"Peter Pig at salute 2019 random thoughts" Topic

Peter Pig went to salute. A busy day. We also sponsored the local weymouth club with the stuff to put on a pirates/buccaneers historical "Pieces of Eight" game. The game was played by a lot of gamers. So that is good.
Trade wise, we sold quite a few 15mm historical figures. That was nice too.
Our new releases were the POE rules and a set of new 15mm land raid buildings. They sold well.

Salute is a massive show. The warlords do a very good job. This deserves double praise as they are doing it to benefit the hobby. Thank you warlords. Of corse there are irritations and problems but there were a a lot of traders and gamers there.

One problem that shows have to deal with are some of the tricks done by traders. At most shows when we get there, our stand has been minimised by neighbouring stands. They push their boundary so that it is impossible for us to get behind our tables. At one large show the traders each side had pushed their stands to totally lock in the Peter Pig stand. We had to climb in under the tables to gain access.

Anyway, back to Salute in particular. The newer waves of gamers are keener on "a few figures and let's blow things up". History is an overlay to these games and that works out fine for them. If this is what gamers want they should be catered for and best wishes to them.

Hence why the trade caters more and more for these game types. This includes fantasy, wherein often a few figures can create the game and history does bot limit the scenario.

The hobby constantly develops, but it is basically still the same hobby.

Met plenty of friends. Of corse my friendship group is getting older, so might be less in evidence? That is the way of things.

Personally I would like next year's Salute to have an historical theme. But then that is a personal ask.

The weather was good for travelling (370 mile round trip). The lack of marathon entrants made the entrance easier. Overall a nice day out.

Nice write up Martin, unfortunately too far for attendance to be financially viable for me.
On another note, any chance of you remaking your 15mm 'rude' archers, from the old 100 years war range?

I second the request for a historical theme.

We are going to be adding to the wars of the roses range this year. so yes i expect we will. Nice idea.

Actually I was referring to Salute – but if you're taking suggestions an early Austrian head in the 1792/3 Kasket that preceded the 1798 helmet ideally scaled/styled to fit Minifigs.

I am, in the main, a historical gamer so always am infavour of a bias for this type of gaming.

However……

It appeared to me that the vast majority of games on show at Salute – demonstration and participation – were historical with Pike & Shotte and Napoleonics very much in evidence. Maybe my perception was wrong – but either way – what would you do ……ban fantasy or scifi games?

There were probably more scifi and fantasy traders in evidence but surely this is down to the traders wanting to attend rather than a bias by the organisers?

Surely the answer to the change in gaming tastes is not to push folk back into old school thinking but to think of innovative games and rules mechanisms that are historical but also engage players. Rich Clarke and the TFL team have done an admirable job of this.

Mechanisms that allow a smooth transition from a fast moving skirmish game to a larger engagement within the rules would also be beneficial – it allows players to be drawn in with an exciting historical small action and small figure committement and grow.

The fact is IMO the fault lies with games companies – they need to write rules which are historical but have the same flair and fluff as fantasy. Take ASOIAF which is very popular at the moment (which has minimal magic etc and is basically a medieval wargame with politics etc) – why has no historical games company grabbed the Wars of the Roses period in the same way considering its politics and colour and come up with such an innovative approach?

Just my thoughts – not saying I'm indisputably right!

Glad the show was good for Peter Pig. Martin, you do a great job of producing actual 15mm (not the jumped up 18mm) figs of excellent quality and which often help in rounding out collections of other makes such as Essex and Mini Figs.

Thanks to the organisers, people who put on games, and the traders for all their hard work in creating Salute.

No problems with Sci-Fi/fantasy or even skirmish games, so nothing bothers me. Big ECW games would always be a winner for me.

Only minor grumble was with TfL who were still announcing 'change at Bank…for DLR', when there was no service to Bank on the DLR. Annoying, but just a minor inconvenience, not the end of the world.

Although if they had softer floors in the exhibition halls I wouldn't complain!

Mechanisms that allow a smooth transition from a fast moving skirmish game to a larger engagement within the rules would also be beneficial

I'd love to know what mechanisms you think would achieve that?

ASOIAF ???

@ Maajor B

A Song of Ice and Fire – Game of Thrones miniatures game.

If I had all the answers I'd be a game designer but as an example Battle Group WW2 (by Warwick Kinrade) – their system allows you to play anythng from squad to battalion size games with the amount of command initiative scaling to the size of game. So the entry point is just a few figures rather than having to get a full army immediately to play.

But clearly I'm not a games designer so you're asking the wrong person.

Do you have any constructive ideas or alternative ideas?

I tried out the Pieces of Eight sailing game – it was by far the best game I played in the whole day. A typically elegant rule set by the RFCM team which works around an "instant campaign" system (bit like AK47).

Which sort of backs up Nick B's comments – we need more rules which offer a quick and easy to pick up game but still give a "historical feel" with plenty of playability and the chance to build up forces as the player acquires new stuff & gets it painted. That's what the Fantasy Skirmish people are doing.

Thank you for that 20th! Most kind.

French wargaming has even more followed the fantasy trend than the Uk.
Most of the surviving old historical gamers have either given up or already got most what they will use.
Going to London if you are not very close to a Ryan/ easyjet airport, ( and even if you have to stay overnight) costs several 100€. " just to see / test "some stuff" you can save efforts, time ( they all seem to say no time) and dough by buying by mail. 100-200 on mail brings you lots of samples.

I moved into a peaceful, old Europe, countryside, assuming that I'd find players among the 3 groups that said be "wargamers". Two are just old timers ,2-4 guys each doing their own stuff, ( for trade, not needing much more really) self sufficient, ALL the rest are doing these 2-3 h club type small games, sometime nominally related to something historical.
Obviously with their needs for it, going to Salute woukd be a luxury spending. Both for different reasons.

All linked with changing population, lower effective education, without military history nor connection to it ( and anyway this is bad, military…) short attention span…
Like books: a tiny %, ever shrinking, of the population reads them. 70% female, (of which the huge majority is romance) which brought the big fall in readership for historical novels. Not sure Cornwell would have found a mainstream publisher nowadays.

Personally I would like next year's Salute to have an historical theme. But then that is a personal ask.

I think that would be good as well – but a nice broad "historical theme", so not WOTR or Agincourt (as we had in 2015), but something like "age of musketry – 1500-1900" so we could see games covering Samurai, (very) late medieval, all through ACW, Napoleonics etc. The broadbrush "Apocalypse" theme worked well this year – lots of different Apocalpyses (apocalypsi ?).

Jc, agreed, move to rural Normandy, an old English friend and gamer move close by, just by chance.
Visit a local club and play historical games. Often there are more brits there than french!

Lucky you. Had two brits but a bit too far for them, and too irregular, also adept of "i don't have time".

And to add to Salute: London is no more the city I went to school , nor even that of the 80s. 40 knife attacks a day? Etc. not inspiring.

40 knife attacks a day

Not really. That would be Fake News.

40 knife attacks a day is rather overblown from what I can tell…but, knife attacks do happen on a regular, almost daily basis and from what I can tell from listening to news from the UK the powers that be are doing frantic handwringing in trying to figure out why it's happening. The answer is politically incorrect and given draconian British laws against speech the authorities don't like the real answer will never be spoken. Recently the PM declared something to the effect that punishing the criminal is not the answer…

In 2017-18 there were 285 murders by knife in the UK. Almost 1 per day. It is too many and it needs attending to. Only a couple of years ago it was half that number. Still too many.

There were about 10 non-fatal stabbings per day that ended up in hospital treatment.

But it could be worse – for example in the USA there was a 20 year record for gun deaths in 2018.

Almost 40,000 people.

2/3rds were self-inflicted ~26,000.

About 10,000 were murders.

The rest were "just" accidents – only ~4,000 of them.

All told ~100 gun deaths per day, of which ~27 were murders.

71 suicides by gun and 27 murders by gun and 11 fatal gun accidents every single day of the year. That's quite a lot.
And much higher than UK knife murders.

There were also non-fatal shootings : ~100,000 of those. 76,000 were assaults, 18,000 were accidents, 4,000 failed suicides and 1,350 by Police in the pursuit of their duties.

In 2017, btw, in the USA there were 1,591 knife murders. Just over 4 per day.

Statistically you're much safer in the UK than the USA.

It all has nothing to do with wargaming. Unless you use Irregular mobs vs police or something like it. From my previous US hosts and cops there, most happen (as I suspect here) from the same people, in the same areas.
Most of the rest is safe.
I remember people looking at me as if deranged for wanting to lock my rental in rural Massachusetts along the coast.

Then I am pretty sure not all attacks come into statistics.

Still the image and feeling about London nowadays has nothing to do with that when I was going evenings to the theater with my Italian girlfriend, we were 17.

With your comparison, remembering USA = 5 Uk.

When I stated that number here, I was testing this "news" hoping that it would be inflated. A pity it is so hard to get the truth nowadays, between the kneejerking politically correctness and the fear feeding politics.

All in all, i don't get much appeal to go in big cities, strangely the one I feel most secure is Moscow. Yes, no fear of trouble for looking one in the eye etc.

To feel better read the letters of madame Von Riedesel travelling through Belgium to reach port to go to the colonies. Uh ty as they would say east.

May i ask nicely that this discussion makes no mention of crime, sex, politics et al.

This is because so many here have strong opinions that no amount of discussion will change. So why provoke them???????

So please leave it alone. No one on TMP will ever change their opinion. Just scan back over the last 8 years.

Sorry Martin.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind (I agree, that's hopeless) it's just that it is really galling when people outside the UK are so quick and seemingly "happy" to point fingers at our "really terrible knife crime rates" and yet seem totally oblivious to the facts of their own horrendous gun murder rate.

There are about 700 murders a year in the UK by all methods, and about 35 of these are by gun.

Using the USA = 5 * UK argument there should be 175 gun murders per year in the USA. There are actually 10,000.

So, don't let knife crime put you off coming to London for Salute.

(And I'm done.)

I live in London. Visitors really don't need to worry about knife crime. At least, no more than in any big city.

The vast majority of these knife attacks are teenage 'gangstas' on other teenage 'gangstas'. Just keep clear of the housing estates where they hang out.

It's not rocket science…

Jcfrog might have presented you with the subject for your next new range and rule set, Martin :- ).

Is part of the problem here that historical gamers accustomed to traditional grand mass battle games feel short-changed by being restricted to having to play skirmish or grand skirmish games? If so, how about making available a new, untouched subject that's fully represented at the skirmish/grand skirmish level, that is, there were no battles as we would recognise them? I think you know what I'm hinting at… and now that there's soon to be an Osprey MAA about a segment of that setting, thus making it 'official' in the eyes of wargamers and providing a solid reference source for figure manufacturers…

I know Peter Pig has always been associated solely with 15mm, but could this not be an opportunity for change on that front, too?

We seem to have drifted far from the realm of pirates, but I can justify the above 'pitch' on the basis that some bushrangers briefly took to piracy, and also that early Tasmanian bushranger Michael Howe ran his gang like a terrestrial pirate crew, complete with a set of 'articles' gang members were required to swear to uphold (Howe had a nautical background).

You are right. i like big battle, awsome looking terrain ( was drawn in by McFarlane's pics in old WI!) and woukd love to play campaigns etc.
in recent years, some rules and research made me realize some subjects are even better and near closer to the main historical "activity" in skirmishes. Or big skirmishes ( representing 50-300 a side).
Like AwI when I discovered sites with info on a huge number of historical small encounter ( together with Sharp Practice2) vs. the somewhat dull big battles ( and ever wanting od battle space especially in depth).

One game type does not preclude the other. Some thing are better suited to one type. Some lose so much ( napies? ) in small actions…

Also found that skirmishes are deceptive for cost and time. To have variety you usualy need quite an amount of stuff, and to have a nice set up and because you must show more details than in big battles, the amount of "terrai" is also deceptive. It can grow very fast.

Yes, Jc, the long term need for variety and depth of play means that your skirmish collection will probably end up much larger than what's needed for any single game, but at least you can get started much more quickly and affordably and gradually add to your collection over the long haul.

I have nothing against mass battles, BTW; quite the contrary, in fact. I'm just putting myself in the shoes of a newbie who might be daunted by mass battles' requirement for hundreds of figures to be bought and painted.

Usually if you can do a mass battle and are reasonable ( not like me) you have 4-6 guys to do it. If each does a few 100 figs, then it is not so out of reach.
Unfortunately you often have the two who do everything and others who might occasionnally enjoy their work.

"Like AwI when I discovered sites with info on a huge number of historical small encounter ( together with Sharp Practice2) vs. the somewhat dull big battles"

That era was known for the "Klein Krieg" or "Petit Guerre" (Small Wars), IMO 7YW / FIW / AWI is The Place for small skirmish games, and the troops are so colourful to boot!

"Also found that skirmishes are deceptive for cost and time. To have variety you usualy need quite an amount of stuff, and to have a nice set up and because you must show more details than in big battles, the amount of "terrai" is also deceptive. It can grow very fast."

So very, very true!

Nick B, on 07 Apr 2019 4:13 a.m. PST, spake:
"I am, in the main, a historical gamer so always am infavour of a bias for this type of gaming.

However……

It appeared to me that the vast majority of games on show at Salute – demonstration and participation – were historical with Pike & Shotte and Napoleonics very much in evidence. Maybe my perception was wrong – but either way – what would you do ……ban fantasy or scifi games?"

Sounds like the eternal dogfight over here in the Colonies:
"Too many non-historical games!" "Too many boring games!"
"Whippersnapper!" "Old Pharte!" etc., etc, etc.

I am designing a t-shirt with the following slogan:
"Zombie Gaming: The Gateway Drug to Napoleonics!"

Says a bit about how getting them hooked, then reeling them in to the truly hardcore games.

They're not really hooked until they're cruising the gaming scene searching for their next fix of Zombie Napoleonics.

My photos from the show are at link

Personally, I had a grand day out, but for me shows are social events rather than shopping trips.

Henry