Very interesting question. I’ve often wondered something similar re: roleplaying games. Gamers tend to play dungeon crawls, horror, intrigue, espionage type games, etc. So a bit more varied than your average wargame and there are more exceptions (magical ponies, rock bands, etc.) but there are definitely genres that RPGs are better suited to than others.

I suppose with wargames and miniatures it comes to atmosphere and ‘cinematography’. Why use miniatures in wargames rather than cardboard? Because we use miniatures to fire our imagination so that we can ‘see’ the action taking place.

There are plenty of board games that aren’t wargames, but do they suffer for not having miniatures? In most cases no. Abstract board games with numbers, words, shapes, etc. are by definition abstract and don’t need minis. Building power grids, settling islands or fighting pandemics are all cool and somewhat cinematic things to do… But would miniatures contribute to making those things more cinematic? Not much, if at all.

So to return to your original question, are miniatures only suited for fighting games? I would turn this question around. What games would benefit from using miniatures? Not many, to any great degree.

If we try to think of exceptions… I suppose city building (or space colony building) could be enhanced by really nice models of cities (or bases). Games like Ticket to Ride benefit from having plastic trains, but would they be much improved by having much better quality trains? Probably not.

Sub Terra is a game about trying to escape from a cave. The base game comes with meeples but I think the game is improved by using the miniatures that are available separately. The cave is ‘haunted’ by something, but there’s no actual combat. So I think it comes back to it being ‘cinematic’.

If a game can be improved by being imagined as a blockbuster movie, then there’s probably scope for using miniatures. If not, then there’s probably no need for them.