Scraping The Barrel - Does The Hobby Need To Contract?

 I was looking at a few historical conflicts over the weekend, and thinkinging to myself 'Hey, they are crying out for a range of figures. I think I'll get my sculptor on the case...'

And then I thought, 'Fuck it! We are already collectively snowed under with more ranges than we need.' Indeed we have more periods than a sorority house.

And I really believe that. We have way, way too many 'periods' and ranges of figures, which the 'Big Boys' in the industry troll out as the 'next big thing we all need to play'. And, because we are, like it or not obsessive with I think a higher than average spread on the autism scale - myself included, before some young scamp does their usual 'hatchet job' - we collectively believe the hype and spend money without thinking about it, considering what scope there is and replayability. 

Of course, the Big Boys, want us to get bored and start something else, that they will already have planned... And do it we will, because we are a hobby of FOMO sufferers.

But do we really need so many different periods? There comes a point where the battles you play (particularly with certain rule sets) become very 'samey' with just a change of figures indicating you are playing a different period. 

To me, (and what do I know?) the joy of, and reason for playing another period is that the game will feel different. For example, Ancients feel different to Medieval, Renaissance feels like Ancients and Medieval all mixed up with gunpowder thrown in.

The 18th Century is like watching paint dry (but it's pretty), Napoleonics has a distinctive feel, as does the later 19th Century, and so on...

The point being, that the number of periods where warfare changes significantly are pretty limited. In fact, the one thing you can say about the old WRG army lists was that they gave you about 50 ways to engage with a particular period, using the same rules. You did not get as bored as these days where you seem to be generally offered a dozen or so armies, and if you are lucky the opportunity to pay £30 for a book which, with much surplus text and pictures gives you half a dozen more armies and a couple of scenarios, purporting to be refights of some immense battle or another, using a couple of hundred figures.

Or, encouraging those people who bought into the eye candy without the means to fund similkarly large battles, to part with more money before they give up on the Latest Big Thing as a bad job, 'regrettably/sadly selling' their army 'to fund a new project'.

And there you have it. Peoiple who can't genuinely afford to spend much on the hobby, getting gulled by eye candy and magazine articles going hand in hand to create a 'need', and a false need at that, for a new buzz.

There are companies out there, who have released about 10 - 20 ranges in 40 years, done them well and thought them out. Take for example Dixon Miniatures. 

Dixon have a massive range of Samurai and ACW with several 'lesser' ranges. And they are still trading with very healthy customer/fan baseswho love the models. They have ranges which are well thought out, interesting and wonderfully cast. 

I asked a group of friends whether they (budgets aside) choose Dixon or modern plastic models for a Samurai army. Unanimously, the result was 'Dixon' because they have style, which make them a joy to paint and collect. Bugger the cost, these are popular models with heritage.

The 'period' hs a lot of gaming options to suit all pockets, and trust me, when you need 900 sashimono, those pockets better be deep. But, as youths, my circle skirmished, mass battled and led bands of ninja across many a table. And we probably still would today.

The point I am making is that if a company with a passion, shares that passion, it will always be ablre to make money. If on the other hand, a company is 'just' a drip feed for shareholders, it will not have the best interests of the hobby and hobbyists at it's core.

And this has I believe led to the hobby need to stop, take a breath and allow the barrels to fill again, rather than be constantly scarping said metaphorical barrel for every last morsel.

We the paying public have the power to shape that hobby by taking our metaphorical meds and resisting the lure of gilded turds. The problem is that nobody wants to be the first to take that stand.