So here is the way I see it, and I would love to play some historical games, if I knew someone into it ( live in a small town) and they had the miniatures or even cardboard chits, and yes, I started with historicals ( panzerblitz ect) before I got into AD&D as a teen.
With fantasy, you have SOOOOoooo many more options. every battle that can be done with Historicals can be simulated with fantasy, and fantasy does it better.
For instance, If you playing any modern historical, and you want to take range into a consideration, how big does you table have to be? your artillary can shoot how many miles? how many inches to scale is that on a table. That same tank, can be simulated with a magicuser casting a fireball spell. Same thing but the magicuser scales easier in fantasy.
All the Futuristic SCI-FI games are in the same boat. the ranges are way off.
Lets say you have painted 500 Napoleonic miniatures. You are still playing a fantasy game, you can not really simulate a Napoleonic battle, because true be told, we really do not know what really happened in any given battle, and we are in our head, just trying to make believe that we really are simulating that battle, ie its fantasy.
Everything in a historical game can be represented using orcs, humans, spearmen, archers, magicusers, and even a figher jet can be simulated using a dragon. The Tactics on the table work just as good, or better using fantasy, and more tactics are available, if tactics are your thing. ( tactics is a thing for me anyways, and I am not always good at them either.)
If your going to fantasize a battle, just let your imagination fantasize just a little bit further.
Now if your a painter, and anyone playing with miniatures has to have a painting streak in them, you can be much more creative painting your fantasy army then trying to paint 500 Confederate troops in grey and Union in blue.
I wish I knew someone who had 1000 greek warriors I could play a game with, but when we were done, why not send those Greek warriors after some Orcs, or some orcs and a dragon, or since its Greek, use a hydra, and add Hercules as fantasy Hero.
For me, that is why I like Fantasy.
