trendy right now. Can't say I've seen it with the F&IW, but I'll take people's word for it.

Oh, and am I wrong to think Hammer's Slammers is on a bit of a roll right now?

MDF Laser-cut Buildings
Warlord Games – Bolt Action
Plastic Figures
Kickstarters
Zombie anything

Well I watch and observe trends and whats up and going only my opinion but my top 5 would be

MDF buildings/parts so many so perfect and wonderful

Bolt action steady excellence, warlord deliver the goods and service

Infinity, they roll out quality, and all the rules and fluff is free on the net

Battles and games on small 3x3 4x4 tables, some stunning rule sets that make people play not rule worry

Plastics the amount is incredible were spoilt for choice

I see also at cons lots selling the same stuff but also small companies showing there ideas and products that astound even me and i been wargaming since i was 12

Battles and games on small 3x3 4x4 tables

Oh yeah, that rings a bell now you've said it.

Games that use 40 – 50 figures total per side
Bolt Action
Commercially made tokens/markers

Plastics & MDF buildings seem to be the main growth areas.

As for periods WWII is probably the most popular historical period at the moment but there are many many people playing all sorts of games, the majority fantasy or SF.

Ancients seems to be a bit rudderless at the moment but then players have plenty of choice which is not too bad a thing.

Alright, a case of my not seeing the forest for the trees: trending historical periods/settings right now are Dark Ages Europe and Feudal Western Europe (along with the Crusades in the Middle East). Dark Ages probably being somewhat over the hump in the bell curve, and Feudals still not having quite reached the top of the hump.

Wait! I have recently started feudal western European forces.
A are you claiming im not original?

Uh-huh

publishing rules & scenarios on Wargame Vault.

On the Historical front:

-Skirmish anything in 28mm is hot

-I've seen some movement in army based games both small and large scale and I for one hope to see that grow.:-)

Christopher

Has anyone actually bought any MDF buildings? They have been at shows for a few years now, but I don't know anyone who actually bought any.

I've bought plenty of resin ones in the same period:)

Martin, I've got a bunch of mdf stuff – cabins and a fort for AWI or F&I, and some huts for a WWII Eastern Front village.

I'm quite happy with it.

I got mdf Japanese buildings

AWI, x-wing

I can really sense a groundswell developing for the Second Italian War of Independence (Franco-Austrian War) of 1859. Glad to know that I'm leading the way!!

Martin – I've bought a bunch. Some fantastic stuff out there and a few dodgy kits.

15mm scifi
Lasercut MDF
Steampunk
Zombies
Vietnam in Space

40K
Warchine
Zombicide
Fantasy Football
Board games with minis

No historicals are hot except in your basement…

1. Playing Games
2. Rolling buckets of dice
3. Drinking Beer
4. Eating Fast Food
5. Not bathing as often as polite folks believe necessary

That seems to cover it pretty well!!

Is Hampden Massachusetts subject to seismic activity, Don?

Just a thought…

I can only judge by what has made me get my wallet out. My significant purchases over the past 12 months or so have been.
• 28mm Empress & Spectre Modern (120 + figures including two Kickstarters)
• X Wing – two starter sets and 6 extra ships
• Reaper Bones (200 pieces from Kickstarter & a few extras)
• Perry Plastic 28mm Medieval Sets (WOTR & Agincourt)
• Laser Cut MDF (Sarissa,Warbases)Buildings, Carts, Tokens & Bases
• 10mm Pendraken WW1
• Tufts with flowers
• Lion Rampant

Perry spearheaded a lot of 1812 Russia activity. Not sure of the overall volume but intensity is high among adherents.

By the time this poll runs, won't it be way out of date?

In historicals, it does look like Dark Ages (Saga especially) is enjoying a fad phase similar to the Pirates, Darkest Africa, etc of the late 90s and early 00s…F&IW and the related periods are trending upward.

The top five trends are below. Some of these are new and some are old.

1. Increasing popular misanthropy of gamers. What this means is that gamers will begin more and more to believe that "what is popular is by nature inferior" and Old School ideologies, if not rules, figures and terrain will increase. This will NOT be an issue of the graying of the hobby, of old farts despising younger gamers. Younger gamers already have this attitude in many cases. This will manifest it in a subliminal hatred of the giants who come into a hobby and try to dominate it.

2.This was told me by Stuart Asquith almost 20 years ago at a convention where he was giving a lecture on the difference between American War gaming and English War gaming. He said English War gaming and American war gaming will continue to diverge with English war gaming becoming more or less sclerotic and American war gaming becoming more and more attenuated and eclectic. I thought he was nuts when I talked to him back then but over the years I see he saw clearly. His main point was that he saw that American war games had literally "No rules" and by that he didn't mean war game rules, but rules on what a war game was and they were continuously innovating.

3. Surplus lead will have a catastrophic effect on the business of war games. When gamers with huge collections die their stuff will be given to others to distribute among friends and young people. The re-entry of this into circulation will lessen demand for new castings.

4.The net, having a depersonalizing effect on gamer relationships will create a degree of anomie and alienation from each other. There will be a bifurcation of gamers. On the net, sociability will go down and gamers will become nastier to each other. On the other hand, the "misanthropic from above" will abandon the net for the personal intimate organization of a small club which meets in a basement or a home rather than in a store or public club. The two sectors will diverge. The sociable gamers will meet in private where they get along and enjoy each others company and arguments and conflicts are muted, and the war game presence on the net will become more and more hostile, surly, and nasty. Of course, that's the only place they will be able to talk about war games or perhaps even play them as no one is going to invite such unpleasant people to a game.

5. Women will steadily enter the hobby, albeit at a seeping rate rather than a flood. This will change the hobby as it will change the gamers, but it will also change the game. Women will be FAR more innovative than men and they will see games a little differently and make new games, new ideas in games, and new genre's of games. This will not be a "sissification" or "wimp whipping" of the hobby, but will offer different perspectives and types of competition which will actually be beneficial and fun.

6.Wargames has already spun off several other hobbies. Board Games are simply non-miniature forms of games. D&D was a development right out of war games and Gary Gygax gave the first D&D game at an Atlanticon I believe, or somewhere else, but when I saw it first, it was at a miniature convention. Punk, Pulp, Pimp, and individual civil-discord games come out of miniatures war games as well. All of these use the same process- Tokens on a table top field representing real-life space and on which human activities are reproduced, modeled and part of Mimesis. I once made up a game called "Morning Noon and NIght in Vienna" which was a game about spying, buying, intrigue , influence and information gathering, and seduction in Old Vienna. No guns, no combat, no maneuver. Other games will come along like that and push the envelope of the hobby, but the key feature is that a "field" on a table top will be used, Tokens will be moved around, dice will resolve conflicts but the games will be about very different things, but they will still be intimately related to War Games. Some of these will spin off whole new hobbies like D&D and Role Playing, others will become sub-niches of games like Pulp, Sci-Fi, or filming B detective movies.

I haven't seen a lot of historical war gaming in my area. There's only one game that sells historical miniatures, and that's mostly Flames of War. They have Wings of War and other historical games, but they're sitting in the shelves collecting dust.

Most of the wargames in my area seems to be in the science fiction genre, particularly X-Wing and Star Trek: Attack Wing.

Henry Martini, I'd like to think others will catch the wave (pushing the metaphor a little further), especially once they see how colorful the armies of this period look on the table! The Austrians in particular were determined to hold on to their Napoleonic-era uniforms for decades. On the other hand, that 'groundswell' might actually be extra cups of coffee needed to keep me painting battalion after battalion of white-coated Austrian infantry late into the winter night. We get hurricanes about once every decade, an occasional tornado, but I don't think earthquakes are on the list of local hazards here in Western Massachusetts!

SAGA has burst on the scene in popularity over the past year.

Bolt Action Rules have gained in popularity after a slow start. (WW2 skirmish has been popular since the release of the 'Saving Private Ryan' movie was released.

Ancients have been treading water. Most have been waiting on DBA 3.0 to be available.

Board games have had a resurgence in popularity.

Laser cut buildings which became an interesting point back under 'Flying Tricycle' hit the market. Has increased in the number of companies doing them (USA and European). And the number of items offered in a range.