"How Many Wargamers am I?" Topic

Or are you? Taking a survey and it struck me that my answers--on what I played, who I played with, what size table I used were often misleading because I'm several different wargamers.
Bob the Old CLS Player uses 30mm (more or less) Napoleonic castings, and plays with two or three friends on tables which are 6'x8 at a minimum.
Robert Rick's Friend drives over to a friend's house for a one on one game in 6mm on either a 3'x3' or a 2'x4' table, period varying every year from a list of about five.
Grandfather Piepenbrink packs a 2mm army to visit the kids and generally winds up playing solo on a 20"x30" board. Again, might be any of six periods.

[Ignore the whining from Robert the solo gamer with his stack of individually mounted 28mm figures. He uses up a lot of time, money and space, but gets hardly any games in.]

There's virtually no overlap in troops, terrain, boards or rules.

So (Poll Question) How many wargamers are you? and (General Discussion) how would you design a survey to capture that?

1, conventions I say 2

How many wargamers are you? 2.

Do you have different playing groups for different game types?

I was going to say a dozen or so, but …

There's virtually no overlap in troops, terrain, boards or rules.

… none of those things define a wargamer or wargaming experience to me. So, I guess, 2.71828…

I mostly play one set of rules since I mostly host. SOM will occasionally set up WH40K (though he's on deployment right now). I'll play 3 or 4 games at a con once or twice a year with whatever rules the host picked. At the high end, that makes 10% of my games. Someone coming to game day might bring a wargame (DOM or SWMBO's cousin), so a few other misc rules.

Maybe 40 different sets of troops across 48 wargames.

If different boards and terrain means different setups, the about the same as troops. If it means terrain pieces, much harder to figure. My Pegasus gothic cathedral stuff could be the stage for a grimdark five-way battle royale or the catacombs where the Nazis raid an Italian resistance hideout. Same pieces, very different setup.

Good points, eto. Yeah, my stuff works the same way within each scale, and the rivers/streams don't even stay within a scale. If I were counting by periods, of course there would be many more and quite a bit of overlap.

What set me off was the Great Wargaming Survey. I dutifully filled in that I had had 20,000+ castings under arms, and realized that people are going to think I've filled a barn. (Mind you, I know people who have.) What I've actually got is a couple of closets, and 90% of my castings, being 2mm or 6mm, live in a single closet 4' wide and 27" deep. Same thing with unpainted lead: my several thousands are not a silver mountain, but about four shoeboxes of 6's, a tray (with compartments) of spare 2mm, and 12 28mm Halfling snipers currently being assembled.

If you take individual numbers--figures, table size, number of opponents--out of context, you're prone to very misleading results.

How many genres and scales do you play?

I play:

* 28mm fantasy mass battles (full 3D terrain and sculpted/painted 3D miniatures);
* 28mm fantasy RPG tactical battles (2D, 2.75D, and full 3D terrain, with sculpted/painted 3D miniatures);
* 28mm fantasy skirmish battles (2.75D/3D terrain, with sculpted/painted 3D miniatures);
* 54mm Army Men games, more than skirmish (we typically have 200-400 infantry figures + vehicles and equipment), but still 1:1 ratio of figures:men (full 3D terrain and 3D sculpted/mostly painted miniatures).

Cheers!

"Number of opponents" is the first bit you have said that starts to approach what I would call "different types of wargamer".

Playing Rorke's Drift in 6mm on a 2'x1' area or with 28mm on a 10'x5' area (with the same scenario and meta-game elements) are not what I would call different games. Nor is playing it with the "right figures" or scifi figures.* Nor is having 4K figures on the table or having a couple dozen (representing the number of actual unique orders the players are giving). Playing the RD British by myself or collaborating with four other players is.

* – I have know of some people who poo-poo on "historical" games. These same people have a rolling good time playing RD, Puebla, or Short Hills (three go-to's) with Martian terrain and Barsoomian figures.

15mm and 25/28mm historical games. I have no interest in any other miniature genre or figure size.

When I was born, my mother wanted twins.

So to keep her happy, I dress the same and go everywhere together.

~,~