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This is where I collect and publish online my personal notes.
Miniature Wargames 🗄️ covers a wide range of games.
It is the game genre I probably spent most time with, probably because it was not just a game and a hobby, but a meta-game and a meta-hobby.
The miniature wargame hobby begins with creating something. Often, it's just assemblying models as instructed, but sometimes it is about modifying the position of an existing models to something I like more. This also result in filling gaps and modelling small new parts. Another possibility is mixing pieces of different models together. Finally, one can create something from scratch; sculpt a whole miniature from the ground up, or most of it.
In my case; not being an able sculptor, my "building something from scratch" is normally confined to building terrain pieces, where I can get some results I'm satisfied with.
The second game is painting.
There is not much to be said; there are different painting tecniques, you choose the colors you like, and put them on the model. I would not classify myself as a very capable painter, but the results I get are good enough for my taste, and seeing a little army painted by myself makes me happy.
The third part of the game, is the actual game.
Create your army or character, choose the equipment, roll the dices, move the miniatures and apply what is written in the rulebook.
The next activity is writing, or at least imagining stories
Explain why there is a battle, who is commanding your army, why they have a particular symbol, or uniform, ...
Such background stories might be a single page, or multiples, evolving as the game continues, battle after battle.
It is by no accident that I like fantasy and sci-fi novels, it makes creating stories much simpler when you do not have to always respect the law of physics and history, and just invent from scratch something you like and use your imagination.
Another important aspect are home rules.
After you have biult and painted your miniatures, you are pretty much invested in them. Even more if you thought about their backgrounds or sculpted something. So it is a natural consequence that you want the rules of the game to reflect theyr abilities.
Thus it is not uncommon to think about special rules, or to twek some rules for specific units, discuss those rules with other players, test them, revisit them, and play again.
Last but not least, derivate games
It is a miniature wargame, and often the games are about battles.
But in war, there are missions that do not require an army; in fact, an army would be counter-productive for a stealth operaion, like helping a prisoner to escape, assassinate a general, steal an object, save someone (or something). For those types of scenarions, a small faction with at most half dozen models should be enough.
Another derivate game is races. In the fantasy world, it would be a chariot race, while in a sci-fi environment, it would be cars, motorcycles, or other machines.
There exist already a lot of games covering different genres, for example Formula Dé 🗄️ for racing games, Battleship 🗄️ for battles between ships, and so on. But it doubles the fun playing in the same environment where the rest of the battles takes places and in an environment you've created 8at least partially.
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