Are you a gaming snob?

[Onebigriver]

Yep, unpainted plastics.  Now...resin...they can sod off! 

"I've no issue with gaming with plastics etc. if there are kids or new players, etc."

You lot must be psychic 

[Malamute]

* Remember, the first big Lead Adventure Meeting (which took place in Germany, but had a few LAFers from other countries too) was an invitation-only event that happened in secret. A few days of peculiar silence in the forum were followed by the sudden, after-the-fact announcement that many of the "rockstar" LAFers had convened for a gaming extravaganza. I know they meant it as a fun, positive surprise, and in a way it was, but from my underachiever's perspective it was also a somewhat daunting jolt that made me realise I'd been flattering myself

Actually you are wrong. The first Lead Adventure Meeting was here in England. I know because I organised it. Was it by invitation? Yes it was because I invited the people that I knew on the forum who I was friends with. It was a weekend together with like minded people to play games and have fun.  It was not a convention/show open to anyone to attend. 
We have never suggested it is anything other than that. The following year our German friends decided to reciprocate and held a German gathering and so it has been since since then. When you invite your friends around for a weekends gaming do you publisize it in advance and allow anyone you don't know to turn up?

[Captain Blood]

I was going to point that out too.
(In fact, I think we may have had two 'BLAMs' before the first 'GLAM' )

We have run BLAMs for the last 8 or 9 years, and I'd estimate that at least 100 different LAF members have attended these events across that time span. Even though on any one day there may be only 20 - 25 people there. So not really elitist or exclusive. But not uncontrolled attendance either. Normally it's governed by the size of the room being used 

[flags_of_war]

Yeah im a total snob. I tend to game with like minded gamers as i know what standard will be on the table. I've played games with guys at my club on felt sheets but i don't enjoy the experience as much as i do when playing on a great table.

I guess that's comes from gaming not being my first reason for loving the hobby. The table and the figures are why i got into wargames and i won't game anything less than 28mm as frankly it doesn't spark my brain in anyway. 

I know guys who don't care for what I like in gaming and i guess it's what makes us all unique in the hobby.

[Remgain]

Yes, indeed. Please.

Actually I have no problem using unpainted or proxies for testing some new ruleset, or something similar.
But usually we play with painted minis, to our best, that, obviously changes from person to person.
What I really cannot stand is minis painted to a VERY low standard, without any effort to obtain a good result.
In this case it's clear that the player has no interest in the aestetical pleasure of wargaming.
To explain what I mean, once I saw WW2 German infantry with silverplated helmets... why the player didn't paint with a green? ANY green would be better!

Marco, Italian snob.

PS In our club, unpainted minis get a -1 to the die roll. So... your choice!!

[Rhoderic]

Actually you are wrong. The first Lead Adventure Meeting was here in England. I know because I organised it. Was it by invitation? Yes it was because I invited the people that I knew on the forum who I was friends with. It was a weekend together with like minded people to play games and have fun.  It was not a convention/show open to anyone to attend.  
We have never suggested it is anything other than that. The following year our German friends decided to reciprocate and held a German gathering and so it has been since since then. When you invite your friends around for a weekends gaming do you publisize it in advance and allow anyone you don't know to turn up?

I'm going to write a proper reply to this, but it has to be rather long and explanatory, so it will have to wait for when I have more time to sit down and write it with my full attention (hopefully tonight). I only ask now that this subject of discussion (meaning the Lead Adventure Meetings thing) be left dormant by everyone until I've posted my reply, as I need to be able to defuse this present situation which wasn't supposed to be fused in the first place. I'll just say for now that I've been very clumsy trying to get my intended point across, and as a consequence I've been justifiably misunderstood. Sorry about that, and please be patient for my reply

[Dr DeAth]

I didn't think the BLAM meetings were exclusive or snobby at all.  As Nick has said they started out with people he know and Richard's comment about space is equally correct

[Rhoderic]

Again, I humbly ask for a chance to set things right before this grows any bigger - only that's going to take a bit of writing, which will have to wait for a bit later. I've been misunderstood, and you're replying to the implication that I was somehow expecting for the meetings to not be invitation only, or that I was expecting to be one of the invited, which I didn't mean to imply (nor did I expect such things). I can definitely see why I've been misunderstood, but please give me time to defuse this situation.

Meanwhile, I hope this doesn't kill the original topic of the thread.

[Vermis]

Actually I have no problem using unpainted or proxies for testing some new ruleset, or something similar.
But usually we play with painted minis, to our best, that, obviously change from person to person.
What I really cannot stand is minis painted to a VERY low standard, without any effort to obtain a good result.

In a club I used to go to, a couple of the veteran members had a strange inversion of this. They liked painted minis for everything, but their standard of painting was awful. I don't know if I'm being a snob myself, or making a meal of it, but it was the worst I've seen. It looked like... a face would be painted by dipping a frayed brush in thick 'flesh' paint, and giving it a quick flick/wipe over said face. It looked less like a little representation of a historical soldier, and more a rough abstract painting applied to a surface that happened to be in the shape of a historical soldier...

It wouldn't have been so bad - they can paint their own minis how they like - if they didn't promote it to some of us more 'newbie' players as the way to get hundreds of minis painted up in a few weeks, then complain that they had to keep lending portions of their enormous collections, because our enormous collections were 'inexplicably' taking time to finish.

In general, I'm happy with unpainted minis as wips, whether mine or someone else's. For games that I might put on (rare enough) I like to have at least a three colour minimum, to provide at least a bit of aesthetic appeal.

[Elbows]

(shoots a dart into Rhoderic and drags him into an alleyway) 

[Bugsda]

"rockstar" LAFers 

[Rhoderic]

Actually you are wrong. The first Lead Adventure Meeting was here in England. I know because I organised it. Was it by invitation? Yes it was because I invited the people that I knew on the forum who I was friends with. It was a weekend together with like minded people to play games and have fun.  It was not a convention/show open to anyone to attend.  
We have never suggested it is anything other than that. The following year our German friends decided to reciprocate and held a German gathering and so it has been since since then. When you invite your friends around for a weekends gaming do you publisize it in advance and allow anyone you don't know to turn up?

I was going to point that out too.
(In fact, I think we may have had two 'BLAMs' before the first 'GLAM' )

We have run BLAMs for the last 8 or 9 years, and I'd estimate that at least 100 different LAF members have attended these events across that time span. Even though on any one day there may be only 20 - 25 people there. So not really elitist or exclusive. But not uncontrolled attendance either. Normally it's governed by the size of the room being used  

I didn't think the BLAM meetings were exclusive or snobby at all.  As Nick has said they started out with people he know and Richard's comment about space is equally correct

I must apologise. I actually was afraid I would kick off something like this. It's difficult for me to formulate what I'm trying to say without having it turn out in a way that's easily misunderstood as chastisement, or even (heaven forfend) outrage. The key thing here is that it's not really to do with you, it's to do with me.

Just to be clear, I certainly didn't mistake the meetings for open "conventions". Of course they were invitational gatherings among friends. That's not the thing I was getting snagged up on. I can't stress that enough seeing as the replies have mainly been about defending the invitational aspect of the meetings (that's also why I asked everyone to leave the subject dormant until I'd posted this reply, so we wouldn't wrongly go any farther down that direction - I hope you understand now). Likewise, I certainly didn't think that I personally should have been one of the invited - I've never been anywhere near closely enough associated with the "core" of LAF, and I've hardly ever been a proper contributor to the forum of anything other than text (occasionally walls of it, which isn't a good thing). It's not about "hurt feelings" from being "left out". I know full well who I am and who I'm not.

As for what it was that drove me away from LAF, that's a bit trickier to put in words...

A large part of it (silly though it may sound) was that I felt I'd made myself a bit of a fool having tried and failed to drum up conversation in the forum during that mysterious lull, because I simply wasn't aware there was a very good reason the majority of the forum's top-tier contributors had all dropped off at the same time. That's about my own overanxiety over the thought of embarrassing myself, not about you. I hope that makes sense.

Partly as a consequence of that, I also (gradually) got to feeling that in the bigger picture, I was just embarrassing myself trying to be a prolific poster on LAF when I wasn't really contributing much of anything of lasting value - ie. almost no photos of pretty miniatures or terrain. I was being an imposition upon the cool kids' table. Everything but one thing was as it should have been on LAF: It was (and is) a chummy, enthusiastic community of great people that make great things happen, a veritable engine of the miniature gaming hobby. The one thing that didn't belong, I felt at the time, was myself, the poser wasting other people's attention.

At any rate, I'm over it now ("it" being my own self-doubt over whether I've "earned" my place at the LAF table or not), and have been over it for a long time. I only brought it up in this thread as an artifact of the past; dead and empty of the emotional substance that once made it meaningful, but as an artifact, perhaps worth a glance apropos the subject broached by Modhail - that is, the notion that some people feel they don't belong here because they're not "elite" enough.

Gods, I feel like I've made myself the drama queen of this forum, which is the last thing I want. Please do put me out of your minds now, for everyone's comfort, mine and yours. Back to our scheduled programming...


EDIT:

PS. I never said, nor implied, nor thought that the meetings are "snobbish". They are to my mind moderately "elite" (not "elitist", mind) judging by photos of the games themselves, but "elite" and "snobbish" aren't the same thing at all. Snobbish people can be held at fault. Trying to hold anyone at fault for being elite is absurd.

PPS. Sorry about misremembering the order of the BLAMs and GLAM.

[OSHIROmodels]

"rockstar" LAFers  

Nah, no pretty, young groupies  

cheers

James

[Lowtardog]

Personally I dont like gaming with unpainted figures as it is part of the hobby and for me something of the buzz of buying the minis. Terrain you have to compromise on depending on space, transport etc especially when gaming at a club. I do however drool over the eye candy on this forum

[eilif]

A snob?  Maybe...
I prefer the concept of having standards.

I am definitely of the sort that if it isn't painted and played on nice terrain I'm not interested.  I'm an adult with real responsibilities so I want my limited game time to be as visually engaging as the wargaming magazine/book pictures that inspired me to join the hobby 20 or so years ago.

I belong to a club that adheres to the same standards.  We only meet every other week, but it's nice to know that we're going to get a great looking game every time.

Does that make me a snob?  Some would say so, but consider the following:

1) We try not to put any sort of "painting standards". If 3 colors and a dip is all you can manage, then that's fine, come join us and have fun.  Interestingly everyone seems fine with this. We've never had anyone do anything outlandish like one-color figs or the like. We have a wide range of painting abilities (I'm probably in the lower quarter) but everyone values painted figs and seems to try to at least meet minimum tabletop standards.
2) We collectively have enough extra warbands and armies to share that we've NEVER had to turn someone away who didn't have painted figures for a certain game.  "Everybody plays" is almost as important to us as having a good-looking game.
3) We encourage the use of alternate (often cheaper) figures as long as it's clear what they represent.  No need to spend your $ on the latest expensive figs if you've got some older/other figs.
4) We mostly play games that are small in scope and often "generic" so it's inexpensive to acquire and easy to paint up a force for most games.

All this to say, I don't think holding to a set of standards makes a group snobish if they take measures to maintain an encouraging, inclusive and relaxed gaming environment.

Some of you may remember that I wrote up a lengthy article in defense of hobby standards some time ago.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2014/08/painting-matters-in-defense-of-hobby.html
Ended up being out blog's most commented on article and spurred an even longer discussion at the WSS facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/WSSMagazine/posts/689490177767008