Warhammer vs. Historical Miniatures

Commentary

by Fergueson Fourmile

The divide is simple. The one overriding feature I have noted with almost every gamer I have met who does Warhammer is that they cannot function without the authority of the book, that is the official GW version. Historical miniatures (and I use that fairly loosely) have a different ethos in that there is no "authority" and that the gamers are fairly anarchic. We buy what we want, we paint what we want, we game what we want, and we do what we want, and that's it. The best way I can convey this is an episode a friend of mine had at a game shop. He lives in central NJ and has a summer home down the shore. He was down there and saw a game shop and checked it out. He went in and looked around at the figures (all Warhammer). The owner or manager of the shop came over, saw he was looking at the stuff and asked him if he was interested. My friend told him that he was a gamer and already had a big collection of figures. The conversation went like this. MANAGER - Oh... what armies do you have? FRIEND- Well, a big Burgundian/Elvish Army, a Zulu Army, of Course A British Colonial Army, a Confederate Army, and I'm working on a Seven years War Army. MANAGER- (Obviously confused) Well.... what book are they in? I've never heard of them? FRIEND- Book? (noticing all the Warhammer Books on the shelf and nothing else) ...Oh, they’re not in any of these books, but they are in the history books and Osprey Books and other sources. MANAGER- (Now worried and disoriented) But how can you have armies? FRIEND- Oh, we just paint up what we want. MANAGER- But how can you have battles, I mean how can you fit those figures into the rules, how do you know what they're worth or their strength? It seems like cheating to me!? FRIEND- Oh we make up our own rules too. MANGER- But how can you have a game, how do you know its fair? FRIEND- Well, it is war, and fairness really doesn't enter into it, and we have games all the time. Conversation Continued The conversation continued on with the manager, who was an avid gamer himself (in Warhammer) completely unable to understand how the whole thing could not dissolve into arguments and chaos. MANAGER-If units are simply what you make them up as, what prevents someone from showing up with a unit of super troops that are unbeatable!" FRIEND- Oh that's easy, the guy who does it gets to play with them... once." After that we simply don't allow it. Each army must be crafted to have its own strengths and weaknesses, and in fact, it's the weaknesses that we really like. MANAGER- But how do you know if you've won or lost! It was then that my friend really flattened him with this. FRIEND- Oh we make up our own victory conditions too. Players are free to play the game for whatever goals they wish, win the battle, screw their buddy, or even play to lose, or just to move the pieces around in artful ways and make interesting situations. The conversation is revealing. He could not conceive of a game not handed down from on high. Historical Miniatures has always been exactly that, a game homegrown with homegrown armies, rules, and sometimes figures. In Historical gaming, (and again Historical is fairly loose here) at least as practiced today (and outside of the tournament crowd) you paint what you like and get to play with it. If someone says "Well you can't use that unit of Ming Chinese horsemen with your Republican Romans" the someone will likely toss a few curse-words at the deniar and say he'll make up his own game, and the Ming Chinese Horsemen will see the battle simply as rather colorful Roman allied cavalry. My point is that I think Warhammer is basically an intellectual straight jacket, which, though is very popular and probably will move into a different trajectory than mainline historical gaming. One other point, I think the figures are repulsive. They all look like fat, squat, ugly people and are in poses and with facial expressions that look like they are severely constipated and settling down for a long squat. I also think the grossly oversized weapons make them comic. I don't care how big the sword or axe is, a Roman Hastatti, or Principes with a dinkly little 18" short sword would have their chitlins out before they could even begin to move their "supersized" weapons. Anyway, my friend invited the manager to several games down at his shore place and the guy never came, and said, "I just can't see how you guys aren't cheating." Strengths Historical miniatures as they are constituted now also have several enormous hidden strengths that will carry it through. Chief of which is that it is completely non-dependent upon manufacturers. It began without ‘em, and has done well with ‘em, and will survive the fall of a few of them already without even a blip.Not so other branches. Board Games have tanked with the collapse of the flagship manufacturers AH, SPI, etc. FRP's have been hard hit by the similar collapse of several makers and the diversion of lots of development dollars into the "fad" areas of cyber-punk, collectable cards, superheroes, and of course the computer game. What will happen to Warhammer should GW tank? More important, what happens when your hobby base grows and grays? They'll discover a new adventure game called B&B, (Bluejeans and Bra-straps) and move on to Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, from then it'll be P&P (Papers and Paychecks), and from then they'll go to D&B (Dunn & Bradstreet). As they grow and mature they will have different dreams and different ideas of power, and they won't want to listen to authorities any more. They'll be the authority. Back to Veteran Campaigner September 2001 Table of Contents Back to Veteran Campaigner List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Pete Panzeri. 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