"Periods / Theaters / Genres you just "don't get?"" Topic

While I like WW2 gaming I have zero interest in North Africa. But that's just a taste/preference of mine. But there are some periods where I wonder, why would you want to game that? Primarily because the battles were unbalanced/uninteresting etc.

For me the Crimean War falls in to that category.

So, are there periods/genres/campaigns where you wonder, why would you game that?

Zombies, in periods, genres they just don't fit in.

WWII

Well, WWII battles. I love gaming resistance movement engagements. I would probably go the same for AWI and WNA (some people call ACW). Raids, insurrections, etc. are on the table. Big lines of dudes running at each other, not so much.

Unbalanced games can be a lot of fun. Everyone loves an underdog. In some cases, the underdog won historically and the Big Bad Army (TM) went home with tail between legs.

We play the Battle of Puebla every year. The French (almost) always lose. And they should. But it's still fun to play the French and see how close you can get. SOM has the current record for how close to "almost winning" the French got.

Historical games that are faithful recreations of the historical battle, especially with special rules to make sure the historically correct outcome is achieved. (To my mind) it's not much of a game if the only decisions you can make were already made years ago and the outcome is assumed. I don't get it.

Good question, by the way.

Napoleonics. Yeah. I'm bad.
Fighting over unpronounceable towns for reasons that are frankly obscure don't turn me on. At all. But I'll be nice when Nappies come up in the game rotation. Funny thing is that I actually have a positive record in these games. "OK. So I get the blue guys?" I've sort of cracked the code on how to play the favored rules.

Harpoon and its ilk. "What you want to do is launch all your missiles and torpedoes on Turn 1, and then move 3/8" per turn for 20 turns when we resolve the missiles and torpedoes."

@Strydberg, I call that a "moving diorama".
Sadly, all of the obscure movies that wargamers love because the Hero has a beautiful table featuring Peter Gilder's fabulous figures featured exactly that.

As for the Crimea, once you have collected and painted hundreds of figures, and gamed the Big Three… What's next?
I felt that way once I had put on Plains of Abraham and St Foy. What next?

Media tie- in games-- I'm talking about you Star Wars/ Star Trek. Imagination seems to be stifled by the existing stories and films.

WWI Western Front, WWII North Africa, Arab-Israeli conflicts, post WWII naval, 40k, most anything to do with starships, and the FPW. I may think of more later.

Zulus? I love the figures, but I wonder if the games are much fun to play…

WWI Western Front
I used to feel that way until I accidentally played one of Mark Hayes and Tim Goodlet's games at an HMGS con in the 90s. Hooked me enough I started collecting WWI militaria.

Zulus? I love the figures, but I wonder if the games are much fun to play…
Without variable initiative and/or movement rates, not so much. Uncertainty makes the game. Same for the Sudan.

I agree with the OFM; modern naval and air on the tabletop seems like slow motion accounting. Which some people like, and that's fine, I just don't get it.

Zombies. Just don't understand the appeal.

I also don't get gaming the Alamo. I assume it's a Texas thing. I guess there were three other battles.

Grelber

Poll Suggestion perhaps?

One thing I always found very off putting were the convention 15mm WWIII land war in Europe games with the Lego like Kibri scenics with a Soviet tank force at one end crammed nose to butt, side skirt to side skirt, 20 tanks wide by 30 deep. It's not a tank force. It's a phalanx.

Spanish Civil War. I was intrigued until I finally started looking into it. Lots of interesting units, but after the initial scramble for ground it's more grindingly static than WWI trench warfare. Itd be more interesting to play it like AH Origins with players representing the major foreign powers jockeying to influence the outcome whilst feathering their $ and geopolitical nests.

WWII Eastern Front. Who do you root for?

Lots of others. Many because my particular gaming group never decided to go there. I got buzzed when they started talking AWI in 40mm, but it came to nothing. Rats!

@EIC

Zulu can be fun. Have someone run TSATF for you.

Main downside to Zulus. Gluing on shields.

I love studying ACW and Napoleonic Wars and have gamed them and I'm always disappointed. It's not the lines of men fighting because I'm fine with that in other conflicts. Maybe I just expect more drama in the games than I get.

40K style SF. You command units but have to move one figure at a time. You win by concentrating fire, and half your figures can hit the same target, and the other half can all hit another target. Then you move up a little, or if you outrange your opponent, you stay in cover and he moves to you; whichever, now you have 2 more targets. Rinse repeat. Oh and your figures are in power armor space suits, except they don't wear helmets.

Vietnam, Afghanistan (Russians or American), Desert shield/storm, Gulf 2, or any of the Arab Israeli wars. Generally modern asymmetric warfare doesn't appeal.

I'm not totally against modern warfare gaming cold war gone hot I find an interesting idea and the Falklands war has always fascinated me. I guess becuase it took place on my TV as a kid.

WWII Eastern Front. Who do you root for?

You root for the Allies not to betray their allies to the Communists after the war.

I don't really get on with Colonials, even though I have hundreds of figures. It just seems monumentally dull, outside of a campaign/RPG setting like Science vs Pluck.

I occasionally peer in the boxes and wonder if I can be bothered to design a scenario, but there is always something more interesting instead.

I live about 15 minutes from the battlefield at Jankov, but I have absolutely zero interest in the Thirty Years War.

These days I am almost exclusively doing imaginations, as it allows me to have the kit I like without being tied to historic results or the stigma of a nation's ideology/politics.

I don't see the fun in playing the Alamo games. That to me is a moving diorama as mentioned earlier. I do know of one time the Mexicans lost in a game run at one of the conventions, but mainly…..

Don't get off my beaten path of Napoleonic very much ( conventional it in fact) but never got how WW1 western front could be interesting. But as at top would love a WW2 Africa desert game.

Almost all Naval just leaves me cold.

Hmm. Now I take the view that almost everything is playable, given that there are important choices to be made and the gamer can implement his decisions. That usually makes it a matter of finding the right command level. 1916 commanding a division? No, thanks. But a trench raid might be interesting--or a resource allocation board game, back in my cardboard counter days.

As noted above, if the designer has already made all the decisions--or if there's only one intelligent thing to do--why bother?

WWI during August and Sept 1914 is quite good, the only way for the Germans to win the war.

Anything involving an animal dressed in human clothing, although I could just about tolerate it in a Sci-Fi setting.

I don't like ahistorical games as fantasy/warhammer, SF, zombies,40K etc.
Historical periods I don't like are the ACW, Crimean war and modern periods. warfare with ships and aircraft are also not my thing

Franco-Prussian War, Crimea.

Another vote for (against) North African WWII. I have a vast collection in 20mm and play Rapid Fire, so I should be on board. Just not interested in gaming there. I don't have any figures for the saber and musket period and have no plans to start now. My least favorite would have to be dogfighting games from WWI to Star Wars.

A few things I thought I'd never play I have ended up with armies for. They haven't seen a big lot of battles but it seemed to make sense when I did them.

I tried to solve the Natives v Colonial rifles bit with my own rules so have Zulu Wars armies that saw one demo game at a show and haven't been used since. The random activation rules for Colonials generally make winning a matter of luck with the cards. Personally I prefer using historical tactics and scenarios that give the indigenous forces a chance if their player has the wit to use them effectively and the Colonial side with a situation that politicians or higher command have put them in that their player has to get them out of.

The Crimean war isn't only fought in the Crimean peninsula, the Turkish/Russian battles are part of the same war. With relatively little imagination you can have some interesting 'what ifs' from the Danube to the Caspian.

I'm with Robert that all periods are potentially playable but I still don't much fancy trench warfare or anything past early WW2 (though I do play that with others) and air war doesn't float my boat but naval does.

Most wars in my lifetime interest me very little, too close to home and they do seem to attract the 'bang, you're dead' sort of players in my limited experience of participation games at shows.

Should note that I have a strong personal bias against bookkeeping as recreation. Normally, that just excludes particular rules sets, but it's hard to imagine a naval game without keeping records on each ship.

I must be an oddity in that I rather like big set-piece trench assaults. It is an entertaining game design challenge to make them interesting for the players.

Trench warfare at division/corps/army level is essentially a resource management game though, and you either like bean counting or you don't.

"just dont get" is different from "i dont like". I dont like, that every silly conflict has miniatures, if brits or americans fought in it. But i get, why a british or american wargamer likes to play it. (I dont like 1st Carlist war, you dont like 1st Schleswig-Holstein war – i get that.)

I dont get why you have to mix genres that dont need to be mixed. Cthulhu is for me the Twentieth with monsters. I like it. I dont want Cthulhu with colonials or in modern times. Zombies is overrated IMO, but i dont get it, why you have to mix it with WW2.

Modern naval, especially anything involving a submarine

Zombies – no thanks!

And at the risk of being a heretic, while I love Napoleonic gaming I have zero interest in the Peninsular War

Eastern Front WWII Nazi vs Commies…for me who cares
Spanish Civil War
Aircraft games
Modern (WWI onward) Naval gaming
D&D games

BTW you can win with Zulus 😊

Anything to do with Games Workshop, Star Wars,and a great deal of Fantasy. For historical, trench warfare and anything after the Korean "Police Action."

Viet Nam, maybe because I remember it so well. Nothing ‘modern' either.

I don't get zombies. At all. Nor those games that combine fantasy and history. (Weird War 2, Flintloque…) Play fantasy or play history, just my opinion.

SYW except F&IW. Biblical. Ancients prior to Imperial Rome. MAW, Naval, excepting Triremes, Renaissance or Age of Sail.

I *DO* like WW2, ACW, Nappy (except the Penninsula), all pike and shotte, Renaissance and all Medieval and dark ages.

No fantasy gaming. It always seems that once you get the hang of it, newer more magical things are needed to play. Even though I have some WW1 and WW2 stuff it doesn't really interest me. I'm more of a SYW up to the late 19th century guy. Love the AWI.

WWII Eastern Front. Who do you root for? </q)

The Finns

Allow me to defend Zulus.
You have to study the "historical documents". (Zulu, Zulu Dawn, Shaka Zulu… The good movies.)

Use the "chest, horns, and loins". Seriously, what's the point of playing Zulus if you don't use their "mostly successful" tactics?
I play TSATF, and it's Big Brother Big Battkes variant 800 Fighting Englishmen.
The various formations start out in a line. As the terrain and bad/good die rolls sort out the front rank vs reserves, you find yourself with the poor souls whose job is to be the initial attacker. He draws the fire and pins the British. Hopefully, your slower moving elderly gentlemen in the rear are fresh enough to successfully throw themselves on the exhausted and disordered British.
Sometimes it works!

But you need an awful lot of Zulu figures.

Anything post 19th centaury really, mortars, offboard artillery, radios, telephones, airplanes, tanks… so many elements, such complexity… hard to depict on the tabletop.

Don't say big stomping mechs, please don't say that one. That genera normally comes up in discussions like this, which I can certainly appreciate. However, Battletech was the system that brought me into wargaming and I still enjoy big stompy mechs in their nonsensical glory.

Anything prior to 1850 – just seems tedious to me.

Mostly for me it is any kind of asymmetric insurgency. If you are the insurgents, it seems to be waves of bodies against a smaller but well armed force. I don't want to game waves of bodies. If you are the well armed force, your hands are usually tied by a ton of rules to keep it balanced so it feels like you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I don't want to game frustrating rules of engagement.

These types of battles are a slog in the real world so I don't get the point of gaming them out.

Fantasy and sci-fi. Bottom line is, I like history and I get nothing from that nonsense. Historical games I'm happy to play most things, not necessarily collect them.

I appreciate most historical periods. I also like some science fiction and fantasy. But never really understood the attraction to the ‘horror' genre and ‘steampunk', whatever that is.

Steampunk basically means… link

Oh, and…
link

Carlist wars. I don't get the appeal.

Pacific Wars (South America) I guess if you are from there, but I don't care.

Renascence Warfare – No interest. I don't consider ECW or TYW a part of that era. Most people do. I like the ECW even though I dislike all sides.

Cold War – I guess when the Berlin Wall came down and WWIII didn't happen, I lost all interest. What's the point? It didn't happen and that is a too big of a "what if" for me. Before then I played a lot of cold War "what if" board wargames, during the actual Cold War.

Fantasy and Sci-Fi (What I call Space Monkeys or the Dark Side) – I like both to read and watch them on TV/movies. I am a bit of a Trekker and a Tolkien fan, but gaming, heck no. I don't consider it wargaming. Historical gaming is a separate hobby, related but different. I did historical gaming for years before I even knew there was such a thing as Sci/fi and Fantasy gaming.

I have a hate for 40K that runs deep. I have seen it destroy several historical gaming groups. Its an insidious, malevolent evil.

For me, gaming, both board and miniature is another tool in my Historian's tool box. It helps me study and really get into a period. Research, designing scenarios and of course historical miniatures has a certain visual appeal.

Zombies in general, especially rules that adhere closely to the "only head shots kill them because they're supernatural creation" trope.

There is a zombie world, "Black Tide Rising," that is different, but I don't want to play mass combat there, either.

Any game setting where the rules allow you to create a tank phalanx, as mentioned above.

I also don't care for the "moving diorama" concept. Really – you have to have everything happen exactly the way it did historically? Why bother playing it, then?