What if….time again and over the last sixteen weeks we’ve covered many subjects from record collections to what happens to your “stash” on your demise, But it does seem that things are slowly creeping their way back to normality (or what passes for normality on planet Earth!) so I think this will be the last What if… for the foreseeable future (but who knows what’s around the corner).
So for this last post I thought we’d end with a simple but fundamental question… What sort of Wargamer are you?
Do you even consider yourself a gamer? Are you in it for the game of the figures? Do you have the figures to play the games or do you play the games to have the figures? Would you even play with unpainted figures? (spit spit!).
Well I think you all know which category I’d put myself, the vast majority of my figures have never seen a die let alone a wargames table! This is not really something I’m proud of, but it’s a fact, I paint for the enjoyment and relaxation of painting, not with any loftier gaming goals in mind, but where do you stand on this, for the last time the floor gentlemen is open to you…
Thanks to all of you who have taken part in any of these “What if” ramblings, it’s been a pleasure reading your stories and opinions.
Stay safe, cheers Roger.
Rantings from under the Wargames table 
For me I like to sit on the fence ! LOL I get a great deal of enjoyment from converting and painting my models, but I also get a great deal of enjoyment from playing games as well. Yes I have played games with unpainted models, but I didn’t enjoy the game as much as playing with nicely painted models.
Thanks Dave, to be honest most of the games I played of late “Magic Plainswalkers”, “Zombiecide” etc… have been with unpainted figures. but I know what you mean.
Cheers Roger.
It was almost as if I wasn’t worried if the unpainted models died as much as the painted ones ! LOL I’m sure will try psycho anaylising that at some point !
I’d like to think I’m still painting stuff to game with rather than painting stuff to keep me out of the way of the wife and dogs! So far, so g. . . !
Hang on! I never said I was painting stuff to keep out of the way of the wife and doooo…..Oh wait forget I said that! 😉
Cheers Roger.
What kind of wargamer am I? Hmmm. OK, I am a lifelong learning miniature painter, world-maker, modeler, scenario-builder, historical gamer, sci-fi gamer, rules writer, rescuer and restorer of the OOP and forgotten cool stuff, caster, creator, game master, tank builder, etc.
Damn if I can’t cut the list down, and I’m sure I left something off!
Sound good?
Cheers,
Mark
God some people make you sick! don’t they chaps……😉
You missed out all round great chap.
Cheers Roger.
😊
I have to admit, I’m not massively interested in gaming, I just enjoy painting the figures; this is one reason why my minis are so random. I played 40K back in the Rogue Trader era and enjoyed it, but I was awful at remembering rules and painting the same colour scheme (Ultramarines) 200 times did start to do my head in. Having said that, I do enjoy reading AARs on other people’s games.
Thanks Matt, you sound so much like me it’s scary!! I too started with 40K went on to other sets (both fantasy and historical) but I am terrible at remembering rules (even ones I wrote, which is a standing joke around here!), and I’m also sadly not really that competitive, all not conducive to being a great wargamer! But I do like figures. 😀
That’s why my collection is so diverse I guess.
Cheers Roger.
I wouldn’t just forget rules, I’d forget entire units; in one memorable game one of my Devastator squads didn’t even move once because I forgot they were there, and in another game I forgot to deploy my Terminators. On top of that, my tactics were basically crap, and that’s putting it kindly. Even so, playing was very enjoyable and seeing the table set up with scenery and figures was great.
😁
I enjoy gaming when I get the chance, but to be honest I have pretty much only been painting for the last year.
Thanks Maenoferren, I think some of the truest words ever written were….
“Wargaming is like sex, you spend more time thinking about it than doing it!”
Cheers Roger. 😉
Middle of the road? I paint to play games, but spend too much time painting! The lead pile is ridiculous, and getting worse. I need to spend more time playing, hence my slow shift to skirmish/low model count games.
Saying that, Muskets and Tomahawks is a pretty low model count game, yet i have 400+ unpainted models for M&T…
Ha ha! “low model count” is a relative term. Hence my turning to HOTT,
We played it on Monday afternoon, and though it was OK I can see we’ll be modifying (completely buggering up! ) the rules concerning magic and shooting as we didn’t really like the way those elements were played , I can however see me sticking to the army lists as is, (I like the small armies) 😉
Cheers Roger.
I’m definitely a gamer. I enjoy painting miniatures but it’s much easier to motivate myself to paint something that I’m excited to put on the tabletop.
Thanks Badger, in a way it’s nice that we can all be different and yet all come under the same banner of “Wargamer”, we all do the same thing but in vastly different ways. 😀
Cheers Roger.
I used to play a lot, but that was decades ago. Now I’m sadly more of a solo miniature gamer, although I do enjoy the rare times I can get my friends over to play something. I was a painter before I was a gamer, and I’ll always be a painter first (although I buy a lot of miniatures because I convince myself I will game with them one day).
Thanks Keith, I think will all buy figures with the belief that we will someday game with them, possibly to help justify the cost and time we put into painting them. Sadly these days I mainly play board games (Played “Star Wars Outer Rim” the other day with my son, and it is one of the best games I’ve played in an age! and I’ve played a few over the last couple of months!) and just paint/build for the fun of it (tomorrow post is a prime example of this!).
“I’ll always be a painter first “, at least you’re good at what you do, there’s a lot to be said for that!
Cheers Roger.
I’m obviously a painter, and though I’d like to play more my circle of friends who are actually wargamers slowly fell apart over the years, and I’m not really one who’s too keen on playing pickups in shops and there are no clubs anywhere reasonably near me… That’s aside from COVID, of course…
So that leaves me with the unenviable task of 1) meeting other wargamers without leaving home 2) who live close enough to game with 3) that I’d actually be willing to let into my home.
On other fronts, I really don’t enjoy building for the most part. Mould lines and puttying gaps on a huge scale *bah*spit*ptooey*
You’re preaching to the choir mate!
This is the world we live in I guess, I only game with my kids these days.
Cheers Roger.
Followed on from Dave’s site as I’ve been doing the terrain challenge too,I mostly paint but it’s nice to have an aim in mind, which building an army gives me, I play a fair bit now, mostly against my nephews although my daughter has given me a few games, took part in my first To the Strongest! Tournament last year, would have done this year except for covid .All historical now, we did do a bit of frostgrave to get the grand nephews interested but that’s tailed off. Started out with D&D,then 40k( never played a game), built a few armies,went through lots of codexs kind of enjoyed it, more the fluff really, much happier doing historical ( difficult to change the codex, just as your finishing an army!)
Best Iain
Thanks Iain, and sorry that it has taken me so long to find your comment, I think a lot of us started out playing GW stuff but drifted away as the years went by, I too went into historicals for a while but I ended up going back to the Sci/Fi and Fantasy that attracted me to the hobby in the first place.
Good to here from you, and hear your opinions/history, cheers Roger.