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Virtual Russian posted:I did not know that, weird. What is the reason? Good reason mentioned. Second reason is that in historicals, especially for the older generation, I’d say most players a) are bad at painting, b) don’t like to paint, c) sees painting as a necessary evil at best, d) has disposable money to throw at commission paint jobs or e), a combination of all of these. You see this in fantasy and sci fi too but not to the same degree imho. It can not be overstated how differently GW marketed wargaming as a hobby and the emphasis it placed on painting being a hobby in itself, worthy of pursuing for quality paint jobs, and that it is expected of you to a larger degree. Historical boomers like good paint jobs, sure, but basic painting skills are imho generally much lower in that generation and they have a different attitude. If you’ve never wanted to paint and your current minis have gloopy enamel paint jobs and you just want to play games NOW, it makes sense to at least a segment of historicsl players to plop down 200 bucks for a painted battallion of napoleonic French. While the same paint job would net you 50-80% of cost mint on sprue if they were 40K minis. But even in historicals it differs a lot based on miniature range and period. But overall it’s a lot more in favour of the seller compared to GW stuff. There will be a retired whale with a ginormous nerd cave basement who just want more painted British line infantry or more troops for his recreation of Gaugamela. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 06:38
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At least with Historicals I never see an unpainted game. Probably 80% of the scifi or fantasy games at FLGS are unpainted.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:57
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alg posted:At least with Historicals I never see an unpainted game. Probably 80% of the scifi or fantasy games at FLGS are unpainted. yep. its rare to see an amazing paint job, but also rare to see unpainted minis. the aesthetic is a big part of historicals, but i think part of it is the aesthetic of mass, or uniformity, and it just doesnt work without painted minis. its why when someone suggests painting their nazis pink or whatever its like "haha yeah gently caress the nazis, but im not playing on that table"
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Mar 13, 2024 13:34
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alg posted:At least with Historicals I never see an unpainted game. Probably 80% of the scifi or fantasy games at FLGS are unpainted. Yup that’s also a part of it. People will happily buy AWI miniatures with more or less a basecoat, while a roughly painted Tau army is ”damaged goods”, or most GW minis that are not oop to be honest. It’s interesting how these kinds of accepted truths in two parts of the same hobby can be different. Because I’s much rather play a roughly painted whfb army than a pile of grey plastic as well.
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Mar 13, 2024 17:51
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:yep. its rare to see an amazing paint job, but also rare to see unpainted minis. the aesthetic is a big part of historicals, but i think part of it is the aesthetic of mass, or uniformity, and it just doesnt work without painted minis. its why when someone suggests painting their nazis pink or whatever its like "haha yeah gently caress the nazis, but im not playing on that table" I’ve been thinking about getting into historicals, specifically with the Perry Miniatures DAK because 1. The models are pretty and 2. the regular historical players at my FLGS are three dudes mirror matching Bolt Action Brit on Brit on the 40k desert tables that easily convert if you replace the 40k buildings. And last time I was there one of the guys had mentioned he was painting some Italians. So yeah I don’t want to roll up with Nazis, and have people think it’s because I love Nazis. I do actually think they have the coolest-looking tanks, but mostly I want to get into historicals without being the lady who rolls up from 40k with the Nazi army. But I want to paint them as the Nazis they were. Especially because I’m a Mizrahi Jew and I loving hate people pretending Rommel was a Good Nazi and ignoring North African Jews that he did what he did to. I guess my question is can I paint DAK and not be labelled/heiled as a Nazi-lover? Especially because if it was the opposite of three German players, I love British uniforms aesthetically as much as German tanks and would happily buy Perry 8th Army and would probably make them Māori or Indian. soviet elsa fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 18:02
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Yeah I don't think most historical gamers will think less of you for having a Nazi army unless you get weird about it, and you aren't weird about it so you'll probably be fine
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Mar 13, 2024 18:12
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soviet elsa posted:I’ve been thinking about getting into historicals, specifically with the Perry Miniatures DAK because 1. The models are pretty and 2. the regular historical players at my FLGS are three dudes mirror matching Bolt Action Brit on Brit on the 40k desert tables that easily convert if you replace the 40k buildings. As a fellow Jew I understand where you're coming from but I would say go for it - there are for sure shitheads in the hobby who are going to paint Germans because they share an ideology, but for the most part people who play Historicals are cool about it and understand that you're not supporting a side, you're just playing out a conflict. For me it's more of just reconciling it with myself. I'm actually painting up some Germans right now and going through similar feelings, because I have to explain to my wife and kid (well, my kid is 1, so mostly my wife) why I have Nazis on my model shelf. Maybe I'll just put them in a box along with Confederate minis and label it "idiot loser zone". But yeah, you're touching on the number one struggle a lot of people have with historicals in general, not even just WW2. Don't even get me started on people that play out things such as 19th century colonial conflicts like British vs. Zulus. If you wanna see shithead historical takes from wargamers, that's a minefield right there.
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Mar 13, 2024 18:14
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Count Thrashula posted:
Lmao yeah colonial stuff is arguably even worse, probably because it's less popular and the default assumption is that you sympathize with the colonials. Like the Men Who Would Be Kings rulebook has a solo mode which basically assumes you'll be playing as the British
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Mar 13, 2024 18:22
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soviet elsa posted:to. Of course. I’ve painted four or five platoons of Germans for our NA games, both Wehrmacht and Fallschirmjägers. The way to not be labelled a nazi is 1) don’t hold weird authoritarian right wing opinions and beliefs 2) don’t tell weird long diatribes about how great the German army was in WW2 3) don’t play with morons I’ve found that by following these three basic steps, I’ve been able to have a happy life as a historical gamer without anyone assuming things about my political beliefs. It’s not hard. It also helps if you are not strictly sticking to just one army. I’ve paited Brits, FFL and South African Highlanders for North Africa as well. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 18:23
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The worst thing that might happen is scummy dudes will feel more comfortable sharing Bad opinions, making them easier for you to ignore forever.
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Mar 13, 2024 18:27
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Finally got my game of Blucher in! We did 250pts, Prussians vs French aiming to roughly represent a small to medium sized action in 1806. The Prussians were very infantry heavy, with a bit of horse and no massed batteries (but lots of attached guns). Meanwhile I took the french, with two infantry corps, a guard corp, and a reserve cav corp. The guards were a mistake, I sunk way too many points into them. We did the Scharnhorst minigame, which was a ton of fun. The Prussians concentrated early and forced a battle on day 2, leaving me badly out of position and scrambling to get my corps to the field. I only just managed to get everything at least adjacent to the field. Most of my army started in a single table section, while the Prussians held most of the table to start. I managed to break out of my section quickly, but got both the Guard and Reserve Cav Corps mauled doing so. Fortunately I got my infantry corps onto the battlefield early in the morning, but the damage was done by then. By the afternoon the sheer number of Prussian infantry units began to really weigh on me, I was generally fighting outnumbered two to one. I lost on morale in the late afternoon when an assault on some exhausted Prussians desperately clinging to a hill went against me badly. We had both been very close to breaking, but the rolls just went against me and that was it. Very fun! Talking afterwards we both really liked the game, it was very easy to learn. Scharnhorst was the star for us, we normally play Epic40k together, and really liked having a battle with more flavour than just "I set all my guys up in a row in my deployment area". We also suspect we played very aggressively, the game was finished after something like 12 turns. I think we both imported the warhammer "I have 4 turns to finish this game" mindset, but could have been more cautious and maneuvered more carefully. I certainly should have waited for more reinforcements before I started pushing. Something we found odd was that prepared infantry seem to only be able to shoot to the front? We house ruled that prepared infantry could volley in 360 degrees, but at a disadvantage. That seemed to work well for us, it didn't make being prepared more attractive, but made sure I couldn't park horse behind him and wait for him to adjust. Maybe we missed something about shooting from prepared infantry? Our only other issue was that the bonus/disadvantage system might be a touch simple. Not stacking bonuses kept things simple and straightforward, firing was very fast to resolve. However, firing canister rounds into prepared infantry felt underpowered, the exact same result as canister into unprepared. Again, we might have done that wrong, but it seemed like we did it correctly.
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Mar 13, 2024 20:02
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soviet elsa posted:I guess my question is can I paint DAK and not be labelled/heiled as a Nazi-lover? Longer answer: lots of people struggle with this, so here's a really thought-provoking article on the topic that may help you come to a decision: https://www.goonhammer.com/goonhammer-historicals-butterflies-pinned-to-a-board-or-why-we-play-the-baddies/
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Mar 13, 2024 20:05
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alg posted:At least with Historicals I never see an unpainted game. Probably 80% of the scifi or fantasy games at FLGS are unpainted. 
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Mar 13, 2024 20:07
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soviet elsa posted:
Paint all the the nazi stuff you want and when it comes time to put the emblems on, give 'em the Tomainian double cross emblem and declar that you're fighting against unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts.
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Mar 13, 2024 20:41
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I think if most WW2 wargamers are honest, it really just boils down to the tactical dilemmas of the period being interesting to play out, both from the perspective of the Allies and the Axis. It's not a great moral failing to look at something like the Battle of El Alamein and think "maybe I could do better in Rommel's shoes than he did." Getting hung up on the moral aesthetics of playing with tiny German tanks on a gaming table is trite and enormously tiresome, and I say that as someone who has absolutely gotten hung up on that exact thing in the past. If you're not materially advancing the cause of National Socialism, Racism, Fascism or what have you, independent of the games you're playing, then you're in no danger from catching Nazism from handling your little plastic Panzers.
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Mar 14, 2024 00:20
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Endman posted:I think if most WW2 wargamers are honest, it really just boils down to the tactical dilemmas of the period being interesting to play out, both from the perspective of the Allies and the Axis. It's not a great moral failing to look at something like the Battle of El Alamein and think "maybe I could do better in Rommel's shoes than he did." Personally I don't like that most wargames essentially perfectly model all the long debunked myths around the Nazis. Wargames almost without fail present the Germans as honourable warriors with superior fighting ability, courage, tactics, and equipment. This mythologizing is also a necessity, [almost] no one wants to play the Dirlewanger Brigade liquidating Belorussian villages, that would be beyond uncomfortable, but would be much more accurate. Playing out the clean Wehrmacht myth makes playing the Nazis palatable. However, what does that do to the popular understanding of WW2 and the holocaust? I always go back to Werner Klemperer, the Jewish actor who played Colonel Klink. He insisted he on playing the character as a moron that can never do anything right. I will always prefer that depiction of Nazis, it is also the far more accurate. That doesn't translate well to wargaming though, so I can't offer a solution. I don't think it is fair to handwave away people's concerns around this issue as trite or tiresome. Maybe it is good if playing the Nazis comes with some heavy baggage?
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Mar 14, 2024 01:07
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Virtual Russian posted:I always go back to Werner Klemperer, the Jewish actor who played Colonel Klink. He insisted he on playing the character as a moron that can never do anything right. I will always prefer that depiction of Nazis, it is also the far more accurate. That doesn't translate well to wargaming though, so I can't offer a solution. 
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Mar 14, 2024 01:20
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Virtual Russian posted:Personally I don't like that most wargames essentially perfectly model all the long debunked myths around the Nazis. Wargames almost without fail present the Germans as honourable warriors with superior fighting ability, courage, tactics, and equipment. This mythologizing is also a necessity, [almost] no one wants to play the Dirlewanger Brigade liquidating Belorussian villages, that would be beyond uncomfortable, but would be much more accurate. Playing out the clean Wehrmacht myth makes playing the Nazis palatable. However, what does that do to the popular understanding of WW2 and the holocaust? Now this is actually something worth thinking about. I don't have much time for endless moralising about playing games, but there's absolutely something worth talking about when it comes to designing games. Flames of War is utterly appalling when it comes to this sort of thing. They even have lovingly written biographies of panzer aces in some of their books. It's ridiculous and quite frankly embarrassing.
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Mar 14, 2024 01:54
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The one thing I like about Flames of War is how they've moved from rating SS divisions as uber elite to better motivated but actually worse at fighting
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Mar 14, 2024 02:20
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soviet elsa posted:I’ve been thinking about getting into historicals, specifically with the Perry Miniatures DAK because 1. The models are pretty and 2. the regular historical players at my FLGS are three dudes mirror matching Bolt Action Brit on Brit on the 40k desert tables that easily convert if you replace the 40k buildings. Yeah I mean, I don't see the issue with buying into Germans personally, since there needs to be a little diversity on the table IMO. (Unless you start using greenstuff to make big red flags with swastikas on them, to cover your tanks. I think someone here posted about a guy who did that a while back) Since from what you said about the other people all playing Brits, someone needs to play an Axis country - since mirror matches are bound to get boring. And hey, you picked the African theatre - that always gets bonus points, since everyone loves model soldiers wearing funny little shorts, right?  Mind you, if you want to use German tanks without actually picking Germans, you could always consider going for a minor power, such as Hungary. Great Escape Games has a solid range. I play Bolt Action with the Italians personally (I must say, I like the added benefit of being able to fight both the Allies and Axis, without it seeming weird/ahistorical ) but I was very tempted to buy into Hungary when I first started, a few years ago.
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Mar 14, 2024 05:10
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Endman posted:Now this is actually something worth thinking about. I don't have much time for endless moralising about playing games, but there's absolutely something worth talking about when it comes to designing games. Ok yeah, I get where you are coming from now. I think I'm more inclined to agree, I don't think anyone really should worry about what people will think of them for playing germans. It is worth examining how games interact with history and shape our understanding of it.
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Mar 14, 2024 07:20
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Count Thrashula posted:For me it's more of just reconciling it with myself. I'm actually painting up some Germans right now and going through similar feelings, because I have to explain to my wife and kid (well, my kid is 1, so mostly my wife) why I have Nazis on my model shelf. Maybe I'll just put them in a box along with Confederate minis and label it "idiot loser zone". Be like Jack Radey. Count Thrashula posted:But yeah, you're touching on the number one struggle a lot of people have with historicals in general, not even just WW2. Don't even get me started on people that play out things such as 19th century colonial conflicts like British vs. Zulus. If you wanna see shithead historical takes from wargamers, that's a minefield right there. I play "colonials." Specifically, I play Zulus. I have over a dozen books on the Zulu nation and have been interested in them since I was a kid. I make sure that their regiments are correct, you name it. lilljonas posted:Of course. I’ve painted four or five platoons of Germans for our NA games, both Wehrmacht and Fallschirmjägers. The way to not be labelled a nazi is One other thing: Don't paint swastikas all over your models. If there's one way to spot someone you do not want to play with, it's by checking to see if they have swastikas on their stuff but say "it's just an air recognition flag" or whatever when asked. No, they just want an excuse to stick Nazi crap in other people's face. Somehow I've managed to paint a lot of historically accurate German models but don't have a single swastika on them. Cthulu Carl posted:Paint all the the nazi stuff you want and when it comes time to put the emblems on, give 'em the Tomainian double cross emblem and declar that you're fighting against unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts. I've toyed with the idea of building a Bolt Action/Chain of Command army based on the Germans from old Sgt Rock comics with blue tanks, etc:  Edit: Maybe I could use converted 40K Catachans for the US GIs. Virtual Russian posted:Personally I don't like that most wargames essentially perfectly model all the long debunked myths around the Nazis. Wargames almost without fail present the Germans as honourable warriors with superior fighting ability, courage, tactics, and equipment. Fortunately this is (gradually) changing as wargaming slowly and ponderously catches up to contemporary historiography. Even Flames of War is coming to recognize that no, the SS were not all "elite;" they may have better "morale," but they have worse "skill." More and more tabletop games are presenting more realistic views. Virtual Russian posted:This mythologizing is also a necessity, [almost] no one wants to play the Dirlewanger Brigade liquidating Belorussian villages, that would be beyond uncomfortable, but would be much more accurate. And while that's completely understandable, I'd really like to get to use my Warsaw Uprising ('44) Poles some day. There was a kickstarter a few years ago from a small minis company called "Infamous JT" that made some excellent Polish Home Army models. I bought all of them, and have added to the army over time. But no one in my group wants to play against them, because - well, that should be obvious. Edit: link Cessna fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 15:48
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Not wanting to play games with Nazis in it is a perfectly reasonable. Luckily there a tons of other time periods available!
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Mar 14, 2024 16:10
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Virtual Russian posted:A lot of cool Blucher stuff This got drowned in the Nazi talk but this is why I love playing historicals. Blucher kicks rear end, your game sounded like it rocked, and it was really fun to read.
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Mar 14, 2024 18:07
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I want to thank you for leading me down the rabbit hole of looking this guy up and I am now watching a 2 part interview with him on YouTube and he just looks like a genuinely sensible person, a mythic beast rarely heard of in the ranks of "Gamers".
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Mar 14, 2024 21:27
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Oh neat, the Far East/Pacific supplement for Chain of Command is finally """about""" to go to the printers. I know it's basically been about to come out for like 3 years now but color me hopeful.
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Mar 15, 2024 03:36
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Jenx posted:I want to thank you for leading me down the rabbit hole of looking this guy up and I am now watching a 2 part interview with him on YouTube and he just looks like a genuinely sensible person, a mythic beast rarely heard of in the ranks of "Gamers". People's Wargames put out some bangers. I've gotten Duel for Kharkov to the table, and it plays like a good account of divisional-level combat. A lot of games let you pile up forces in an off-table holding box and just put one counter on the map to represent them, DfK gets really cutthroat with that. I'd dearly love to play Black Sea Black Death against another human, that's the Little Land invasion around Novorossiysk with land, sea, and air all going on at once.
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Mar 15, 2024 05:15
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Cessna posted:If there's one way to spot someone you do not want to play with, it's by checking to see if they have swastikas on their stuff but say "it's just an air recognition flag" or whatever when asked. No, they just want an excuse to stick Nazi crap in other people's face. Somehow I've managed to paint a lot of historically accurate German models but don't have a single swastika on them. Building on this, the only places you might plausibly see a battlefield swastika are: 1) Aircraft recognition flags in the early war (grey tanks) before the Luftwaffe knew friendly fire was turned on. 2) In the palm tree of DAK symbols. 3) the tail of certain German aircraft. It's basically like a tornado watch. One of these means conditions are right for this guy to be an alt-right creep. All of these have valid workarounds. Some people choose to fold the flag in such a way to obscure the swastika, use a different historically accurate tail marking, or alter the DAK palm tree. If you see swastikas anywhere else, or any Nazi symbols on shirts, hats, or gear, get out. If they start talking "both sides had heroes," "the Wehrmacht were just being patriotic," or "Well actually Stalin was worse than Hitler because..." then just pack up your models and leave. Alt right douchebags desperately want you to know that they're that way. What they're doing with the symbols and "conversation" is probing to see how receptive you are or the venue is.
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Mar 15, 2024 15:59
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moths posted:If you see swastikas anywhere else, or any Nazi symbols on shirts, hats, or gear, get out. I'll also add swastika dice. Yes, really.
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Mar 15, 2024 17:26
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I ran into it so much when I played Advanced Squad Leader. I'm not going to name him, but there's a guy who runs a pretty big ASL reseller and is known pretty well in the community, and I played in person with him a couple times because he lived near me. His game room was entirely decked out in SS divisional flags and he had a mannequin dressed in German camo and had an MG42 hanging on the wall. And he has a tattoo of the guy from the cover of the Up Front board game (the uh, SS soldier). But he was just proud of his German heritage and just had an interest in history, he didn't get why it was so offensive  gently caress that guy. He had an incredible game collection and gaming table and stuff but super wasn't worth it to be around all that.Edit-- SS divisional emblem dice too, that made me think of it. And all of the super rare black-colored SS game pieces for ASL. And a wall of Panzer models. I could go on but gently caress that guy.
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Mar 15, 2024 20:20
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That reminds me, I still need to give Where Sten Guns Dare a try - a game that right at the beginning "There's not moral ambiguity, we're here to fight Nazis and blow things up", and enemy types are Collaborator ("Cretinous cowards"), Fascists Goon ("Faceless Stormtroopers") and Fascist Elite/boss ("Faceless stormtrooper who just had bratwurst")
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Mar 15, 2024 20:39
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I think the thing about Flames of War is they have Germans at virtually every quality level you can think of in its various ways of measuring quality- it used to be the metagame to actually try to dig up Reluctant Trained Panthers from somewhere because the armor was plenty of protection anyway so being Vet didn't accomplish much but you could put more hulls on the field that lighter AT guns would still struggle with (frontally) In a broader sense, i mean, you gotta have somebody to fight and i think it reflects well that yes, DAK was a very capable fighting force, well-trained, with excellent tactical acumen, and Monty beat those guys.
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Mar 15, 2024 21:07
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Count Thrashula posted:His game room was entirely decked out in SS divisional flags and he had a mannequin dressed in German camo and had an MG42 hanging on the wall. And he has a tattoo of the guy from the cover of the Up Front board game (the uh, SS soldier). When I was a kid the club I played wargames with had a bunch of old grogs who knew the Avalon Hill people well. The backstory of that cover, from them, was that Roger McGowan wanted to do a cover with an American GI for the game. Avalon Hill said no, covers with Germans sell better. So McGowan sent in art with the most gently caress-off Nazi possible, so it would be rejected and he could use the GI, but to his horror they published it. He HATED that cover.
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Mar 15, 2024 22:05
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There are a few good checks to see how "mythologized" a rules set is. I usually look at the Tiger to see if it's free of drawbacks, if Soviet Commissars are on-loan from 40k, or if the SS are the extra most bestest Nazis.Cessna posted:I'll also add swastika dice. Yes, really. gently caress.
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Mar 15, 2024 22:07
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Springfield Fatts posted:This got drowned in the Nazi talk but this is why I love playing historicals. Blucher kicks rear end, your game sounded like it rocked, and it was really fun to read. It was a ton of fun, can't wait to get another game in. I'll try to get some pictures next time.
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Mar 16, 2024 01:54
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This is why my go-to WW2 game is Chain of Command. The difference between German and a British platoons are based on the sections having a different structure and the LMGs working differently. Oh and Germans don't get smoke grenades. And that's pretty much it, but it is still enough to make them feel distinctly different to play.
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Mar 16, 2024 09:05
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moths posted:Building on this, the only places you might plausibly see a battlefield swastika are: There's also Finnish recognition markings. Conveniently, someone trying very hard to convince you that the Finns did absolutely no wrong in joining the war on Hitler's site is also a warning flag!
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Mar 16, 2024 10:31
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Really good VIkings just went on KS: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/footsore-miniatures/vikings-28mm-dark-age-early-medieval-miniatures
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Mar 17, 2024 20:06
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Speaking of KS, I just finally got my shipping email from Fireforge from their Samurai KS. Six boxes of plastic soldiers on the way! This is what I need to make enough troops for two opposing armies.
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Mar 18, 2024 14:46
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alg posted:Really good VIkings just went on KS: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/footsore-miniatures/vikings-28mm-dark-age-early-medieval-miniatures Now I just need to figure out how many jomsvikings I'm gonna need for Saga. Wish they had a few more daneaxe guys
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Mar 18, 2024 15:38
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