Are you a Grognard?

[Umbran]

i'm a grognard. Chainmail by Gygax & Perren.

Yeah. That's a grognard.

As far as I'm concerned, you're no grognard unless you've been playing longer than I have.

 

[Yellow Sign]

So what war games have you played? What kinds do you enjoy? Miniatures? Historical? Board games?
YS

 

[Festivus]

Does playing games like Diplomacy and Kingmaker count? I do recall playing a game with little metal tanks where we had mock tank battles with the allies vs axis, but I don't recall many rules associated with it.

My life is so full of things now that there would be very little time for something like this. Perhaps when I retire I could see getting into it.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Does playing games like Diplomacy and Kingmaker count?

I don't think so. You have to have played one of:

1- Squad Leader
2- Panzer Leader
3- Star Fleet Battles

To the point where you no longer look at the rules to determine what you can do, instead referring to them only to prevent the opponent from making a maneuver during play.

Even then, without acheiving the tactical mastery and obscure military history necessary to play Squad Leader with an exaggerated air of indifference at the plainly unrealistic simulation of the historical battle, you can only rise so far in the grognard ranks!

 

[Croesus]

I don't think so. You have to have played one of:

1- Squad Leader
2- Panzer Leader
3- Star Fleet Battles

To the point where you no longer look at the rules to determine what you can do, instead referring to them only to prevent the opponent from making a maneuver during play.

Even then, without acheiving the tactical mastery and obscure military history necessary to play Squad Leader with an exaggerated air of indifference at the plainly unrealistic simulation of the historical battle, you can only rise so far in the grognard ranks!

I think you can add a few others to that list:

Panzer Blitz (pre-Panzer Leader, with worse rules)
Third Reich (even the designers said it was impossible to play a mistake-free game)
Just about anything by SPI

Also, IMNSHO Diplomacy and Kingmaker qualify for grognard-lite.

 

[Silver Moon]

Actually, a great many traditional wargamers wouldn't be caught dead on this board, as from what I've seen many look down upon role players.

For example, I recall a large gaming con in the early 1990's where my game required a large 3D set-up. The tables in the Role Playing Room were all too small so they had me set up and run in the Wargamers Room instead. While I was setting out my roads, hills, bridges, rivers and large quantities of miniatures several GM's from the other table wandered by and were impressed until they asked "What game system are you using?", and I replied, "Dungeons and Dragons". You would have thought I had told them I had the plague from the look on their faces and the speed that they walked away.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I used to play a fair amount of WRG Ancients tabletop wargames, and a variety of other stuff too. In the last decade the only tabletop rules I've used have been DBA, which enables you to fight a complete ancients wargame on a 2ft x 2ft board in about an hour. It means that with a group of mates you can even play a whole set of battles in an evening!

See http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/guides/index.html for more details, and http://www-personal.umich.edu/~beattie/dba/dbaintro.html for an introduction.

Cheers

p.s. I also still have a moderate collection of SPI wargames that I'd *love* to play through again!

 

[Sledge]

Everything is relative, so depending on your perspective I may be a grognard. I play Classic BattleTech but that game is still only 20 or so years old now. I also created a custom miniatures war game with some friends.

 

[dougmander]

So are you a Grognard?

Oui, je suis un grognard.

DGUTS, Tractics, PanzerBlitz, Squad Leader, Chainmail, all before I heard about this game called "D&D" at a wargaming convention. That was 1977.

 

[Tsillanabor]

Well, I'm definitely an old school role-player, and I play Warhammer and 40K, so I suppose so.