"Building a Better Miniature Wargame: The Grand" Topic

…Stategy

"Miniature wargamers are both blessed and cursed to live in a golden age of the hobby. Thanks to advances in material science and manufacturing, combined with the reduced cost of shipping and ease of cross-border payments, the cost and selection of figures available to wargames have never been better. The revolution in self-publishing has led to an explosion of rulesets that cover every setting, period, conflict, and scale. In short, there is literally no conflict for which you cannot find at least one line of figures and one set of rules. All these options lead to two dead-ends for actual gaming, the dreaded analysis-paralysis and gamer attention deficit disorder. Every grognard has at least one perpetually unfinished game stuffed in a box somewhere, and no game is ever truly complete. It may be playable, but there's always one more figure, one more unit, or one more terrain piece. Miniature wargames are a hobby for collectors, after all.

If you're looking to miniature wargaming as a way to meet people in your area, the best way to pick a game is to play what others play. As hobbies go, it's as welcoming as any other, and if you play what the locals play, you'll have an easier time meeting people. Your friendly local storefront, if they have any business sense at all, will likely have a few game nights where you can sit in, meet the regulars, and find out what sorts of games get the most table time in the area. The benefits of this approach are obvious, you only need to build one faction of the conflict because your opponent will already have a matching force, and you can most likely use the terrain at the store or your opponent until you build up enough terrain to host your own game. The downside is that you'll be stuck playing what everyone else plays. This means larger mass-produced games heavy on the IP and salesmanship, and depending on your area, you may wind up playing in competitive style play which focusses on rules-lawyering and production lines that incorporate ‘power creep' as a selling point. If you aren't interested in that sort of costly arms race, then you're much better off playing in more casual, niche games.

Whichever route you take, the goal of this series is to help you stay focused on the end goal of producing a playable game that is not just fun to play, but that is also visually appealing. Individual posts will lay out the tactics for each step of the process, but you can't implement your tactics if you lack a grand strategy. Even though you know there is no finish line, you still need to pick a direction and set some goals, or at least some operational parameters…"
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