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  • #40839
    Avatar photoAngel Barracks
    Moderator

    Not like what you slap on a base, but how you describe yourself, if indeed you do at all.

    Another ramble…

    I used to play Napoleonic’s, or rather when I think about it, I used to play with Napoleonic figures.

    My men were painted fairly accurately for their regiment.
    Cuffs, plumes and all that as accurate as I could.
    Drummers had the correct breed of horse and all that.

    But I never once played a game that was based on anything historical.
    All my games were totally fictitious and made up from my own noggin.
    They were also small scale games, with a model representing one man.
    So my units of 100 models were in fact companies.

    Bit odd?
    Maybe, did I care?
    Nope.

    So was I a Napoleonic gamer, or was I gamer that used Napoleonic models?
    I favour the latter, but in all fairness I don’t care that much how you label me*, I just wonder if the more accurate label would better explain what I actually played?

    Like I said, a bit of a ramble really…

    *steady.

    #40840
    Avatar photoThuseld
    Participant

    I began playing with unpainted, unbased Airfix WW2 figures, combined with various tanks build by my dad back when he was in Uni in the late 70s. There were no rules, just us deciding who shot who first.

    We then discovered the Airfix Guide wargaming rules, so we tried that, again with unpainted, random figures in a town made from our model railway buildings. However, we started building our own vehicles, so I became a model maker/wargamer?

    Long pause for puberty to take its course, university to happen, and then find myself with cash and time.

    I began painting WW2 infantry and vehicles with no reference to their units. The only games I played between 2012 and now have been maybe 3 or 4 fictitious WW2 skirmishes using Bolt Action and Flying Lead. But again, my model making to gaming ratio was heavily skewed in the model making direction.

    Now I find myself collecting Sci Fi rules, and painting up individually based 6mm miniatures. But I have yet to actually play any games using the skirmish rules I have. But with the dawn of Horizon Wars, I have started basing soldiers together to make more realistic looking elements. But still no games played.

    So I suppose at the moment I am a miniature painter and a model maker as opposed to any kind of wargamer.

    #40841
    Avatar photoDon Glewwe
    Participant

    I’ve been a model builder for 50+ years and a gamer for nearly as long if you count the usual toy soldier stuff.

    I see gaming as just another facet of modeling, only instead of things it is events that are being modelled.

    #40842
    Avatar photoirishserb
    Participant

    Labels are funny things.  Most call me a “wargamer”, but  most of my games are really about an adventure, more than war.  I personally don’t like the term as it seems to include a perspective that I don’t really share, and exclude much of what I get from gaming.

    My gaming is sometimes referred to as skirmish gaming, but I usually have multiple companies and sometimes battalions or regiments with 1 to1 representation and individually resolved combat.  I’m often told that my games are too large to be considered skirmish games.

    Almost every game I play has a role playing element, but I haven’t played a RPG in over 30 years.

    I tend to use “miniatures gamer”, but gaming is the thing I do the least with respect to the miniatures.  Time spent model/scratch-building, painting, planning, researching, and writing all exceed the time spent gaming.  So even that is misrepresentative.

     

    #40844
    Avatar photoRuarigh
    Participant

    I label myself a wargamer. It’s simpler than the contortions I would need to go through to encompass all the periods, scales, and types of games that I enjoy.’Wargaming dilettante’ might be a better description, but that implies a lack of knowledge. I pursue knowledge, so perhaps ‘wargames butterfly’ because I flit from project to project, from period to period, investing myself heavily in each one before moving on to the next thing that grabs my attention. ‘Miniatures gamer’ doesn’t cut it because I play a lot of board wargames too. No, ‘wargamer’ describes it as well as anything else, or perhaps just ‘gamer’ although that implies, in my mind at least, video games which are not really part of my gaming repertoire.

    Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

    https://roderickdale.co.uk/
    https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

    #40847
    Avatar photowillz
    Participant

    I label myself as a “Wargamer”, and ditto all of the above.

    I paint, model, convert, play historical, play imagination, played science fiction (not for 20 years now) and as stated all of the above.  When people ask what hobby do I do, I say I am a “Wargamer” (normally they say is that like paint balling?) after I have put them right it is surprising how many people want to know more.

    #40856
    Avatar photoPaul
    Participant

    My wife and friends just call me a geek. I call myself a gamer.

    Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

    #40859
    Avatar photoNot Connard Sage
    Participant

    I’m a wargamer. I play games of war with toy soldiers.

     

    Since 1970, so fie to anyone who thinks I’m a know nothing noob. I’m a know nothing…opposite of noob.

     

    Can’t remember the last time I played anything based on a real battle. Hardly worth the effort. If it’s true to history it’s waste of time, you know who wins. If the historical winner doesn’t win, it’s not historical is it? 🙂

    Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

    #40874
    Avatar photoGuy Farrish
    Participant

    I’m a wargamer who talks a lot about playing but doesn’t get around to actually gaming a lot these days – family, real life etc. but also pontificating and procrastinating seem to take up a lot of time.

    NCS – Depends what you mean by historical – you can have the historical set up, approximately the correct combat values of the units but poor old Napoleon was never as good as me so it’s hardly surprising if I win Waterloo is it? Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a historically accurate game – just that I’m a better general than he was.

    That is what it means isn’t it?

    #40875
    Avatar photoNot Connard Sage
    Participant

    I’m a wargamer who talks a lot about playing but doesn’t get around to actually gaming a lot these days – family, real life etc. but also pontificating and procrastinating seem to take up a lot of time. NCS – Depends what you mean by historical – you can have the historical set up, approximately the correct combat values of the units but poor old Napoleon was never as good as me so it’s hardly surprising if I win Waterloo is it? Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a historically accurate game – just that I’m a better general than he was. That is what it means isn’t it?

     

    See if I wanted to be nit-picky, I could point out that real ‘units’ don’t have ‘combat values’. And that no two military historians can agree on the ‘historical set up’ of a battle, a problem that increases the further one goes back in time.

    😉

     

    Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

    #40883
    Avatar photoAngel Barracks
    Moderator
    #40891
    Avatar photopaintpig
    Participant

    Just a gamer, huddled with other gamer’s and forced to use an adjective I will say historical gamer, I dont refight battles but I use historically based figures. Amongst the general populace I drop the historical and use figure/miniature as the descriptor. I think Gamer covers it well enough in most cases.

    I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel
    Slowly Over A Low Flame

    #40893
    Avatar photoAltius
    Participant

    I would call myself a wargamer, for convenience. It’s just a way to put myself in the same box as the rest of you sad, silly geeks. In my head, though, I consider myself more of a painter than a gamer. I paint for maybe 4-6 hours per week but only play a game maybe once every two months.

    Where there is fire, we will carry gasoline

    #40900
    Avatar photoEtranger
    Participant

    I’ve been a model builder for 50+ years and a gamer for nearly as long if you count the usual toy soldier stuff.

    I see gaming as just another facet of modeling, only instead of things it is events that are being modelled.

    Good description & sums it up for me too, except not quite as long…

    #40902
    Avatar photoBlackhat
    Participant

    I play games with Toy Soldiers….

    I don’t recall ever playing a game based on an actual battle that I organised myself.  I’ve played in several with the rest of the Guildford Club but it isn’t something that I ever think of doing.

    I am happy playing historical boardgames for actual battles.

    These days I am tending more and more towards simpler rules, possibly on grids and using 54mm gloss painted figures – this is partly an attempt to separate my hobby from my business.

    Mike

     

     

    #40903
    Avatar photoSane Max
    Participant

    Labels just give power to the man. Fight the Tyranny of Foucaultian Labeling my friends! (raises clenched fist)

    I call myself a wargamer, that’s as much as most norms can grasp. My wife tells people I play with little toy soldiers. It’s more demeaning, but in my heart I know she is right.

    #40905
    Avatar photoAngel Barracks
    Moderator

    this is partly an attempt to separate my hobby from my business

    I think this is why I find myself drawn to video games, doing wargames for a job, takes the fun out of hobby.

    (or summat)

    #40924
    Avatar photoA Lot of Gaul
    Participant

    I think of myself as a hobbyist, with historical miniatures as my primary focus. I spend my leisure time researching my armies and their cultural contexts, painting and basing my miniatures, and of course playing wargames with my ‘toy soldiers.’ Since I do all of these activities solitaire, I don’t really see myself as being part of a clique.

    Scott

     

    "Ventosa viri restabit." ~ Harry Field

    #40933
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    I’m just a wargamer. Always have been and probably always will be.

    That said, my initial foray into the hobby was through historical Avalon Hill wargames, but when I started buying my own, they were all fantasy/sci-fi. IIRC, my first purchases were AH’s Starship Troopers, SPI’s Sorcerer and TSR’s Battle of the Five Armies. The last one was the only one I was able to learn how to play on my own (I was nine at the time), so it probably saved me for the hobby.

    I’m trying to remember the first historical wargame I bought. It may actually have been AH’s Squad Leader.

    I’d been playing with Airfix soldiers since I was six and my uncles finally bought me some miniatures rules — the old-style mimeographed kind, stapled into a booklet. Then I found Grant’s and Featherstone’s books at my local library. Soon, I was basing my unpainted Airfix figures on index cards according to Grant’s rules, blithely mixing American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars types.

    Around this time I got into D&D and I bought Chainmail as a result. Soon, I was asking for lead soldiers for Christmas and birthdays. (Oddly, I never tried playing Chainmail with my Airfix Romans and Britons). I also started to go to Gencon at this time and there I started playing “real” miniatures battles almost exclusively (after all, I could board wargame and roleplay to my heart’s content back in Oshkosh, but only at a big con could I, say, play Napoleonic miniatures).

    When I went to Madison for undergrad, I got involved in the active local wargaming scene and got more chances to play with miniatures. But it was only in the late 1980s that I really started collecting. First a Warhammer Fantasy skeleton army (cheap and easy to paint), then Warhammer 40k Epic (Ermmagerd! 6mm sci fi! It seemed like such a revelation at the time).

    When I immigrated to Brazil and got hired by Devir as their gaming specialist, I went back to 25mm fantasy, mostly because those were the miniatures available (almost all pirated). Then I got into 6mm sci-fi because Devir produced Battletech and GURPS (landing us some sweet Ogre figures). Then 15mm fantasy.

    Now, I am doing 3mm WWII, Seven Years War, SF and Napoleonics and 6mm Napoleonics in MDF. These are pretty much the only minis I can afford in terms of cash and space, but I dream of one day being able to do a 28mm Arthurian Britain game for Saga. Oh yeah: I also paint 15mm Quar.

    So I’m a wargamer and I will pretty much play anything, but historically, I’ve leaned more towards fantasy, Sci-fi and imaginations in my gaming purchases.

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

    #40952
    Avatar photoSpurious
    Participant

    Whilst a certain amount of events and discussions of the past few years have made me lean away from the name, though that is because it’s a very generic title as well as certain clusters of rather disreputable folks that I would rather not be associated with branding themselves with the name ‘Gamer’, it does still seem to be very fitting for myself given the sheer amount of time I spend in some way related to games (in many forms) every single day.

    Plus I don’t have any better ideas.

     

    #40957
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Has your blog broken Spurious?
    The link seems bad.

    #40961
    Avatar photoSpurious
    Participant

    Has your blog broken Spurious? The link seems bad.

    Ah, knew I’d forgotten something, fixed it.

    #40964
    Avatar photoChris Pringle
    Participant

    I think of myself as a wargamer, but it’s not how I usually describe myself. It tends to go something like this:

    “So what’s your hobby/pastime/interest?”

    “I like conflict simulation …”

    [… puzzled look …]

    “… which is to say, playing with toy soldiers.”

    Which I think is the right balance of accurate description and pre-emptive self-deprecation. And by not saying ‘wargamer’ I avoid the listener assuming I play Warhammer (nothing against Warhammer etc, it’s just a bit different from what I do).

    Chris

    Bloody Big BATTLES!

    https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BBB_wargames/info

    http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.co.uk/

    #40968
    Avatar photowillz
    Participant

    this is partly an attempt to separate my hobby from my business

    I think this is why I find myself drawn to video games, doing wargames for a job, takes the fun out of hobby. (or summat)

    Never lose the fun, always enjoy this hobby.

    #40973
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    Historical wargaming to me has always been “set up a battle that could have happened” or at the smaller scales “set up an encounter that probably happened 10 million times”.

    The idea that some people play very specific units and specific battles was kind of a revelation to me once I got on the interwebs back in them days.

    #40974
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    I think of myself as a wargamer, but it’s not how I usually describe myself. It tends to go something like this: “So what’s your hobby/pastime/interest?” “I like conflict simulation …” [… puzzled look …] “… which is to say, playing with toy soldiers.”

    I usually add on, after that: “The chicks really dig it, you see.”

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

    #40990
    Avatar photoGuy Farrish
    Participant

    See if I wanted to be nit-picky, I could point out that real ‘units’ don’t have ‘combat values’. And that no two military historians can agree on the ‘historical set up’ of a battle, a problem that increases the further one goes back in time. 😉

    Well you could but I’d have to wonder if you had read the rest of my post, and if you had, whether you thought I was completely barking or maybe, just maybe, taking the mickey?

    And, no, real units don’t have little labels with their combat values printed on them.

    But they do have combat values.

    Working out what they are relative to other units is perhaps difficult but not impossible. And lots of quite serious types do it.

    Commercial hobby games generally don’t try to pretend they mimic reality. Some do. Pretend that it is. They generally don’t. But it is certainly possible to play a game which is pretty close to the historical set up – and yet still allow the cock ups of the wargames general to deviate from history.

    And yes – the further you go back, the more unlikely becomes an attempt at historical reality.

    #40993
    Avatar photoNot Connard Sage
    Participant

    You must never, ever, take me seriously Guy 🙂

    Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

    #41112
    Avatar photoGuy Farrish
    Participant

    But I do!

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