Warlord actually covered this in their Open Day. They do not approach this from a perspective of gathering young players or even attracting them. They let these other companies, GW, whoever, get that younger audience. The Warlord audience is the older player who has tried and played all the flashy games, and now appreciates the more historical and chill wargames.
It is certainly fair to say Warlord specifcally is targeted at aged, legacy retail model collectors. Their product doesn't really stand up in any other context.
If that's true, I think that's a self-defeating approach. You need younger players to grow the historical hobby, and you need them to feel like historical gaming is something that's just as exciting and accessible as sci Fi or fantasy gaming.
The guys who I know play historicals, and this is 100% anecdotal, all got into it once they hit their 40’s and either had post-secondary education and/or military history.
@@ApocryphalPress there is a new pipeline of hoi4/eu4 players. If your average time commitment per historical video game is 2000+ hours and 500$, you are more ready to wargame than GW players assuming you care to do the physical stuff.
I think you may be looking at this from a retail skewed perspective (which is understandable). Lots of people play historicals but buy direct from the many, many ‘cottage industry’ sized niche historical period miniature manufacturers, rather than buy from shops? Sure you’ve got flames of war and warlord games but that’s only 4 or 5 games really. there are scores of other manufacturers who sell direct to the customers, who use non manufacturer specific rules (of which there are a hundred options/variants).
I wonder if more players would be attracted to the hobby by skirmish-style modern wargames? There are many tabletop wargames covering more recent historical conflicts, but I don't know much about the mini side of the hobby (although it may be mostly digital/3d printing now). Infinity seems pretty popular, although it is sci-fi and not historical...
Unfortunately the retail products both in terms of the models and rules tend to simply be inferior for a higher cost vs what is available online for historicals.
@@markwatson8714 Definitely true. Over here you can get historical gaming miniatures (Warlord, Victrix, Perry...) in scale modelling shops, but none of the game-oriented shops that carry Warhammer, Malifaux, D&D miniatures etc. carry them.
aren't battlefront a kiwi company, they fought in Italy not France dude send the boy and his kids on an Italian holiday. (it would probably do huge violence to his algorithm though
@@montroyalbynight8107 I didn't get what you are saying. Is tires legacy a lingo for something or just a typo? English is not my first language. My point is that they, being some of the biggest historical gaming companies, I have no interest in their products, but if they do something spectacular and engaging I might try some of their products.
Between Victrix and Footsore I have most of my historical games/minis covered. Then you have Claymore Castings that uses a sculptor called Matthew Bickley that I love, his minis have so much movement and still are cast in single piece metals. No Warlord for me, but I'm usually the guy looking for less known games around.
@@montroyalbynight8107 back in N2 I wanted an Infinity WWII, with CB quality metal models and getting rid of all the sci-fi shenanigans from the special rules.
I've recently started a Saga army. I'm fortunate that my local store has a large historical section with all the great Victrix and Perry miniatures. I'm not sure how they justify keeping so many historical kits, but I'm very pleased about it. Gave me a place to get my Napoleonics for Turnip conversions as well.
It's not about marketing, it's inherent to historical gaming. You buy an army or two for a given theater, and then you play with them. There's no chance to keep revising and nerfing so you have to keep buying and re-buying units. A Tiger tank is a Tiger tank.
Warlord actually has a lot of tank kits made by Italieri. As for seeing historicals in stores, I think Bolt Action is seeing a resurgence due to the new edition coming out this year, but usually don't see very much. I am surprised more stores don't carry Firelock Games stuff. as they have some lovely historical and semi historical games.
Yep, while WW2 and similar do look neat, the ones that tend to attract a lot of people to them are Samurai, Westerns, and Pirates/Swashbucklers...often ones that can start small. One local store had a major thing of Ronin and added a house rule document to it that added more to the game (Along with things like standardized mounted basing). There's still, occasionally campaigns using GW's old Legends of the Old West as well. Pirates pop up with everything, but it's been a bit, though seems to have a few things whenever there's rumors of another PotC movie or similar coming.
Historicals outside of late war ww2 are hard to get into. You usually buy miniatures from two or more vendors, buy rules from another, and then have to make your own community of people playing that specific period+ruleset. I’d say historicals (some not so historical) are in a bit of a golden age now with miniatures, rules, and RUclips presence.
The Little Wars TV channel regularly discusses this same topic and how to bring younger gamers into historicals. Would be a great crossover to hear your perspective and theirs together.
Bolt Action has an existing deal with Italeri for their tanks, also IRL armored vehicles from the 40s are smaller than you realize. A 1/56th scale VW bug is less than 3 inches long.
Historicals eat 40k burnouts, when 40k goes bad historicals eat good, and vice versa. They'll always be around. Historical makers also haven't managed to bridge the gap with historical games, HOI4 and Warthunder, and World of Tanks are massive right now, people just don't know that historicals exist a lot of the time.
its insane how warthunder, world of tanks, Europa universalis, HOI, Foxhole, battlefield, call of duty and a few other games are not contacted by the historical model makers to work together. thats probably a few hundred millions of players and potential customers they missed, over the years
@@GoalOrientedLifting Yeah, I'd be contacting anyone whose ever streamed these things and sending them free starter sets and paints and bags of coke and hiring strippers for them, tbh
I feel like there’s been a big change in the whole war gaming hobby. Back in the dark ages, when I started, there was virtually no secondary market for any sort of war games. When someone got out of even 40k, they’d just give their army to their 8 year old nephew to play with, break and lose in the sandbox. Now, armies don’t ever go away. And there’s lots of people who want the pre-built and painted army because they don’t like the hobby side.
Pretty balanced commentary. One key point worthy of considering is that while playing in shops seems to be the norm in North America, it's far less the case elsewhere where the norm is playing in a club setting. So as the wise man once said, "you dont see what you dont see". I think Warlord have done a great job in actioning one of the key lessons from GW: Make good starter sets! That was always one of the major barriers to entry in Historicals - buying rules from one place and figures from multiple other places. Having a "one stop box" with rules, tokens, dice, figures etc and selling it at a reasonable price point. As for quality of figures, myself and lots of people I know find the modern GW design aesthetic totally overcooked. Spear carrier number 46 doesnt need to be leaping off a rock covered in tiny skulls, especially when he is glued to a base with 7 other guys in tight ranks. As I was watching this I was gluing together 50 Perry medieval pikemen, and they are just fine as multi-part plastics go.
My friend graduated from WHFB into historicals recently at the tender age of 32. I think people like him would respond really well to better social media advertising of that setting.
One thing about new editions and changes: particularly for relatively recent conducts like WW1, WW2 , Korea and Nam there are a lot of people who become invested in these settings because of personal family connections to the war. As a result, changing the nature of a rule or unit fundamentally changes the nature of models which may represent the memory of real people. A change to the efficiency of bombers might be good for game balance but a lot of people are going to read that as the company reducing the impact of Great Grandpa's contribution to the war effort.
One of the largest problems with Historical wargames is there is so much of that product out there already. It is not hard to find tons of miniatures at historical gaming convention for sale. Another problem is the painting, quite a few historical games require painting 100's of miniatures so few new people are willing to under take the task. It is also becoming pretty difficult to find painters willing to paint historical due to fact it does not pay as well as painting up 40K or fantasy.
Squad and skirmish suze games are available in historicals, so the daunting task if painting an entire army isn't necessary. Now, with that being said, you're never going to be able to get the desired feel of Napoleonic era combat (specialization and vast array of units) without putting in the paint strokes.
Gale Force 9 do licensed board games, terrain, etc. GF9 and Battlefront are sister companies, under The Battlefront Group. It's diversification under different brands. One company failing doesn't take down the other(s). Forge World, GW Retail, Citadel, et al. are similar. They're under a larger umbrella.
Odd, historical seems to be having a boom over here in the UK. Warlord are ofc a key driver, but also Too Fat Lardies have been coming along for quite a while. The trade shows are still going strong.
Old geezer here. Started historical games in 1985. The shop I went to, you found out what people were playing and what scale and found out what ruleset. Then you looked for whatever Osprey book or other painting guide and got to reading and painting. If you saw cool figures, the question wasn't "what game are these for?" It was, do I have rules or do I know of rules for these? Sometimes you or your friends made rules. Based off of Donald Featherstone's Wargames usually, but there were several small companies from the UK that published rulesets.
Great video guys. Certainly generated a lot of local discussion in my community in Aus! I agree with your analysis from a retail perspective. There are so many historical periods, rules, scales,and units that I can’t see how it would ever make sense to sell ‘historicals’. I don’t think the problem is a limit on historical collecting - most historical players I know, including myself, keep collecting army after army at the same rate as GW players. I believe the issue is because no company can control historical IP, the offerings are too dispersed and mark-ups too limited by competition to make selling in a store viable. Also unlike GW where you can expect the get everything you want from an FLGS, for historicals there is almost a certainty that you must order some stuff online to get the niche bits you need to build a playable historical force since no FLGS store can carry a full historical range, so while you are online why not just order the rest? Historical gaming is actually going through an upswing atm from what I can see, certainly with Bolt Action v3, but I doubt you will see that in your store. I think the FoW/battlefront period was an anomaly, there had been a gap in the WW2 market which battlefront jumped into with modern quasi-GW approach to rules and models, allowing them to briefly untie the historical market, but when Warlord released BA the market fractured again. I doubt we will see a historical force like battlefront again anytime soon.
As someone who left GW in 2016 an went historical with bolt action an napoleonics, I was supprised at how many of them had never even stepped in a GW before, they were all over 35 an did nowt but historicals, that sort of audience isn't viable for stores as they often just buy the cheapest from certain small online only metal companies an you just couldn't stock everything for historical wargamers an they wouldn't be loyal
Growing up in the 80's/90's, I could talk to my grandfather who was a WWII veteran and listen to his stories - which is one reason I love the period. This option isn't available to people any more.
there are a few stores that stock a good range of historicals. Historicals are also what i've open my webshop up with and they've been going okay. I think alot of it is based more around the enjoyment of playing the games than the flavour of the month new releases.
Historicals being model agnostic will always handicap them from a retail perspective. Modern GW wont even let you put non-GW bits on your models to play in tournaments. Old GW gave you instructions on how to turn a cereal box into a looted wagon in White Dwarf. For something like bolt action, as long as your guy is holding the right kind of gun, thats basically the only important thing. I would say the main thing holding BA back, if anything is, would be the small game sizes. 1250 point games are maybe 4 squads of infantry, two tanks, and a forward observer. A 2000 point 40k army can have hundreds of footsloggers, half a dozen tanks, a flyer, and a bunch of other weird stuff. Imagine if every GW army was pointed like custodes. Wouldnt sell nearly as well.
I am a pushing-30 exclusively historical gamer. To answer the question of what to buy when you have everything is to get into another period of history. My collection has 7 different periods in several differnt scales.
I know the title is click bait but I'm still going to write my comment before watching. I wanted to try 40K again after dropping out of it as a kid and it did not live up to my expectations and left me disappointed. I still have games-workshop miniatures because they're cool but I've also picked up stuff for Bolt Action and Flames of War and they are closer to what I wanted in the first place. tl:dr games-workshop is still a miniatures company not a game company to me.
As a retailer, sure, it must be hard; there is such a huge range of minis, eras, and rules. What should you target and sell? As a consumer, it's excellent; there's such a huge range of minis, eras, rules. There is a never-ending supply of options and choices from smaller companies who LOVE what they do. You buy and build a viking force. Then you decide I'd better make a rival saxons band. Then you decide that those English Civil War pikemen look interesting. And better get a troop of cavalry to go next to them. Then you rewatch Sharpe, and decide you must paint up a unit of riflemen. Which Napoleonic skirmish rules should I use? I'll buy 2 or 3 options on pdf to decide. Then I really do need to have a counterforce of French linemen. Ooh, look at those men-at-arms from the Perrys... Also, I have just listened to that audio book about the conflict between Rome and Carthage, it would be so fun to represent that on the tabletop. And on and on it goes. As a hobbyist, it's truly a wonderful age to be living in. The possibilities are endless.
Historicon (in the US) had a really healthy attendance this past year. Sure there were alot of greybeards as there always is, but alot of younger people as well, probably trickling in from GW games, 3D printing and the like.
I definitely agree with the points you both brought up, especially the dead ending of “welp, got my 101st airborne done and they’re complete basically forever.” However, I do think one overlooked aspect is that there is still a huge hunger/interest for historical wargaming but it is finding its outlet digitally. Look at the popularity of the various Total War games or the Paradox titles, and heck even Civilization. I think this scratches the historical itch for a lot of people but unlike, say, Space Marine 2 which drives people to the tabletop, these experiences aren’t drivers of new tabletop players. People get their historical kick with plenty of detail and they’re plenty full so to speak.
It's no more a dead end than anything else. Admittedly, it's been over 20 years since I touched GW, but even then most people I knew would only collect one or two armies, and generally once they hit the points value they were looking for that would be it. If anything historicals tend to be less prone to that since they usually focus on wider periods; to take Warlord's Black Powder for example the rules cover a period from the War of Spanish Succession (1705) to the Anglo-Zulu war (1879). Sure, I might finish my Jacobite army forever, but once I do there's still the American Revolution, Napoleon, Crimea or even the Boshin War to explore.
@@montroyalbynight8107 sure, I only meant to say that something like 40k has digital feeders to direct new players to the tabletop, whereas historicals don’t have the same feeders despite ongoing interest. Just a compounding factor in addition to what you pointed out.
While the 101st Airborne comment may be true, where's your fallschirmjagers? See, there's ALWAYS more! At the heart of it, we're miniatures people and there's always another army to be collected.
@@andrewwing7484 There's far more historical games than there are 40K games. The other feeder historicals have always had that GW tends to struggle with is the boardgame space, which I suspect might be slightly more impactful (given you already know someone playing boardgames is interested in tabletop play, which isn't necessarily the case with videogames).
The only times I've been interested in playing Bolt Action have stemmed from watching the scenarios on Games Night on RUclips. They had a hilarious episode playing with characters from the British TV show Dad's Army and a hilarious Indiana Jones episode.
As a collector of historicals (ancients, napoleonics, medieval, etc) and player of Battlegroup in 10mm, game stores are the last place to look for really anything other than paint and general hobby supplies. Bolt Action is there to "hook" the GW crowd and the ones that answer the call will eventually dig much deeper and fall into the pit of Napoleonic wargaming. More time and deeper pockets are the hallmarks of historical wargamers and those things aren't in ample supply to most until there's a bit of grey in the beard.
I wanted to get back into 40k this year but Game Workshop just sold out all the time, so I just went back to my roots and drop $1000 on Warlords Games epic Napoleon Waterloo. Me, my dad and nephew been having blast every weekend just painting them up and having wonderful game.
The Warlord lads have actually negotiated an "exit strategy" with Hornby (Airfix, model trains). It was announced a bit over a year ago. 25% then and more later. "Warlord Games was founded in 2007 by two former Games Workshop employees; sales director John Stallard, and White Dwarf editor Paul Sawyer. " Unfortunately Paul has gotten very ill. It seems likely there will be significant change once John retires and maybe Hornby buys the rest of Warlord.
Can you explain more? I know Hornby invested in Warlord Games, but I don't understand what effect that has on Warlord. What is Hornby's overarching plan for Warlord?
@@joshuagarcia4523 the owner is super old and it has a buy-out clause in the contract. It's an obvious offramp and they are flailing with kicking out shovelware to show market cap in the meantime.
@@montroyalbynight8107 oh wow. I didn't know anything about the buy-out clause. So essentially when John Stallard retires/passes away, Warlord Games effectively ceases to exist? Or, if it does exist, it's totally owned by Hornby?
@@joshuagarcia4523 You can read about it, I think saying that would be an oversimplifcation. But in general the writing is on the wall about them being packaged up. FOW has an old owner as well but seems to be flailing less. Neither companies really have new or good ideas though.
@montroyalbynight8107 that's interesting. My impression seems to be completely wrong. I thought Battlefront was almost totally dead but that Warlord was holding steady and slowly growing. They seem to be putting together a dream team for Konflikt '47 3rd edition. Your insight makes me somewhat hesitant to continue collecting Bolt Action
This was one of your best chats. Appreciated. A note, Warlord games is partly owned by Hornby Hobbies, who also has options to increase their share. Hornby also own Airfix, the scale model company, so we might see synergies in the future.
A few things to consider. 1) In the video game realm WW2 themed games are very popular and among the most well known. Consider the popularity of the Total War historical series. So it would appear that the subject matter is still very engaging and interesting to a lot of people. 2) It is interesting that the tabletop historical wargame scene is dominated by older guys, while the sci fi and fantasy (Warhammer specifically) is dominated by a younger crowd.
I can confirm the long term cultural shift. I grew up in the 70s & 80s, and historical references were pretty common in popular entertainment, even in stuff aimed at kids. It was already trending downwards though, I think this was at it's height in the 50s & 60s. At least here in Europe. But yeah, as a kid I played a lot with actual toy soldiers. At some point, possibly in the wake of Star Wars and with things like Masters of the Universe, they started to be replaced with sci-fantasy action figures and now they're almost completely gone. It's no coincidence that sci-fi & fantasy wargaming also started it's rise in the 80s. So if GW killed off historical wargaming by luring away the kids, it happened decades ago 😀
Historicals have been around for ever, so I wouldn't worry about GW killing that genre. They haven't yet and they won't any time soon. With expos like Salute etc happening every year with their MASSIVE game boards on display by the various clubs and the Wargames Illustrated mags available on the high street, Historicals will be fine. They do need a bit of a kick up the arse where marketing and visibility are concerned though
I feel like a Dan Carlin partnership with someone making a system thats centered around famous elite units and interesting quirky personalities of historical fighting forces primarily around antiquity up to 15th or 16th century could maybe make a thing out of it again. I also think Historical has been something you “age into” for the last 30 years anyway, so the fact it cant get much traction with young folk isn’t exactly new.
Many of the general points I can agree with you on, but there's also a lot of weird knowledge gaps in this video that I would have expected you guys to know. Warlord are the ex-GW guys who were really into historicals who left and took their business knoledge with them. Stallard, Sawyer, and lots of work done by and with Rick Priestly, Alessio Calvatore, etc. Warlord also work with Italiera (and have for many years now_ Itelieri's range of 1:56 scale WW2 vehicles are the same models that Walrord sells for Bolt Action - each company selling the same kits with their own packaging. That's without talking about Rubicon Models who were created to horn in on the Bolt Acton/25mm/28mm WWII market while also being very respectable model kits that you can find in the "Mainstream" Hobby/Model/Railroad shops. Battlefront are also Gale Force Nine who do all sorts of licenced board games and products. Right now they have Dune, Star Trek, Spartacus, Aliens, World of Tanks. They also run Battlefield in a Box with product aimed directly at 40k, Star Wars (Legion/Shatterpoint) & Battletech.
Also with Jay, on the fantasy historical ... that what I treat LOTR and Star Wars Legion like. Also Jay look at Reconquer Miniatures, Piano miniatures and so of the new wargames Atlantic and victrix minis
I think the main limiting factor for historical gaming is that it's just not promoted effectively. A big part of this is the lack of a single game or group of games that's easy to pick up, is accessible, has a community built around it and has brand recognition. Games tend to be limited to a small group of friends or maybe a single gaming store. You might pick up Black Seas because you've always wanted to play a game with sailing ships and lots of cannons, so you read the rules, build and paint the models.....and have no one to play with. You might even have a small community or friend group you play with, but you can't just take your army to another store or city and find a game the way you can with 40k or AoS. If we want historical gaming to grow (I do, personally), we need to look for ways to build communities, promote games, and get people interested. Of course, that would mean we historical gamers would have to put aside our disagreements about period, scale, etc.
This seems like the right moment to say thanks for the Team Yankee Airborne Heavy Weapons blister I just bought from you - it arrived yesterday and I'll start building it the day after tomorrow! ;)
I started out in historical gaming then went to WH and WH40K. After purchasing several rules sets for basically the same GW games I found myself back into historicals. This is mainly because a WWII British paratrooper or a base of French Napoleonic Grenadiers are still the same regardless as to the rules used. GW tends to make things obsolete after a few years as sales slow rendering certain models useless. Case in point all the recently retired MESBG models and whole factions besides.
Konflict '47 speaks to me as a fun setting and the Bolt Action ruleset seems cool, but it feels like it would be a niche within a niche to try and get into. Interesting point about history being over and done with really limiting the possibilities to do fun and creative things with the mini ranges.
I think WW2 historicals can miss the point. At the Flames of War level it seems to revolve around how many Tigers/Fireflys you can squeeze into a force = the only place where Tigers/Fireflys are common is a FoW battlefield. And in Bolt Action it’s how much stuff can you add to three platoons. I’d like to see much smaller ‘full game’ in a box eg. ‘Pavlov’s House’; A platoon of Russians and a platoon of Germans, a weapon sprue for each for customisation (Russians with MP40’s because of the engineering quality and Germans with PPSh’s because of the drum magazine!), a building, a game board, a paired down ruleset and six missions. A game where a heavy machine gun is a serious tactical problem to deal with and every trooper is festooned with grenades. GW would call this combat patrol. My little gaming group is playing 02 Hundred because of the low model count high cinematic feel to the action.
The issue for a FLGS is that you can buy historicals like a 40k habit but you will once you leave Normandy 1944 it becomes hard for a FLGS to (or even a decent sized manufacturer like warlord) to accommodate you, I've had a itch about a 1940 battle of Navik project for a while now can you guys help me out with some French Forieng Legion in winter kit? of course you not! You can't cater to a freak obsessed with a battle you didn't even know existed before he stepped through the door, it would be monsterous of me to exspect you to. That is what the internet is for.
I think WW2 is pretty easy to sell, but that doesn't even have much relation to historical wargaming (and I say this as a hater of the era). In my experience historical wargamers have their specific projects they're making, and it will involve a bunch of things from a specific era. For a shop to carry all of that then you need to have a ludicrously wide range *not all of which would even be considered by your customers*. There would be ways you could carry a focused selection, like just having specific plastic kits, with the understanding that you could special order things in but I just think players would inevitably end up buying online and even in the best case scenario it still probably doesn't earn as much as Warhammer. What I think shops should be getting into carrying is Quar. Cheap, focused, interesting/novel, gets the feel of historical gaming across without being infinitely deep and wide, and they just have a certain charisma. I think even just as a hobby project they're a pretty good sell, especially the new Fidwog box that combines infantry and tiny tanks.
Hornby have invested in Warlord Games and now own a 25% stake and Airfix is one of Hornby's brands. John Stallard from Warlord said something about them figuring out if there's a way to work together on products in an interview last year, so I guess we'll see what the future holds for them. It makes sense for there to be a crossover with Bolt Action and Airfix as you mentioned.
Compared to the supposed glory days of historical gaming (ie the 60s-70s and maybe 80s), the range & quality of products available has vastly expanded, and it seems to continue to do so. Just check out all the plastics that have come out over the past 10-15 years. The market for them is probably bigger than it ever was, even if it's not as big & never will be as big as for sci-fi & fantasy. But most of the buying happens online, or in shops other than the traditional gamestore with its emphasis on GW, MTG & board games.
I got my start back in the dark ages of 1979, using Airfix figures and photocopied rules (mind you, some were still Mimeograph or Ditto but that was on the way out). Even then, I was starting to hear about "the greying of the hobby". Historicals gamers do certainly tend to skew older as a group. Starting out in junior high was a slight aberration from the norm. I certainly see it in my own game group - most of us have gamed together since the early 2000's and we were middle aged then, so yeah. I think part of it that most gamers who favor historicals usually get into it later in life? My closest FLGS has some boxes for Bolt Action, as do a few of the others in the region. One of them also carries Black Powder boxes. FoW was big here for a time but I have not seen anything for that in a long while. If I ramble on long enough I could tell you about the time we all tied red onions to our belts, that being the style at the time. Give me five Bees for a quarter, etc. What's that? It's time for my meds. Ok, I'm out. Cheers!
The commercial marketing of war toys actually took the greatest hit after Viet Nam. The more resent disincentive for towards historicals for young people is the atrophy of history offerings and majors in college. The young are not taught how to read and do research in high school. These skills are also disappearing among college students (I'm a former History prof.) W 40K and such drek are appealing because one is free to paint them anyway one likes without doing much research. Painting w 40k and fantasy figures in brilliant dayglow colors is seductive, but also has led to paint manufacturers developing paint line colors that don't support historicals all that well. Most of the popular RUclips paint tutorials follow in this way.
It's interesting because everyone acknowledges that historical gamers will always exist in some form. I think the bigger question is how do you as an FLGS try and commercialize something so incredibly diverse and spread out? Because there's a growing trend of these Historical gamers just not feeling welcomed at FLGS because the owners know they can't make money on what that person plays. So you have a dual hump of trying to entice these rejected people to go to your store at all, AND trying to find way to sell them something. I have some friends in the Atlanta area who would run a "historical game day" a couple Saturday's a year at a local shop. The partnership with the store was they would run at least a demo of something they could order/carry in-stock, but otherwise also made it a charity event to use as general store advertising to entice people to run and play in these random games. But like your other recent video, that requires usually some kind of "champion" customers to volunteer to do that. Or it becomes a passion project by the store owner to keep that flame burning. Unfortunately that is a tough ask and not always possible.
A lot of folks mentioned the "once you buy it, you own it, and it isn't going to change"... but also, for game shops, HOW THE FLIP would you stock all of the stuff that a historical gamer might need? You cannot possibly stock everything from Warlord, from Battlefront, for 28mm, 20mm, 15mm, 10mm, 6mm, friggin 2 & 3mm, as well as naval for everything from ancients to theoretical WW3, plus ALL the historical paint lines and terrain... Which in my experience leads to most of the historical wargamers doing a lot of shopping online or searching out the one shop within 90 minutes that stocks the game they are looking at, and then make that trip once every 6 months or something... The OTHER big issue that has been talked about on this channel is "do you play where you shop" when it's something like historicals? Let's say you get a new wave of Flames of War or Bolt Action players... and then folks who have armies from 2 editions ago start coming in... what do they buy? What do they do "to become a customer" at that particular shop to get them the "permission" to play? It just really backfires on the LGS level unless the staff & owners of the store are really into that period or style of gaming, so is really hard to do...
I will add that historical gaming. Is the heart and soul of the wargaming hobby, not GW. I know that hurts many who white knight for GW, but its true. You wouldn't have GW without historicals. Matter of fact most if not all of GWs old staff are historical gamers.
you wouldn't have either without caveman painting. its irrelevant who came first. And while historical stuff will stick arround until wargaming as a genre dies, companies manufacturing minis and writing games will not. It doesn't matter if you use german dudes from tamiya or warlord for example, they are still the same german dudes
From my experience the historical crowd is largely offline so it is hard to find info or get onboarded as my local FB group is fairly dead and there is no discord, there also doesn't seem to be much for a secondary market. Hot Lead is hosted an hour away from my city and there was zero mention of it in any local Warhammer/Miniature groups on discord or Facebook. No one had even heard of it even the guys that did play historicals, seems crazy they don't advertise it at all!
I play Warhammer and historical games and thought your comments were fair and reflected the reality of the hobby. One nice thing about them is people aren't married to one set of models so you can keep an army on the shelf for years and then jump in again when and if you find games.
No at a diffrent age every tabletop gamer starts to get into historic stuff, the problem for stores is how Gw works now, they made so many diffrent games that the booted out the other games couse you dont have infinity space to have all systhems...
My shop has sold 32k of Warlord Games product since New Years...likely because no one else locally supports it as deeply as we do for 12 hours in any direction.
I think a big part is the divide between North America and the rest of the world. Two completely different markets. In NA 40k is wargaming far more compared to the rest of the world. Historicals are huge in comparison in the UK. in Flames of War killed their business with a poor new edition and a change of market strategy.
As primarily a historical gamer. Its does ok in stores where I am but there appears to be a more stratified market with some of the more switch on companies like Warlord and Victrix doing quite well and the more niche old school metal spinners slowly decaying. I suspect the audience will decline a bit because as you say the culture has changed and the 'boomer' generation was more into history. I do think it will go down then level out or come back up again as the minis market as a whole feels bigger today than back in the glory days of historicals. At some point there should be enough through put from GW to sustain a historicals audience.
I got into the hobby in 2023. Would love to play some historical stuff. I just agree the models mostly the infantry look antiquated like early 90s warhammer and there's no obvious point of entry.
In local areas maybe, but overall? No. I'm still amazed people play GW rulesets as they're terrible. But the theme of the GW minis is amazing - yea more exciting than a french line soldier I guess. GW have cultured a FOMO and release heavy game system which people have got obsessed with - every week is a new GW release in work, more work, more product to the grinder. Historicals sell well in my work, but nowhere close to GW.
I live in the UK and no, Warhammer is not killing historical games. I play a huge range of historical periods and also 40K and sometimes AoS and other fantasy wargames and at our wargames club and the LGS where I live they are all played regulary by lots of people. There are more people playing historical periods than ever and I've been playing since the 80's.
Our club gets most of its gamers from the EU4/HOI4 pipeline where spending 2000+ hours and as many dollars on a few of those games is the norm. Their commitment level is higher than GW players and they come with a much deeper level of historical context to work with than the old grogs.
Bolt Action and Team Yankee is big in my local area. We have more and more regular tournaments with bigger player count than AoS or Warhammer. Only yesterday I was at an LGS, where they held Bolt Action tournament alongside Team Yankee tournament. In total twelve tables for twenty four players, the max the LGS can accomodate for wargamers. The interest in historical wargames are to play or recreate the accurate units, battles, regiments. In FoW, the "correct" way to play hungarians are hungarian infantry with german tanks. But the problem is, Hungary never recieved a lot of german tanks and sometimes you can field more Tigers or Panthers on a table than the whole of Hungary recieved through lend lease. And to me, who is a historical player at heart, that is not good. And as such, you collect specifically what a certain regiment had. My next project is 6th Luftwaffe Field Division. So the part of excitement is to search for documents on what type of troops they had. And then recreate that. That is the joy of historical wargames. I do not need "new and exciting" stuff. I need more variety of the same. Give me history accurate Luftwaffe uniforms any day, I do not need 37th Primaris Leutenant. It is just niche product. You can not sell it indefinitely, you will saturate the market sooner or later. But you can be in contact with the seller of historicals and buy to order. Funny thing is, the ammount of historicals on the shelves has declined, while the atendiees of games are up. So my LGS years ago was huge into FoW and Team Yankee. All those players come, rent a table and play. You still has your money, it just not through sales of new and exciting, it is by providing an environment to play with those bought models. Terrain. People. Locale. Amenities.
Bolt Action and Flames of War are very popular in my FLGS, Moxie games, in Columbus, Georgia. People of all ages play them. It is mostly people burnt out on Games Workshop milk you till you drop mentality towards customers and are looking for something else.
I got the Bolt Action British Airborne starter army a few months ago and I disagree on the models being ugly, the plastic ones look great IMO! The metal support weapons are pretty bad though.
There’s a fairly widespread idea that the only reason we have Heresy, Old World, Kill Team, Warcry and Underworlds is that GW doesn’t worry as much about profits from these games... that they just want to have an offering in those sectors that competes with the smaller companies. So maybe it’s not completely far fetched that GW might get into historical games just to give the 40k/AoS players, who are “aging out” of those systems, a place to migrate to within the GW line.
The issues you bring up about the distribution of historical games has been a hiccup for me when it comes to FLGS. I want to buy things from my local store, but, for the most part, they don’t have it in stock, and it’s not feasible or possible to order through them for the historical minis I want. I will say for the store that I frequent the most, it’s kind of dubious how much the owners really know about the miniatures hobby, being primarily card and board gamers. So there is almost a language barrier when it comes to ordering or asking about the warhammer and infinity products they do carry. So that is compounded when you start throwing even more niche historical miniatures. They (and many mainstream wargaming hobbies for that matter) seem pretty blind to the idea of having a miniatures collection that you can play a multitude of games with, which is pretty common in historical circles. So that’s kind of another issue. To me, when they ask “what game do you want to play,” is a much less straightforward, and the question that I, and I feel other historical Wargamers find more interesting is “what time period”, “what campaigns”, “what battles?” The game is immaterial. This is anathema to people who are dependent on being spoon fed a game by fantasy flight or similar companies.
The thing about historicals is that it's something people get into when they're older, always has been. The audience is pretty gray but the audience was always pretty gray. I think Warlord is doing a lot of things right at the moment. It's never going to be a staple in every store but it seems like it's doing okay and the new edition is solid. If they land the new Konflikt 47, that could go places (relatively speaking). Flames of War is definitely struggling. I don't think Team Yankee was ever super popular and mostly drew in the boomer ex-military types pining for their glory days (come at me bro) and FOW has really struggled to retain audience through version changes, SKU bloat/cutback, etc. It's a fun game but, to the extent that there is a popular front historical scene, Bolt Action is taking it over. (A lot of historicals will continue to be cottage industry/basement gamers, same as always.) Battlefront should think about moving into SF. There is definitely a 15mm SF scene but it's extremely cottage-industry and underground. I think a fun, good looking 15mm SF game done in nice plastics could have legs. Certainly a better bet than yet another variation on late-WW2-speculative excuses to field a Maus or two.
My guess it's the same problem with franchise IP products, eventually you run out of stuff to release. There is a set amount of British or German troops available in WWII. I guess why the alt-war like Konflikt 47 eventually show up as a possibility to sale more models to the existent player base. I still want to do a WWII army and paint the tanks like Scooby Doo's Mistery Machine and paint the uniforms like they are hippies using guayaberas (specially those Brits using shorts on the Africa front) just to piss off the purists. But it's a lot of effort just to annoy people :P
TRENCH CRUSADE MENTIONED 14:41 14:43 20:27 20:57 Chris should not be giving the younger hipper Jay ideas about replacing older people with similar hip young people to drive engagement. Just saying.
They DID strike a deal with Italeri for the tanks! The thing is that 1/56 or even 1/48 are not traditional tank model scales. 1/72 is way too small and 1/35 is way too big (works for 40K conversions ironically though). Also wargamers want more simplified kits "serious" tank modelers sneers at. 1/72 plastic kits is the reason WWII gaming was traditionally done in 20mm scale. Metal infantry from small manufacturers, plastic guns and vehicles from Revell etc. As for my personal experience... my local supported Flames pretty well, but it's been disappearing from the shelves lately. I can still special order it since their distributor carries it. They dabbled in others but none seem to have stuck. I don't really mind that much as I can just order direct anyway (and I play at my own place), but it is kinda sad. BUUUT: Pretty much the same thing has happened to all the other miniatures games except GW. Warmachine/Hordes used to be big, now it's on liquidation sales etc.
Game design I think is the main issue. The reason fantasy and sci work ( Warhammer ) is because within a setting you can write your own story ( so to speak ). Younger people especially don’t like being told they can or can’t have a certain army or battle because of the history. That being said if game designers developed a way to change the corse of battle or history within a historical context I think this would appeal better. ( this is part of the so called magic of trench crusade. ). I think too people even game designers are largely ignorant of history as well. Too fantasy saturated.
the only games that are that limiting in historicals are mentally or physically 20-30+ years old. Modern game series like the Honour system and Revolution the wargaming have more modern design concepts than even more recent warhammer editions.
Perhaps ….. but according to our Canadian friends here …. That is not helping either. Perhaps it’s just marketing. Historicals have always been a big part of wargaming but will always be on the fringe ……
Everything you said in your 3-d printing video also applies. You cant stop peoppe making stls of historicsl hardware and people and posting them online for free. Theres a best case scenario where players get together and maintain their own spaces while printing all their models, and there are some prominant role models for that here on youtube, but mostly I think historicals have become something you do at home with one or two friends in a closed D-I-Y system.
Warlord actually covered this in their Open Day. They do not approach this from a perspective of gathering young players or even attracting them. They let these other companies, GW, whoever, get that younger audience. The Warlord audience is the older player who has tried and played all the flashy games, and now appreciates the more historical and chill wargames.
It is certainly fair to say Warlord specifcally is targeted at aged, legacy retail model collectors. Their product doesn't really stand up in any other context.
If that's true, I think that's a self-defeating approach. You need younger players to grow the historical hobby, and you need them to feel like historical gaming is something that's just as exciting and accessible as sci Fi or fantasy gaming.
Warlord is the GW guys that wanted to do historicals, that's where it came from BTW.
Historical Wargaming has been around a hell of alot longer than GW btw.
@@ivanivanovich4294 they seems more like the retirement home for gw guys who ran out of steam
@@TimcPlays I know, kriegspiel outdates it by 2 centuries
@@montroyalbynight8107 dumb
@@TimcPlays he's not saying that's where historical games came from, he's saying that's where the company Warlord Games came from...
The guys who I know play historicals, and this is 100% anecdotal, all got into it once they hit their 40’s and either had post-secondary education and/or military history.
@@ApocryphalPress there is a new pipeline of hoi4/eu4 players. If your average time commitment per historical video game is 2000+ hours and 500$, you are more ready to wargame than GW players assuming you care to do the physical stuff.
I think you may be looking at this from a retail skewed perspective (which is understandable). Lots of people play historicals but buy direct from the many, many ‘cottage industry’ sized niche historical period miniature manufacturers, rather than buy from shops? Sure you’ve got flames of war and warlord games but that’s only 4 or 5 games really. there are scores of other manufacturers who sell direct to the customers, who use non manufacturer specific rules (of which there are a hundred options/variants).
I wonder if more players would be attracted to the hobby by skirmish-style modern wargames? There are many tabletop wargames covering more recent historical conflicts, but I don't know much about the mini side of the hobby (although it may be mostly digital/3d printing now). Infinity seems pretty popular, although it is sci-fi and not historical...
Unfortunately the retail products both in terms of the models and rules tend to simply be inferior for a higher cost vs what is available online for historicals.
It's the type of retail too - generally the stores you find historical models in tend to carry more Hornby and Airfix than GW ....
@@markwatson8714 Definitely true. Over here you can get historical gaming miniatures (Warlord, Victrix, Perry...) in scale modelling shops, but none of the game-oriented shops that carry Warhammer, Malifaux, D&D miniatures etc. carry them.
Yup, historical wargame figure sales were maongst the first to go online - the brick and mortar shops disappeared rapidly in the 1990s-2000s.
if Warlord Games or Battlefront get a Zorpazorp-like guy building a giant table of Normandy for playing D-Day, I might end up falling for it XD
aren't battlefront a kiwi company, they fought in Italy not France dude send the boy and his kids on an Italian holiday. (it would probably do huge violence to his algorithm though
@@steeldrac or just watch little wars tv rather than wait for these tires legacy retail brands to be something they are not
@@montroyalbynight8107 I didn't get what you are saying. Is tires legacy a lingo for something or just a typo? English is not my first language. My point is that they, being some of the biggest historical gaming companies, I have no interest in their products, but if they do something spectacular and engaging I might try some of their products.
You were thinking of All Quiet on the Western Front. A fantastic, but incredibly depressing movie.
Ironically, the book that it's based on, ends very differently
Between Victrix and Footsore I have most of my historical games/minis covered. Then you have Claymore Castings that uses a sculptor called Matthew Bickley that I love, his minis have so much movement and still are cast in single piece metals. No Warlord for me, but I'm usually the guy looking for less known games around.
@@steeldrac metal doesn't hold back anything. CB has shown it is still the premiere material.
@@montroyalbynight8107 back in N2 I wanted an Infinity WWII, with CB quality metal models and getting rid of all the sci-fi shenanigans from the special rules.
I've recently started a Saga army. I'm fortunate that my local store has a large historical section with all the great Victrix and Perry miniatures. I'm not sure how they justify keeping so many historical kits, but I'm very pleased about it. Gave me a place to get my Napoleonics for Turnip conversions as well.
That's great to hear!
Historical games are awesome, but the way Historical games are sold and marketed doesn't feed the rampant and insatiable consumerism of today's gamer.
It's not about marketing, it's inherent to historical gaming. You buy an army or two for a given theater, and then you play with them. There's no chance to keep revising and nerfing so you have to keep buying and re-buying units. A Tiger tank is a Tiger tank.
poor business blames the customers
Yeah, nobody has come out with a new WW2 unit in years. Even longer if you're into Napoleonics.
Unless... They make a game where you actually destroy the units with fireworks and fake blood.
I will look into developing this so I can make it big
Warlord actually has a lot of tank kits made by Italieri.
As for seeing historicals in stores, I think Bolt Action is seeing a resurgence due to the new edition coming out this year, but usually don't see very much. I am surprised more stores don't carry Firelock Games stuff. as they have some lovely historical and semi historical games.
Yep, while WW2 and similar do look neat, the ones that tend to attract a lot of people to them are Samurai, Westerns, and Pirates/Swashbucklers...often ones that can start small. One local store had a major thing of Ronin and added a house rule document to it that added more to the game (Along with things like standardized mounted basing).
There's still, occasionally campaigns using GW's old Legends of the Old West as well.
Pirates pop up with everything, but it's been a bit, though seems to have a few things whenever there's rumors of another PotC movie or similar coming.
Historicals outside of late war ww2 are hard to get into. You usually buy miniatures from two or more vendors, buy rules from another, and then have to make your own community of people playing that specific period+ruleset. I’d say historicals (some not so historical) are in a bit of a golden age now with miniatures, rules, and RUclips presence.
The Little Wars TV channel regularly discusses this same topic and how to bring younger gamers into historicals. Would be a great crossover to hear your perspective and theirs together.
LWTV is quality. Also scotch
Bolt Action has an existing deal with Italeri for their tanks, also IRL armored vehicles from the 40s are smaller than you realize. A 1/56th scale VW bug is less than 3 inches long.
Lol yeah Sherman Tanks were only about the size of a modern humvee
@@nicholashurst780there's one in the park in my town, and can confirm, they're just not that big.
No one in my local group wants to play anything but modern Warhammer (40K, Tow, Aos, Killteam etc.) and it is maddening.
Historicals eat 40k burnouts, when 40k goes bad historicals eat good, and vice versa.
They'll always be around.
Historical makers also haven't managed to bridge the gap with historical games, HOI4 and Warthunder, and World of Tanks are massive right now, people just don't know that historicals exist a lot of the time.
If I was at warlord games I'd be sponsoring HOI4 and Warthunder youtubers like a saudi prince flying instagram models out to dubai
its insane how warthunder, world of tanks, Europa universalis, HOI, Foxhole, battlefield, call of duty and a few other games are not contacted by the historical model makers to work together. thats probably a few hundred millions of players and potential customers they missed, over the years
@@GoalOrientedLifting Yeah, I'd be contacting anyone whose ever streamed these things and sending them free starter sets and paints and bags of coke and hiring strippers for them, tbh
@@GoalOrientedLifting It wasn't until recently HOI realized they could make a board game out of the IP (that isn't necessarily Axis and Allies).
I feel like there’s been a big change in the whole war gaming hobby. Back in the dark ages, when I started, there was virtually no secondary market for any sort of war games. When someone got out of even 40k, they’d just give their army to their 8 year old nephew to play with, break and lose in the sandbox. Now, armies don’t ever go away. And there’s lots of people who want the pre-built and painted army because they don’t like the hobby side.
Pretty balanced commentary. One key point worthy of considering is that while playing in shops seems to be the norm in North America, it's far less the case elsewhere where the norm is playing in a club setting. So as the wise man once said, "you dont see what you dont see". I think Warlord have done a great job in actioning one of the key lessons from GW: Make good starter sets! That was always one of the major barriers to entry in Historicals - buying rules from one place and figures from multiple other places. Having a "one stop box" with rules, tokens, dice, figures etc and selling it at a reasonable price point. As for quality of figures, myself and lots of people I know find the modern GW design aesthetic totally overcooked. Spear carrier number 46 doesnt need to be leaping off a rock covered in tiny skulls, especially when he is glued to a base with 7 other guys in tight ranks. As I was watching this I was gluing together 50 Perry medieval pikemen, and they are just fine as multi-part plastics go.
My friend graduated from WHFB into historicals recently at the tender age of 32. I think people like him would respond really well to better social media advertising of that setting.
My hobby shop sells some historical minis but no historical rulesets, I thought it strange until I learned that those minis make great LOTR proxies
miniature wargaming channels with ~5k subs gotta be one of my favorite genres
One thing about new editions and changes: particularly for relatively recent conducts like WW1, WW2 , Korea and Nam there are a lot of people who become invested in these settings because of personal family connections to the war. As a result, changing the nature of a rule or unit fundamentally changes the nature of models which may represent the memory of real people. A change to the efficiency of bombers might be good for game balance but a lot of people are going to read that as the company reducing the impact of Great Grandpa's contribution to the war effort.
One of the largest problems with Historical wargames is there is so much of that product out there already. It is not hard to find tons of miniatures at historical gaming convention for sale. Another problem is the painting, quite a few historical games require painting 100's of miniatures so few new people are willing to under take the task. It is also becoming pretty difficult to find painters willing to paint historical due to fact it does not pay as well as painting up 40K or fantasy.
Squad and skirmish suze games are available in historicals, so the daunting task if painting an entire army isn't necessary. Now, with that being said, you're never going to be able to get the desired feel of Napoleonic era combat (specialization and vast array of units) without putting in the paint strokes.
Gale Force 9 do licensed board games, terrain, etc.
GF9 and Battlefront are sister companies, under The Battlefront Group.
It's diversification under different brands. One company failing doesn't take down the other(s).
Forge World, GW Retail, Citadel, et al. are similar. They're under a larger umbrella.
Odd, historical seems to be having a boom over here in the UK. Warlord are ofc a key driver, but also Too Fat Lardies have been coming along for quite a while. The trade shows are still going strong.
Old geezer here. Started historical games in 1985. The shop I went to, you found out what people were playing and what scale and found out what ruleset. Then you looked for whatever Osprey book or other painting guide and got to reading and painting. If you saw cool figures, the question wasn't "what game are these for?" It was, do I have rules or do I know of rules for these? Sometimes you or your friends made rules. Based off of Donald Featherstone's Wargames usually, but there were several small companies from the UK that published rulesets.
Sorry for the long post
Great video guys. Certainly generated a lot of local discussion in my community in Aus! I agree with your analysis from a retail perspective. There are so many historical periods, rules, scales,and units that I can’t see how it would ever make sense to sell ‘historicals’. I don’t think the problem is a limit on historical collecting - most historical players I know, including myself, keep collecting army after army at the same rate as GW players. I believe the issue is because no company can control historical IP, the offerings are too dispersed and mark-ups too limited by competition to make selling in a store viable. Also unlike GW where you can expect the get everything you want from an FLGS, for historicals there is almost a certainty that you must order some stuff online to get the niche bits you need to build a playable historical force since no FLGS store can carry a full historical range, so while you are online why not just order the rest? Historical gaming is actually going through an upswing atm from what I can see, certainly with Bolt Action v3, but I doubt you will see that in your store. I think the FoW/battlefront period was an anomaly, there had been a gap in the WW2 market which battlefront jumped into with modern quasi-GW approach to rules and models, allowing them to briefly untie the historical market, but when Warlord released BA the market fractured again. I doubt we will see a historical force like battlefront again anytime soon.
Great comments and insights!
As someone who left GW in 2016 an went historical with bolt action an napoleonics, I was supprised at how many of them had never even stepped in a GW before, they were all over 35 an did nowt but historicals, that sort of audience isn't viable for stores as they often just buy the cheapest from certain small online only metal companies an you just couldn't stock everything for historical wargamers an they wouldn't be loyal
Growing up in the 80's/90's, I could talk to my grandfather who was a WWII veteran and listen to his stories - which is one reason I love the period. This option isn't available to people any more.
ww2 is definately becoming a paper war and thus losing a major genre advantage
there are a few stores that stock a good range of historicals. Historicals are also what i've open my webshop up with and they've been going okay. I think alot of it is based more around the enjoyment of playing the games than the flavour of the month new releases.
Historicals being model agnostic will always handicap them from a retail perspective.
Modern GW wont even let you put non-GW bits on your models to play in tournaments. Old GW gave you instructions on how to turn a cereal box into a looted wagon in White Dwarf.
For something like bolt action, as long as your guy is holding the right kind of gun, thats basically the only important thing.
I would say the main thing holding BA back, if anything is, would be the small game sizes. 1250 point games are maybe 4 squads of infantry, two tanks, and a forward observer.
A 2000 point 40k army can have hundreds of footsloggers, half a dozen tanks, a flyer, and a bunch of other weird stuff.
Imagine if every GW army was pointed like custodes. Wouldnt sell nearly as well.
"All quiet on the Western Front"?
I literally couldn't think of the title lol thanka
I am a pushing-30 exclusively historical gamer. To answer the question of what to buy when you have everything is to get into another period of history. My collection has 7 different periods in several differnt scales.
thinking one can be "done" any era seems to be about a lack of research
I know the title is click bait but I'm still going to write my comment before watching. I wanted to try 40K again after dropping out of it as a kid and it did not live up to my expectations and left me disappointed. I still have games-workshop miniatures because they're cool but I've also picked up stuff for Bolt Action and Flames of War and they are closer to what I wanted in the first place.
tl:dr games-workshop is still a miniatures company not a game company to me.
Warlord has a sci-fi wargame it's Gates of Antares and it's really not bad it just needs that one thing for it to really take off.
As a retailer, sure, it must be hard; there is such a huge range of minis, eras, and rules. What should you target and sell?
As a consumer, it's excellent; there's such a huge range of minis, eras, rules. There is a never-ending supply of options and choices from smaller companies who LOVE what they do.
You buy and build a viking force. Then you decide I'd better make a rival saxons band. Then you decide that those English Civil War pikemen look interesting. And better get a troop of cavalry to go next to them. Then you rewatch Sharpe, and decide you must paint up a unit of riflemen. Which Napoleonic skirmish rules should I use? I'll buy 2 or 3 options on pdf to decide. Then I really do need to have a counterforce of French linemen. Ooh, look at those men-at-arms from the Perrys... Also, I have just listened to that audio book about the conflict between Rome and Carthage, it would be so fun to represent that on the tabletop. And on and on it goes.
As a hobbyist, it's truly a wonderful age to be living in. The possibilities are endless.
Historicon (in the US) had a really healthy attendance this past year. Sure there were alot of greybeards as there always is, but alot of younger people as well, probably trickling in from GW games, 3D printing and the like.
@@sdchip you missed historical video games and board games, where the big money is being made
I definitely agree with the points you both brought up, especially the dead ending of “welp, got my 101st airborne done and they’re complete basically forever.” However, I do think one overlooked aspect is that there is still a huge hunger/interest for historical wargaming but it is finding its outlet digitally. Look at the popularity of the various Total War games or the Paradox titles, and heck even Civilization. I think this scratches the historical itch for a lot of people but unlike, say, Space Marine 2 which drives people to the tabletop, these experiences aren’t drivers of new tabletop players. People get their historical kick with plenty of detail and they’re plenty full so to speak.
It's no more a dead end than anything else. Admittedly, it's been over 20 years since I touched GW, but even then most people I knew would only collect one or two armies, and generally once they hit the points value they were looking for that would be it. If anything historicals tend to be less prone to that since they usually focus on wider periods; to take Warlord's Black Powder for example the rules cover a period from the War of Spanish Succession (1705) to the Anglo-Zulu war (1879). Sure, I might finish my Jacobite army forever, but once I do there's still the American Revolution, Napoleon, Crimea or even the Boshin War to explore.
@@andrewwing7484 video games are huge and tabletop wargaming is small. Our historicals club is full of paradox people in their 20s and 30s
@@montroyalbynight8107 sure, I only meant to say that something like 40k has digital feeders to direct new players to the tabletop, whereas historicals don’t have the same feeders despite ongoing interest. Just a compounding factor in addition to what you pointed out.
While the 101st Airborne comment may be true, where's your fallschirmjagers? See, there's ALWAYS more! At the heart of it, we're miniatures people and there's always another army to be collected.
@@andrewwing7484 There's far more historical games than there are 40K games. The other feeder historicals have always had that GW tends to struggle with is the boardgame space, which I suspect might be slightly more impactful (given you already know someone playing boardgames is interested in tabletop play, which isn't necessarily the case with videogames).
The only times I've been interested in playing Bolt Action have stemmed from watching the scenarios on Games Night on RUclips. They had a hilarious episode playing with characters from the British TV show Dad's Army and a hilarious Indiana Jones episode.
So, are you guys saying that historicals are a thing of the past?
Great discussion as always! Thank you both 🙏
As a collector of historicals (ancients, napoleonics, medieval, etc) and player of Battlegroup in 10mm, game stores are the last place to look for really anything other than paint and general hobby supplies. Bolt Action is there to "hook" the GW crowd and the ones that answer the call will eventually dig much deeper and fall into the pit of Napoleonic wargaming. More time and deeper pockets are the hallmarks of historical wargamers and those things aren't in ample supply to most until there's a bit of grey in the beard.
I wanted to get back into 40k this year but Game Workshop just sold out all the time, so I just went back to my roots and drop $1000 on Warlords Games epic Napoleon Waterloo.
Me, my dad and nephew been having blast every weekend just painting them up and having wonderful game.
The Warlord lads have actually negotiated an "exit strategy" with Hornby (Airfix, model trains). It was announced a bit over a year ago. 25% then and more later. "Warlord Games was founded in 2007 by two former Games Workshop employees; sales director John Stallard, and White Dwarf editor Paul Sawyer. " Unfortunately Paul has gotten very ill. It seems likely there will be significant change once John retires and maybe Hornby buys the rest of Warlord.
Can you explain more? I know Hornby invested in Warlord Games, but I don't understand what effect that has on Warlord. What is Hornby's overarching plan for Warlord?
@@joshuagarcia4523 the owner is super old and it has a buy-out clause in the contract. It's an obvious offramp and they are flailing with kicking out shovelware to show market cap in the meantime.
@@montroyalbynight8107 oh wow. I didn't know anything about the buy-out clause. So essentially when John Stallard retires/passes away, Warlord Games effectively ceases to exist? Or, if it does exist, it's totally owned by Hornby?
@@joshuagarcia4523 You can read about it, I think saying that would be an oversimplifcation. But in general the writing is on the wall about them being packaged up.
FOW has an old owner as well but seems to be flailing less. Neither companies really have new or good ideas though.
@montroyalbynight8107 that's interesting. My impression seems to be completely wrong. I thought Battlefront was almost totally dead but that Warlord was holding steady and slowly growing. They seem to be putting together a dream team for Konflikt '47 3rd edition. Your insight makes me somewhat hesitant to continue collecting Bolt Action
Flames of war made a huge mistake turning their forums over to Facebook. That marked the beginning of the end.
This was one of your best chats. Appreciated. A note, Warlord games is partly owned by Hornby Hobbies, who also has options to increase their share. Hornby also own Airfix, the scale model company, so we might see synergies in the future.
A few things to consider. 1) In the video game realm WW2 themed games are very popular and among the most well known. Consider the popularity of the Total War historical series. So it would appear that the subject matter is still very engaging and interesting to a lot of people. 2) It is interesting that the tabletop historical wargame scene is dominated by older guys, while the sci fi and fantasy (Warhammer specifically) is dominated by a younger crowd.
I can confirm the long term cultural shift. I grew up in the 70s & 80s, and historical references were pretty common in popular entertainment, even in stuff aimed at kids. It was already trending downwards though, I think this was at it's height in the 50s & 60s. At least here in Europe. But yeah, as a kid I played a lot with actual toy soldiers. At some point, possibly in the wake of Star Wars and with things like Masters of the Universe, they started to be replaced with sci-fantasy action figures and now they're almost completely gone. It's no coincidence that sci-fi & fantasy wargaming also started it's rise in the 80s. So if GW killed off historical wargaming by luring away the kids, it happened decades ago 😀
Historicals have been around for ever, so I wouldn't worry about GW killing that genre. They haven't yet and they won't any time soon. With expos like Salute etc happening every year with their MASSIVE game boards on display by the various clubs and the Wargames Illustrated mags available on the high street, Historicals will be fine. They do need a bit of a kick up the arse where marketing and visibility are concerned though
I feel like a Dan Carlin partnership with someone making a system thats centered around famous elite units and interesting quirky personalities of historical fighting forces primarily around antiquity up to 15th or 16th century could maybe make a thing out of it again.
I also think Historical has been something you “age into” for the last 30 years anyway, so the fact it cant get much traction with young folk isn’t exactly new.
Many of the general points I can agree with you on, but there's also a lot of weird knowledge gaps in this video that I would have expected you guys to know.
Warlord are the ex-GW guys who were really into historicals who left and took their business knoledge with them. Stallard, Sawyer, and lots of work done by and with Rick Priestly, Alessio Calvatore, etc.
Warlord also work with Italiera (and have for many years now_ Itelieri's range of 1:56 scale WW2 vehicles are the same models that Walrord sells for Bolt Action - each company selling the same kits with their own packaging. That's without talking about Rubicon Models who were created to horn in on the Bolt Acton/25mm/28mm WWII market while also being very respectable model kits that you can find in the "Mainstream" Hobby/Model/Railroad shops.
Battlefront are also Gale Force Nine who do all sorts of licenced board games and products. Right now they have Dune, Star Trek, Spartacus, Aliens, World of Tanks. They also run Battlefield in a Box with product aimed directly at 40k, Star Wars (Legion/Shatterpoint) & Battletech.
Also with Jay, on the fantasy historical ... that what I treat LOTR and Star Wars Legion like. Also Jay look at Reconquer Miniatures, Piano miniatures and so of the new wargames Atlantic and victrix minis
I think the main limiting factor for historical gaming is that it's just not promoted effectively. A big part of this is the lack of a single game or group of games that's easy to pick up, is accessible, has a community built around it and has brand recognition. Games tend to be limited to a small group of friends or maybe a single gaming store.
You might pick up Black Seas because you've always wanted to play a game with sailing ships and lots of cannons, so you read the rules, build and paint the models.....and have no one to play with.
You might even have a small community or friend group you play with, but you can't just take your army to another store or city and find a game the way you can with 40k or AoS.
If we want historical gaming to grow (I do, personally), we need to look for ways to build communities, promote games, and get people interested. Of course, that would mean we historical gamers would have to put aside our disagreements about period, scale, etc.
This seems like the right moment to say thanks for the Team Yankee Airborne Heavy Weapons blister I just bought from you - it arrived yesterday and I'll start building it the day after tomorrow! ;)
Wait.. So Trench Crusade isn't a real historical game..? I'm so confused 😊
I started out in historical gaming then went to WH and WH40K. After purchasing several rules sets for basically the same GW games I found myself back into historicals. This is mainly because a WWII British paratrooper or a base of French Napoleonic Grenadiers are still the same regardless as to the rules used. GW tends to make things obsolete after a few years as sales slow rendering certain models useless. Case in point all the recently retired MESBG models and whole factions besides.
Konflict '47 speaks to me as a fun setting and the Bolt Action ruleset seems cool, but it feels like it would be a niche within a niche to try and get into. Interesting point about history being over and done with really limiting the possibilities to do fun and creative things with the mini ranges.
I think WW2 historicals can miss the point. At the Flames of War level it seems to revolve around how many Tigers/Fireflys you can squeeze into a force = the only place where Tigers/Fireflys are common is a FoW battlefield. And in Bolt Action it’s how much stuff can you add to three platoons.
I’d like to see much smaller ‘full game’ in a box eg. ‘Pavlov’s House’; A platoon of Russians and a platoon of Germans, a weapon sprue for each for customisation (Russians with MP40’s because of the engineering quality and Germans with PPSh’s because of the drum magazine!), a building, a game board, a paired down ruleset and six missions. A game where a heavy machine gun is a serious tactical problem to deal with and every trooper is festooned with grenades. GW would call this combat patrol.
My little gaming group is playing 02 Hundred because of the low model count high cinematic feel to the action.
@13:35 mark....Warlord games is secretely funding conflict globally to help create new miniature lines. Dark /s
The issue for a FLGS is that you can buy historicals like a 40k habit but you will once you leave Normandy 1944 it becomes hard for a FLGS to (or even a decent sized manufacturer like warlord) to accommodate you, I've had a itch about a 1940 battle of Navik project for a while now can you guys help me out with some French Forieng Legion in winter kit? of course you not!
You can't cater to a freak obsessed with a battle you didn't even know existed before he stepped through the door, it would be monsterous of me to exspect you to.
That is what the internet is for.
I think WW2 is pretty easy to sell, but that doesn't even have much relation to historical wargaming (and I say this as a hater of the era).
In my experience historical wargamers have their specific projects they're making, and it will involve a bunch of things from a specific era. For a shop to carry all of that then you need to have a ludicrously wide range *not all of which would even be considered by your customers*.
There would be ways you could carry a focused selection, like just having specific plastic kits, with the understanding that you could special order things in but I just think players would inevitably end up buying online and even in the best case scenario it still probably doesn't earn as much as Warhammer.
What I think shops should be getting into carrying is Quar. Cheap, focused, interesting/novel, gets the feel of historical gaming across without being infinitely deep and wide, and they just have a certain charisma. I think even just as a hobby project they're a pretty good sell, especially the new Fidwog box that combines infantry and tiny tanks.
I was building my old world empire militia whilst watching this. :-)
Hornby have invested in Warlord Games and now own a 25% stake and Airfix is one of Hornby's brands. John Stallard from Warlord said something about them figuring out if there's a way to work together on products in an interview last year, so I guess we'll see what the future holds for them. It makes sense for there to be a crossover with Bolt Action and Airfix as you mentioned.
Compared to the supposed glory days of historical gaming (ie the 60s-70s and maybe 80s), the range & quality of products available has vastly expanded, and it seems to continue to do so. Just check out all the plastics that have come out over the past 10-15 years. The market for them is probably bigger than it ever was, even if it's not as big & never will be as big as for sci-fi & fantasy. But most of the buying happens online, or in shops other than the traditional gamestore with its emphasis on GW, MTG & board games.
The historical wargame in my FLGS looks like it is 20 years old and covered in dust or in the other just doesn't exist.
I got my start back in the dark ages of 1979, using Airfix figures and photocopied rules (mind you, some were still Mimeograph or Ditto but that was on the way out). Even then, I was starting to hear about "the greying of the hobby". Historicals gamers do certainly tend to skew older as a group. Starting out in junior high was a slight aberration from the norm. I certainly see it in my own game group - most of us have gamed together since the early 2000's and we were middle aged then, so yeah. I think part of it that most gamers who favor historicals usually get into it later in life? My closest FLGS has some boxes for Bolt Action, as do a few of the others in the region. One of them also carries Black Powder boxes. FoW was big here for a time but I have not seen anything for that in a long while. If I ramble on long enough I could tell you about the time we all tied red onions to our belts, that being the style at the time. Give me five Bees for a quarter, etc. What's that? It's time for my meds. Ok, I'm out. Cheers!
The commercial marketing of war toys actually took the greatest hit after Viet Nam. The more resent disincentive for towards historicals for young people is the atrophy of history offerings and majors in college. The young are not taught how to read and do research in high school. These skills are also disappearing among college students (I'm a former History prof.) W 40K and such drek are appealing because one is free to paint them anyway one likes without doing much research. Painting w 40k and fantasy figures in brilliant dayglow colors is seductive, but also has led to paint manufacturers developing paint line colors that don't support historicals all that well. Most of the popular RUclips paint tutorials follow in this way.
It's interesting because everyone acknowledges that historical gamers will always exist in some form. I think the bigger question is how do you as an FLGS try and commercialize something so incredibly diverse and spread out? Because there's a growing trend of these Historical gamers just not feeling welcomed at FLGS because the owners know they can't make money on what that person plays. So you have a dual hump of trying to entice these rejected people to go to your store at all, AND trying to find way to sell them something.
I have some friends in the Atlanta area who would run a "historical game day" a couple Saturday's a year at a local shop. The partnership with the store was they would run at least a demo of something they could order/carry in-stock, but otherwise also made it a charity event to use as general store advertising to entice people to run and play in these random games. But like your other recent video, that requires usually some kind of "champion" customers to volunteer to do that. Or it becomes a passion project by the store owner to keep that flame burning. Unfortunately that is a tough ask and not always possible.
IME the atlanta crowd for FOW is extremely competitive and not newb friendly
A lot of folks mentioned the "once you buy it, you own it, and it isn't going to change"... but also, for game shops, HOW THE FLIP would you stock all of the stuff that a historical gamer might need?
You cannot possibly stock everything from Warlord, from Battlefront, for 28mm, 20mm, 15mm, 10mm, 6mm, friggin 2 & 3mm, as well as naval for everything from ancients to theoretical WW3, plus ALL the historical paint lines and terrain...
Which in my experience leads to most of the historical wargamers doing a lot of shopping online or searching out the one shop within 90 minutes that stocks the game they are looking at, and then make that trip once every 6 months or something...
The OTHER big issue that has been talked about on this channel is "do you play where you shop" when it's something like historicals?
Let's say you get a new wave of Flames of War or Bolt Action players... and then folks who have armies from 2 editions ago start coming in... what do they buy? What do they do "to become a customer" at that particular shop to get them the "permission" to play?
It just really backfires on the LGS level unless the staff & owners of the store are really into that period or style of gaming, so is really hard to do...
I will add that historical gaming. Is the heart and soul of the wargaming hobby, not GW. I know that hurts many who white knight for GW, but its true. You wouldn't have GW without historicals. Matter of fact most if not all of GWs old staff are historical gamers.
Historicals will predate and postdate all current IPs, its the core of the hobby, no matter how small it is.
you wouldn't have either without caveman painting. its irrelevant who came first. And while historical stuff will stick arround until wargaming as a genre dies, companies manufacturing minis and writing games will not. It doesn't matter if you use german dudes from tamiya or warlord for example, they are still the same german dudes
From my experience the historical crowd is largely offline so it is hard to find info or get onboarded as my local FB group is fairly dead and there is no discord, there also doesn't seem to be much for a secondary market. Hot Lead is hosted an hour away from my city and there was zero mention of it in any local Warhammer/Miniature groups on discord or Facebook. No one had even heard of it even the guys that did play historicals, seems crazy they don't advertise it at all!
I play Warhammer and historical games and thought your comments were fair and reflected the reality of the hobby. One nice thing about them is people aren't married to one set of models so you can keep an army on the shelf for years and then jump in again when and if you find games.
A modern SUV is the same size as a Sherman tank. WWII tanks aren't as large as we'd imagine.
No at a diffrent age every tabletop gamer starts to get into historic stuff, the problem for stores is how Gw works now, they made so many diffrent games that the booted out the other games couse you dont have infinity space to have all systhems...
I made more money in krieg boxes today than I sold in historicals in an entire year. The players are literally dying out.
My shop has sold 32k of Warlord Games product since New Years...likely because no one else locally supports it as deeply as we do for 12 hours in any direction.
Yea it's nice when you can dig out a niche like that.
Congrats on the success!
I think a big part is the divide between North America and the rest of the world. Two completely different markets. In NA 40k is wargaming far more compared to the rest of the world. Historicals are huge in comparison in the UK. in Flames of War killed their business with a poor new edition and a change of market strategy.
I'm a kiwi.. we have a lot of flames of war players Warhammer still bigger but here Warhammer is brutally expensive and it's not selling as well
As primarily a historical gamer. Its does ok in stores where I am but there appears to be a more stratified market with some of the more switch on companies like Warlord and Victrix doing quite well and the more niche old school metal spinners slowly decaying. I suspect the audience will decline a bit because as you say the culture has changed and the 'boomer' generation was more into history. I do think it will go down then level out or come back up again as the minis market as a whole feels bigger today than back in the glory days of historicals. At some point there should be enough through put from GW to sustain a historicals audience.
I got into the hobby in 2023. Would love to play some historical stuff. I just agree the models mostly the infantry look antiquated like early 90s warhammer and there's no obvious point of entry.
Doesn’t warlord already contract their armour kits out to Italeri? Definitely not to scale though
In local areas maybe, but overall? No.
I'm still amazed people play GW rulesets as they're terrible. But the theme of the GW minis is amazing - yea more exciting than a french line soldier I guess.
GW have cultured a FOMO and release heavy game system which people have got obsessed with - every week is a new GW release in work, more work, more product to the grinder. Historicals sell well in my work, but nowhere close to GW.
Kits change. Players change. Editions change. But war? War never changes.
I live in the UK and no, Warhammer is not killing historical games. I play a huge range of historical periods and also 40K and sometimes AoS and other fantasy wargames and at our wargames club and the LGS where I live they are all played regulary by lots of people. There are more people playing historical periods than ever and I've been playing since the 80's.
Our club gets most of its gamers from the EU4/HOI4 pipeline where spending 2000+ hours and as many dollars on a few of those games is the norm. Their commitment level is higher than GW players and they come with a much deeper level of historical context to work with than the old grogs.
Bolt Action and Team Yankee is big in my local area. We have more and more regular tournaments with bigger player count than AoS or Warhammer.
Only yesterday I was at an LGS, where they held Bolt Action tournament alongside Team Yankee tournament. In total twelve tables for twenty four players, the max the LGS can accomodate for wargamers.
The interest in historical wargames are to play or recreate the accurate units, battles, regiments.
In FoW, the "correct" way to play hungarians are hungarian infantry with german tanks. But the problem is, Hungary never recieved a lot of german tanks and sometimes you can field more Tigers or Panthers on a table than the whole of Hungary recieved through lend lease. And to me, who is a historical player at heart, that is not good. And as such, you collect specifically what a certain regiment had.
My next project is 6th Luftwaffe Field Division. So the part of excitement is to search for documents on what type of troops they had. And then recreate that. That is the joy of historical wargames. I do not need "new and exciting" stuff. I need more variety of the same. Give me history accurate Luftwaffe uniforms any day, I do not need 37th Primaris Leutenant.
It is just niche product. You can not sell it indefinitely, you will saturate the market sooner or later. But you can be in contact with the seller of historicals and buy to order.
Funny thing is, the ammount of historicals on the shelves has declined, while the atendiees of games are up. So my LGS years ago was huge into FoW and Team Yankee. All those players come, rent a table and play. You still has your money, it just not through sales of new and exciting, it is by providing an environment to play with those bought models. Terrain. People. Locale. Amenities.
There's likely also a 'fatigue' of war because of Iraq/Afghanistan, so not something people want to recreate on the game table.
Bolt Action and Flames of War are very popular in my FLGS, Moxie games, in Columbus, Georgia. People of all ages play them. It is mostly people burnt out on Games Workshop milk you till you drop mentality towards customers and are looking for something else.
I got the Bolt Action British Airborne starter army a few months ago and I disagree on the models being ugly, the plastic ones look great IMO! The metal support weapons are pretty bad though.
I think both jay and chris has a point, you either need to have a interest in history or get in via popular culture.
There’s a fairly widespread idea that the only reason we have Heresy, Old World, Kill Team, Warcry and Underworlds is that GW doesn’t worry as much about profits from these games... that they just want to have an offering in those sectors that competes with the smaller companies. So maybe it’s not completely far fetched that GW might get into historical games just to give the 40k/AoS players, who are “aging out” of those systems, a place to migrate to within the GW line.
Gave up on GW and went to Bolt Action so much less of a FOMO toxic world
The issues you bring up about the distribution of historical games has been a hiccup for me when it comes to FLGS. I want to buy things from my local store, but, for the most part, they don’t have it in stock, and it’s not feasible or possible to order through them for the historical minis I want.
I will say for the store that I frequent the most, it’s kind of dubious how much the owners really know about the miniatures hobby, being primarily card and board gamers. So there is almost a language barrier when it comes to ordering or asking about the warhammer and infinity products they do carry. So that is compounded when you start throwing even more niche historical miniatures. They (and many mainstream wargaming hobbies for that matter) seem pretty blind to the idea of having a miniatures collection that you can play a multitude of games with, which is pretty common in historical circles. So that’s kind of another issue. To me, when they ask “what game do you want to play,” is a much less straightforward, and the question that I, and I feel other historical Wargamers find more interesting is “what time period”, “what campaigns”, “what battles?” The game is immaterial. This is anathema to people who are dependent on being spoon fed a game by fantasy flight or similar companies.
The thing about historicals is that it's something people get into when they're older, always has been. The audience is pretty gray but the audience was always pretty gray.
I think Warlord is doing a lot of things right at the moment. It's never going to be a staple in every store but it seems like it's doing okay and the new edition is solid. If they land the new Konflikt 47, that could go places (relatively speaking).
Flames of War is definitely struggling. I don't think Team Yankee was ever super popular and mostly drew in the boomer ex-military types pining for their glory days (come at me bro) and FOW has really struggled to retain audience through version changes, SKU bloat/cutback, etc. It's a fun game but, to the extent that there is a popular front historical scene, Bolt Action is taking it over. (A lot of historicals will continue to be cottage industry/basement gamers, same as always.)
Battlefront should think about moving into SF. There is definitely a 15mm SF scene but it's extremely cottage-industry and underground. I think a fun, good looking 15mm SF game done in nice plastics could have legs. Certainly a better bet than yet another variation on late-WW2-speculative excuses to field a Maus or two.
Are you sure historical model guys aren't making the vehicles exactly correct to scale? Are you sure about that?
So where would Cohors Cthulhu fit? Historical+Fantasy? Sandalpunk?
I just realized, you guys never mention Modiphius, they only sell direct to consumer?
WW2 wargames are cool, but I'm waiting for the sequel.
My guess it's the same problem with franchise IP products, eventually you run out of stuff to release. There is a set amount of British or German troops available in WWII. I guess why the alt-war like Konflikt 47 eventually show up as a possibility to sale more models to the existent player base.
I still want to do a WWII army and paint the tanks like Scooby Doo's Mistery Machine and paint the uniforms like they are hippies using guayaberas (specially those Brits using shorts on the Africa front) just to piss off the purists. But it's a lot of effort just to annoy people :P
You'd have a hard time getting games, tbh
TRENCH CRUSADE MENTIONED
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Chris should not be giving the younger hipper Jay ideas about replacing older people with similar hip young people to drive engagement. Just saying.
They DID strike a deal with Italeri for the tanks!
The thing is that 1/56 or even 1/48 are not traditional tank model scales. 1/72 is way too small and 1/35 is way too big (works for 40K conversions ironically though).
Also wargamers want more simplified kits "serious" tank modelers sneers at.
1/72 plastic kits is the reason WWII gaming was traditionally done in 20mm scale. Metal infantry from small manufacturers, plastic guns and vehicles from Revell etc.
As for my personal experience... my local supported Flames pretty well, but it's been disappearing from the shelves lately. I can still special order it since their distributor carries it. They dabbled in others but none seem to have stuck. I don't really mind that much as I can just order direct anyway (and I play at my own place), but it is kinda sad.
BUUUT: Pretty much the same thing has happened to all the other miniatures games except GW. Warmachine/Hordes used to be big, now it's on liquidation sales etc.
Game design I think is the main issue. The reason fantasy and sci work ( Warhammer ) is because within a setting you can write your own story ( so to speak ). Younger people especially don’t like being told they can or can’t have a certain army or battle because of the history. That being said if game designers developed a way to change the corse of battle or history within a historical context I think this would appeal better. ( this is part of the so called magic of trench crusade. ). I think too people even game designers are largely ignorant of history as well. Too fantasy saturated.
the only games that are that limiting in historicals are mentally or physically 20-30+ years old. Modern game series like the Honour system and Revolution the wargaming have more modern design concepts than even more recent warhammer editions.
Perhaps ….. but according to our Canadian friends here …. That is not helping either. Perhaps it’s just marketing. Historicals have always been a big part of wargaming but will always be on the fringe ……
Everything you said in your 3-d printing video also applies. You cant stop peoppe making stls of historicsl hardware and people and posting them online for free. Theres a best case scenario where players get together and maintain their own spaces while printing all their models, and there are some prominant role models for that here on youtube, but mostly I think historicals have become something you do at home with one or two friends in a closed D-I-Y system.