"Evolution of a Wargamer continues" Topic

Toy Soldiers as a child, board games from pre-teen through the death of SPI, miniatures in the 1970s, then the decision to rationalize/reduce/focus my miniatures several years ago.

Currently it is getting very specific. For example, I am looking at changing my fantasy army focus from 90% Dwarf, Gnome, and Goblin armies to:

Dwarf –

Specifically figures in 25mm that are the height of 1970s Ral Partha and Der Kreigspieler of the same roughly 1970s time span for battles and looking to have skirmish figures of that size with no duplicate weapon combinations. Everything else must go.

Gnomes -an army to represent allies to the Dwarf armies. Using smaller figures from the 1970s/early 1980 to represent gnomes, I expect this will remain static. Some figures may go to reduce the painting backlog.

Token units of Der Kreigspieler Elves will remain intact since I still have some but not grow.

Dwarf 15/18mm for battles with an adventuring party with about a bakers dozen figures using various weapon combinations.

In 25mm Goblins, I am 99.9% of what I want with the old Der Ktiegspieler "Smiley Faced" goblins so no more growth there.

Science Fiction, VSF, and Historical are also evolving.

What have you seen change in your War Gaming armies focus as you mature in the hobby? Are you growing in size and/or diversity of figures? Staying steady? Focusing on fewer or smaller armies.? Other? -

Started off with d&d at school in 70s, discovered Napoleonics, and pretty much that was it. Dallied with 40k and LOTR, but now moved from 28mm to 40mm Napoleonics because of age and an inability to see smaller figures properly, plus they look better.

Simply: more periods. For a long time it was just the Prince of Periods; Napoleonics.

Now, Colonial, Ancients, Renaissance, Dark Ages & the new favourite, the SYW.

Mind you, I think Napoleonics will always be the "go to" period.

Started with trying to create rules for toy soldiers as a kid, discovered boardgames, then historical miniatures, D&D with miniatures, and then Sci-fi in the form of SFB by late teens.

Miniatures grew in my 20s, particularly historical miniature with the interests taking me into about 25 different periods. RP and boardgames went away.

Miniatures evolved from a cross section of skirmish to classical large army games, to focusing on skirmish with RP elements and large 1 to 1 representation battles. Fantasy miniatures faded.

Went through two purges, eliminating historical periods that don't get worked on and/or played much. This left what I call core interests, mostly things that I had an interest in when I was a kid, before I really started even gaming.

Now, I am looking at narrowing my focus further, as space, time, and health impact what I can accomplish in my lifetime. Currently Victorian adventure, WWII, various post war and modern, near future and post apoc, Star Trek, and a touch of fantasy are still on the menu. Probably won't eliminate any of those outright, but narrow the focus within periods.

I currently have fewer figs, than at my peek, but with an average of more figs per army than before.

Like many of those who have already commented, I have come to the point where I have decided to limit myself to things I can expect to get painted in my lifetime.

I started with plastic toy soldiers in childhood, and tried making very simple d6 rules for them. Then discovered Avalon Hill board games in adolescence and high school. Finally discovered miniatures with Napoleon's Battles in '89, and stuck with painting Napoleonics until I finally met other wargamers, and ended up playing everything under the sun. Played a lot of big battles in Napoleonic and ACW, on tables much too large for the space we had available.

After 21 years, I moved from San Diego to the Carolinas, and ended up giving away 1/3 to 1/2 of my collection to my friends. I wanted to focus on keeping my 15mm ancients for DBA and BBDBA, and ACW. Both periods in my collection have near universal basing. For napoleonics, there is not as much of a basing standard, so I gave mine to a friend who could use them. From now on, my horse and musket units will be 12-man battalions on four bases. Napoleonics, AWI, SYW, War of 1812, etc.

I am also collecting small groups of 25mm figures for Penninsular war French and British, and FIW troops for skirmish games. Possibly a few more figs for Lion Rampant. That's it for 25's. If I were starting from scratch on my big-battle H&M armies, I would choose Old Glory 10mm. Easy to paint, looks great on the table.

Interesting to hear how others are also simplifying their war gaming hobby.

Started with late achaemenids 25mm. Grew to Greek, Classical Indian,Macedonian,Middle Roman and Sassanids. Went 6mm and have Early Achaemenid;Late Roman,Classical Indian,Egyptians,Hittites,Sassanids, Greeks.
Went on to epic 40k when my son was 7 but sold them few years ago.
Also, Polish and Turkish rennaisance armies and Prussian and Austrian Napoleonics. Almost on the verge of selling the 25mm armies. Yes I know I'll regret it if I do

Wow was just about to post my own topic on this but thanks to Mute I can just add to this thread.

Well I am been divesting myself of lots of things for the past few years. At this point I am down to the following:

28 mm WW II, have Americans, Germans for ETO, British and Germans for North Africa, and Russians waiting to be painted.

28 mm Medieval for Lion Rampant with a focus on the 13th Century, but WOTR is in the wings.

28 mm Colonial and VSF I do not see myself letting go of these models as when I do get in a game it is just plain fun. As I side shoot of the Colonials I have African animals and other bits and bobs for safari games. Speaking of safaris this group also includes dino hunting.

28 mm Vikings and Normans
28 mm Ancient Greeks, currently the Vikings, Normans and Greeks are not seeing any gaming.

15 mm WW II for Flames of War
15 mm Cold War Team Yankee

15 mm and 28 mm Science Fiction using Tomorrow's War

I also have a Warmaster Chaos army and a Chaos fleet for Battle Fleet Gothic. Again I cannot bring myself to let these go.

Sitting not getting played are my 40K Forces and my Warhammer fantasy stuff. I have been slowing getting rid of the fantasy forces but again just can't quite let the 40K stuff go as of yet.

Biggest evolution has been to larger figures. I've been using the same rules for the better part of twenty years. I have gotten better at getting to a playable point with new periods quicker.

Opposite of Rich, I've been moving to smaller and smaller figures as I've gone along :-)

Started in "heroic 28", then 15 and now I am buying into 2mm, 3mm and 10mm.

Started in the 80's with EVERYTHING GW and really enjoyed it. I painted very little but was in a group that painted my figures for me, it was pretty awesome. When plastics hit, I played with my middle school friends with large armies of white plastic on the table. Discovered girls and drinking and stored it all until I had my own kids.

In 2000 started with GW again as it's all I knew, found FOW and moved to historicals and 15mm in a BIG way, never looked back at GW, ever… Discovered TMP and LAF and many, many more options. Moved to Vermont and started looking at the local battles, moved to 6mm SYW and AWI for a long time. Always wanted to try 6mm Nappy's but couldn't until Bleucher came along, gave that a spin.

Spent years churning out 6mm bases and loved it. Wanted to try a different pace and settled in on 28mm FIW. That opened me up to paying more for a figure than I had previously thought was necessary. Then I bough lots of different 28mm figs that were fun to paint as opposed to useful for a game I wanted to play. That was a pretty cool change for me, more relaxed.

Then I started a Supers mini line and had fun painting them for a while. Then bought a laser cutter and stopped painting at all :( Now I enjoy designing for the laser more than painting, but I'm making things in MDF for painted figures to play on, so I feel it's an evolution of my hobby. And I'm looking to do some wargaming with Lego to make up for my lack of painting and take advantage of my kids new found love of star wars.

Started around the age of 12 in 1980 using plastic Airfix, Matchbox and Revell miniatures and kits.

I then joined a club and got thoroughly put off by the older players who scoffed at me and my friends then moved into the Golden Age of Board Wargaming with Avalon Hill, SPI, Squad Leader and monster games. Miniatures were still an ambition, but it wasn't as easy to do as a pre-packaged board wargame.

I was then introduced to RPGs with D&D in 1983, gave up on D&D (powergaming, ugh) and switched to Traveller because Traveller players were smarter (we thought). Stayed in RPGs as board wargaming's popularity declined in the late '80s. Still wanted to do miniatures but no one else did. Wargames clubs still massively unfriendly to anyone under 21 in those days.

In the 1990s I was playing RPGs but assembling miniatures armies in the hope I could convince my Role Player friends to join in. I had Napoleonics armies (two opposing sides, because I had to paint everything) in 15mm, largely from Minifigs. Still no takers.

By the late 1990s I had assembled a good collection of reference material and had sizeable forces for Napoleonics and WW2 in 20mm. Then I moved towns, joined a special wargames club (not an RPG group) and have largely turned my back on RPGs and board wargames. All that work over 20 years has finally paid off!

My evolution was practically linear: I started out "1066", expanded into later medievals, bled over into medieval fantasy RPG, and continued to the present. Along the way I acquired a couple of ancients armies but rarely use them; usually as a fantasy variant.

WW1 air combat was even more linear. I've simply played the same game virtually the entire time (and currently), without expanding my collection more than a handful of planes, and resisting all the while playing air combat in later periods, although I have succumbed to pressure when it existed, to do more than simply WW1.