"Minis or Boardgames?" Topic

You were asked – TMP link

Which do you play the most? ACW miniature wargames or ACW boardgames (non-minis).

51% said "I play ACW miniature wargames the most"
13% (tie) said "I don't play either" or "I play both equally"
9% said "I play ACW boardgames the most"

I think it would depend upon the type of board game. Although I own the entire GBACW series from GMT, miniatures still comes out on top as you can literally see the terrain, strength of units, etc., which at least to me makes miniatures superior at that scale. For operational and strategic ACW,, however, board games are hard to beat.

I'm also beginning to see an interesting trend with historical miniatures gamers who are starting to give up on painting large armies and going towards board games more than in the past.

It may be that the increasing cost of large armies of miniatures is starting to have an effect. Particularly if you want to do both sides in 28mm. A friend of mine has spent a four figure sum creating his two Napoleonic arimes, for example. You could easily do the same in ACW if you stuck to little metal men.

Down side to Boardgames for me has always been the tendency to produce games around a particular battle, don't want to play the same thing , or variations on it, over and over.

"Down side to Boardgames for me has always been the tendency to produce games around a particular battle, don't want to play the same thing , or variations on it, over and over"

Yes, this is one of the attractions of miniature gaming in that you can set up all kinds of situational or fictional battles, where board games usually cover particular actions. On the other side of things, however, there's no painting, no huge sums of money for armies, and clean up is only a few minutes.

clean up is only a few minutes.

This tends to vary on whether my cat gets there first!

Which of course is of itself another downside!

MY group plays acw in Miniature most often and board games in other periods.