@piers Was that the open letter that Pete from Baccus did on the state of the industry saying pretty much the same thing we are saying here?

Again it’s like we have moved away from modelling a conflict with rules reflecting the period to more “abstract” concepts that we now take as the norm. 28mm now has us playing games where the max range of a rifle is about as far as the model could throw a grenade (to scale). The big/popular ancients sets of rules has Julius Ceasar having a “hero” profile and getting stuck in with multiple wounds and beating up hoards of German Cav.

But we excuse all this as “giving a good game”, and we see the phrase “cinematic” given when unrealistic things happen.

The drive for the realistic game by rule writers seems to have disappeared, and instead it’s seems to be a competition to see who can come up with the most innovative game mechanic (even if it doesn’t really fit into the era that it’s being used in).

It IS the situation with the rules that seems to be the thing that sits ill with me (again this is just a personal opinion). There just doesn’t seem to be the variety of gaming styles/rules that we used to have (yet we have more professional rules writers than we ever did before). Wargames Rules do seem to be moving towards a family boardgame level of complexity (again perhaps this is due to having the professional rules writer who’s remit is to appeal to as many people as possible).

It just feels that we’re getting “dumb” rules because the writers expect us to be dumb perhaps?

But we DO need to see more exposure of types of gaming other than 28mm Skirmish. Is that fact we’re swamped by articles on this due to Games Companies using professional writers to “feed” the magazines/media, or just that indeed gamers are no longer interested in these types of games and moved on?

I dunno, it’s a hard nut to crack. But I do still wonder why I’m using rules written in 1988, and why nothing “better” has appeared recently from the big companies that have the funding to steer market appeal towards certain genres (and they all seem to be producing the same product with little or no variety in concept or scope).

But I do tend to “rant” on, perhaps I need to drink less coffee 😀