Love hate thing....

Buoyed by an enjoyable read on Big Andy's blog [clicky] where he documented his five loves, and five hates, of wargaming, I thought I'd have a go and do my own...

"Hate" (bit strong really - 'dislike' is probably more accurate; hating something to do with wargaming is kind of a first world problem 😁) :

1. Hex and grid based "wargames" Without a doubt top of my list of dislikes is ...  I've blogged about this previously, so no surprise....  for the record though, they aren't wargames, you're playing a board game...  Afficianado's of the milieu (hark at me!) will say that it means you don't have to argue about measuring distances for firing or movement...  I say if you are arguing about that then you aren't playing the right opponent....  DG and I have been playing games for longer than I care to remember and we have never, ever, in all that time had an argument in a game about measurement of a move or firing distance... at heart my opposition is the appearance on the table, but also the fact that my brain doesn't seem to be able to work out distances when using hexes (a source of some amusement to DG - he was forever counting hexes for me)

Even the mug understands....

2. 6mm and/or 1/300 figures - they're not figures - they're board game pieces... (there's a trend here.. 😁) I speak as someone who has had WWII and ECW forces in the scale (both now passed to DG) so I have tried to like them...  for me, wargaming is about the figures, and I need to see the detail, so 6mm just doesn't hack it (I even had a WWII GHQ army, and they are about the most detailed 6mm's you can get)...  Aficionado's of the milieu (too good a word not to slip into the post again) say there is nothing like it for showing the panoply and scale of large battles, but over and over, all that happens is that they paint a unit with the same number of figures as they would have in a larger scale unit, but it's on a smaller base... if you're going to do it you don't want 24 tiny blobs on a tiny base, you need to use the same size bases as you would for a 15/20/25mm game, but absolutely fill it....... 

3. Painted eyes on miniatures - just weird..  it would keep me awake at night thinking about all those staring eyes in the loft....  following you about as you move round the table....  look at someone across the office...  any more than 50 feet and you can't see their eyes....  "don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes"

This is the way to do it... from the incomparable brush of Scott MacPhee

4. Ultra modern wargame periods - some of you may remember my recent hissy fit about the ISIS range of figures being marketed by the numb nut in the US (and that's not a xenophobic statement I hasten to add, there are numb nuts everywhere.... ) One of the interesting thing about that post was the realisation that most of my fellow gamers have their own historical high water mark, and that it can differ from gamer to gamer.....   in my case Vietnam (old hippy).... 

5. Plastics - I am at heart an old school wargamer brought up almost solely on Featherstone, Wise and Grant (the Brigadier kind of passed me by.. I think I may have read him at the time, but thought it was a "little old fashioned")... anyway, back in the day the sheer range of scales/figures/periods/manufacturers just didn't exist...  the old masters hacked Airfix figures around and added plasticine covered in banana oil (no green stuff or Miliput then) to cover the deficit, but it was implicitly understood that these were no more than a stop gap until someone bought out a suitable range in metal....  metal figures are aspirational for me, I have erred slightly on the side of Zvezda for 15mm vehicles (just lovely...) but I can't see me every buying another plastic figure - not the least because you have to assemble the damn things as well these days, whereas at least Airfix came ready assembled.... 

Bear with...  the "Love" thing will be along imminently....  feel free to blog your own likes and dislikes..  it would be quite entertaining to see how my fellow bloggerati's minds work....