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Reply To: Why is it that Skirmish Games Dominate the Gaming Scene?

June 18, 2021 at 8:12 pm #1657182

limburger

21709xp

@tankcommander based on good ol’ fashioned gut feeling and probably personal bias 😉

But you’re right … without any hard data we don’t know if they actually do dominate.
However they do seem to be the ‘hot new thing’.
The majority of rules that hit the limelight appear to be small team/warband sized skirmish games.

Maybe they appear to dominate because they are easier to sell to people ?
Here’s a picture of a half dozen minis painted by experts … doesn’t it look sexy ?
Try doing that with a mass battle system and see if you can create interesting pictures …

I’m not saying it can’t be done, but even the likes of Flames of War tend to focus on small groups of minis.
Then again … maybe FoW can be classified as a ‘skirmish game with tanks’ because you’re not exactly painting a hundred minis (unless you’re crazy and do a soviet infantry horde ;))

I’d also argue that things tend to run in cycles and ‘skirmish’ is the hot new thing at the moment.
Maybe things will change if someone managed to be lucky with marketing their mass battle system and the rest of the industry followed suit ?
The industry goes were the money is … (or at least the ones that survive do).

Time is definitely a factor that shouldn’t be underestimated. Especially when you consider that other hobbies offer more direct rewards.