"Why Do You Play WW2?" Topic

Yes thats it thanks sparky

I'll agree with Martin on Where Eagles Dare and "The Eagle has landed".

I recently showed Eagles to my son and he loved it. Might turn him into a bit of an Eastwood fan in the process :-)

To be bluntly honest, its nowhere near my favorite period. not even in my top 10. Actually, its pretty low on my interest list. What it does have is readily available models and a huge diversity in tactically interesting rulesets (and some that aren't so much so…) and I'm pretty much alone in my feelings here. most of the people in my group have ww2 as either their favorite period or on the short list of them.

I suppose the other reason is that it is the easiest to "slap some stuff on the table and play" as everyone is relatively familiar with it.

I think another thing going for "WWII" is the fact that it was both a WORLD War and a TOTAL War. For people wishing to recreate it there is so much variety to choose from.

Early war equipment being upgraded or replaced as the war slogged on.

World wide fighting so lots of different locations and terrain to choose from.

Land, Air and Sea fighting.

Dobber has a good point:

You can take people who don't have much experience in the period, tell them "Its like Saving Private Ryan" and go. They'll have at least a decent idea of what to expect.

Throw in video game experience and there's a wealth of pop culture that makes the transition easy.

A number of young people are now familiar with WW II as opposed to being familiar with the ACW or the Napoleonic war due to video games. And fair praise has to be given to Battle Front (Flames of War) and Warlord Games with Bolt Action which has made the era popular for war games and folks who have transitioned or have added either FoW or BA or both to their games of 40K. And yes popular culture has plenty of references to WW II. Fury did rather well in theaters after all.

And speaking of Fury and @Sparky68 here is my list of WW II favorites:

Kelly's Heroes
Saving Private Ryan
Das Boot (Just recently re-watched the entire Director's cut)
Fury
In Harms Way
The Dirty Dozen
Where Eagles Dare
Longest Day
Run Silent, Run Deep
Enemy at the Gates

Tanks, Played with airfix soldies and had the famous 50 Geman Tank book. lots of Airfix tanks and my mate had ROCO minatures but who cared. Been reading the books since then.

Wargames in this era were a diasapointement but started again in 2008 when I knew enough to write a decent set that played like the books I read. I need minatures to get suspension of belif but like the movies I'm not obssed, to me only 2 Shermans required, Short (75/76 as defined) and Long Firefly.

The arrangement of these movies would be determined by my mood or the company I think…Band of Brothers is special, special, special and has certainly changed the way I'd judge any movie/show made about WW2. As mentioned by Martin earlier it is hard to compare with a movie but on an evening on my own (what's that) I'd watch an episode or two in preference to anything else on the list. If I wanted to share a movie with someone else I think I'd like to introduce the uninitiated to some of the oldies: Both Eagle movies are "fun" and Kelly's Heroes is a howl in the right company too.

Band of Brothers*
Das Boot
A Bridge Too Far
Kelly's Heroes
Saving Private Ryan (The opening scene blew me away first time I saw it…gradually became disappointed but I still like it)
The Eagle Has Landed
Where Eagles Dare

I only watched Band of Brothers the once. I'm going to have to buy it one day

I'm very much in the Harry Pearson, Achtung Swhinehund! camp, although it gets more complex I suppose. Part of the fascination of WWII is in unlearning all the stuff that was trotted out to you as a kid, and finding out the whole story as opposed to whatever it was Uncle told you, but the childhood connection is still there I guess, hence the love for things 20mm.
The other aspect is that of research/reading, there is virtually an infinite amount of good reading material on WWII and that is even after you sweep aside the 95% of it which is garbage.
How many truly good books are there being constantly written by comparison in other periods? The Napoleonic period probably comes closest, but choice work on most periods tends only to arrive infrequently.

Figures are easy to paint!

I like playing wwll because of the history ,the movies, the eye candy of a good game board were so much is happening and I find it amazing of the leaps that technology wound up taking in such a short period of time. But that goes with history.

This is all fairly new to me, so I'm just enjoying it all at the moment. The history, the model assembly, painting, terrain accumulation, and of course, the actual gaming experience too.

I enjoy it. Though now, I do more research into scenarios than playing.

Because my Dad fought in it!

As Bart Simpson once said: " there are only 3 good wars: the american revolution, ww2, and the star wars trilogy"

I like the period. On the table top it's not line formations end to end covering the entire length of the wargame table. You can actually turn a flank.