Please click on a link to view (first one is Tiny Tin Men Blog with the post.and then click on the YouTube link, second one is just direct to the YouTube link)
http://snv-ttm.blogspot.com/2018/06/wargaming-magazines.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=0nd4JF84JZ0
Fun fact: And my wife thought I had a large collection of Wargame Magazines until she saw this little lot ;)
Great video - really took me back in time.
ReplyDeleteI still remember buying Wargames Illustrated #1 when I was 18 and it was great.
I stopped keeping up with subscriptions about 15 years ago, have bought the odd magazine, but that chap's right - the articles aren't homespun anymore and so there is a lack of integrity and research - you get a sense now that every page is trying to sell you something, and the mags have lost that 'cottage industry' - do it yourself - feel. But then I guess the industry (if that's the right word) has changed too.
Agree
ReplyDeleteI caught up with wargaming magazines much later (I was well into my thirties) then I saw a "repeat" cycle in the articles
Other people are doing the History of Wargaming as a Project (see John Curry) so I stopped
I much preferred the "cottage industry" article as I felt people were giving their soul as opposed to the metre and rhyme of "1000 word copy" plus prety pictures
Out of interest I picked up a copy of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy to "take apart" - post-it noting the salient points (don't I sound clever or have more time on my hands than I know what to do with)
28mm scoring "high" so far ... more on this later ;)
I think Battlegames magazine had the right feel, focusing on the DIY aspect of wargaming rather than the commercial products. Alas, it folded into Miniature Wargames and now its spirit is gone.
ReplyDeleteThe commercialization of the hobby (which has been going on for decades), is slowly turning us into wargaming-consumers rather than wargaming-crafters. It used to be every wargamer had to invent his own game, and you could emphasize the research, or the rules, or the painting an modeling, depending on your own preferences.
Now everything is much more pre-formatted, and the games seem to exist in their own bubble and their own frame of reference. And this attitude towards the hobby is reflected in the magazines as well.
I have to admit despite the niceness of the figure ranges I find Flames of War and Team Yankee guilty of reconstructing OoB around what they sell - I was in a conversation regarding the FoW OoB for El Alemain with a FoW gamer (but Grognard) who said it ran against what was actually there!
ReplyDeletePS I should have started with .. I agree Phil
ReplyDelete