"How Bad Was 80s/90s Wargaming For You?" Topic

Prompted by something that was discussed on the latest MW review thread, I've been thinking back to my early days of gaming: A callow 13 year old youth in 1981 who wanted to play with model soldiers but in a "proper" way with rules instead of rolling marbles at them.

Now the 80s and early 90s has earned some notoriety as being the age of the complicated or monster game. I did both board and miniatures gaming back then and I recall the names of the games that I either owned, played, or witnessed the "grown up" gamers playing.

Squad Leader, Advanced Squad Leader, Third Reich, Advanced Third Reich, Atlantic Wall, Empire, Empire 3rd Edition, Firefly, WRG Ancients 5th, 6th and 7th, Air War, Tactical Commander, WRG 1925-50…and it's 2nd edition, charts, charts with national characteristics, wheeling turn protractors, written orders, orders that must be transmitted through the chain of command, issue the order on your turn and you unit will act three turns later, simultaneous movement, you can only target what you can see through the periscope, rivet counting, the term "factors", match gun velocity with angle of armour, cannonball "bounce through" to test for casualties in the second or third rank, zones of control and tracing lines of supply (or else gain an "out of supply counter").

I've kept a few of these games from then and all of them score badly on Board Game Geek. Now some of these games or concepts still exist but looking back wargaming is a LOT easier now than it was. Still, I harbour some affection: After all, owning a game that had 2000 counters has its own appeal. So if you remember gaming in the 1980s and early 90s did you like the games of that era? Do you like the odd monster game now and again? Do you still dream of playing the grand campaign game of Europa? How more challenging was it to research in the pre-internet era? Or do you shudder with horror at the memory?

I was married from 1986-1996.
I call that my hiatus from gaming.

The 1980s was great. Sales got slow in 1990. Big companies started going to shows rather than have me represent them. That hurt too. Still the 1990s was better than the 2000s.

I look back on those days fondly. We had a club with over a dozen members that played historical big battle miniatures and multi-player boardgames each week. Now it's just me and a few others irregularly while the main wargaming is a shop where they mainly play card games and skirmish fantasy. Paradise lost.

The interesting thing is that when dealing with mechanics at the time (rivet counting, the term "factors", etc.) we really didn't know any better.

Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs

Luckily we have evolved and, just like fashion, we can wonder what the hell were we thinking?

In the 1980s and 1990s my local club had over 100 members and 50-60 would turn up to a club meeting. The club meetings had role play games, sci fi and fantasy miniature games, Ancients, Colonial, WWII in 1/72nd scale, Modern micro armour, WWI aerial and Napoleonic Naval. Plus we had regular board games.

You could join in different games outside of what you owned.

Now it seems as each "period" or type of game has its own small club or group and they no longer mix.

I think the wargaming of the 1980s and 1990s had a lot going for it particularly in the club sense.

Loved every minute! I really started wargaming in the early/mid 90's, and enjoyed hours of huge, complex boardgames as well as rules like From Valmy to Waterloo. It didn't mean that I couldn't appreciate more abstract gems like Napoleonic Command, but I think the hobby seems to have lost much of the engrossing exploration of different types of systems and mechanics that typified that period.

Didn't play in the 80s, but the 90s were great.

I'm with Ditto on this one…

I joined Wargame Developments when it was founded in 1980 and found myself in a group who shared my dislike of the complicated "mainstream" games then in vogue and enjoyed writing their own rules.

I still have memories of spending an enormous amount of time setting up an SPI board game and then having only enough time left to play one move…

The research side was helped by my addiction to books and three visits a year to Terry Wise's Athena Boos in Doncaster – it has to be said that I can normally find what I need faster on the Internet than looking for the right books.

The 1980s were good. Now is better.

The 80s was D&D and then Traveller for me… by 1987 my Traveller game had reached the point where we needed Striker, but it was far too complicated for our group. I bought Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader as an easier alternative for larger combats, and we gradually started playing straight 40k instead of Traveller. We had about a 3-year resurgence of D&D before I moved to Las Vegas, and then it was straight 40k with some Vor: the Maelstrom and a little HotT until a few years into the new millenium.

I started gaming in 1975 and progressively the rules I gravitated to were more and more complex (over complicated) to the point that I might play a Napoleinics game (as an example) and be lucky to play 2 moves in 3 hours (which doesn't matter too much if a lot happens in a move, but very little ever did).

I think this was a reflection of as we (my wargaming friends) grew up we wanted to mature (falsely) as gamers by playing very complicated and granular level detailed games.

I ultimately became disillusioned with wargaming. My personal light bulb moment came with DBA – I realised that the "gaming" in wargaming (the fun and enjoyment) had gone but DBA brought it back.

So in some respects my gaming in the 80/90s was not good – but for me personally I needed to go through that experience to get to where I am now with my gaming…and I still did manage to have many laughs with great friends during all of it anyway (one lasting memory is of spending 30 minutes trying to calculate – as we followed the rules very carefully – how many shots a Sherman could get off as the turret traversed through 60 degrees…we decided to go down the pub instead)

I still have some affection for that era, after all I still own my copies of ASL, Third Reich and Air War to name but a few (but my copy of Atlantic Wall is sadly gone). As for miniatures wargaming, I did find a lot of the published rule sets frustrating although I loved the modelling and painting aspects. I remember the era having games where accounting and record keeping were standard. I can't remember the game, maybe it was Empire, where casualties were recorded by the number of individual troops hit, not by figures so you had to write down the casualties on a log and once that reached 33, you took a figure off that unit. Ammo counting was another feature that cropped up a bit, especially in Tactical Commander where every soldier had 2 grenades each and you had to note that all down on your unit log.

I miss the board gaming from that era; those monster SPI and Avalon Hill games were something to behold. I do think miniatures gaming has got better by getting rid of a lot of the accountancy and obsession with detail.

Funny you should mention Crossfire, but I remember that and Rapid Fire emerging at the same time and how they swept away a lot of the old ideas of how to wargame WW2.

The clubs I was involved in back then were never that big. In the 80s the numbers were around 20 to 25. The club in London I was a member of for many years only started to hit its peak of around 50 per meeting with the rise of Eurogames in the mid-90s, collectible card games and all those "peaceful trading" games.

I started boardgaming in the late '70's with Squad Leader, asl, and a bunch of others. Total of games 25+ which changed when I first saw Johnny Reb 2 and some old glory 15mm acw.
Went to Spartacon that year and met Steve Jamieson and Steve Thomas of 19th Century Miniatures. I was invited to their group and we played some massive acw, napoleonic, dark ages and Boxer Rebellion. Those games would have 10-12 guys playing hours. I really miss those huge games. I ended up selling most of my boardgames at Michicon and using the money for miniatures.
Joe
I

I STILL play ASL. Best game ever – wars and all.

The eighties and nineties get a bad wrap however, in addition to ASL and other heavy games there were tons of lighter games that came out as well. The tank leader series from John Hill, The Team Yankee game line (First Battles game series from GDW), Across Five Aprils, Command Decision and Combined Arms (People complain about CD2 but it was no more complex than CD1 when sticking to what both games covered – CD2 covered MORE and that is where the extra rules came in).

Enjoyed wargaming just as much then, as now. Although I no longer have an interest in playing complicated time consuming games. Between work, family, and other commitments my life style is more suited to games that can be played in an evening or an afternoon.

Lots of ACW and MicroArmor. Was part of Several clubs in the Bay Area each with @ a dozen regulars. Was still in College so had lots of time. Started with lots of Board games and Empire (III). Ended with Fire and Fury and Command Decision.

I liked the 80/90s era. My friends and I are older and did not get sucked into the monster games. There were a lot of great games. WRG turned me off on miniatures. I did not start miniatures until DBA came out and at that point fell in love with miniatures. I cant think of a time when the boardgame companies were more productive.

I got in with Warhammer 3rd ('87) then, which was about ten times more complicated than 4th ('92).

And in general, I think would have said 70's-80's. Things changed in the 90's.

Wait, has no one mentioned Spreadsheet- er, Starfleet Battles?

80s I was only playing DnD
90s I started playing Space Hulk, Legions of Steel, and some 40K and some Heavy Gear.

At the beginning of the 90s I met this great guy who was an awesome painter and held various games at our school and really got me into gaming. And then he moved away. :(

Mid 90s sucked because I didn't have money coming out of college and there weren't many local stores. Especially ones with play space.

I began searching outside of Worcester, MA and in the neighboring states. I would gather a couple of friends and make road trips into Boston and Hartford, CT. Most catered to GW with the odd corner of weird stuff.

Late 90s really started to suck as stores started closing left and right.

They were good times, even with 3 day, 12 hr/day, massive empire games with 3000+ figures :)

Less gaming in the 1980s – more collecting.

1990s improved with more gaming.

Ah, Striker, the rules that could have/should have been, instead of a vehicle design rules set. A pity, even to this day.

Great thread. I was exposed to wargaming in the 1960s, but really introduced in 1972. I played, clubbed and conventioned much of my spare time all through the 70s. I got married in 1982, my son was born in 1984. Through the 80s and early 90s my time for hobbies got less and less. In the late 90s the internet developed as a medium for hobbyists, and I got connected and active in a way I hadn't been for years. Today I am finally on the high road to retirement, wargaming every day and making a dent in my backlog. Too bad I can no longer read the print on 1/2 inch cardboard counters. I have to sell the old boardgames off. Oh well, I need the shelf space. I've been waiting for this moment all my life…

Rogue Trader
Epic
Challenger 2000
Full Thrust

Good Times

Wow. The title of your post is somewhere between sad and somehow, almost insulting. For me, the 1980s were fantastic.

I gamed with a wonderful group of gamers who met informally, playing mostly miniatures, some role-playing, and a little board gaming. We gamed on the order of 280 days per year, but didn't adopt any of the rules that you mention for our games. We were familiar with most of them, but they just didn't make the cut.

The 1990s were good, but not quite as good. More money, and more figs, less time, but still a lot of gaming with good people.

Thinking back and looking at the present, for me the hobby has been, and continues to be wonderful. Sorry that your experience hasn't been the same.

I guess I never got into the giant game scene. One of my professors in grad school in the 70s had been a play tester for SPI, so I have several of their games, though only one really big game, Global War. I did several WRG Ancients armies, including Vikings. Then I got TSATF and did colonials. About the same time, I realized I didn't want to do big battles with Vikings--I wanted to do small fights like you read about in the sagas. I sold off half the Vikings in the late 90s.

One error I made was in assuming that you needed to be able to field a complete miniatures army to take part. So, I didn't really game with a group until the 90s (living in obscure parts played a role here, too).

Like raylev3, family, work, life get in the way for right now. Looking forward to retirement when I can spend more time gaming, including switching WRG armies to other rules, more smallish Viking games, and maybe even setting up Global War a time or two.

Grelber

I think that period was really the "Golden Age" for me. We had a good size group, played regularly in a wide variety of genres….Unfortunately, times changed, people moved away, or changed interests and thus went our group….

I Started in the 1970's with Board games(SPI,Avalon Hill) and Lots of D&D. In the 1980's It was Battletech, Sword and the Flame and Johnny Reb ACW, By the 1990's I was totally wrapped up in GWS. So I liked the both decades for Gasming.

AH/SPI games-started in '68 learned in the 70's, played in the '80's-defined my game philosophy.

Same with the RPG's.

Have a lot of Europa Monster games-working on a ImagiNation variant for them. Tying in Trav Pocket Empires mechanics-not done

You cannot generalize by using a sweeping statement that the 80/90s were"bad" just because you happen to feel that way.As in a lot of other areas life in the 70/89/90s etc were different but not worse or less than today just different.

During that period we obviously lacked the internet so gaming was much more personal and individual To encourage us we had a number of magazines like MWAN The Courier Featherstone's Wargamers Newsletter etc and my favorite Empires Eagles and Lions.

There were a variety of manufacturers and we watched the growth in various scales and a growing diversity in periods I belonged to a couple of groups and had games usually on a weekly basis in a variety of areas To put it simply we had fun doing our thing and to have someone now claim it was "bad" is simply ridiculous

We had a lot of fun.

I started miniature gaming in the '70s and virtually ended board gaming. The '80s and '90s were the Golden Age in my estimation. The current miniature gaming scene seems to be dominated by fast, simplistic, roll a lot of dice and get home by dinner rules. I miss the Old Days but it may just be I miss my youth.

Greatest gaming days of my life. To me they were simple days. Painting figures wasn't an art form. Basing wasn't a mini diorama. You made one roll and got a result for the most part. No activation rolls, no to hit rolls followed by saves and such.

Nope, great times and if I could go back to the simple joy of the time, I would in a heartbeat.

Early Warhammer, 1st edition 40K, D&D, AD&D (2nd edition) hobby shops with in a bus a ride (Beatties, Minifigs factory Past Times and Games workshop). GW figures at 2.50 a pack for 5 metal miniatures….pretty bloody good I'd say.

I have very fond memories of wargaming in the 1980s, really it was the golden age. More board games, less minis. Had a bit of a gap in the 90s, young family, career change etc and mainly stuck with computer games, but late 90s, Crossfire, Shako, Spearhead and DBA all came out.

AH boardgames in the early 80s
Warhammer and D&D in the late 80s and early 90s.
MTG in the mid 90s
Only started proper historicals in the late 90s.

It was a great time!

As is usual in this type of discussions, the "Golden age" has much more to do with personal circumstances (when in your life and with whom) rather than with specific years that are the same for everyone.

80s slow, started Warhammer when it first appeared, later in Hong Kong did a little more. Early 90s was slow then in Germany and back to the UK great got into Historical games never looked back,

Tally Ho!

we started s&s models in 86 so it was great

"As is usual in this type of discussions, the "Golden age" has much more to do with personal circumstances"

LOL, yes. I'm not sure my wife would be too keen on me playing a week long seven player game of Third Reich now, nor would I have the time.

One of my wargaming badges of honour is to have played Third Reich enough times to have seen the French 1-2 counterattack on the German bridgehead in Paris succeed not once but twice (1:32 chance). The howls of pain from the Germans on both occasions were a joy to behold.

We also played it enough times for the 1939 attack on France to succeed, but having done it once decided it was silly and didn't do it again:)

Martin – me too! I played Third Reich so many times to almost see every conceivable option within the game played out. Great times.

Kevin

I wish people wouldn't twist my words or second guess my motives. Overall, I didn't have a "bad" experience in the 80s with gaming. I don't think I ever mentioned that. I'm talking about the gaming world I entered into which I accepted at the time as standard but which, looking back on, I find a lot of gaming concepts which have died out, often for the better.

How "bad" was the 80s for you isn't about the decade of gaming being "bad" overall, I'm talking about a sliding scale because that era usually comes off worse when compared to the gaming decades either side of it. I'm trying to gauge the degree to how much the bad rap of 80s style gaming (and it's flexible really, the era covers approximately 1978-1994) was real for us all. For me, I lapped up the SPI and Avalon Hill games but in miniatures gaming I found things such as degree of armour slope in WW2 rules and cannonball bounce through to cause casualties in the rear ranks in horse and musket games and all the book keeping, movement and ammo logs to slow down or overcomplicate matters. I think those concepts have been abandoned by rules sets designed in the last 20 years.

I wish people wouldn't twist my words or second guess my motives.

Perhaps you should have chosen a better title for this topic then ;-)

Anyway, who says 80s gaming has a "bad rap" as you claim? Sure, there are some rulesets that were horrible to play, but that's a given for any age.

Moreover, games people play(ed) during a specific period are not necessarily the games that were published in that period. There is a very large "smearing out" effect, that can last 10 or even 20 years. That makes it hard to define "80s gaming" in such a manner that everyone knows what you're talking about. For me personally, "80s gaming" involved playing a lot of AH boardgames that were published in the 60s and 70s.

Not nearly as bad as gaming is now.

80s/90s? Great … Society of Ancients conferences, WD, Megagames … Slingshot rejuvenation and membership peaking at around 1700 … Miniature Wargames …

Everything moves on … today is different and perhaps better (though I'm no fan of the more commercial, more bland stuff that dominates today's shiny-driven market) ..

Phil

Gaming was good then and now.

D & D in the 80's was incredible and getting into GW games in the 90's was a dream come true. By the late nineties I was introduced to WW II gaming so I can't say that there was anything bad about either decade. And it's only gotten better and better!!

I was gaming with my friends Mickey and Mark, brothers who also accepted me as one of the family. We were well-practiced gamers by the 80s, having gotten into gaming in the 70s with Panzer Leader and Panzer Blitz, and the excellent GDW and SPI games such as La Bataille de la Moscowa and Highway to the Reich respectively. By the late 70s we had discovered micro-armor and our focus in the 80s was miniatures. This was during our college years. It was a great time for miniatures, but terrain lagged behind. I don't recall exactly when we got into GHQ's Terrain Maker, but that was our first foray into good terrain. This was 1989-1990 or so I think. I still have all of the Terrain Maker. As someone stated earlier, I look back on this time fondly.

Phil Dutre…maybe you should have read the OP more. I also think you've ended up half agreeing with my premise.

The starting point of my thoughts on the 80s was a discussion I had at my club in November which began "do you remember Firefly?" and we all had tales of how over-designed it was which led on discussions about other massively detailed rules which seemed prevalent back then.

Started seriously gaming in the 1980's,Close And Destroy 2,Wooden Ships& Iron Men,Johnny Reb 2 or 3,among others.

Since my first post went somewhere else, the 80s were great for me. I was introduced to Naps, ACW, WWII, fantasy, Star Guard, Wooden Ships and Iron Men with miniatures, etc. gaming and transitioned from 1/72 plastics to metal figures. The Courier, PW Review, MWAN … good times, although I no longer care for complicated rules and all day gaming.