Your 2024 in Wargaming, Part 2 – Your Games & Decision-Making

Brant Guillory, 10 January 2025

Back in December, we launched our second annual year-end wargaming survey.  We’ve already brought you a look at the population that replied to the survey and their gameplay over the past year.  This week, we take a look at some of your decision-making in the wargaming hobby.

Your Most-Played Games

These are the games (or systems) that you reported playing the most

These were all reported at least 3 times Advanced Squad Leader –12 Commands & Colors: Ancients – 6 Memoir ’44 – 5 A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg – 4 Advanced Squad Leader: Starter Kit #1 – 4 Combat Commander: Europe – 4 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics – 4 Undaunted: Stalingrad – 4 A Gest of Robin Hood – 3 Andean Abyss – 3 Ardennes II – 3 Burning Banners – 3 Combat! Volume 1 – 3 The Last Hundred Yards – 3 Weimar: The Fight for Democracy – 3

These all showed up twice Brotherhood & Unity Dawn of Battle Downfall: Conquest of the Third Reich, 1942-1945 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 I, Napoleon Imperial Struggle Last Blitzkrieg: Wacht am Rhein, The Battle of the Bulge Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific Manila: The Savage Streets, 1945 Pax Porfiriana Rebel Fury Root The Greatest Day: Sword, Juno, and Gold Beaches The Plum Island Horror Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition Vietnam: 1965-1975 (2nd edition) WWII Campaigns: 1940, 1941, and 1942 World in Flames

Another 143 games all showed up 1x each.  We’ve got that full list in our forums rather than tie up screen real estate here.

We also asked you for your favorite game released in 2024, and as it was an optional question, not everyone replied to this one.  These are the games that were mentioned more than once.

• Burning Banners – 11
• Rebel Fury – 10
• A Gest of Robin Hood – 9
• I, Napoleon – 9
• Thunder on the Mississippi: Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign – 6
• Winter’s Victory: The Battle of Preussisch-Eylau, 7-8 February 1807 – 6
• Manila: The Savage Streets, 1945 – 5
• Red Dust Rebellion – 5
• Air & Armor: Würzburg, Tactical Armored Warfare in Europe – 2013 Designer Signature Edition – 4
• France ’40: 2nd Edition – 4
• Next War: Iran – 4
• The Greatest Day: Utah Beach – 4
• Vijayanagara: The Deccan Empires of Medieval India, 1290-1398 – 4
• Arcs – 3
• Battles of Napoleon: Volume I – 2013 EYLAU 1807 – 3
• Dune: War for Arrakis – 3
• The Last Gamble: The Ardennes Offensive, December 1944 – 2013 Designer Signature Edition – 4
• Wolfpack: The North Atlantic Convoy Struggles October 1941 – March 1943 – 3
• 1812: Napoleon’s Fateful March – 2
• Berestechko 1651 – 2
• Commands & Colors: Medieval – 2013 Expansion #1 Crusades Mid-Eastern Battles I – 2
• Limits of Glory: Bonaparte’s Eastern Empire – 2
• Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific – 2
• Littoral Commander: The Baltic¹  – 2
• Luzon: Race for Bataan – 2
• Mirages: Formation Series #1 – 2
• Operation Bøllebank – 2
• Purple Haze – 2
• Shiloh: The First Day – 2
• Stalingrad Roads: Battle on the Edge of the Abyss – 2
• Traces of Hubris – 2
• Twilight of the Reich: Endgame in the European Theater 1944-45 – 2

Another 52 games all showed up 1x each.  As above, that full list is in our forums to shorten the length of this article a bit.

---

We didn’t ask about designers, but we were able to pull the data from BGG entries, so we took a look at which designers’ games got played the most and who designed your favorite games of the year.  Note, this is not the number of games released by each designer.  This is the number of times a game by that designer showed up on either list in our survey.

These designers all showed up at least twice in your most-played games list Richard Borg – 15 Don Greenwood – 12 Dean Essig – 11 Hermann Luttmann – 6 Mark Herman – 6 Volko Ruhnke – 6 John H. Butterfield – 5 Ken Dunn – 5 Chad Jensen – 4 Ross Mortell – 4 Trevor Benjamin – 4 Adam Starkweather – 3 Christopher Moeller – 3 Cole Wehrle – 3 David Schroeder – 3 Fred Serval – 3 Joseph M. Balkoski – 3 Kevin Zucker – 3 Matthias Cramer – 3 Mike Denson – 3 Richard H. Berg – 3 Ted Raicer – 3 Ananda Gupta – 2 Dane Beltrami – 2 Dean Brown – 2 Gene Billingsley – 2 Greg Pinder – 2 Gregory M. Smith – 2 Jeff Grossman – 2 Joe Chacon – 2 John Astell – 2 Matt Calkins – 2 Matt Eklund – 2 Michael Rinella – 2 Mike Nagel – 2 Nick Karp – 2 Philip C. Barker – 2 Richard Clarke (III) – 2 Sebastian J. Bae – 2 Tomislav Cipcic – 2

These designers all showed up at least twice in your favorite games of 2024 list Christopher Moeller – 11 Mark Herman – 11 Fred Serval – 9 Ted Raicer – 9 Joseph M. Balkoski – 6 Mark Hinkle – 6 Jarrod Carmichael – 5 Mark Simonitch – 5 Michael Rinella – 5 Bruce S. Maxwell – 4 Cory Graham – 4 Danny S. Parker – 4 Gene Billingsley – 4 Joe Chacon – 4 Sebastian J. Bae – 4 Cole Wehrle – 3 Marco Maggi – 3 Mike Bertucelli – 3 Tetsuya Nakamura – 3 Uwe Walentin – 3 Andrew Rourke – 2 Bernard Grzybowski – 2 Bill Cirillo – 2 Brian Berg Asklev Hansen – 2 Dirk Blennemann – 2 Hermann Luttmann – 2 Joseph Miranda – 2 Krzysztof Dytczak – 2 Matsuura Yutaka – 2 Nicola Saggini – 2 Nicolas Rident – 2 Richard Borg – 2 Stephen Baker – 2 Steve Carey – 2 Trevor Benjamin – 2

 

Your Initial Considerations

We asked who your favorite publisher was, and after weeding out the “none”s and the “I don’t know”s we got the following

These were all reported at least twice GMT – 101 MMP – 29 Compass Games – 15 Revolution Games – 6 VUCA Simulations – 6 Osprey – 4 Too Fat Lardies – 4 SNAFU Design Team – 3 SPI – 3 White Dog Games – 3 Avalon Hill – 2 Bonsai Games – 2 Clash of Arms – 2 Flying Pig Games – 2 Histogame – 2 Hollandspiele – 2 OSG – 2 Take Aim Designs – 2 Worthington – 2

These all showed up once Alchemist Raker Australian Design Group Battlefront Columbia Games DVG Dietz Foundation Europa Simulazioni Fort Circle Games GDW Gale Force Nine Game Journal Games Workshop Gripping beast Hexasim Legion Lock ‘N Load Publishing OSG One Page Rules Osprey Sam Mustafa The Wargaming Company Vae Victis WRG Wargame Design Studio Worthington zombiesmith

 

We asked our respondents what grabs them first about a game.

And we also asked whether or not awards had any bearing on purchase decisions.

 

Crowdfunding

We asked “Did you pre-order or crowdfund any games last year?” across 5 different kinds of pre-order options.  We’ve broken them down on the following slides:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Cross-Comparisons

Look, almost everyone’s focused on the topic of the wargame as their first consideration, but if not that as a first consideration, does your length of time in wargaming have any bearing on what catches your eye?

How long have you been wargaming? ➡️ ⬇️ FIRST thing to catch your interest?	0-3	3-10	10-25	25-40	40+ years	Grand Total
Topic / Battle / Campaign	13	19	20	34	59	145
Part of a series / family of games	2	3	6	5	12	28
(none specified)		2		5	17	24
Game Graphics	5	1	3	2	8	19
Recommendation from someone else	3	3	1	4	5	16
Designer		6		1	5	12
Publisher				1	3	4
Marketing Graphics	1	1		1		3
Grand Total	24	35	30	53	109	251

 

We should’ve grabbed this as a part of the ‘convention’ numbers last week

How long have you been wargaming? ➡️ ⬇️ Did you attend any game conventions this year?	0-3	3-10	10-25	25-40	40+ years	Grand Total
Yes	7	17	13	21	52	110
No	17	18	17	32	57	141
Grand Total	24	35	30	53	109	251

 

What catches your interest vs your most common type of wargame

First thing to catch your interest? ➡️ ⬇️ The most common type of wargame I play is…	Topic	Part of a series	Game Graphics	Rec’ed	Designer	Publisher	Marketing Graphics	Grand Total
“Traditional” Hex & Counter	82	26	11	4	5	1	2	131
“Traditional” minis wargames	14		1	8		1		24
Ops/Event-style CDGs	11		1	2			1	15
COIN / ICS series wargames	9	1		1	2	1		14
Procedural solo wargames	9		2		2			13
Card-Assisted Wargames	5		1	1	2	1		10
Area-Impulse Wargames	6	1						7
Block Wargames	4		1		1			6
Big-Box Map-&-Minis games	3							3
Solo point-to-point or ‘tower defense’	2		1					3
Other			1					1
Grand Total	145	28	19	16	12	4	3	227

A few numbers do stick out here, such as the number of hex-&-counter gamers who look at whether it’s a series game, or the game graphics.  Minis gamers also seem to look at recommendations a bit more.  Interestingly, the COIN/ICS series folks, and the CDG folks don’t identify the series of the games as the first thing they look at.

 

 

Was there anything in here that you found surprising?  Something you’d like us to try and dig into a little deeper?  Let us know in the comments below, or in our forums.

After The ACDC we’ll dive into with your open-text responses on biggest stories in wargaming.

 

---

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

---

Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
Rather than list a bunch of social media links, the easiest thing to do is to check out our LinkTree, which connects you to all of our various locales around the web.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.

1. which wasn’t released in 2024 and really doesn’t belong on this list, but it was being tested by a lot of military folks who probably didn’t realize it wasn’t officially released yet