"Please define how you understand Overrated or Underrated" Topic

Every time I see a "Most overrated" or "most underrated" tie here, my mind goes blank.
Does it mean that They (whoever that may be…) love it and you don't, or vice versa.
But nobody seems to agree.

I understand both to be a lead in to click bait.

"Overrated" is anything that fails you personally, at the exact moment you needed it most. Preferably while your opponent smirks.

It's the elite Guard unit that, absorbs half your army's points, advances magnificently… and is then pinned by a nervous conscript with a rusty rifle.
Conclusion: clearly, the unit is overrated.

"Underrated," on the other hand, is anything that succeeds despite your generalship. Possibly by accident.

It's the scruffy second-line troops you only took to fill points… who then hold the key objective for six turns, fight off everything thrown at them and emerge as legends.
Conclusion: criminally underrated: I must take them every game!

Ultimately, these terms have very little to do with history, balance, or design… and everything to do with memory, emotion, and that one disastrous turn you will never forgive and your gaming pals will never let you forget.

Without naming names, there's a singer who I never heard of. I found a song and immediately fell in love. I rabbit holed as many songs I could find on YouTube. I thought "Wow, she's so underrated!"
Then I found out how many Grammies she had won, how many hits, how many artists she performed with, etc. "Underrated"? Joke was on me.

How many bands or artists are so popular, yet turn me off? "Overrated" for sure.

So, it all boils down to how much you agree or disagree with popular opinion.

Yes. This makes no sense, and is contradictory. So is the whole idea. If you disagree with who I, or "experts" consider underrated or overrated… perfect!

Yeah, that whole "overrated/underrated" thing collapses pretty fast unless you anchor it to a specific audience. Saying an artist is underrated by critics, casual listeners, or your personal circle are three completely different claims, and people blur them like they're interchangeable. At least with something like awards, you've got a defined metric—even if the criteria behind it are messy, the count itself is concrete.

In a lot of hobby discussions, though, people toss around terms like "skirmish" or "campaign" as if everyone shares the same definition, when half the time we don't even agree on what's being counted, let alone whether or not we can count it. It ends up being less about insight and more about talking past each other with undefined categories. Without a clear "based on what," the whole discussion is basically divergent personal vibes pretending to be conversation.

I bought Gloire years ago. It's the ultimate "skirmish" game, designed for 4(!) figures on a 3'x3' mat.
I ran a game I called "Rescue Roddy McCorley", loosely taken from a song of "the ‘98". It had over 100 figures on either side. I used the mechanisms and stats from the game exactly as written. The game ran very smoothly, with no hitches.
Oh, by the way, the rebels did indeed rescue him.
I consider a "skirmish game" as one with individual based figures. But when you start to do Cowpens… The basing becomes a distinct liability.

Not out of context at all, Mary Chapin Carpenter is a beautiful singer with a very active stage presence. I had vaguely heard of her and then found her "Down at the Twist and Shout" video performance before President Bush. Then I shut up and kissed her.
Nothing to do with my above posts at all. 🙄

Overrated: someone who is lauded as a military supergenius because they won battles they were supposed to win. They had everything in their favor, or the press loved them for some reason. Bradley comes to mind.
Underrated: someone who performs exceptionally well, winning battles against the odds but don't get the publicity because either they don't self-promote or they serve in a lesser theater. Swedish Marshall Rhenskjold or Finnish Marshall Mannerheim come to mind.

I agree with ALL of the above, not a man-jack of whom is over-rated!

I know it when I see it.