Is Historical wargaming more popular than Sci-fi?

After a week of drama amongst the wargaming community online, we decide to look at which genre is more popular in 2023. Is it Fantasy, Sci-Fi or Historical wargaming. Does Warhammer 40K top the charts as the biggest dog on the block, or has it slipped in these uncertain times. Has historical wargaming become more popular and which period, is it WW2, Napoleonic's or Ancients.

#wargaming #warhammer #40k #historical #tabletopgaming #gamesworkshop #warlordgames

[oskar]

Now add to the "survey" the fact that most historical wargamers are 50-60 years old...and couldn't be bothered to take a survey (or even go online to discuss wargaming), and you have a giant sub-community which doesn't even have an online presence. I think the 20-30 year old GW-based influencers don't understand that there's an entire world of wargamers who aren't an online-community.

[chriskay]

Enjoyed the video but couldn't work out what the picture behind you was.
I was a historical Wargamer before GW came along and it has pretty much passed me by.
You point out that there are a lot more skirmish games out now, seems like a new one comes out every week.
the hobby has grown massively over the last twenty years, and is now bigger and more diverse, and is only good to continue in that direction.
As you say we are all playing the same hobby, we just have a lot more stuff.

[bronco]

Part of the reason historicals seem less popular is because they basically NEED to be pre-arranged games. Most historical games are not pick-up-game friendly.

The thing about history is: there is SO MUCH OF IT. So when you want to play "historicals", you generally have to not only find someone who wants to play the same game/ rules set you do, but you also have to make sure they're playing an appropriate historical period AND in the same scale. Even when playing the same game, while it might be technically compatible, a lot of players don't want weird matchups. So, you might both want to play historicals, and both like DBA... but one of you has a 28mm Hittite army, and the other has 6mm Early Imperial Roman. Not compatible. Oh, but he also has a 28mm Early Qing Dynasty army. Do you play Hittite vs Qing, with massive disparity in geography and time?

The end result is that you don't see these historical games at game store tables, because there's no reason to. If you already have to go to an opponent finder database or an online niche forum for your game or historical period to find an appropriate opponent, and arrange the game days or weeks in advance, you might as well play at one of the player's homes, where you will be much more comfortable, have much more space, and probably have much better terrain than available at typical game stores. But this means that prospective new players don't really see you playing, so they don't realize there are historical gamers near them, and don't get introduced to the games until they've spent a lot of time in local gaming groups with older players.

Whereas if you want to play Warhammer... you just play warhammer. You know their army is compatible with your own. You know you can just show up to any old game store and find a match. I am convinced that a lot of GW players don't actually like GW games that much, and would rather play different rules sets or genres... but stick with GW simply because they know they can find a game whenever.

[jemeredith]

I'm really interested in history, though not so much military history, but I've no interest in historical wargaming. I've been into GW for nearly 25 years and it's not the rules or games per se but all the background/lore and the freedom allowed by it all being fantastical