"Favourite period" Topic

….and why.

I must admit my favourite period changes according to what I'm working on. At the moment it's Bronze Age/Biblical/Chariot Wars (call it what you will).

I like the period because of the history. It's about as Ancient as you can get. The pyramids. Mycenae & Troy. The Catastrophe that nearly wiped out civilisation.

Finding figures. No manufacturer makes everything so there's the joy of tracking down potential figures & of converting. I use several plastic manufacturers & three metal.

The rules we use (Field of Glory) are very tactical & you can gain much enjoyment from working out Cunning Plans to win (in my case, usually ending in failure & rout).

And chariots are just cool.

An earlier game. I plan to be better & bigger.

AWI

I grew up in upstate New York so there's lot's of local places where events occurred.I still live in the Hudson Valley.

History, ledgend, heros. Cool uniforms. Various troop types. Big battles, Skirmish battles, Naval if I get bored with land battles.

I've played with toy soldiers, read books, watched movies and visited historic sites for as long as I can remember and although I collect other periods this is still my favorite.

It's the War that gave birth to my country.

To read about . . . definitely 17th century England. I enjoy gaming it as well.

To straight up game, probably the Carlist Wars. Super desperate fighting, with everything on the line for the individual soldiers, relatively small battles that can easily be done at the battalion level. Cool looking uniforms, neat terrain and lots of battles that really could go either way. Plus the history is very interesting to read about. It is one of those periods where thing could have gone absolutist or become more liberal. Multiple nations are involved and you can see how and why they became involved.

I would say 19th Century. Colonials, Naps, 1866, 1870, 1877, 1848, 1854 and so on. Lots of great gaming there!

Thanks,

John

I love:

WW1 – Ever since reading "All quiet on the western front", it's had an appeal to me both for its transformative nature, the sheer horror and the common myths and misunderstandings.

WW2 – The best gaming of small unit tactics you'll ever get.

Black powder – Dash, charm, funny hats and men on horses.

I enjoy almost any other period, but those are the defining ones for me.

All of them. Except ACW. ACW is dull.

Early mediaeval/dark ages – being English that formational era has always had me invested in it.

British Colonial period, but I like Ancients & ACW also.

I love chariots, too.

Napoleon's Old Guard in Chariots. Hmmmm, since my favourite period is Napoleonics, guess I'll have to forego that pleasure in place of ensuring buttons and lace are all correct.

Why Napoleonics? Colour. Colourful characters, colourful uniforms, many nations, many years with evolving uniforms, flags, flags, and more flags, and so much variety in manufacturers, scale and material to be truly spoilt.

Increasingly for me it's WWII in the Pacific:

the mix of high-tech and low-tech (both sides have carriers, advanced aircraft, and submarines---but the island battles are short-ranged, primal infantry combat);

big sweeping battles and close-in knife fights (both naval!);

the many kinds of terrain (temperate, tropical, semi arid);

and the many types of troops and equipment (British and their Commonwealth and colonial forces; US Army and Marines; numerous types of Japanese army division and SNLF).

I dislike chariots on the wargames table, they are rarely as effective as they seem historically.

So how many of my armies contain chariots ? Early Carthaginian, Indian, Gallic, Ancient British, Sea Peoples, Seleucid – almost all of them !

WW2 land battles. Why – the old Squad Leader boardgame and I'm just the right age mostly.

right now ;
it is WWI – my son (12) and I have been going over to France(we live in New York ) for the anniversaries of different battles and campaigns .(every year since 2014 )-this year the plan is for Vimy ridge , Nivelles, and Isonzo . Last year it was 2 weeks in the Somme area (Starting July 1st).

But always AWI and ACW .There is nothing like going to the battlefields (some are mostly unchanged -others unrecognizable )

and VBCW.

AWI/FIW

In order of current interest:
Franco-Prussian
WW1 in Mesopotamia
Ancients (mostly Successor period)
7YW
WW2
Napoleonic naval
All kinds of colonial

The Great Seige of Malta 1565. The good guys are vastly outnumbered but still win. Plus very nice looking uniforms.

Whatever period associated with my current "Oooohhh, _shiny!_ fixation is.

I jump all over this place,my favourite would change as the day changes!!!

This week? SYW. Other contenders would be Napoleonics and WWII land combat.

High Fantasy settings, leaning towards Middle-Earth.
After that Science Fiction spaceship gaming and armor (Ogre/GEV).
Then comes historical periods, for which the top alters with whim, but usually among the following (in current whim order):
American Revolution (aka AWI)
Ancients & Medieval
WWI Biplanes
ACW
WWII
Though for the latter two in all honesty I prefer board games like Battle Cry and Memoir '44 than strict tabletop miniature gaming.

As to why? I'm a child of the '80s fantasy craze, a long-time Tolkien aficionado, and of course I also grew up on Star Wars/Star Trek, Heinlein and Asimov (among others). For the historical periods, I grew up loving to read about the American Revolution, the early flying aces, and Ancient Rome and Greece, as well as the history and literature of Medieval England. And, being a child of the South, I was always steeped in the American Civil War, while WWII is to some extent the father of the modern age, not to mention much of the old movie classics that used to run on WTBS back in the day. The gaming whim changes, of course, as memories of these long interests rise up from time to time, triggered by books or movies or even passing conversations here and elsewhere.

Khusrau, why do you find ACW boring?

The middle Byzantine period into the Crusades is my favorite (although Franco Prussian is a close second). I love the color and look of armies of this early Medieval period. I also love the variety of troop-types from the Kataphraktoi to the Turcopoles. I have no control when it comes to new figures in this period…

Two equal favourites for me.

Dark Ages. Historically interesting, lots of competing small kingdoms and warbands, small armies so high figure ratio, lots of 'generic spearmen' can be used in any army, nothing was 'standard' so you can mix and match loads of different manufacturers, I just like mail and spangenhelms!

Napoleonics. Colourful, over the top uniforms. Loads of choice because of the vast number of different countries involved. Wars went on for a long time so huge number of battles, big and small, to choose from. First proper wargame I ever saw was a Napoleonic battle and it just stuck.

.

The big draw for me is the backstory behind all the fighting. The history, understanding personalities and characters, plus the social history, not just the military stuff. AWI and ACW have heaps of this, but also Wars of the Roses and ECW are loaded in this respect too. WW1 aerial too I might add.

All things considered, I'd probably have to say AWI though if I were to nail it down to one.

Medievals, I just love the heraldry and the history. It covers a really broad range of armies and time as well.

WW1 Air. That has been my 1st love since The Blue Max came out in 1966.
WW2 Ground
WW1 Ground
British Colonial. My first "real" minis. Still playing TSATF, which I bought in 1979.and yeah, I bought all the updates, expansions & versions throughout the years. Using 20th Anniversary now, of course!
I have played these periods since I got into gaming in the early 1970's & still enjoy them all. I game more periods now but these are my core ones. I actually started with Airfix ACW, now I have 15mm metal ACW,(ALL of my other figs are 25-28mm) but really don't play ACW ground that much anymore. We do play Ironclads or actually, Sail & Steam Navies though, in fact that's what set up now!

It's a toss up among WWI naval, WWI air, and ACW for me.