"Big Game Gaming - Is it Dead" Topic

I'm sure 'big wargaming' will survive amongst those who regard it as the ideal, and have the money, resources, time and space to do so.

It will, however, probably not be the sort of game to which the majority of wargamers will aspire, let alone actually play. And that's fine; everyone is free to wargame in whatever way is practicable and pleasing for them.

But the mere fact that one has assembled a large number of beautifully painted figures and created a huge, diorama style playing surface, does not ipso facto guarantee a better, more enjoyable or more realistic game, however visually impressive it may be.

Great topic Ken!

Personally, I cannot get enough of the big games where you get to roll out everything you have onto the table and then spend a couple of days playing the game to its conclusion. I have had many an enjoyable weekend gaming in this manner.

My own experience is that if you can get a really big game going then you can properly immerse yourself in the longer term strategy e.g. losing a battle now might create a diversion that you can exploit somewhere else on the battlefield later in the game. A shorter game does not really allow for this.

I've posted up some images from a couple of big games that I've participated in over the last few years on my blog. If you're interested, please head on over to link and leave a comment.

Quite true arthur1815. But keep in mind that "large numbers of beautifully painted figures on a huge diorama style playing surface" can at least be counted on to be beautiful and impressive, while there's no guarantee that poorly painted figures on a small board with rudimentary terrain will be any more enjoyable or realistic. Size is sometimes beyond us, but I'd like to think we can pursue realism, enjoyment and beauty all at the same time.

OK. Probably depends on period a bit, and how we define "realism." But we can at least have fun on a good-looking table, even if it's not always a large one.

"…there's no guarantee that poorly painted figures on a small board with rudimentary terrain will be any more enjoyable or realistic."

Absolutely true, robert, and I had not intended to suggest that.

But at least if I improvise a small board, slap down some unpainted RISK figures and experiment with some new rules, only to discover that the resulting game doesn't satisfy me, or is not worth pursuing further for whatever reason, I won't have spent a lot of time, effort and cash preparing it!

If I simply want to look at something beautiful, I'll look at some of the pictures on my walls or in my books – but, then, I'm not a modeller or figure painter…

but, then, I'm not a modeller or figure painter…

This, I think, has a lot to do with what most gamers achieve, collections wise at least. It takes a lot of time to paint a large figure collection and not being good at painting often quells the enthusiasm before an aspirational project gets anywhere near finished. Good painters tend to stick at things because what they produce is pleasing and this encourages them to do more, and more. Simply put, people like doing things they are good at.

There is another group, that aspires to, and achieves, big collections and games which I don't think has been mentioned in previous posts. These are the gamers with the finances to employ others to do their painting and modelling for them. Being a full time figure painter, I come into contact with these collectors a lot. I can tell you for a fact that, there are a lot of very large collections out there, sometimes not advertised as painted by professionals, that are wholly painted by them. The three things that allow this group to aspire big, collect big and play big, are: Ambition, lots of cash, and patience. A lot of patience is still required because commissioned collections are not conjured up by magic, they still take time for the professionals to paint, and the best painters rarely paint full time for one client (clients generally have to wait their turn).

Me 40 years ago: Wow, that is a big battle. I must go and sign up to play.

Me now: OMG, look at the size of that battle. If it's going to take more than 4 hours to play, I'm not getting tied up in it. I'm not even going near it because I might get sucked into the vortex.

I think I can say that 50 years of figure-painting and terrain-making practice has gotten me to the dizzy heights of "ok if you're not too fussy." But you're perfectly right, arthur. Big battles and time-consuming castings aren't how you begin a period or test out a set of rules. It's what you strive for after you've got that right.

For myself, I still miss the old MNWC program. We fought in twos or threes on weekends as we had the time with whatever troops or terrain we had and game conditions agreed on the spot. But three or four times a year, and especially once every fall, we'd all meet for games set in a particular year and theater of war with games carefully worked out well in advance and the best-looking terrain our hosts could muster, every casting painted and some painted very well indeed. Like dressing for dinner, it was a civilized thing to do, and gave us all a mark to shoot for.

A convention "big battle" can be a nice-looking table. But it's not the "Formal Game" I remember.

As Doctor Piepenbrink will likely attest, it helps greatly to be part of a well organized club run by a clear-sighted leader (Hats off to Dick Bryant) who keeps the group focused upon a specific period and rule set. For NEWA/OCWA, the semi-official club theme was Napoleonics and the "official" rule set was CLS. Everyone painted in the same scale (25mm) and based their figures for CLS. The end result was a more than ample Napoleonic order of battle for French, British, Austrian, Prussians and Russians. 2,000 pt (1500 figures per side; 5 or 6 players per side?) Saturday games were played on a monthly basis. That was back in the 70s/80s.

The upshot? The same guys from back in those days of yore still gather a couple of times a year for similar BIG games (20ft table, with three weeks of tactical pre-planning). The last time I was up north and able to participate in one, there were 15-18 guys (and a woman or two!) in attendance.

It is a very different experience compared to a one-on-one weeknight flog on a 4x6 card table.

B

I'm with arthur1815 I will never be inspired by Huge gaming tables of figures, to me that is immaterial. Like the tactical challenge of a "Big Game" a virtual 16ft by 6ft board at 1/144 is to me a huge game and took 200 bounds or move to complete. It offers immense potential for tactical and strategic planning. Would it look better on a real 16ft by 6 ft board rather than the bit in question, no. In addition the effort in terrain manufacturing would eat into palaying time for no real gain in my terms.

The OP's games are really only an aspiration for folk who love and appreciate painting and scenary creation. My gratest achivement is making 2D trees that are to me acceptable, take up minimal space and very fast to produce on a 3D printer. A nightmate to some but a dream to others.

"The OPs games are really only an aspiration for folk who love and appreciate painting and scenery creation"

I take it your not a fan then, UshCha lol. The OP has a name btw I'm not in hiding.

I'm not sure what the hobby is about then If painting and scenery creation (The latter I hate by the way) is not part of it ?

Regards Ken
The Yarkshire Gamer

I take it your not a fan then, UshCha lol. The OP has a name btw I'm not in hiding.

No, he's just not a fan of accurately representing what went on in the battle being played.

I don't play a lot of "big games". Four hours (or eight, or whatever) doesn't bother me. One turn with a few decisions every 30 minutes or more does. In the big games where I've seen this doesn't happen, they tend not to be big games as much as multiple small games played on the same board.

If you're playing a game where the details of formation geometry spread over large areas are significant, you need to have enough figures (and appropriately designed rules) to represent those differences.

etotheipi, wide of the mark as usual. A beatiful painted house and garden, many of which appear on "moddlers tables" are not a good representation with respect to the simulation apects. When spaced to "Look right at Model scale" which seems typical, (not ground scale) they are so far appart at ground scale that they do not come close to representing the limited sightlines seen in the real world. This can improved by dropping the model scale realtive to the ground scale and "simplifying the model" to COMPROMISE not solve the problem. For instance we use very simple 1/144 houses with no gardens or extranious external decoration an so can close doen the sightlins. Still not ideal but better than excessive models desighed for art not science.

I am happy to take the critique that I am no collector of models, to me personally, there is little or no diffrence in a basic paint job and some excessive paint job at say 4ft+ at 1/144 scalew. Ego a 28mm at about 10ft away is no better than a 1/144 model at 4 ft and neither will/should show much detail, certainly in my period where clothing is not supposed to stand out.

Well, the empiricist has me again. please provide your empirical data basis for this statement:

When spaced to "Look right at Model scale" which seems typical,

Also, could you actually address formation geometry?

etotheipi seems pointless so this is the relevant extract from another thread

) BUA – Obviously urban areas are difficult to model. We suggest that you use houses without gardens as models, and space them the minimum distance needed to pass the vehicles of the size you define, either single track or double track. There are UK and European cities that will not even let two European cars pass. Like real army training grounds the number of buildings will be far lower than the real world (actually 25 times less on an area scale). However it is possible using even 1/144 scale buildings as defined above to get most of the road pattern. As a gaming/simulation aside I would suggest you limit yourself to between 10 and about 18 buildings for an urban area, certainly at 1/144. This simplified urban fighting is very time/bound intensive like the real world, so you get the armored battle moving on fast outside the urban area while the urban area becomes a long slog (still faster than the real world) but the discontinuity we consider is sufficient to demonstrate the effect even though it's not by any means perfect, again a declared limitation of the model.

For formations see the link:-

link

figure 3-2 is a typical though not exhaustive illustration.