Reply To: Inaccessibility of Historical Wargaming

[aermordParticipant 231xp 1]

As mentioned above, people like different games for different reasons. I agree about the immersion thing, and it affects me too, if something is possible in a game that would be either impossible or very unlikely in real life. The issue here, I think, is whether we value a game higher based on how good a simulation it is or how good the mechanics are.

In my experience with regard to tabletop gaming, the games that have solid and fun mechanics are the games that most people will enjoy playing. Bolt Action is very much an example of this. The game got some glaring flaws in regard to what it tries to simulate and the designers did a very poor job in regard to fleshing out the point values for some of the units. But when it comes to the mechanics, they are solid and fun, and that is what make people keep playing it. In many ways I see Bolt Action as a “gateway game” – to use a term used for board games that describes games that are fun enough to get people hooked on gaming. For those who have played 40k, Bolt Action is a gateway game into historical gaming. This means that there is a unique opportunity to ‘convert’ Bolt Action players, who is developing an interest for history, into trying out other historical based games. But one must be clever about it. The chance of conversion is greater if you praise the game you would like to introduce for its merrits instead of criticising the game your buddy is already enjoying.