Historical Gaming - style that doesn't fit the period

[flags_of_war]

I've been having a few interesting conversation of late with a couple of friends and I'm not sure what i want to make of it all. It's to do with a style of gaming that is becoming more and more popular but I'll be honest I don't feel it fits the period. It's mostly to do with the latest Kickstarter for Clash of Spears but for me the style of gaming doesn't fit the period.

There are more and more small scale battle or large skirmish styles games coming out but they also come with the rules that made the large battles interesting like Phalanx, War Elephants, Testudo and other formations. For me things are not for skirmish gaming and I'm wondering why it's becoming popular. I turn up to a battle with 10 guys and someone has an elephant I'm not hanging around.

Is it the case that folk just want to game for the sake of it rather than recreating a true historical game? You can't have 6 guys in a Phalanx it just wouldn't work. Ut's the same when i changed the rules for M&T into the 1745 period and folk wanted the Highland charge. 

Yes it's cool to try it but it simply wouldn't work at that scale. I love small scale games but i always keep it the scenarios to what they would be at that scale. A daring raid, a rescue or small chance encounter.

I can't help but feel something should just be left to the big table games and let GW play with the fantasy stuff.

[JollyBob]

I can see an interesting scenario in ten guys trying to kill or capture a war elephant that has gotten separated from the main army...

But yeah, a four man phalanx or testudo seems ludicrous. I suppose the writers are trying to maintain a "feel" of the army by giving them a special rule or formation, but honestly these should be add-ons or options for a expanded game, not something catered to by a small skirmish ruleset.

[tallyho]

It will get worse... The lardies are jumping on the ancient skirmish bandwagon as well.

[Yankeepedlar01]

They are all aimed at the Goldfish Gamer with no sticking power to field an army, they are just games, no more, no less.

[Belligerentparrot]

They are all aimed at the Goldfish Gamer with no sticking power to field an army, they are just games, no more, no less.

Or at people who like to spend hours carefully converting each mini to make it unique and characterful? 

I could see the historical dimension working with a sufficiently well-prepared scenario (e.g. 10 volunteers try to take out a bunker on Iwo Jima). Otherwise, I agree with a lot of what the OP says.

[Inkpaduta]

I think you put your finger on it. People do not have the time, money, space or maybe interest to produce large armies so they go skirmish.
Yet, they still want the big battle feel. Partly I also think it is because we haven't really defined what is a skirmish. Some think it is still 6-9 units on
the board. Others, like me, think it should be a handful of figures.

[DS615]

They are all aimed at the Goldfish Gamer with no sticking power to field an army, they are just games, no more, no less.

They're all just games. You're not doing any deep meaning scientific work, no matter how seriously you take your little dolls.

[Elbows]

I love me some skirmish games.  I do agree though that there are some very off-scale historical styled skirmish games.  Skirmishes did occur in any era in history, but a lot of these companies want an excuse to sell you a $50-60 model, or appeal to the gamers who want to run that kind of thing.  I've seen no end of skirmish games which start off well-intentioned, and then, six expansions later are....completely bastardized forms of their previous self.

There are more skirmish game options right now than ever before.  The simplest answer is; don't play the ones that you don't like.  It's really only limited to you and your gaming buddies to decide what you enjoy playing.

[OB]

Maybe it's about time and money.  Big armies take a lot of both.  Skirmish games not so much.  For that matter the latter are easier on storage too. 

[Antonio J Carrasco]

In my case, and in the particular case of Clash of Spears, is two things: first, that I have been long convinced that skirmishing was the most common experience of the Ancient warrior; and second, that CoS is a true skirmish game. You can close your models and  field the big armored chaps, but, more often than not, being a skirmish game, your heavies will be exhausted by your opponent's lights and then killed. A bit as happened at Sphacteria with the Spartiates during the Peloponnesian War. I have playtested CoS and it is a ruleset firmly based on historical evidence, rather than in Fantasy Ancients (not that Fantasy Ancients are bad, but I like something with more flesh)

Then there is another plus: it caters my taste for different periods, but keeping it manageable. I mean, I have wanted to collect the Second Punic War in Iberia for ages, but never had the time nor the space to collect full armies. Games like CoS allows me to collect a few models, enjoy the skirmishes, and then keep my focus for big battles in the Successors period, which is the one I have invested more time (and money!) already.

[Hobgoblin]

I don't really play historical games, but a few thoughts occur to me:

1. Some of the best 'historical' games are really fantasy games: Lion Rampant (which acknowledges that it's more Hollywood than history) and Saga (which has magical effects in the Age of Vikings battleboards). They're designed to be played with historical miniatures and with period atmosphere, but they're not in any way simulations. I'm sure the designers don't believe that Norse berserks always fought in units of four, for example!

2. I wonder if the growth in the sort of skirmishes the OP describes has something to do with a reduced willingness to accept large figure-scales in massed-battle games. I really like the HotT/DBA/ADG sort of game, but I think more people struggle to accept that three miniatures are 300 men (or whatever) than perhaps they did in the past. I suspect that ultimately stems from the influence of Warhammer, which - as acknowledged by Rick Priestley - did some very odd things with units that were part 1:10 and part 1:1. It also had units of, say, 20 men wheeling and forming other strict formations that such small units would never need to undertake. And it very much blurred the skirmish/massed-battle distinction.

3. As a result of that, I think that a group of models that - 20 years ago - might have formed a DBA army or equivalent is now more likely to be used in a 1:1 skirmish game. I know DBA is still popular, and ADG seems to be too, but I suspect that there are more gamers now who are more comfortable with a 1:1 figure ratio. (I could be completely wrong on this!)

4. Warhammer and related games have popularised the idea of 'factions' with special rules and special powers. It's a recurrent theme on this forum and elsewhere that many gamers don't like the idea of all armies having access to the same troop types (it's a common complaint against the Rampant rules and HotT). And if you're not happy with the same rules representing both an orc spearman and a dwarf spearman, might you not also be keen to have mechanical distinctions between an Anglo-Dane and a Viking? There's nothing wrong with those preferences, but I suspect that Warhammer, et al, have helped to create a bigger appetite for 'flavour' - which might encourage game designers to throw in testudos and phalanxes even when there are too few men to form them.

[Cubs]

There's nothing wrong with those preferences, but I suspect that Warhammer, et al, have helped to create a bigger appetite for 'flavour' - which might encourage game designers to throw in testudos and phalanxes even when there are too few men to form them.

I think that's true, but I recall arguing with my brother that my Waterloo Highlanders absolutely MUST have the Highland Charge rule, despite basically just being bog standard line infantry, based on nothing more than the fact that I loved them and thought they were really cool looking. This was before we'd ever played Warhammer!

We like our toys and we choose our models based on some sort of flavour or style that interests us and it seems natural for us to try to reflect that in our games, probably too strongly for accuracy, but it is just about fun and games after all.

After all, there's probably some deep meaning to the way the pieces move and attack in chess, but I've only once seen the Queen slide rapidly diagonally across a parade ground from one side to the other, and that was because her horse stepped on an icy patch of manure that hadn't been cleared up. Coincidentally, someone with a knighthood narrowly avoided being hit by leaping two steps sideways and one backwards.

[Gibby]

Historical skirmish is a challenging genre. You can't please everyone, and it's amazing how differently two people can interpret what is being represented.

Had a weird moment with a friend where, after many games of Sharp Practice 2, it suddenly dawned on us that we were both viewing the battle in very different ways. To me, everything was 1:1 scale, whereas to him it was a more vague scale playing out a small battle. To him, 24-30 troops using various formations and drill in such a way was inconceivable, and in his mind each group of 8 was at least 80 men.

I didn't bring up that once you get vague about the unit scale, things like buildings, true line of sight and various other skirmish considerations break down. This all cropped up because in his mind's eye, a 12 pounder cannon was killing hundreds of men in one shot!

Ultimately, somewhere down the line, I think there became a demand for games at 1:1 scale but with nods to the battlefield characteristics that might be displayed by the various belligerent of the period. How far those nods go will obviously result in attracting different types of players. People just need to be honest with themselves about what they want. If the entire concept doesn't work for your understanding of the era then best to stick to big battle sets. Happy to let others have fun however they wish!

[Gibby]

It will get worse... The lardies are jumping on the ancient skirmish bandwagon as well.

Not sure that's fair. From what I have read about the game they're making, they seem to be making it at a scale where you're essentially "zoomed in" on the actions of an actual tactical manoeuvre unit, such as a Roman Century. This is different, I think, to what is commonly represented in a "skirmish" where multiple tactical units are represented by small groups of individuals.

[FierceKitty]

I think the predominance of skirmish at present is an inevitable effect of 28mm's aggressive marketing, combined with the legacy of fantasy (and Bolt Action, though I wonder what kind of gamer plays that one twice). I regret that, given my age, I'm unlikely to live long enough to see real wargames return.