my view is there are different levels of historical wargaming.

1. Using historical minis creating your own scenario

2. Refighting a historical battle, using the same forces on the similar battle field

3. Refighting with historical deployment

4. Just following turn by turn what happened.

The last is boring but in my gaming group we do a combination of all the other three depending on the mood or what we fancy doing.

Dismissing “historicals” out of hand means you could be missing out on some really fascinating stuff.

A few years ago, I decided I wanted something a little more historically accurate – rather than a hollywood style – in a “wild west” game.  I had some Black Scorpion miniatures and had painted a few up in muted colours and mud-splattered chaps and they looked nice. But I had no idea if they were accurate to the period or not.

It turns out not – for example, the most popular hat in the “wild west” was the humble bowler – not the ten gallon or the stetson. Very few of my minis had bowler hats on their heads! Further research turned out some surprising discrepencies between Hollywood and the real cowboys (that said, I still think Young Guns is a brilliant film – even if they remade it as Young Guns II after admitting the original was “too Hollywood”!)

For example, Billy The Kid wasn’t a hardened outlaw and never robbed a bank (his is actually a really tragic story about a teenager struggling to stay on the straight and narrow). Jesse James isn’t the “American Hero” as romaticised in popular lore, but a sociopathic murderer. Wild Bill Hikok was one of the few cowboys to actually shoot from the hip and Buffalo Bill was a down at heel drunk, with little more than a circus act to his name. Very few “famous names” from the period came into contact with each other as their activities were spread across many different US states (and not all lived at the same time).

Some of the stories I followed up (with visits to an actual library, to read real books and everything) were far more fascinating – and unexpected – than I could have imagined.

I didn’t actually go on to paint any more western miniatures and those game rules never got started. But going through the process of historical research, learning about real lives of real people, who really lived… that was some of the best hobby time I ever spent!

One of the most interesting things I discovered (reading up on The Real Wild West) was that Billy The Kid gave himself up to Governor Lew Wallace, who promised him a pardon (in return for turning himself in).

Billy The Kid went ahead with the deal, gave himself up, and was sent to jail, but Lew Wallace reneged on their agreement (leading to one of the most infamous jail breaks). It’s said that by the time Billy the Kid had given himself up, Lew Wallace was distracted by his passion for writing and had “outsourced” his peacekeeping duties while completing his second novel…. Ben Hur.

Who knew?

I never once thought a passion for making and painting tiny little things could be so educational!

Interesting post @phaidknott.

Having read most of the threads that i am guessing inspired this one, I am not sure the issue is a fear of historical refights (or for that matter an issue with personalities involved),  rather it is a clash of what is more important fidelity of flexibility.

The first clash I have seen between fidelity and flexibility is what defines a historical game – is being based on a real historical period/conflict enough, or does it have to try and represent the period/conflict in accurate detail?

The second is should someone be willing to suspend their sense of disbelief/history even slightly too accommodate someone else? E.g. is it ok to refuse to play @warzan‘s Nachtwulf due to it not being properly historical? Is it ok to refuse to play WW2 Finns vs Chindits as they never came up against each other?

If you’re in the flexible camp then OTT have been putting out loads of historical content – SPQR, FOW, Bolt Action, Sharpe Practice, World War Zero (Blood and Plunder maybe?) and the incredible output @Orisksny has produced.  If you’re in the fidelity camp them maybe many of these don’t seem to be truly historical as most are based on creating cinematic moments  and take too many liberties with history and you may not feel you are being served the historical content you crave.

Long story short – we seem to be on different pages on what the historical genre is and how it should be approached.   OTT and the wargaming public (including myself) and probably more in the flexibility camp which i think is the cause of a lot of the frustration.

I’ve found a good thing to do, and I’ve done it often, is to find a battle you want to replay, and modify it for a “pop” game system. I’ve done several (usually Scottish) battles this way and it’s easy enough to get someone into it – they have their Orc/Elf/Alien army and a good grasp of their rules and the scenario objectives – and often they have learned something in the process.
We did a 40k Watling Street thing with “Boo, Da Ork” riding around on a Squig Chariot years ago for some shows and it stormed.

The issue with getting people on board historical gaming in general is getting over the “fun” barrier. Pop culture games have surface candy coloured fun for all to see. I’m not saying historicals are not fun, but it’s a different, slightly more academic fun, which is usually less appealing en masse.

There’s also an obliqueness in historical battles. We can tease LOTR or Game of Thrones or Starship Troopers about the wild and whacky tactical decisions they make, but recreating them on a board has a simple point of reference. “Go watch the film” is much easier and immediately entertaining for most, than “go read about Waterloo”. There’s great sources, yes, but there’s a grimness about real war that pop culture avoids. Heck, pop culture can automatically make real history more accessible – your pirate accent is no doubt modelled on Robert Newton or Johnny Depp depending on your age, I’ll always channel Christopher Lambert in Highlander when shooting Nazis, and I’m always being accused at coming at Tank Commanders with them negative waves, man.

I think the key is not to be altogether too precious, even with refights – no rules for a game are 100% battle accurate, and there is always room for negotiation. How accurate you want to go is up to you, but I’d encourage everyone to give a historical refight or two a go, even if it’s just a loose representation of the battlefield and involved forces – Stirling Bridge is still entertaining if it’s 50 Space Marines holding off a horde of Tyranids at a bottleneck. If you can pull a few people into a more accurate version later, brilliant, but don’t force them and put them off. Perhaps follow up with a “cinematic” Thermopylae or whatever. Baby steps from the familiar to the unfamiliar.