One thing that both my wife and I noticed at Crisis in Antwerp was the abundance of significantly younger gamers in the aged group early/mid twenties to 30. I spoke with at least a dozen of these types of gamers during the day, all keen to move from Fantasy/Warhammer to historical periods and hungry fro info on how to, what to...

A great sign that the hobby has some young, fresh blood coming through but a very worrying contrast to my own personal perspective of the UK gaming scene where, at many shows its the same old(er every year!) faces (including my own)

Great to talk with German gamers too... the hobby seems to be picking up followers there. Maybe there are healthy pockets of new recruits coming through in Blighty but I don't see it (with a couple of notable exceptions)

Perhaps with the Evil Empire being based in the UK has something to do with it and its hypnotic tendrals haven't quite the same effect on the continent?
Cheers
Dave

possible.. but they are pretty popular across the world I think. One of the guys was amazed that he could buy 4-5 Historical minis for the prcie of 1 fantasy. Even the plastics prices when compared doen't stand up. The response was one of total incredulity.. it's a true saying...

You don't know what you don't know

I don't know if there are any restrictions on having kids in clubs on the continent? In this country if you have kids under the age of 16 then a certain number of committee member have to go through police checks at around £45 per member. When this became law our club took the decision to stop taking on younger members which is a shame for the kids and also for the club and the hobby.
Cheers
Dave

I am in an older bracket of mid/late 30s I have several friends who were in our youth involved in a mix of RPG games and GW type games. We didn't do any gaming for nigh on 15+ years and have all started to get back into various things again.

The spur for us was the release of the Blood Bowl PC game that got us thinking about playing the board game again (We had played mostly 1st and 2nd edition!). That got us wanting to start painting our own teams and the like and then get back into miniatures. One thing lead to another and 10-11 teams painted later, I wanted to paint more military type stuff so jumped into historical miniatures having always despised the Evil Empire and loved history..

My evil empire resentment came from experience of having played Blood Bowl 1st edition, with all the counters needed for the game etc, awaiting the release and then buying the more expensive Blood Bowl 2nd Edition, only to find all I got was an unpainted pitch and 2 horrible unpainted plastic single pose teams, deliberately slightly out of scale with their other BB miniatures. I have no idea why it took some people a lot longer to figure out exactly what the Evil Empire was all about but that is another story..

Anyhow getting back into things again, I have to agree the first thing that shocked us was the price of GW miniatures, including a lot of the plastics. I think that will put a lot of people off gaming again.

I can only imagine that people 'brought up' with those type of prices will be amazed at the lesser cost of a lot of historical figures.

This is absolutely true. I and my good friends used to do a lot of GW gaming, but interspersed with that was a lot of historical gaming/reading, Wab (classical anc dark ages) the guys have started up again with SAGA, the beastie boys new rules and thoroughly enjoying them, WWII of various flavours.

I do go into a local GW store in Manchester here to get paints and the like. Their foundation range is actually decent. Always greeted with a 'so what are you painting' followed by me saying 'Napoleonic Portuguese' to be met with a blank stare Last time I was there I had a look at some miniatures, and it was £8 for one, one I say, plastic figure.

Somebody somewhere is making money

One of the reasons I think FoW did so well taking in ex GW players was the 'hobby in a box' aspect they pushed. This appeals to those used to GW, as its the same approach. Not surprising given that a lot of the people at the top of Battlefront used to work for GW.

There is also the distaste of 'historical' gamers for anything GW/Evil Empire related, including the players of GW games.

I'll say it out loud

My name is Bill and I (used to) play GW games



Main reason I dont currently is the latest version of the rules is utter cack.

I wasn't really denigration GW as apart from still having a number of gangs for Necromunda (fantastic game) and my Chaos 40K army, many of my friends work for the 'Evil Empire' as most historical wargamers call it. They produce wonderful figures but as you say, the prices are horrific.
Cheers
Dave

And some of there games are good. We also play warmaster, its a really good set of rules for adding in that fog of war.

Never had you down as a ray gun player though Dave

(saying that I have a Dark Eldar army

Bill

I'm just full of surprises!
Cheers
Dave

A bit like Barry

Oi!

no telling!

your secret's safe with me

What a coincidence, my two youngest are Half-Filipino and Half-Scottish and they are always muttering on about YOOF IN ASIA.

Jim

When I said "Louis XIV French infantry" he recovered enough to say, "How many points?" to which I replied, "One on the end of each bayonet." I do believe that they are forced to be "interested" at all costs.

Jim

Im 28 does that count as YOOF? Please say it does