"Largest Wargaming Hub in the US?" Topic

If there's a single metropolitan area that could be described as the heart of American wargaming, what city would that be?

Most game shops, most clubs, most historical wargaming activity.

Baltimore/ Washington metroplex. Site of Avalon Hill's creation, beginning of HMGS in Wally's basement, and a circle of 200 miles diameter from a center point of that combined metroplex would encompass 70% or more of all US wargamers.

The symbolic root of US miniature gaming should be Visalia, California which provided magazines, rule books, and many figures in the early sparse days of the hobby, thanks to Jack Scruby.

The annual center point was Historicon, until it ceased to be held in a reasonable location. Now it continues as a shadow of its former self.

70% of all US gamers live within 200 miles of DC?

Source?

The simple fact is no one knows anything like this nor is there any way to know. No one gathers any reliable data.

Also, are we including fantasy, boardgames, etc? Or just miniatures gaming? What about card games like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh? They are wargames. Computer gaoming as well?

70% of all US gamers live within 200 miles of DC?

Could be. When I lived in Norfolk, VA, 70% of me was within 200 miles of DC and the other 30% hung off the south side of the sofa.

I would have said the symbolic center is Lake Geneva, WI.

"The annual center point was Historicon, until it ceased to be held in a reasonable location. Now it continues as a shadow of its former self" You mean Lancaster, PA?

I don't think there is one.

There isn't ONE. Each major city has a group of gamers centered around it but none of them can be considered the heart of it for the US.

You do realize that 37.9% of all statistics are completely fabricated, and that 73.2% of the fabricated statistics are just made up on the spot, don't you?

I can't speak with any great knowledge other than antidotal obserences from my travels around the country but The Chicagoland area would be in the running based upon the number of gamers I've run into over the years.

Also, could our Dear Editor do a count of how many TMPers there are in each county based upon their registration and extrapolate a very rough guess from that?

Already done:

TMP link

Membership statistics. Texas with 612 is the state with the most members.

Actually it's California with 875 members.

Orange County has 63 TMP members (the highest in California) – nearly all of them inactive. Randomly looking at states I'm not finding any county with comparable numbers.

Problematic as a proxy – there may not be any game stores but Brookhurst in OC. Though that may well be the best place in the nation.

I agree with the Baltimore/DC area being at or near the center of the east coast gamers (New York south thru Virginia and New Jersey west through Ohio.) Years ago, HMGS, "East" found this to be center mass for this swath of their territory. As mentioned above, Historicon used to be held within a certain mileage of this center point.

Illinois, Texas and California each have nice quantities of gamers but are not similarly surrounded by dense areas of participants.

Using TMP members by state and the areal size of each state to calculate a gamer / square mile value, the top 12 states are;

New Jersey
Massachusetts
Maryland
Rhode Island
Connecticut
Delaware
Virginia
Pennsylvania
Ohio
New York

So an argument can be made that yes, Historicon is the center of the wargaming in the United States.

What makes county searches invalid as a comparison is that in Virginia, Cities are independent and not part of a county….

Yea, no single one, but lots of clusters in the larger metro city regions, as one would expect.

My guess is that Anchorage, Alaska is not the correct answer?

You really can't use HMGS data as a source unless you were trying to figure out the center if HMGS gaming was .
Among the gamers I know I would estimate maybe 14 out of over 150 belong to HMGS .

based on personal experience I would say the Chicago area

how old is the data? maybe a new census needs to be done.

"Years ago, HMGS, "East" found this to be center mass for this swath of their territory. As mentioned above, Historicon used to be held within a certain mileage of this center point."

I think that was just last year and if you go back to before the Baltimore trouble it would be further north, as I recall the newsletter use to print address of members and there were a fair number from NY and new England

I got involved in minis and joined HMGS, Inc. (then "East") back around the summer of 2002. My first ever con was Historicon of that year.

The old website and yahoo group had lots of data and policy info that eventually was changed, ignored or disappeared under the cone of silence that fell over the organization not long after.

My recollection is that Historicon was to be held within a certain mileage distance of the membership epicenter. I can't recall if this was a bylaw, policy or just an accepted practice. I think that was somewhere close to the cities of DC and Baltimore. The Host in Lancaster filled the needs list and fell within that accepted distance so Historicon was held there.

So while the convention was held in a specific location, the epicenter was for a rather large contiguous geographic area containing tons of gamers.

Fox Cities ain't too bad. Two gaming stores in Oshkosh, Two in Appleton, one in Fond du Lac, and two in Green Bay. Several local, but small cons. Not saying we're the biggest, but we do ok here

I'm pretty sure it's my gaming table. And if you disagree, good luck getting an invite over on game day!

And if it's not my gaming table then surely it must be the Old Glory 25s shipping department. (You're welcome, Russ.)

The East Coast Megalopolis.

Visalia had a historic role in wargaming? Really? I think they dropped wargames on favor of crystal meth awhile ago.

forwardmarch, you might want to reconsider, see this map:

link

And, yes, wargaming got its 'modern' birth in Visalia when Jack Scruby – who influenced Donald Featherstone, started manufacturing miniatures and created a little news magazine for the hobby – the original subscribers being the Old Guard. This is well established. He didn't invent wargaming, he just made it accessible and was the locus of development of what became the modern hobby we have today.

One of our local gamers as a youth played with Mr. Scruby.

Yes, we have crystal meth in California – as does just about everywhere. Sad piece of reality.

More than 1/3 of the US population lives in only four states – and only one of them is in the megalopolis – or even near it.

The website alludes to different methodologies used to report meth crimes, and that is pretty obviously at play on that map. There are probably more that 70 meth crimes in Fresno in one weekend, frankly, maybe in one day.

I lived in Fresno for the last three years before moving to the Bay Area. That said, Im not trying to knock Visalia, its got its nice points. Downtown is cool, especially Quesadilla Gorilla, and its right next to Sequoia National Park. Fresno didnt seem to have much in the way of wargaming, so thats all I was really referring to.

BOSTON!! YouTube link

East coast has more gaming stores but west coast has cooler ones.

Call GAMA and see what the results of their survey is. Depending on customer based surveys from a specific company will only get skewed results.