GW returning to the organised play arena.

[Erik Setzer]

Well, there's still an expectation of having at least remotely historical paint schemes. But I don't mind that. It's kind of fun to look up the proper way to paint an army of Desert Rats, or what kind of uniforms Swedes wore in the 17th or 18th century.

[Mr Mystery]

There's definitely an appeal. But like many hobbies, it's easily defined by those who insist there's only one correct way to do it.

[Erik Setzer]

Technically, there *is* only one correct way to do it. It's just whether we're accepting of the incorrect ways of doing it.

[Denzark]

Slightly off topic - but I wonder if historicals is inhibited by the fact that your number of men isn't going to reflect true numbers at Antietam, Waterloo etc.

Whereas fantasy, even in ranks, you sort of don't feel each man is scaling up to be worth 10.

After all the charge of the Scot's Greys with 15-20 horses is a bit of an anti climax.

[Mr Mystery]

I guess it depends if you play the whole battle, or focus on a section.

Consider Waterloo. Play that, or focus on Hougoumont Farm? In terms of the collections I'm familiar with (so GW), Waterloo would be a little...ahahaha, Sharpe in scale. Hougoumont Farm? Less so

[40kGamer]

I play a fair amount of 6mm SYW and we fit around 3000 models per side in a battle. Still have to 'scale up' but it looks amazing to see that many tiny bodies on the field.

I would guess the lack of any massively popular historical rules, game scale or basing mechanism hurts that side of the hobby. It's hard to get people to even pick a project!

It's also a downer to be restricted by 'history' to what you paint and field thereby inhibiting rampant creativity and access to absolute tomfoolery which runs rampant in fantasy and sci-fi.

[Erik Setzer]

In theory, the story of sci-fi and fantasy games should provide some guidelines on what you can or can't do, but since the rules don't always put restrictions in, you can end up with Space Wolves and cowardly git Dark Angels working together in a mixed unit, taking orders from some guy from another chapter entirely who left the rest of the chapter at home.

Or Space Wolves getting buffed by a Munitorum Priest despite the fact they wouldn't be looking to the Emperor as a God, and having their abilities enhanced by an Astra Militarum psyker using powers on them, which seems like it'd bother them given that they don't entirely trust psykers and, IIRC, Rune Priests aren't supposed to be getting their power from the Warp (even if they functionally do).

But one of those scenarios has shown up on this website, and the other I had to face too many times.