Musings on Figure Scales

The release of the new Warlord Games “Epic Battles” Napoleonic range seems to have set off quite a discussion on scales and manufacturers choices and it set me off looking back over my many years as a Napoleonic gamer, student and historian.

So, whose “side” are the manufacturers of ranges/games such as Perry, Warlord, Flames of War, &c on? Obviously, they are primarily in business to make money, but, equally as obviously, they are dependent upon wargamers for business and these statements clearly needs to be in balance. Clearly, the desire for a “captive market” as evinced by altering accepted scales to non-standard ones such as 12.5mm lies on the “business side of the scales, but how much notice do the manufacturers take of their customers? We are seeing a situation where rules, even unit sizes are dependent not on any historic accuracy or imperative so much as what the market will bear in terms of price per box.

Of course, this isn't a new phenomena. The first company that really took this attitude was Games Workshop, with their “one stop shop” for gamers (particularly the young and parent financed) , their pre-digested rules and pre-packaged “history,” so of course, with so many of the current games designers/sculptors starting off with GW it's hardly surprising they try to follow the same business model. GW were the first to state that only THEIR products should be used in their games and encouraged their young gamers to not play anyone not sticking to this “rule.” Similarly, GW were the first company to up-scale from 25mm to 28, effectively freezing out the opposition at the expense of the gamers' pockets, with respect to their games.

Don't get me wrong, if these companies can persuade the marks to buy their products, fair enough, and, to be fair, they HAVE brought a lot of new blood into our hobby. I seriously doubt whether gaming has ever been as popular as it is now, for which we should be thankful, but on the down-side, we've LOST an awful lot of how the hobby used to be:- the anarchy, the individuality and, through the ubiquitous “source books,” “Googling” questions or asking on FB groups and such, expecting to find answers and details ready made, skills in researching and the desire to do so are diminished. I've no problem with newbies asking daft questions to get them going and we ALL have those problems we CAN'T find answers to and so need help, but it shouldn't become the only way we learn and develop our skills as painters, sculptors, players or history buffs.

It seems to me that interest in gaming a particular period has very little to do with importance of a particular conflict, the rules, the "feel" of it or anything else. What it boils down to is how much information is easily available. It helps explain why say, Napoleonic games are more common than the Age of Marlborough or the Seven Years War. I know from my own research into the armed forces of Tipu Sultan just HOW hard it is to find information on unusual periods, theatres or armies and how much of what we CAN find is wrong.

In a way, I'd love for us to go back to those early days. There was something a bit “fringe” about being a gamer. There was a hint of glamour and mystery about it that is lacking now, as if we were each going to be the victims of an “outing campaign.” At one time, there were even hints that the hobby was to be outlawed -made illegal. I can imagine being arrested in possession of a bag-full of dice on suspicion of being a wargamer. Does anyone else remember going to the “Triples” in Sheffield and having to run the gauntlet of Ban the Bomb protestors and Sally Army to get in?

Personally, I'm giving up on relying on manufacturing companies for my fix of minis. I'm investing in a 3D printer so I can fix my OWN scale and this I think is the way ahead for the hobby. I feel that with the increase in high quality STL files and improvements in technology and lowering prices that THIS will be the shape of things to come. Now, I don't know how the best of these files are made, but I suspect they involve re-enactors, costumes and 3D scanners. Using these, there is no reason why clubs and groups shouldn't produce their own figures. Such a scenario almost puts us back in the “good old days(?)” of the previous “golden age” and will hopefully lead to a return to more individuality in our hobby.

3D French Young Guard from STL files by Marco Campagna

The grey "ghosts" in the background are the rest of the Young Guard awaiting painting.

All that is good in wargaming does NOT spring from Games Workshop. In his essay “The Very Real Difference Between Historical and Non-Historical Wargaming” Jeffrey Knudsen of The War Artisan's Workshop states:-

"Historical gaming followed the path beaten by Warhammer." "Warhammer Historical was one the best things that happened to historical wargaming." "The wargaming world has caught up to Warhammer" "[the Warhammer rules] have turned into must-do concepts in our wargaming world, whether fantasy or historical." . . . which could only have been made by someone with a woefully shallow view of wargaming. While acknowledging that "everything in a Warhammer rules set will have been tried or published before", he seems unaware that it was constructed from mechanics that had been tried and abandoned by many historical wargame designers decades earlier, for good reasons. He also claims that it established an "archetype" and was built by "the best minds in the wargaming world", apparently without any awareness that he was propounding what would be recognized as unsupportable hype by anyone with wargaming experience outside of a very narrow range. He proclaims that, while Warhammer Ancients Battles is "still a fun set to play", it falls short of Warhammer Fantasy because of limited options, viz., "You can put Arthur on a horse, but not on a flying dragon." as if the pageantry, glory and romance of Arthurian England were not sufficient to hold one's interest without dragons. He also makes the mistake of judging the value of a rule set by its popularity. If that is a valid criterion, then we must judge a Hyundai to be an automobile superior to a Mercedes, since so many more people buy Hyundais. In his one-line comment at the close of the column the editor states (hopefully with just a touch of irony) "Rumour has it that the original Warhammer was formed around the solid principles of historical wargaming."

“Many of the most recent generation of wargamers seem only marginally concerned with, and often completely unaware of the hobby's origins. This lack of perspective leaves them unaware that fantasy and science fiction gaming is a very recent offshoot of an ancient and venerable practice, with its roots very firmly embedded in reality. I have even run across gamers who thought that historical wargames were a recent, niche development of fantasy and science fiction gaming(!). Fantasy and Sci-fi gaming came very late to the dance and, in spite of its current popularity, had no influence on the development of the more general hobby until the last few decades. In its recent explosion of popularity it has differentiated itself from its ancestor so dramatically as to become virtually a different hobby altogether. “

“Wargaming being primarily a social hobby, social divides have arisen between those who embrace the newer styles as part of a larger and increasingly diverse hobby and those who persevere in the original, historically based games. Conflict and friction have developed over space in gaming venues, retail establishments, and hobby publications and invective flies back and forth, with those who clung to the older style accusing the others of being juvenile and frivolous, and the proponents of the newer styles characterizing the others as stuffy and elitist. Other rifts opened within each genre between those who prefer rigid, tournament-style games and those who indulge in more cinematic and narrative types, between those who savor bottom-up, nuts and bolts simulations and those who enjoy top-down command studies. These differences are often highlighted and aggravated by vocal proponents of one faction or another who are all too ready to disparage the others and defend their own favored genre and style as superior. Under these pressures, the already small hobby of adventure gaming has inevitably splintered into even smaller, niche sub-hobbies. (I make no value judgment on this trend; I merely note it as fact.) However, some of the most strident declarations come not from the fans of a particular genre, but from the generalist gamers who blithely cross between genres and styles in pursuit of a good game. For these gamers, the game is all-important and the subject matter is either secondary or irrelevant. They seem to prefer themes that are colorful and dramatic, but they are indifferent to the source of the material, be it taken from the pages of history books, literature, or film. The miniatures or other game components have no meaning for them beyond their function in the game, and the mechanics of the game have no significance for them beyond their utility in winning. As far as they are concerned, any game with historical playing pieces is a "historical wargame", regardless of any dissimilarity between what happens in the game and what actually happened historically. For someone who comes to wargaming primarily because it is a vivid and dynamic way to engage military history (that is, someone for whom the subject matter is of primary importance), this attitude is difficult to understand; and, because the history of war is a grim and serious subject, it definitely rubs the historical wargamer the wrong way when someone insists that what he is doing is no more than "playing with toy soldiers", and can never be anything more. This is akin to claiming that, because you only use your pencil to draw stick figures, therefore my pencil cannot draw a portrait or a still life. Though there are superficial similarities between historical and non-historical gaming (the use of dice, miniatures or counters, maps or terrain), a profound difference lies in the way in which they are used. If games were not capable of being anything more than play, they would not find such useful and widespread application in business, the military, and the social sciences. Even more obnoxious is the generalist gamers' insistence that the purely historical gamer must include other genres as being part of his hobby, and must welcome them at venues where historical gamers gather to partake of their mutual interest in military history. This is patently ridiculous, akin to insisting that an association of landscape artists must include house painters because they also use brushes and paints, or that a gathering of bakers must include barbecue chefs because they are both "just making food." This blindness to disparity is a natural result of indifference to the content and purpose of historical gaming. The inability (or refusal) to perceive a difference between historical gaming and other genres does not mean that no difference exists, any more than the inability of a color-blind individual to perceive a difference between red and green means that they are the same color. “

In a way, our games have become subject to the whims of fashion, behind which games and figure designers hide. How often have you started collecting a range of models for a particular game only to find it has been discontinued, re-sized or re-worked so completely you have to begin collecting again? Old sets of rules that served us well for many years have been replaced by newer (and therefore better?) sets, using new and “better” systems that appear to be more to produce quick games than any historical accuracy. Old rules are decried as being “proven wrong” or as outdated, (though how you “prove” a set of rules or assumptions wrong I don't understand.) even, as with Quarries rules, “racist,” replacing them with ones that treat every army as identical in ability and requiring “army lists” or “victory conditions” that slew the games even more than the supposedly “bad” older rules. So many “modern” rule sets appear to have very little actual Napoleonic content beyond the minis and are proudly proclaimed as “having a Napoleonic flavour” which is a bit like the difference between vanilla essence and extract. In some, even the most basic concepts, figure, ground and time scales appear to have vanished, with basing conventions grossly distorting unit depths. Certainly most modern rules seem to be unable to deal with re-creating (simulating) the warfare of our period in all but the simplest of ways without masses of "special rules" to cover events the basics don't cater for. Fair enough, we don't always WANT to simulate warfare accurately, but to me at least, a game is far more enjoyable if it IS reasonably accurate history-wise.

Ironically, despite so many players calling Bruce Quarries venerable rules, with their "National Characteristics," racist, it is amazing how popular the WW2 game "Flames of War" is, given that it relies heavily on national characteristics and stereotypes. Perhaps colour photos, "idiot sheet" style explanations and the fact everything is pre-digested and new makes up for that.