Looking back at the early days of this blog I stumbled upon a post in which I'd listed all the wargames I'd played or run over my first thirty-odd years in the hobby. I thought it might be interesting to revisit the process.
So back in 2010 my top ten most-played miniatures games were:
- Hordes of the Things
- Arc of Fire
- TacWWII
- Cold War Commander
- Rapid Fire!
- Challenger
- Firefly
- My own Wars of the Roses skirmish rules
- DBA and The Fire and the Rose tied in ninth place.
Interestingly there are two more-or-less homemade rules systems in there. The Fire and the Rose were a set of mass battle Wars of the Roses rules from York Wargames Society.
Having moved on 14 years the current top ten is as follows:
- Hordes of the Things
- Arc of Fire
- Sharp Practice
- Cold War Commander
- TacWWII
- Chain of Command
- To The Strongest!
- Lion Rampant
- Song of Blades and Heroes tied with Pulp Alley.
The actual numbers of games played are interesting. In 2010 the last two games only had four plays each. Now SOBH and Pulp Alley both have 14 plays each.
Clearly the big winners are the two Too Fat Lardies games with Sharp Practice having 31 plays and Chain of Command twenty. This is despite my nearly having given up on TFL in disgust at the way the card-driven events system in first edition Sharp Practice constantly conspired to bugger up my carefully crafted scenarios!
Obviously HOTT is still on top. The sheer amount of games generated by 15 years of the Berkeley tournament, as well as a few other events, mean that it'll probably never be overtaken even through I rarely play it now.
Overall the number of games I've played or run of Arc of Fire, Cold War Commander, and TacWWII is nearly double what it had been.
The remaining systems (To The Strongest!, Lion Rampant, Song of Blades and Heroes, and Pulp Alley) are all, I believe, new games rather than ones I just hadn't encountered in 2010.
Also interesting that only the top four of the 2010 list are systems that I play even occasionally these days.
If there's anything else you think it would be interesting to analyse I'd love to hear from you by commenting below.
3 comments:
I suppose looking back when I re-entered the gaming world, Mordheim was played almost to the exclusion of anything else. FoW then became a big thing at the club, soon to be supplanted with BKCII as my defauly WWII ruleset. Even now it remains unchallenged on this front. I've dabbled with many rulesets since then, but have settled on the Rampant series (rarely played), Honours of War and the Black Powder stable for most of my other games. I find they tick all of the boxes for me and are so easy to pick up even after many months away.
Thanks Steve.
I've never been a member of a wargaming club so I've tended to avoid the we-all-play-X-rules pressure. Also I'm old enough to pre-date the GW/Warlord/FOW approach of "Just buy into our system and we'll provide everything you need." For me it was always about sourcing stuff where you could and if that means mixing models from five manufacturers across metal and plastic then so be it.
I think you're right about the value of a set of rules you can just pick up and run however long it is since your last game. Arc of Fire and Sharp Practice do that for me.
Since those seem to be lifetime totals, what have you played in the last year (or since the beginning of 2023)? How are those ranked?
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