The meteoric rise of the “Games Workshop Hobby” has been a major concern for many wargamers. Historical wargamers have deserted to the reviled fantasy and science fantasy games in droves, accompanied by a most newcomers who choose Warhammer in one of its many guises over historical wargaming.
This trend was painfully obvious at NatCon, the New Zealand national convention in Hamilton at Easter. I was not unduly surprised to see a marked discrepancy in ages between the historical players and the Warhammer players. As far as I could tell not one of the ancients or renaissance players was under thirty. That implies that virtually no one who started wargaming in New Zealand in the last ten or more years has taken up ancients as a period. The other historical periods were much smaller and in no better state.
So why has Warhammer done so well in comparison to historical gaming? The answer is manifold, but I am firmly convinced that the biggest part lies in the nature of the games and their rules. After playing, reading and writing heaps of historical rules seeking an accurate simulation through clever and elegant mechanisms for far too many years, it has been very refreshing to discover that the Warhammer rules provide just as good a simulation (and a much better game) with the same rules fundamentals that Grant and Featherston espoused when I was a wee little lad!
Perhaps the success of Rapid Fire in reviving the moribund Second World War period in New Zealand is another example of this. It is another simple game with no gimmicks and is much the same as anything played in the Seventies. It plays fast and fun, and clearly gives a good enough result to be the hands down choice at the moment.
Why are simple rules proving so successful? I think the combination of being easy to pick up and play combined with the overall historical accuracy achieved equalling or exceeding most complex games is a convincing argument. Non-DBM players scarcely need reminding how convoluted and contorted this game seems to newcomers, and few rules produced in the last decade are much better.
As a professional mathematical modeller I knew that adding detail to a good simulation rarely improves it and often wrecks it. At the very least it makes it hideously complex. Yet that is what I and countless other rules writers have been doing for over a decade. In our quest for better simulations we have gone down a dead-end path.
Another convert for the Games Workshop Hobby? Not likely! I admire the beautifully painted armies and the great terrain in their publications (but no more so than Wargames Illustrated, now that really makes me drool), I’m just not interested in their fantasy world and definitely won’t pay their extortionate prices. However, the simplicity has won me over. I have taken a leaf out of their book and have become converted to rules that are easily understandable, playable and thus, in my opinion, loads more fun.
I bought a copy of Warhammer Ancient Battles soon after it came out after reading the copy of a friend who plays Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Prior to this I had played exactly eight ancients games (mostly DBA, and none in the last ten years). Not only did I buy the rules, but I researched and bought an army too! So it doesn’t surprise me that Warhammer Ancient Battles (not a Games Workshop product by the way, but an independent work by historical gamers who are also part of Games Workshop) has sold more copies in one year than DBM has in ten.
Not only am I an avid Warhammer Ancients Battles player, but I have also written Warhammer Panzer Battles, a Second World War conversion of Warhammer 40,000. While Warhammer is not the perfect game, it is outstandingly playable (after all what other wargame has been played and refined by so many!) When I first applied it to the Second World War I was both thrilled and shocked. How dare such a reviled system produce the most believable battles in post D-Day Normandy I’d ever played.
I’ve enjoyed stalking Panthers with Shermans, fighting from house to house, working my infantry forward one hedgerow to the next and dominating river crossings with long-range machine-gun fire and artillery like never before. I’ve learned to respect anti-tank guns and cleared pillboxes with AVRE’s and flame-throwers.
Perhaps we should consider the possibility that it’s not just slick marketing and pretty toys that are attracting young wargamers and instead look at the basics. If the games we play are so contorted that we have not attracted new blood to historical wargaming for a decade, it’s time to do something about it. Wargaming is meant to be fun. Simpler rules can help us get back to that goal.
Warhammer Panzer Battles can be found on the Internet at: http://geocities.yahoo.com/TimesSquare/Alley/2541/ Rules/WPB/WPB.html (you will need a copy of Warhammer 40,000 to play it though).
Phil Yates is a New Zealand wargamer and author who has been published in such obscure magazines as Wargames Illustrated to name but one. He is also a prolific rules author and I can recommend a visit to his site for some of the best WWII skirmish rules (amongst many others) that I’ve seen to date. Phil’s WWII army lists alone are worth the price of admission and have made more than one or two WWII gamers drool at the mouth. His (published) DBM Dark Ages Army Lists are the stuff of legends. - Ed.
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