Your 2024 in Wargaming, Part 1 – The Initial Stats

Brant Guillory, 3 January 2025

Last month, we launched our second annual year-end wargaming survey.  Building on our first run last year, we wanted to know how your wargaming unfolded in 2024 – opponents, purchases, conventions, playing habits, and more.  We also tried to tweak our questions to respond to your feedback to last year’s survey.  Annnnnnd . . .  cue the complaints¹.

How we conducted the survey

As last year, this was a basic Google form, with 17 questions in the basic survey, plus a couple of additional ones if you attended any conventions.  Only a few of them were required, and we did cut back on the number of BGG links we asked you for – one required, and one optional.

The majority of the responses were either dropdowns or buttons, with some open responses at the end of the survey.  A few items were repeated verbatim from last year; a few asked the same kinds of questions but in a slightly different format.

The survey opened up in the first week of December of 2024, and stayed up until 1 January 2025.  The response total was slightly down from last year, but close enough that we’re comfortable comparing the two populations overall.  As always, we’d love to have more responses, but we understand that (1) some people don’t like having to include the BGG URLs², and (2) some people don’t like surveys of any kind, plus (3) some people mistakenly thought we were conducting market research for specific publisher³, and (4) some people out there just don’t like us 🤷🏻‍♀️

As with last year, the stats you’re going to see here are not trying to describe “the wargaming population” but rather “these are the people that replied to the survey”.  It’s an important distinction but one we always feel needs to be called out.

 

Descriptive Stats

Here is the overall snapshot of the respondents to this year’s survey.  As expected, a huge chunk of the audience has been playing wargames for over 40 years.  Also, we rather expected that a lot of people would learn about our survey from us.

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Overall, we had slightly fewer respondents than last year, and BGG is still a key resource for recruiting respondents.  We are inevitably going to get comments about “I didn’t even see this show up on Facebook and I’m in a bunch of wargaming groups there” but we’re limited on how many times we can (re)post in those groups without taking (legitimate) criticism for spamming those groups.

 

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2024 Gameplay

First, the key questions asking people to compare their wargaming to the previous year, in a series of 5 slides here.

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While each question had “About the Same” as the largest response⁴, we only had 18 respondents who reported “about the same” for all 5 questions, indicating that most people had some change in their gameplay from last year, whether titles, opponents, or time spent playing.

 

What & where people are playing also gives us a few expected results.  Most of the respondents are still playing traditional hex-& counter games at home

Comparing the previous 2 sets of numbers, we see that about third of the audience are playing traditional hex-&-counter games at home, and a lot of them online, too.

Where are you usually playing? ➡️ ⬇️ The most common type of wargame	My House	VASSAL TTS etc	Friend’s house	Local Club	Convention	Store/Cafe	School	Grand Total
“Traditional” Hex & Counter	81	40	8	8	3	4	1	145
“Traditional” minis wargames	6		8	7	1	2	1	25
COIN / ICS series wargames	8	2		2	2	1	1	16
Ops/Event-style CDGs	8	3	2	1	2			16
Procedural solo wargames	10	2		1	2			15
Card-Assisted Wargames (*not* ops/event)	7	2	1			1		11
Area-Impulse Wargames	5		2					7
Block Wargames		3	2		1		1	7
Big-Box Map-&-Minis games	2						1	3
Solo p2p/tower defense	2	1						3
Other	2	1						3
Grand Total	131	54	23	19	11	8	5	251

 

Finally, do we see any connections between how long someone has been playing, and the kinds of wargames they play most often?

How long have you been wargaming? ➡️ ⬇️ The most common type of wargame	0-3	3-10	10-25	25-40	40+ years	Grand Total
“Traditional” Hex & Counter	16	19	18	28	64	145
“Traditional” minis wargames	3	5	3	4	10	25
COIN / ICS series wargames		4	1	5	6	16
Ops/Event-style CDGs	2		3	4	7	16
Procedural solo wargames	1	2	2	4	6	15
Card-Assisted Wargames (*not* ops/event)			1	4	6	11
Area-Impulse Wargames	1	3		1	2	7
Block Wargames				1	6	7
Big-Box Map-&-Minis games			1		2	3
Solo p2p/tower def		2		1		3
Other	1		1	1		3
Grand Total	24	35	30	53	109	251

It looks like the 40+ group is all over the map, and there’s no real skew toward a younger crew based on the type of wargame.

 

How long are the games you’re playing?

We asked 2 questions about your game times:
– How long is your normal game session?
– How long does it take to complete one of your most commonly-played games?

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The session length might be tied to the where you’re playing

Normal game session? (hrs) ➡️ ⬇️ Where are you usually playing?	under 2	2-4	4-6	6-8	8+	Grand Total
My House	38	61	26	5	1	131
VASSAL TTS etc	11	36	7			54
Friend’s House	1	14	8			23
Local Club	2	9	6	1	1	19
Convention	1	7	2		1	11
Store/Cafe		5	3			8
School	2	2	1			5
Grand Total	55	134	53	6	3	251

 

Where you are playing seems to have some impact on the length of overall game, as the long games seem to show up online, and it’s rare to see anything over 8 hours anywhere other than at a house or online.

How long does it take to complete? ➡️ ⬇️ Where are you usually playing?	Under 2	2-4	4-8	8-12	12-20	20+	Grand Total
My House	16	44	39	12	5	15	131
VASSAL TTS etc	6	12	7	7	5	17	54
Friend’s House	2	10	6	2		3	23
Local Club	2	13	4				19
Convention	2	4	4	1			11
Store/Cafe		6	2				8
School	1	3	1				5
Grand Total	29	92	63	22	10	35	251

 

Length of session vs length of overall game also gives us the following numbers

How long does it take to complete? ➡️ ⬇️ Normal game session? (hrs)	Under 2	2-4	4-8	8-12	12-20	20+	Grand Total
Under 2 hours	15	11	10	5	5	9	55
2-4 hours	12	67	24	13	5	13	134
4-6 hours	1	13	24	4		11	53
6-8 hours		1	4			1	6
Over 8 hours	1		1			1	3
Grand Total	29	92	63	22	10	35	251

So for anything under 8 hours, it looks like most folks get those played in one session.

 

Finally, we took a look at what types of games you play and how long those games tend to take

Normal game session? (hrs)➡️ ⬇️ The most common type of wargame	Under 2	2-4	4-6	6-8	8+ hours	Grand Total
“Traditional” Hex & Counter	31	75	33	4	2	145
“Traditional” minis wargames	2	17	5	1		25
COIN / ICS series wargames	2	10	4			16
Ops/Event-style CDGs	3	7	5	1		16
Procedural solo wargames	7	7			1	15
Card-Assisted Wargames (*not* ops/event)	2	8	1			11
Area-Impulse Wargames		5	2			7
Block Wargames	4	3				7
Big-Box Map-&-Minis games	1	1	1			3
Solo p2p/tower def	2	1				3
Other	1		2			3
Grand Total	55	134	53	6	3	251

 

How long does it take to complete? ➡️ ⬇️ The most common type of wargame	Under 2	2-4	4-8	8-12	12-20	20+	Grand Total
“Traditional” Hex & Counter	7	37	41	20	9	31	145
“Traditional” minis wargames	2	17	5			1	25
COIN / ICS series wargames	4	8	4				16
Ops/Event-style CDGs	4	7	4			1	16
Procedural solo wargames	4	5	4	1	1		15
Card-Assisted Wargames (*not* ops/event)	2	6	1			2	11
Area-Impulse Wargames		4	3				7
Block Wargames	2	5					7
Big-Box Map-&-Minis games	1	2					3
Solo p2p/tower def	3						3
Other		1	1	1			3
Grand Total	29	92	63	22	10	35	251

Looks like we’ve got a handful on monster-gamers in this survey, with 40 of our “Traditional” Hex & Counter respondents taking over 12 hours per game to complete.

 

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Conventions

110 respondents attended at least one convention last year, accounting for almost 44% of survey participants. Last year, it was 45%, so we’re holding steady at just under half of the survey group.

Respondents reported attending a total of 214 different conventions, so we averaged almost 2 cons/year for the attendees.  Based on last year’s feedback, we dramatically increased the number of conventions in the pre-populated list that people could choose, and we allowed you to enter your own conventions in the “other” category, so we had 87 different conventions mentioned this year!

These are the conventions that got at least 4 attendees.
SDHistCon might be a little over-represented because this survey was shared in their Discord server.

Convention	Attendees
SDHistCon (any of them)	18
Origins	14
CSW Expo	10
Historicon	8
Buckeye Game Fest	7
GMT Weekend At The Warehouse	7
The ACDC	7
Other HMGS event	6
World Boardgaming Championships	6
Compass Expo (any of them)	5
HistoriKC Fest	5
MMP Winter Offensive	5
Pacificon	5
PunchedCon	5
Circle DC	4
GenCon	4
The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly	4
Winterfest	4

Adepticon, Connections Conferences (Any), the Strategicons (any of Orccon / Gamex / Gateway), Bellota, FoxCon, ASLOK, Batalladores, BottosCon, CanCon, CondoCon, Gaelcon, Game mORe, GameOn, Pax Unplugged, Stack Académie, UKGE all reported at least 2 attendees.

Acadacon, AireConwest, ASL Double 1 – UK, ASL March Madness, ASL Texas Team Tournament, Auckcon, Carnage, CascadeCon, Charlotte NC, Chiba Club, Chimera Con, Chimeracon, Claymore, Community event KC, Crisis, Czech Consim Con, DunDraCon, Essenspiel, Fall In, FIASCO, Gathering of Friends, GBACW Meet-Up Near Chickamauga, GCACW at the Battlefield, Geekway to the West, GRIDCON, Gulf Games, Hammerhead, Huzzah, Karlsruher Spieletage 2024, KC ASL Weekend, KS, KublaCon, Kurashiki Game Geeks, Les Grands Stratèges (Thionville – France), LinCon, Little Wars, LjungCon, Lobster Trap, Local convention, MdG, Mythiccon, No Quarter Con, NUTS! (in Belgium), Other, Partizan, Rochefortaise (France), Rocket City Game Fest, Southern Front, Spring Offensive, Unfurl Your Banners, Vanguard, WARFARE, Wellycon all came in with 1 mention each.

 

Why you attend, and what your budgets look like, are fairly consistent with what we saw last year.

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Following up on a couple of things we looked at last year, we compared convention attendance to game purchases and overall gameplay, looking into whether or not people attending them are spending more and/or playing more.

Did you attend any game conventions this year?➡️ ⬇️ Compared to last year, my purchase of games	No	Yes	Grand Total
Much fewer	14	13	27
Less, but only somewhat	29	28	57
About the same	43	38	81
More, but not a lot	32	20	52
A lot more	23	11	34
Grand Total	141	110	251

 

Did you attend any game conventions this year?➡️ ⬇️ Compared to last year, my hours played	No	Yes	Grand Total
Much fewer	6	4	10
Less, but only somewhat	25	14	39
About the same	57	37	94
More, but not a lot	26	32	58
A lot more	27	23	50
Grand Total	141	110	251

Much like last year, it doesn’t appear that folks attending conventions have any real change in total hours played or money spent on games compared to their stay-at-home compadres.

 

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Next week, look for your most-played games, favorite 2024 releases, info on your buying/playing decision-making, and other preferences; in a few weeks we’ll wrap up with your open-text responses on biggest stories in wargaming.

 

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2024 YEAR-END WARGAMING SURVEY
THE 2024 SURVEY ~ OVERALL STATS & 2024 OVERVIEW ~ FAVORITE GAMES & OTHER HABITS ~ OPEN RESPONSES

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1. we’re wargamers; it’s what we do
2. which is a known issue we’re working on
3. which we’ve never done
4. anywhere from 32%–54%