Reply To: Reign of the Neckbeards (or why do historical re-fights).

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I think we’re getting into just a “Why play Historicals” debate again.

The re-fight (using a fixed army list and map) has indeed been used as the basis for Sci-Fi/Fantasy scenarios (Bloodbath at Orc Drift springs to mind), and I’ve indeed played games where we’ve taken a Napoleonic refight and “morphed” it into an Ancients battle (Napolenic heavy and light cav swapped for their equivalent ancient version for example). So it’s not a hard core “you must adhere to the exact details in everything down to the most minute detail”. Even played a game of 40K based on Arnhem (with a column of Imperial Guard trying to punch through to Marines holding abridge (although that was more perhaps a battle used as inspiration for a game than strictly being a re-fight)

But there does seem to be an aversion these days in playing with a fixed army list and map. Rather things seem to be “I’ll paint up what I think is cool, and I’ll play it when and where I want to” (not saying anyone here takes this mindset). I think we first had a debate on this when Dracs bought the Dads Army box set from Warlord (because he liked them), but then found great difficulty in getting a game because other Bolt Action Players seemed resistant in a pick up and play game (although the Dads Army set were more for the Campaign books for the fictional invasion of Britian). A worse case might be buying the Mash figures for a game of Bolt Action in the Korea campaign (although I don’t think there’s rules for them). But unless you are aware of that before buying Mash Unit someone who has done no research into the period might assume you CAN use them in a game of Bolt Action somehow. But you can find similar stories into both the Sci-fi and Fantasy genres (it just seems to be the vogue to demonise Historical gamers at the moment).

But many may not have realised we HAVE seen some historical re-fight sneak in “under the radar” here on BoW in the form of the World War Zero “lets plays”. And these seemed to have a general “good” response from the viewers, compared with the “not even going to contemplate that” response to playing an historical refight game.

I suppose I do keep carping on about this as we just are not seeing any “new blood” coming into the field of doing these refights. When watching the Historicon footage it just seemed to be a mass of grey hair (to match mine) with not a lot of younger gamers around (vs watching things like the Gencon/Adepticon footage). And I really don’t want to see this genre die out.

I play Sci-fi and Fantasy as well as Historicals (in fact I think my largest 28mm collection is for Gates of Antares), although I admit I don’t enjoy the whole tourney scene (which is more popular these days). An I find I end up doing as much “research” for Sci-fi and fantasy genres as historicals (although this might take the form of trawling trough the internet for cool paint schemes to “borrow”), and have bought campaign books for both Sci-Fi and Fantasy game systems I own. Yet there seems to be a self imposed barrier these days in gamers going across from playing fantasy and sci-fi games toward playing historicals and an even greater one in playing a historical refight (although I’m sure some here can regale me with an example of historical gamers refusing to play a sci-fi or fantasy game).

But “re-fights” go beyond just historicals (although it’s more common to see these days). The old GW boxed campaign systems like Bloodbath at Orcs Drift and the Tears campaign ARE a “refight” (ie they have a map and a fixed army list) yet appeared for a Fantasy rules system (and game world).

But they do tend to be a joint effort (rather than a solo one) sometimes if you want to do the REALLY BIG battles like Waterloo. Yet even with historical periods that are easy to paint and collect (such as the American Civil War), with LOADS of reference material (as this was the first “media” war with war correspondents from many of the newspapers). Many of the more recent gaming systems released (such as black powder) ignore the aspects of the refight and just tend to provide details and points for players to pick their own army list for a more tourney style game.

But the refights (I probably only get to do one of these as an annual experience these days as we just don’t have the new blood coming in) still form the highlight of the hobby for me. These large multiplayer games where we aren’t fighting for individual victory points (instead we are relying on our fellow gamer to hold our flank and/or deal with the enemy cav so YOU might press the attack on the enemy), and the constant running into a side room for a brief consult on the tactics we are going to do as the game progresses and plans change still cause a laugh. And I think that’s it, most of our refights have us laughing at each other for bad dice rolls and everything going FUBAR, whereas many game styles today are just too competitive and feature lots of scowls.

Fixed army lists mean you can blame the troops that were there on the day (rather than blaming yourself for bad choices when building a army list), Deployment is also fixed (so no arguments at the table about legal deployments before the game has even started). Rather its a game of trying to do the best you can with the troops you have in the situation they find themselves in. Rather than a constrained game, it’s actually rather “free” in a way.

So perhaps if you haven’t tried a re-fight yet, take a look at some of the booksellers at the next wargames show you go to and see if you can find a campaign book featuring refight with ORBATS and a map with the deployments shown (there’s actually plenty out there if you look for them). Then after reading it you might pick a battle to do (perhaps one of the smaller ones) and then either pick up the figures for both armies (or perhaps you and a gaming buddy might decide to do one side each) and then do a large multiplayer game (because that’s were the fun is). ACW is a fine start, as the uniforms are easy to paint (although you might want to look at getting 15mm, 10mm or 6mm as 28mm takes AGES to paint and restricts the size of the refights you can do to perhaps a brigade each side…which knocks down on the multiplayer aspect). But first of all just look for a book to act as the source for building your refight (in the same way the Bloodbath/Tears campaign boxes had armies listed as an “aimpoint” for you to collect and paint) and then decide if you want to give it a go.

But drawing a self imposed line of “I’ll never do that” just cuts down on the availability of games you have access to (perhaps I’m guilty of this myself as I draw a similar line in not wanting to do any tournies). And although saying you only have so much time to devote to the hobby I’m sure you still take the time to trawl the internet for tips on painting or how to do the best paintjob for Imperial Fist Marines  (and this is “research” even if you don’t think of it as such)