Wargames Magazines

[Hman]

That's it not buying one again.

Not everyone, can afford a huge layout, covered in 28mm figures - most I can do is 4x4'.  What happened to a well written articles; what happened to realistic (by that what Mr or Mrs average can afford table layouts); what happened to scenarios and sharing of ideas?

Magazines are now just adverts, and adverts masquerading as articles.

I am just going to stick with the this forum and the Nugget from now on!

Rant over...

Howard

[Matías]

Did any magazine in particular trigger this rant?

[Hman]

Wargames Illustrated.

[Colonel Kilgore]

Well, if we're ranting, what I find even more annoying than the repeated portrayal of the 28mm dream is when those pretty pictures are not even directly related to the article in question (e.g. the article is about a specific scenario, rule set or battle, and the pictures are simply of figures of the same general period).

Simon

[martin goddard]

Magazines do love 28mm.
Several members here worked hard to get 15mm articles into magazines and met a lot of friction.

Probably a mixture of promoting favourite manufacturers, availability of great looking 28/30mm and many painters liking bigger figures.

There would be howls of protest I suspect if the magazines showed less than top notch painted figures.

My guess is that 70% (guess) of magazine buyers (and gamers in general)  are not part of any gaming group of more than 3 people. Thus, a magazine can portray the wider gaming culture as mainly 28mm.

The internet provides gamers with a huge range of wargame resources that were once part of magazines (reader's letters).
Therefore, gamers do not need magazines in order to keep their hobby interest/knowledge going.

Instead, the magazines might have become "wow look at this", "pick me up now", "Exclusive"? Similar to the women at motor shows approach of years gone past?

On a positive note, I like the work that WSS (wargames soldiers strategy) are doing with figure reviews.
The other and more significant change in wargaming is the existence of game shops with tables for hire.
This allows historical gamers to involve gamers in games they have never heard of.

martin

[Colonel Kilgore]

I agree re. WSS. They are also one of the good guys in terms of better matching photos to articles.

Games shops with tables (in the UK) provide a lot options flexibility for people to meet up and play too. With houses seemingly ever-smaller and times to play limited (both in absolute terms and by shift working and the like), a game shop offers more opportunities than a once-a-week club night.

Simon

[NTM (Nigel)]

WSS is the only one I subscribe to these days and if they didn't do pdf sub I probably wouldn't bother.

[sukhe_bator (Neil)]

I have to say I also find the dearth of features on 15mm in mags frustrating. I do think it skews public perception of the hobby. More importantly, I think also having niche period interests does not help. I find most mags in catering for the majority actually end up satisfying only a small number. The same goes for modelling shops which I find particularly hard since I dearly want to support and encourage those independent shops but my needs are small and usually for something more obscure that they do not carry. Much as I'd love to support them when I see them, I am actually hard put to find something I need. Online caters for the odd and the scarce far better I find. The hobby mags have gone through the same evolution as those for Railway Modelling. They used to have in depth articles with real gems of inspiration. I still have a set of black and white articles from the 70s that I culled from mags that I still refer to. Those today now also seem to be 50% adverts and the remainder periods or topics that only occasionally attract interest but all in glossy technicolour. The last mag I actually bought in a shop had a rare feature on Dunsterforce and that was after about 4 years of regularly looking.
I have to agree that online forums now cater for the bulk of the info anyone is likely to ever need, plus comradeship among those who share your passion for an esoteric period or that particular early period left-handed smurf army.
Much as I like saving trees, I simply do not have the space to have a laptop open at the same time as I'm modelling, so will always favour a hard copy over pdfs...
I'm one of those wallflowers at shows who watches from the sidelines but rarely engages in conversation. I've found the last few shows I attended like those awkward shopping trips where you duck into the shopping centre and get out as fast as you can (which is a great shame). The thought of booking a table at a venue, least of all finding an opponent, fills me with dread. At least online I can share without revealing my complete social ineptitude... oops!

[John Watson]

I haven't bought or subscribed to any war-games mag for many many years now. I occasionally buy one if there is something that interests me on the front cover. A friend of mine, who also stopped buying them, pointed out that for the price of a magazine you can get a cheap Osprey Men at Arms or for two magazines you can get a full price Osprey. So you can choose the subject matter. There is likely to be more useful information in the Osprey and you are likely to keep for years rather than recycle after a few weeks.
John

[pbeccas (Paul)]

I don't see these as wargaming magazines anymore.  They have become glossy sales brochures for wargames companies.

[Hman]

Glad to find it isn't just me...

[Colonel Kilgore]

Ah, but they reel you in with some pretty pictures and intriguing topics on the front cover, only to leave you underwhelmed later...

To be honest, I was happy with the WSS issue on Fallschirmjaeger and, while the recent Vietnam one could have been a bit better, it still gave me some food for thought.

Simon

[Leman (Andy)]

I too subscribe only to WSS. It also makes sense it being produced here in the Netherlands. Still has some very informative gaming and historical articles. Each mag is themed but they seem to have moved from specific conflicts to related ones, e.g. the latest theme is Norway, so has articles ranging from the Vikings to Norway in WWII. In the previous issue there was an extremely useful article on making forests out of bath mats for 2/3mm gaming. Particularly good for my forays into 3mm ACW and 2mm Austro-Prussian.

[Ben Waterhouse]

Just WSS now for me, for the reasons Andy and Martin state. I'm currently reading The Wargamer's Newsletter on my iPad...

[Norm]

That's it not buying one again.

Not everyone, can afford a huge layout, covered in 28mm figures - most I can do is 4x4'.  What happened to a well written articles; what happened to realistic (by that what Mr or Mrs average can afford table layouts); what happened to scenarios and sharing of ideas?

Magazines are now just adverts, and adverts masquerading as articles.

I am just going to stick with the this forum and the Nugget from now on!

Rant over...

Howard

Going back to the opening post ...... people stopped writing and submitting. We all sit at home and look at the internet for free instead, fill our wellies and move on. It is our collective fault. The editors must be scrambling for articles and having to every rely on in house writing or in house control of writing and that loses something in the lifeblood of a magazine.

I do a huge amount of writing for the internet. I am fairly well visited (around 15,000 visits a month), but just the same small handful of kind souls (rather like here) actually take the trouble to even say thanks, or encourage more writing. It is a case of read, move on, read, move on. The balance between the consumer and the creator has markedly changed as we increasingly see the internet as free and by association our magazines are in peril.