Shaking A Fist At The Sky!

 When exactly, did the hobby become collectively, droolingly, retarded?

Look, you go out these days, and buy a set of rules that is 70% 'padding', you buy plastic figures or worse, 3D printed (of which more anon) which in many cases are awful for several reasons, and you finish up by buying a sourcebook with lots of eye candy and not that much truly useful information and a few scenarios. And it's all nice and shiny and attractive to the eye, but then, you buy the latest, greatest thing in paints, make a spirited start on it all, and sell it on a bring and buy (if you can find a bring and buy these days) to another unsuspecting sap or worse a dealer, who will do the same at a higher profit.

Then, you start all over again with the whole process, perhaps with a 'Grandmother has died' or 'bills to pay' preamble on the next sales post on Facebook, having not found a bring and buy this time.

How many people have bought armies based just on some glossy pics, without any real interest or research into the period? How many peoiple have paid an over-inflated price for another skirmish system, set in a period where in reality, most battles were truly massive affairs? Sometimes you get the feeling that Caesar, Bonaparte or Robert E Lee were nothing more than gang leaders, the number of times you see great generals leading tabletop raids for a packet of Cheetos and an 2 litre bottle of Pepsi down the local baggage train.

What has happened to the hobby? Where are the big battles? Where are the kids doing their own research and finding true love for this or that period, be it a true historical era or just a well crafted and original fantasy world? Where, in point of fact is the individuality?

I understand that times change, but fundamentally, gaming has always seen people with armies that they were proud of, some made up of simple Hinchcliffe or Minifigs, others since the mid 80s, more detailed models such as Foundry, Corvus, Essex etc, but all universally lovingly, researched, curated and played with, the tastes and hand of the owner apparent in the models and painting. 

People were truly invested in their miniature armies and worlds, and the hobby literally seeemd to glow.

Now, everyone uses the same grubby painting styles, lazily applying (often direly so) overpriced pigment washes with no genuine skill, gained from practice and observation and very little actual knowledge of the materials they use. It's all so sterile.

MDF terrain is in my humble opinion truly fucking awful. Why not just use poster-painted cereal boxes? Why not go full circle in your rush to recreate a childhood you never had? I draw the line at MDF bases, but MDF scenerty is never coming into my games room. I'd give up gaming first - I mean it.

Let me take you back to 1983, and take you through the building of a collection.

Following speaking to older members of one of my RPG groups, I was introduced to the pike & shot gaming. The look of it appealed to me, the variety of uniforms across a century of time, the similar but not identical tactical doctrines and the chess-like nature of those tactics. It was accessible and surprisingly 'fresh' as a wargaming period.

Now, I was on £3 per week, which, if I used 15mm, that meant a unit per week. As I was also painting for additional pocket money, that was probably more like 3 units per week after adjusting for the other things I was interested in.

I looked in the mags and spoke to older and more experienced gamers and decided that I would use the wonderfully chunky and characterful Mike's Models, Jacobite and latterly Gallia 15mm figures which mixed well, and had great pike & shot ranges.

I became obsessed with the New Model Army. After all, B class, salvo firing and dressed in Venice red, - what wasn't to like?

Back then I worked broadly to the WRG renaissance rules as a starting point, backed up with Ospreys and the Gush and Haythornthwaite books, hunting each down in assorted shops or borrowing from older gamers (See a theme here?).

I chatted to others in my gaming peer group, and soon, we had every army of the ECW period covered. (These were armies you understand, not factions, gangs or warbands)

My initial target was a 3 regiment brigade, two regiments of horse, artillery and a few dragoons, and I based it on a Mike's Models army pack. I then widened that to 12 regiments of foot, 12 of horse, more guns, plus baggage, camp followers and engineers. It filled a cantilever toolbox and, was a pretty large army for a teenager.

As to painting, it was the first time that the late Pete Armstrong realy went into any kind of depth on how I should go about painting models, and it turned out he'd been an ECW reenactor a few years before, so he knew his stuff. It was at this time I developed a love of Pete and saw another side to his irascible persona, thet many never saw. I know a few who like me grew to love Pete and their experience was the same.

From there, I moved to the Italian Wars, using Warrior Miniatures army packs in 25mm as the starting point. They were cheap, looked good when painted and handily, gave two Landknecht regiments per pack. You bolted a few bits on and away you jolly well went with the enthusiasm of a buck rabbit in Spring!

Next, it was back to the ECW, building a dual use collection of pre New Model units which were 25mm and based on single bases, so that as they collection grew, it could be used for both skirmish level games (skirmishes wwere a big part of the ECW) as well as brigade level engagements. I used Corvus, Essex and the new Wargames Foundry models.

For games of the excellent (still my favourite skirmish set) Once Upon A Time In The West Country rules, we used the cardboard 'Blood On The Streets' buildings from Games Workshop . These had to be built, but were ready coloured and still to this day, look better than MDF - brook me no buts please, because I will not be swayed by your medium density fibreboard with all it's carcinogens (there's a reason it's banned in certain U.S states and woe betide you, if you ship a second hand army to one of those states that's on MDf bases, and they check it - You're fucked, my friend.

Basing was done using art board or thanks to a friend who worked on mains electricity, lead sheet, with carefully applied filler for groundwork, painted green and drybrushed with yellow. No statcic grass in Sheffield, until the late, great Ian Smith brought some back from a trip to Germany and wowed us all not only with the new product but with the eye watering porice of a small sachet of the stuff, which I recall was actually more expensive than dope. It really was a rich man's indulgence at the time, and Ian was stinkingly well off, being one of the original 'Cheque Book Wargamers' of 80s lore and fame.

And so you see, it was a more varied and less 'locked in' hobby back then, and into the late 90s. I laugh now as I see YouTube videos claiming that this or that has been 'discovered' about the hobby's oast. It was always there in plain sight, but the last tranche of incomers didn't and largely don't give a fuck about origins. Yes, I say that a lot, but it's true.

They rediscover ways of painting that some of us have never veered away from and give them new names, trying to claim they discovered something never before seen. It's funny, but I bet in another 40 years, those older techniques and styles will still be being discovered whilst the crap that is being produced today, such as 3D printing will be seen as a fad. I really don't like 3D printing and I am not the only one. The models are soulless, brittle and really not goping to last as long as my hefty old metal castings, which at the very least will have a scrap value one day if they don't go to somone as passionate as I.

There is a lack of true passion for the hobby these days and we need to reignite it in the next generation and cast aside the largely failed experiment of the last generation.