"Board games a replacement for Mini games?" Topic

In the "Models for decorative purposes only" thread it morphed a bit into war games vs Board games. Board games being simply a war game using counters. I felt that was worth a bit of thought but so as not to clog the other thread I put my thoughts here.

So a working definition of a board game for the purposes of this thread.

Board war game – typically a flat card playing area no bigger than 2ft by 2ft most often gridded with hexagons but occasionally other tessellating shapes. Typically with hexagons around 1/2" across flats and played with using counters typically square and approx 1/2" side. All counters use hex based movement.

That is the classic (to me board game).

Now can it be a war game to the same standard as a mini game ignoring the art value. My argument is categorically no it cannot.

1) Boards are flat so 3 representation of hills is more difficult to comprehend.
2) As hex based games tend to assume a standard for all the area in a hex. Realistic terrain cannot easily or practically be represent a 1000m long straight road at 45 degrees s the road needs to wind with the hexes, so terrain cannot be realistically be represented by typical Board game Hex granularity.
3) Key to me is that tanks need to turn there turrets, just like the real thing. Now a marker that is practical that can have a direction of the turret and the facing of the vehicle cannot easily be made practical on a 1/2" square space. Early work on our rules indicated its just possible with a 1/300 scale tank but not smaller AFV's. The equivalent marker therefor needs to be about a 1" across and the hex at least that minimum dimension being somewhat optermistic. This now puts the board up to at least 4ft by 4 ft to maintain the same granularity, that is already looking like a war games table.

4) With the bigger board the ability to read small print on card markers becomes more difficult as the players now need to stand over the board, so minimum viewing range doubles. One solution to this is to make the graphics stand out. One option would be to use 3D graphics as they are easier than flat graphics to recognize. How about making the graphics representative of the actual vehicle as that is easily recognized and it has an obvious front and back and its easy to see which way the vehicle is going and which way the turret it is pointing.
5) Hving had to resort to 3D markers its an obvious step to making other features easily recognizable so instead of flat contour lines (difficult to read the numbers 4 ft away) use 3D representations of height.

I guess by now its obvious that a Board game and a minis game get to look close to identical without any recourse to the need for artistic merit.

Now ASL uses bigger hexes as the markers can be placed relative to an object such as a house on the hex indicating which side of the house the marker is. Again this requires bigger hexes possibly up to 1 1/2 " across putting the board up to 5ft across even for 1/2" markers and much more for a credible tank marker.

On the basis of the logic above a classic board game as initially defined above cannot reproduce the level of detail that is required. Significant scaling up of the board to allow reasonable representations of AFV'S is required. At larger board sizes minis become a preferred marker standard as does 3D representation of terrain. Ergo a board game and mini game look very similar given a certain set of critical parameter representations.

Feel free to point out where my logic is inconsistent.

So I am not sure, am I a Large scale Board gamer or a mini gamer. Perhaps I am a large board gamer as the distinction at least in part seems to be how the minis used are considered, simply gaming pieces or works of art. What is clear a classic representation of a board game is not a direct replacement fort what is classically called a minis game.

I have played many board games scaled up for miniatures. Age of sail games, air combat games. Is RISK a board game, or a miniatures game?

Gozerius- Quite the difference is not at all clear.

First of all, that's not the definition of wargame. What a wargame is, or what a board game is are definitions made by English speakers at large, and the specific broad base of of those who produce, distribute or play such games or otherwise interact with that group in a significant way.

Thus a wargame is any game which involves a depiction of war at any level of abstraction or player control— thus, even simple games as Risk are indeed wargames. If it's about war or battle, and it's a game, it's a wargame. That is literally what the word means within the community of gamers.

Now, there can indeed be more precise definitions within certain groups or circumstances— for example, within the military (and related contractors), a wargame means very detailed and specific simulations, up to and including actual soldiers using actual military equipment and hardware in simulated combat across a specified region for the purpose of training, determining readiness, etc., etc.. In the military, you can "wargame" with an actual aircraft carrier and her entire battle group, or you can wargame in a room with a map and other representations of forces.

But of course, within the hobby community we certainly don't mean the full scope of the above. We mean games played for entertainment (even if what is entertaining is trying to study actual history and/or military tactics, etc..), and presumably on one or more tables (or the floor or the Land of Counterpane).

And what you mean, obviously, is representational warfare on a highly detailed scale. Well, yes, that is a wargame. But so is something less detailed, as an Avalon Hill product, or a simple skirmish system for miniatures. They, too, are wargames. The term cannot be cut up to serve one's preferences in the manner you suggest, without causing confusion— and any definition which, through over-precision, causes confusion among the users is never the correct definition of a word. So, what you are trying to define as the limitations of what can be a wargame is incorrect. You require a different term.

That term, then is "tabletop miniatures game." (Thus, a "tabletop miniatures game" is likely a wargame, and thus a subset of wargames, but not all wargames are "tabletop miniatures games.")

To me the difference between a board game and a tabletop miniatures game is somewhat fluid, but largely centers around not the playing surface, be it board, printed map, cloth with felt shapes representing significant terrain features, or a highly detailed representational diorama, but the presence of figures.

1.) Are these figures representative of people, creatures, and specific physical devices (of whatever nature), whether real or imagined?

2.) Are these figures intended to stand upright at all times (except when noted as damaged or otherwise disabled as specific functions of the game)?

3.) Are these figures, in their representational appearance, significant to the game based on that appearance? (That is, they cannot easily be replaced by a wooden block or a plastic pawn without significant explanation or even labeling.)

4.) Is each figure's precise location on the playing surface of significance to the processes of the game?

If the answer to all 4 is yes, I submit that such a game, whether possessing a board or a representational diorama setting, is a "tabletop miniatures game."

Thus, Risk may be a wargame, but it is not a miniatures game (representational appearance is not important, nor is precise location). Advanced Squad Leader is certainly a wargame, but it is not a miniatures game (involves no figures). Space Hulk is a miniatures game and a wargame, even if played on a board— it has representational figures, the appearance is significant and defines the processes of the game, the location of each figure is significant, the figures are not haphazardly placed (must be upright and with a specific facing).
And so on for other games.

It's not really that difficult or convoluted, and has nothing to do with the precision suggested in the OP. To claim otherwise is to introduce confusion.

Now, none of those or anything like those may be the sort of wargame or miniatures game one prefers to play— but they are still wargames and/or miniatures games. Personal preference does not change the definitions of terms— you are not Humpty Dumpty. (Lewis Carroll reference.)

On a side note, I've also played board games with boards larger than 2' x 2'. And they were wargames.

(referring to UshCha's OP)

1 is nonsense. Unless you have incredibly precise ways of constructing hills, then drawing contours allows for much more accuracy and flexibility in using relief. And depending on what you are doing, calculating LOS is much easier in a boardgame than with miniatures. 3D representations of height are typically well out of synch with the ground scale and the model scale, so it is pretty unconvincing to argue that this makes it easier to determine the underlying shape of the ground.

2 might be okay, if you have a very high level of detail in your terrain construction. Most games I have seen, the terrain is richer in boardgames. Compare the average wargames table to the average Squad Leader board, the latter is likely to be far more granular.

3 might be true, although most actual games and rules don't particularly support this. And on the plus side for boardgames, you can actually quite easily work out if a shot is going to hit the side armour or hit the front armour obliquely.

4 is just taste IMHO, how much game info you want represented on the counter and how much in a list somewhere. On the counter is easier for playing, on the list for looking good. You can never be worse off for having the info on the counter, the worst that is going to happen is you have to look it up…which you would have to do with a model anyway.

5 is an argument which depends on the others, so no point in discussing it directly.

All these arguments (amongst others) are why veteran wargamer and author Paddy Griffith gave up figure gamer, so it is pretty hard to argue that miniature games are obviously capable of being wargames 'to a higher standard'.

Whirlwind to be honest Paddy Griffith is not a guy I would have much time for he was as I understanding it not overly fond of simulation so does not hold any sway with me. Quote Phil Barker and I would take his opinion more seriously.

1) Hills Limited in scale admittedly, but very precise and again, as I assumed by the implication of single vehicles very large areas cannot be modeled at a sufficiently detailed level. You per-suppose I can easily read say an OS map and visualize the contours, that is an incorrect assumption.

Parsival. you missed the TYPICALLY

3) its what is says real, tanks have turrets that turn. Players are allowed there own interpretations regardless of their alignment to reality, these are my assumptions.
You missed the point, its important to know not only where the hull is pointing but also the turret angle, they are not always co-incident so your comments are off the point.
4) In the classic game as defined in the header they do have more data tan would be in a miniature game. Longer ranges necessitate moving the data elsewhere, again from the classic definition against which this discourse is referenced.
5) I suspect you missed the point.

Parsival, you missed the TYPICALLY. Have played a few board games in my time but they were all within the size range defined in my working definition.

1) Hills Limited in scale admittedly, but very precise and again, as I assumed by the implication of single vehicles very large areas cannot be modeled at a sufficiently detailed level. You per-suppose I can easily read say an OS map and visualize the contours, that is an incorrect assumption.

Sorry, you are a bit hard to follow here. Your argument is that because you can't read contour lines, then 3d model relief must be categorically better? No, that won't do, that isn't what categorical means

3) its what is says real, tanks have turrets that turn. Players are allowed there own interpretations regardless of their alignment to reality, these are my assumptions.
You missed the point, its important to know not only where the hull is pointing but also the turret angle, they are not always co-incident so your comments are off the point.

No, sorry, you are really missing the point here. I am talking about the physical reality of playing these games. With boardgames it is trivially easy to work out the angle of impact from a gun-barrel onto armour, with miniature tanks it is not (I write this as a gamer who uses models, not primarily a boardgamer). Treating turret and hull facing as separate adds to that difficulty.

4) In the classic game as defined in the header they do have more data tan would be in a miniature game. Longer ranges necessitate moving the data elsewhere, again from the classic definition against which this discourse is referenced.

No, you can say you prefer object data to be held in a list off the board in some form than on the piece itself, if you like. Again though, this is your personal preference trying to masquerade as some kind of definitive truth. And your reasoning is contradictory: if you are far back from the board, then calculating the LOS and impact angles are going to be even harder.

5. I suspect you missed the point.

No, I got it. But I can see that you missed mine.

So your argument that it is categorical that a board game cannot be of the same standard as a war game is refuted. You obviously prefer minis – that is nice, so do I. But these arguments are just terrible.

The operative term in your arguments is warGAME or miniatures GAME. They are games. If you like them, play them. If not don't. There is really no need to overthink this, it is just about a hobby.

My introduction to wargames was a boardgame, Parker Brothers' Civil War Game--1863. The board is marked off in squares and covers the country from the Atlantic to central Arkansas. It is a strategic/grand strategic game. For me, gaming at this level is sort of the default for wargames. I have played board games intended to replicate individual battles, like Waterloo or Gettysburg, as well as games where a counter represents an individual or a tank, like ASL.

Strategic games tend not to be miniature games. I suppose a few do use miniatures as counters, but not many. Miniatures war games tend to concentrate on the tactical level, skirmish level, or even individual level.

Grelber

Whirlwind, you comment on angles seems to defy physics, me being a mini I gamer and an engineer. The an angle is between a reference line, say that position of the hull and the gun muzzle. That is a simple measurement. Whether the items are placed on a plane printed with hexes or not is immaterial.
Grelber – I agree mini games do not generally cover the same context as board games GENERALLY so one cannot directly replace the other.
Renfrew – clearly one man's micromanagement is another's key parameter without which the game is just not interesting or fun. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

They are alternatives but not replacements , which is what the thread is about. The whole point is a mini game called not reasonably be played as a typical board game. QED.

Fitz vice – it was not my intention to immune either mini or board gamers per say. Ther are some mini players who consider that if you are not bothered about the art of mini games you might as well play a board game. This thread demonstrates the two are not direct equivalents, A simple switch is not practical.

UshCha
Perhaps some folks do worry about the art. What others think really isn't all that important. It remains just a game, play or do not.

Where do we put Mantic's Deadzone?

The game is played with miniatures but the board has squares. Models move and measure range square to square. Like a hex board, right?

The game has 3D terrain and usage within the square is important for cover, etc.

Perhaps if there is no Army Modelling it's a board game but then how to classify things like Zombicide where people paint the miniatures?

Whirlwind, you comment on angles seems to defy physics, me being a mini I gamer and an engineer. The an angle is between a reference line, say that position of the hull and the gun muzzle. That is a simple measurement. Whether the items are placed on a plane printed with hexes or not is immaterial.

This is a really simple point: it is easy to do visually with a hex-based boardgame, it can be hard to do visually using miniatures – especially in your case, since one of your own points is the necessity to 'sit back' from the table. Your claim that it can only be done by using miniatures with adjustable turrets at a minimum scale of 1/200 is simply untrue; equally untrue is the idea that this is a typical feature of miniature wargames.

I think it is undisputed that miniature wargames have three aspects that are interesting for players: conflict / strategy / tactics /rules (your interest is to win); roleplaying / simulation (your interest is beeing someone else); aesthetic (your interest is that the battlefield looks good). If you are interested in miniature wargaming, you are interested to a little degree in each aspect, even rules lawyer and painters have that interest in common.

To argue, that miniature wargames is even by ignoring the other aspects superior in the strategy aspect is IMO a lost cause.

I do board games to set up Mini games.

I play boardgames with figures and set up figure games on boards. Does this make me a bad person?

Martin Rapier, you have hit it, Board Wargames and "traditional mini" wargames coexsist together and overlap to a larger extent that perhaps I had not appreciated. One is not a replacement for another. On this basis a passion for miniatures is not a requirement for playing wargames with minis. Minis are a necessity even for some of board games.
So perhaps I am really a mini using Board Wargamer, not a classic miniature wargamer. Perhaps I should use that term then folk will understand painting of miniatures is not part of my personal hobby as in the case of some (but not all board gamers). To me minis are just 3D board game pieces.

UshCha, it's Parzival— as in the classic Medieval Arthurian romance.

Terms are important— if others don't agree with your definition, the only result will be confusion in the discussion. Hence my post; you put forth a definition which is not universal, and thus created a point of gross confusion, which continues through the discussion.

As for miniatures games being more accurate than board games, that's clearly false, in that miniatures games inherently treat the overall battle scape as largely flat, with one or two significant vertical elements, while ignoring things as overall gradual slope, undulating ground, heavy underbrush (or much underbrush at all), etc., etc.. These are almost impossible to model accurately or with any precision, especially as units are typically out of actual scale to real world conditions (most trees even at the smallest scales should be several feet tall, if presented at scale, and underbrush and trunk spacing has to be excessively wide to allow for the bases containing various miniatures to be functionally placed and moved on the table top).

In a board game, such elements can be more readily presented and accounted for, even in an abstract sense, to more closely reflect the various effects and impacts these terrain elements will actually have. Board games also allow for a unit to be defined as an imagined pin point location, which miniatures necessarily lose simply due to sheer bulk.

Miniatures wargaming is as much about abstraction and compromise as any other form of wargaming, and indeed more so simply because of the physical requirements forced into the effort by the miniatures themselves, and for that matter the limited reach of human arms! The size of the table and the ability to actually reach, handle, and move a miniature is an enormously restrictive factor on what the scale of anything can be, or what must be presented as abstract.

If one wants an actual, accurate simulation of warfare, one should look to computer simulations. Only these can present the factors that are necessarily and unavoidably missed in both miniatures and board-based wargaming.

Parzival you missed the point.

3) Key to me is that tanks need to turn there turrets, just like the real thing. Now a marker that is practical that can have a direction of the turret and the facing of the vehicle cannot easily be made practical on a 1/2" square space. Early work on our rules indicated its just possible with a 1/300 scale tank but not smaller AFV's. The equivalent marker therefor needs to be about a 1" across and the hex at least that minimum dimension being somewhat optimistic. This now puts the board up to at least 4ft by 4 ft to maintain the same granularity, that is already looking like a war games table.

The point here that a mini is NOT REQUIRED, but the physical representation needs to me a minimum size to be easily and reliably manipulated by hand. It could simply be a marker no a mini!
However now the minimum hex size is limited to the size that can sensibly accommodate a sophisticated marker. This then starts to make any board with a similar detail requirement, the same size as that of a table top game board. This increases board game viewing range so new features neewd to be identified arise that overcome the additional viewing range issue with a simple flat board.

Now certainly in my games, be they called Board games or Mini Game the spacing of the elements (lets say Tanks) is typically large (say 75m sometimes more, in a road march between 60 and 140m). This is large and so sets a minimum spacing larger than a vehicle and can be large compared to other terrain features. Thus a board game at the same ground scale and level of detail offers no more or less than a miniature game of the same ground scale. The board needs to be approximately the same size due to human limitations of manipulating small items accurately and reliably.

Now if you want to say certain games with different requirements can be dome better as a board game then I agree. But that was NOT the premise of this thread.

But that is just like the military where at scale they go from a sand table to map. This thread notes that a Board is not necessarily a good replacement for a "sand Table".

one wants an actual, accurate simulation of warfare, one should look to computer simulations. Only these can present the factors that are necessarily and unavoidably missed in both miniatures and board-based war gaming.

I never included computers in the scope of this thread so this is an off thread topic. Should you wish to address computers vs Board game/Mini game I suggest you start a new topic as this is a massive discussion in its own right needing vastly more definitions to even begin the discussion from a common basis.

If you wanted solely to deal with tank turrets, why did you title this thread "Board games a replacement for Mini games"? Your complaint is restricted to a very distinct period— roughly WW2 through today— and thus is only relevant to that era. It has NOTHING to do with "Wargaming in General" or the hobby as a whole.

The simple solution for your turret dilemma is to give each tank a command card where upon the direction of the turret's current orientation is marked with an erasable marker. Refer to the marker, et voila— you know where the gun is pointed. Change the orientation, erase and change the mark.
A referee can transmit that data to the opponent as tanks are spotted, if you want a fog of war element; or the cards can be freely examined by opponents themselves if that is not a concern.

Not everything need be represented on the map or tabletop.

In any case, the orientation of a tank turret is highly time dependent, as tank turrets can presumably change orientation in relatively short order. Unless the allowed "decision making" period in a game represents less than the time it takes to traverse the turret, it really doesn't matter where the dang thing is pointed, as it can be readily defined as point anywhere in its arc. Leisurely observation and decision making are a luxury of wargaming; in real life (and in accurate simulations) these do not exist; there are no "turns" or "bounds" in real life. So unless you propose having somebody shrieking information into your ear in real time,* there is no true simulation going on at the apparent command level you are describing.

Now, perhaps your game is based on "impulse" movement, where each tiny detail of time is so tightly focused on that turret training can actually be tracked in precise "impulses"— For example, on an impulse a turret can be altered 15°— during which time all other forces also move by impulse amount, and you wind up with a very slow, very meticulous battle… but also a very unrealistic one, as such decision time just isn't valid as a simulation— like trying to represent football as a game of stop-motion animation. In such a situation, really only one tank is viable as a unit command for any player. So unless you have many, many players participating, this becomes a two player battle (perhaps a few more, I suppose, if you want to have a big firefight) restricted to only one tank per player (or some other unit). (In a much more abstracted way, this is typically the approach for aerial combat games.)

But at some point abstraction always enters in; and whether that's on a sand table or a felt covered table with lots of terrain, or a flat map/board, there's no real difference. As I noted, not everything has to be on the board.

*This, by the way, is EXACTLY how the military conducted wargame simulations for young officers a few decades ago; I suspect it's been supplanted by computer simulation now, but I don't know. The point was to teach the officers that stress and noise are inherent to an actual battlefield, and they had better learn how to process a rapid stream of sometimes contradictory or even false information on the instant, or when the real thing began for them, they and their men were going to DIE. Now *that's* battlefield simulation. But I suspect none of us are playing anything like that.

I think in a strange way we are agreeing that at some point there is no real diffrence between a board game and a Minis game depending on actuallity of what you are representing. A mini game terrain will feature the same level of detail as that of a map, the absence of a tessalted shape superimposed on the terrain map is achedemic. In my case, though we do not feel its useful we do have the board with an imposed hexagonal matrix.

Minis or markers is imterial so no diffrence there.

Ego I was wrong a board game and a Minis game are identical given a certain set of criteria. The only diffrence is minor forms of representation, but even that may not be valid, a 3D marker may be easier to recognise than a falat marker where the board size needs to be significantly bigger than 4 ft by 4ft.