Gamers Experience Ranks Followup

It seems as though my previous blog post about gamer experience levels has caused a bit of a stir, larger than I had expected. Yet, it also got a few questions that I think I should clarify on.

First and foremost: While those are how I personally see gamers experience levels, those are not set in stone in anyway, and the post was not meant as a GW vs PP vs DP9 vs SG hate thread.

For me, if you look at almost every one of the GW games how many has Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, I go U go turn play, ect? Yes, there are some differences between games, but they are barely enough to validate calling WFB and 40K for instance two different games. They are built for players to easily jump from one game to the other and quickly/easily get an understanding on those games.


That is generally what that previous post was hitting on. If you only stay with PP, only stay with GW, or only stay with DP9 you are only going to see how PP games work overall, GW games work overall, or how DP9 games work overall. Knowing how to play Warmachine is supposed to let you easily change over to Hordes, that's how they wanted it to be, but playing Warmachine only doesn't let you understand how all skirmish level tabletop games play like. There is nothing similar between WarmaHordes and HGB outside their use miniatures and are both considered skirmish level wargames.



Second: You are always going to have the new guy that comes in, gets the game with a single play and understands it better than the other player who had been playing for 5 years (as an extreme example). That happens in hobbies, work, and even homelife.

That however, at least in my experience, is not the norm in any of the cases I listed in my previous blog post. When you start a new job and get a trainer do you naturally expect to learn more from a guy who had been in the area for 1 year or the guy who had been in the area for 10 years? Most people would naturally assume that if a guy still has a job for 10 years, he must know his stuff decently well, and usually that is true. Every now and then though you get into that job and find the 10 year 'vet' to be cruising along with as little effort as possible while the 1 year newbie is just ubiquitous around the work area.

That same thing can and does happen with wargaming. Not everyone is going to play to the same level, thus those rankings I posted are more of a general guideline rather than hard rules to follow. Always give your fellow man at least a chance to prove himself.

Third: I just want to reiterate that this is how I personally see wargaming experience levels and my personal OPINION. Not everyone is going to agree, and I certainly would not expect them too. Some folks might like to think that since they have played all GW games that they are in fact considered experience wargamers, others will believe that you can play a single game for years and years and still be called a experienced wargamer. I just personally choose my rankings on what I believe are the rankings overall, and I would expect everyone else to take a hard long look and do the same on their own if they indeed someone get insulted by my previous post in some way.


In the end, putting wargamers in rankings of experience levels or labeling them as proper wargamers or not is only just a passing water fountain conversation. Wargamers to too niche a crowd to break our groups up into even smaller circles. Tournaments already do that well enough in some gaming meta circles.