By the Numbers: Collection analysis and classification by divers methodologies – Part I

  

Note: I started writing this with the best of intentions to keep it short and breezy. I don’t do short and breezy. Rather than try to edit it down, I’ve split it into two halves. Part II should appear within a week. If self-indulgent nerdery is your thing, read on.

 

Back in December, I posted quick and dirty analysis of my own game collection by publisher. I don’ think there were too many surprises for me there; GMT Games had the strongest representation by a half-dozen furlongs. Worthington Publishing came second, which also didn't surprise me. But that analysis didn’t tell the whole story. I’d left all expansions out of the count. I only counted stand-alone games and the first games in series (so, no Panzer or Commands and Colours expansions, though I did individually count all games with shared rules-sets, like the Great Sieges series from Worthington, and both Par le feu, le fer et la Foi and The Fate of Reiters (Hexasim, 2014, 2019).

I recently revised my game listings. This was prompted partly by my selling or giving away a number of games before and just after Christmas. None of these were wargames, but they were listed on my BGG collection list, and now they’re not (my goal is to get the “family” game collection down to about thirty games, mostly to make more room for the other kind).

Looking back on it, I think there is probably more value in considering everything that takes up valuable space in storage around the apartment so in this revised collection consideration, I’ve incorporated all the individually titled expansions and supplements. I should also point out I’ve only included true “expansions” in this count, not items like mounted boards.

Since December, the collection has also grown by maybe two-dozen titles. I have no idea how this could have happened, but there it is. So, without further ado, may I present a series of graphical expressions of my complete wargame collection (as of 14 April. 2024*).

With the inclusion of expansions, GMT Games, already the biggest chunk of my collection, plumped out an extra 2% or so to 46% of my collection, exactly 100 titles (for now, at least). It’s all those Commands and Colors series expansions, as well as Panzer, MBT, and Combat Commander: Europe.  And Tank Duel. It’s a curious thing about wargame expansions – not just GMT, but across the board. In the case of non-wargames (Euros seem to be the worst for it), there seems to be an obsession with upscaling aspects of the game in expansions to make things more overpowered, then introducing other expansions to balance out the newly-introduced imbalance from the earlier expansion with more overpowered parts, or pimping up the components so the game looks better on the table. Either way, the original charm and/or playability of the game is often lost. 

Coming from a heritage of carboard counters from Avalon Hill, GDW, and SPI, I’m not that invested in how a game looks set up. Unless an expansion is offering either a solo-mode or a fifth-player option (preferably both), I really don’t have much time for them. Wargame expansions tend not to change the game, but merely make the original game more extensively playable, through the introduction of new historical situations (Commands and Colors: Ancients), new historical foes (C&C: Napoleonics), or new scenarios and maps (Combat Commander, Panzer).

I’ve also picked up some pre-loved GMT games since the previous post; Wellington (GMT Games, 2005 - unpunched!), and No Retreat! the Russian Front (GMT, 2011). I had pre-ordered the new printing of No Retreat! RF on GMT’s P500 list, but the new one is a straight reprint, and the price was too good to pass up. I still have an order in for No Retreat! The North African Front (GMT, 2013), as this is a new edition – I didn’t want to get the older version (also for sale) only to have to purchase the update kit later in the year.

Worthington Publishing still holds second place at 12% (this is a little surprising to me, since I’ve been doubling down on Compass Games purchases of late), though, to be fair, I’ve lumped a couple of early Worthington Games titles – Richard Berg’s Turning Point (Worthington Games, 2009), and Boots on the Ground (Worthington Games, 2010) – under Worthington Publishing for convenience’s sake. By this count, I own twenty-five separate Worthington games, and the McClellanMoves extension for Grant’s Gamble: The Wilderness Campaign of 1864 (Worthington Publishing, 2016). I’m an unapologetic fan of Worthington. I teach games to new people from time to time, and I’ve found Worthington games to me among the easiest to teach to somebody who has never played a wargame, especially when trying to convey a concept like point-to-point movement or lines of supply. They are also the most reliable company for game duration. If the back of the box says, “Victory within 90 minutes,” you can set your watch by that.

Compass Games is third by representation with 20 titles. I think in the last six or so months alone I’ve bought six or seven Compass titles, most recently The Lamps Are Going Out: World War I (Compass Games, 2016), and Wagram, 1809 (Compass Games, 2019), from Paper Wars, issue 93 (I’ve shot the picks for an unboxing of Lamps, but I may not get to it for aa few weeks yet). Compass has published some of my favourite games, like Dawn’s Early Light: The War of1812 (Compass, 2020), and Brothers at War: 1862 (Compass, 2022). Like Worthington, they can generally be relied on for good components and solid games. I’ve heard complaints about a couple of their games, but in my experience, I haven’t experienced a problem.

The next three publishers are very close together: Flying Pig Games – 6% (14 titles), Legion Wargames – 5% (10), and Osprey – 4% (8). More than half of the Flying Pig count are expansions, but their games are solid and a lot of fun (hence the devotion to expansion acquisition). I think I only bought my first Legion game less than three years ago.

Legion specialises in subjects that tend not make it into games all that often. Three or the reviews I posted last year were for Legion games, and I’m going to try to work through the rest of them over the next eighteen months or so.

I actually have more Osprey games and expansions than this. I didn’t count the three supplements I have for Force on Force (a great modern tactical miniatures game – yes, I do own some minis), and I have a couple of non-wargame games that I couldn’t in good conscience include in the count, like Martin Wallace’s London (Osprey Games, 2017).

An honourable mention should go to the French Contingent – Hexasim, Shakos, Nuts! Publishing, Companion Games and, Fellowship of Simulations, which are represented by twelve titles between them. The French make damn fine, thoughtful, and innovative games, and I expect I’ll be adding to this count before the year is out.

Next, I thought it would be interesting to see where my interests lay historically-speaking. I started to do this using the data from my previous list, but I went too far down the rabbit hole, parsing “Ancients” into about four categories and the medieval period into two, then three. This time I’ve settled on using the current Charles S. Roberts Awards categories (as much as the Gunpowder/Industrial conglomeration vexes me).

I’m not too surprised to find the biggest segment of my collection is devoted to games dealing with or set during the Second World War. Collectively, these come to 35%, with 75 titles (a lot of the expansions live here). I suspect 35% may well be a little shy of the average, but I’m a magpie when it comes to history – it’s all so distracting.

There are a total of 32 games (15% of the collection) falling into the grab-bag of Gunpowder/Industrial – I swear that sounds like how you’d describe an album by Postmodern Jukebox doing sassy Crime and the City Solution covers. Gunpowder/Industrial covers a period from around 1500 to around 1936 that isn’t captured by the Napoleonic, American Civil War, or World War I categories, so there’s a lot of room for diversity there. This count includes a mixed bag, from the Musket and Pike Dual Pack (GMT Games, 2022) to Mar Rojo (Spania Games, 2021). 

Modern (13% - 28 titles in all) is a little tougher; it covers anything from post World War II to now, that actually happened. Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2019), and Tonkin: The First Indochina War (Legion Wargames, 2012) land here, Assault (GDW, 1983) and MBT aren’t supposed to because the Cold War never went that drastically Hot (I’ve put them under Modern regardless, along with Armageddon War (Flying Pig Games, 2018); they’re all tactical level, so what’s the harm?).

Napoleonic is next, at 11% (23 titles). It’s not all about Commands and Colors, I swear. I have two volumes of Didier Rouy’s Vive l’Empereur! series, Trois Batailles en Allemagne (Legion Wargames, 2020) and Quatre Batailles enEspagne (Legion, 2015). In the shadow of La Bataille and the Library of Napoleonic Battles, Vive l’Empereur! and Hexasim’s Eagles of France series get a little starved of oxygen. I want to devote some column space to the Vive l’Empereur! series here in the future.

I’ve also had a lot of fun with (and derived a lot of content from) Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017), the first volume in the Conquerors series from Shakos. Napoléon 1806 covers the frenetic weeks of the Napoleon’s Prussian campaign of 1806. It was on my 6x6 list in 2023, though the review didn’t make it to A Fast Game until early this year, and I’m very keen to move on to Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020) this year. I also managed to secure a copy of Napoléon 1815 (Shakos, 2022), Which was nominated for a Charles S. Roberts Award last year, fittingly enough, in the Napoleonics category. I believe all three are still available from the publisher, and there have been rumours of new volumes, extending the Conquerors series into the Roman era and the late nineteenth century with Napoléon 1870 (Napoleon III).

I hope it never comes to this, but if I had to pick just one period to game for the rest of my days, it would almost certainly be the Napoleonic era. It’s just so rich in gameable situations, which I suppose translates to it being so tragic a period of human history.

Ancients-representative or -themed games make up 8% of the collection, eighteen games in all. Nearly a third of those slots are taken up by Commands and Colors: Ancients (GMT Games, 2006) and its expansions. In fact, thirteen of these are GMT titles (a couple of these are expansions, besides the C&C Ancients titles). There are a couple of games in this category of, shall we say, questionable wargame credentials. I have no qualms over submitting that Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD (GMT Games, 2017) belongs in the category of wargames, though I can understand the objections of those who do. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I can hold such certainty with The Barracks Emperors (GMT Games, 2023). It’s definitely a game with a strong military/historical theme, and it looks gorgeous on the table. To my mind, that’s enough to warrant inclusion here.

The case for inclusion is weaker for two other games, Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (PSC, 2022 – you can read my review here) and Agamemnon (Osprey Games, 2016). At first blush, Caesar! is an area control game with a nifty mechanisms and frustratingly tight competition. It’s definitely an aggressively opposed player game. It won’t tick everyone’s boxes for what constitutes a wargame, but it lives up to it’s title on both counts; it is strongly themed and manages to convey on a very small board the desperation of Caesar and Pompey vying for rule of the empire, and it’s over in twenty minutes.

Agamemnon is more like a fever dream of a mourning Achilles after the death of Patroclus. It’s such an abstract game that it the one I probably feel least comfortable about inclusion on the list. The conceit of the game is two warrior leaders trying to tie together the longest thread in a labyrinthine city before Atropos ends their collective existence. Some would write it off as a simple worker placement game, but that would diminish the brilliance of the balance and play of the game. I’ve spent some time with Agamemnon, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it has going on. Wargame? Not conventionally, but it gets to the nub of Homeric conflict; the understanding that you are mortal, and that you must strive to succeed in the face of your own mortality.

The World War I, ACW, and Medieval categories all come in at around 6% (fourteen, thirteen and twelve games respectively). I’m a little surprised that games representing the American Civil War only came to 6% of my collection, thirteen titles in all. This has been a burgeoning area of interest for me. My first ACW wargames were the original Blue and Gray series titles from Worthington, Grant's Gamble: Wilderness Campaign of 1864, Lee's Invincibles: Gettysburg Campaign of 1863, and Jackson & Sheridan: The Valley Campaigns (Worthington Publishing, 2016), point to point movement block games with every simple rules that still manage to convey a lot of period and battle-doctrine flavour.

I’ve recently acquired a couple of Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) series games, Death Valley: Battle for the Shenandoah (GMT Games, 2019) and Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 (GMT, 2022). The series has a reputation for difficulty. I don’t know how much of this was earned and how much is hyperbole. While not quite a closed book – I’ve started picking at the series rules; they don’t seem that scary – there is a lot going on in these games, and considering my current tentative play schedule, I really don’t know when I’ll get any of it to the table. I bought Death Valley second hand and the previous owner had it clipped and sorted into trays, so I’ll probably start there. I may still get to it this year, but I don’t feel like I can make myself any promises.

In breaking the collection down by CSR categories, I made a subtraction and an addition. I rolled the Hypothetical games into the Modern category, because it didn’t make sense to give so few games their own category. Then I hypocritically created a brand-new category to squeeze in a couple of games and an expansion. My Speculative category covers science fiction and fantasy games, of which I’ve only included two, SpaceCorp: 2025-3000AD (GMT, 2018), and the oldest game I still own from my earliest days as a wargamer, The Sword and the Stars (SPI, 1981). I’m stretching it a bit to even have SpaceCorp on the list, given it’s not strictly a wargame. Especially when I kept another game off the list – Small Star Empires (Archona Games, 2016) – because it didn’t seem wargame-y enough to be on the list (it is a game of exploration and fighty-fighty conflict, and quite novel mechanically that plays quickly with a small footprint – right in my wheelhouse – so really it should be on the list; if I do a future breakdown, I’ll put it on).In truth, SpaceCorp is here because John Butterfield is one of my favourite game designers, and in the end it’s my list so I can put what I like on it.

That's it for now. The next post should be a little shorter, a lot more analytical, and a lot less self-indulgent. We'll get to the heart of why my collection looks the way it does. It might be fun.

 

* This list is already slightly out of date, as the evening before writing this up, I pulled the trigger on Herman Luttman’s A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days at Gettysburg, Second Edition (Third Printing) (Flying Pig Games, 2022). After this, I probably won’t be buying anything else for a few months.