Skirmish Wargames: Future or Fad?

0:00 In this video, I'll talk about whether the explosion of skirmish games is a permanent structural shift in the wargaming industry or if it's just a fad. You've read the title of this video, I assume. Although, uh, you know, sometimes I doze off on the couch while watching YouTube at night and then I wake up like watching a video that I didn't plan to and I don't know what it's about. So, if that happened to you, hello. I hope you had a good nap. You should probably, you know, go to bed. But for the rest of you who clicked on the video knowing what the topic is, I'm going to be clear. You can prefer skirmish games or army style games, neither is intrinsically correct. It's opinion. That said, there are some definite trends in the wargaming industry, and it's kind of hard to deny.

0:56 Also, if you've been watching me for a while, you probably know my gaming preference. I prefer skirmish games. Just a quick catch up if you don't know what I mean. A skirmish game is a tabletop miniatures war game with between roughly 3 and 20 miniatures per force, right? Per side, right? In in most situations, they generally all act kind of singularly instead of in squads. In an army game, you have considerably more models, potentially more than a hundred in your force, maybe. And and they generally move in squads or units of like five or 10 or 20 or more. Popular examples, Warhammer 40k is an army game, and Kill Team is a skirmish. Tabletop miniatures wargaming started in army style games. I did a video a long time ago about the grandfather of wargaming, HG Wells, Pachchow. And yes, if if that name sounds familiar, he also wrote the original War of the Worlds.

1:57 And no, he wasn't related to Orson Wells, who famously produced the War of the Worlds radio show that scared listeners in the autumn of 1938. A fun fact actually um HG Wells made an army game called Little Wars and it was played on the floor with lots and lots of toy soldiers. Much of today's army style wargaming sprouted from that game. When I played my first miniatures game in middle school somewhere around like seventh or eighth grade, it was Battletech, which I would honestly consider to be a skirmish game. You know, also we didn't play with like miniatures per se. Actually, we we played with the little cardboard standies, but that was what, you know, came in the starter box at the time.

2:43 Still, it was not what one would consider an army style game, right? So, there were technically skirmish games out even way back then in the 1980s. They were just few and far between. Then, in the early 1990s, I was introduced to first edition Space Hulk and was therefore introduced to the world of Games Workshop. I learned that there was a game that Space Hulk was based off of and it was not in like tight hallways, but instead on a large open surface, kind of like Battletech. It was called Warhammer 40,000. And though I thought it kind of sounded awesome, I completely bounced off of it because I was a poor college kid and I couldn't afford to buy all those squads of models, even back then when the prices certainly weren't like they are today.

3:36 years later, I got into 40k during fifth edition in like the mid 2000s and then went from there. But these days, a person just getting into tabletop miniatures wargaming could start with a skirmish game and easily get a full force and rules and the whole shebang for like 50 to maybe 80 bucks or maybe even a two-player starter for around $100 pchow. And instead of having to build and paint dozens and dozens of minis, they'd only have to do maybe like five or 10. If this would have been more available to me back in the early 1990s when I was in college, I might have started in earnest earlier. And so, as we stand, you know, here in the world of 2026, it looks like skirmish style miniatures war games are at the very least not going anywhere. Both the industry itself and the hobbyists who buy and play the games are proving that these types of war games have become the backbone of the modern hobby. That said, the most popular game out there obviously Warhammer 40,000 is definitely in the like army style camp and it's probably not going anywhere either. But the majority of new games coming out as of late are predominantly skirmish focused. And there's important reasons for that. Part of this explosion of skirmish games in the miniature wargaming market is due to economic and lifestyle factors. Skirmish games are

5:08 generally cheaper to buy. They take less time to build and paint. The games themselves are usually quicker to play. And even the like the play areas are generally smaller and easier to wrangle. Now the money thing is obvious, right? But the time and space thing is a little bit less. So tabletop war games are predominantly played by adults, especially if you know my YouTube analytics are anything to go by. And as adults, we got stuff to do. Sadly, I can't play a game all day. And even if I could play a single game all day, would I want to? Generally, no. I remember playing a game of War Cry with my good friend Sam Lens, who you should be watching here on YouTube. He's obviously an incredibly talented painter. And he's also hysterical. Pachchow. and he said that he liked skirmish games over big army style games these days because if he spent hours and hours playing like a big army game and then eventually lost most times it felt bad because he spent so much time just to lose. However, if you played a quick skirmish game and lost, it wasn't so bad because you could just play again.

6:27 The other thing that you're seeing that makes skirmish games popular for a lot of players is the the more narrative focus that that that style of game can have. When you're playing an army game, right, your individual models in the squads are barely more than just tokens. You know, as the unit takes damage, then you usually pull out some of the figures to show the casualties. They this this then also then, you know, lowers the effectiveness of that squad in combat. there's fewer guns to shoot or swords to swing as you peel off more and more casualties. The individual models themselves don't matter much more than that. But in most skirmish games, each model is an individual unit and they frequently are characters with like names and stories and differing skills and loadouts and all that kind of stuff.

7:17 games like Infinity, Malifox, Cyberpunk Red Combat Zone, and others. Those games can give names to each individual figure in your force. Having these models be individuals instead of just hit markers creates, at least for me, a more personal kind of connection to the models that I've got down on the table. And there are more and more skirmish games that kind of ride the line between war game and role- playinging game. And there's one more big reason that skirmish games are popping up more and more. They're generally easier to create. As a game publisher myself, I can back this up. YouTube's Vince Venturella and I have been making miniature games since 2021 with our company Snarling Badger Studios, and they've all been skirmish- sized war games. Right. Our games are all miniature agnostic, so players can use miniatures that they already have or whatever miniatures that they would like, right? But only needing usually fewer than 10 or at the most even 20 models helps our games sell. Speaking of our games, Vince and I have a new game coming out in just a little over a month from today. Uh, Friday, June 5th, 2026, we'll see the launch of Repent Ye Foolish Gods, a dark fantasy game that we've been working on over this last year with amazing artwork and uh, a lot of like campaign play. And you can play it solo and co-op or versus all that kind of stuff. And it's really cool.

8:47 We're really looking forward to you folks being able to see it, and you will be soon. But if you're a game company that produces a game and also a line of miniatures for that game, which is something we generally don't do, skirmish games are just more accessible and easier to to put out. It's a huge piece of work to produce enough models for multiple forces when you launch your skirmish game. And it's an even more insane task to produce enough models for multiple forces for armies in an army style game. Take a look at full spectrum dominance from the lazy forger. They have STLs out for six entire armies with at least a dozen models a piece. That is a huge amount of work for a small organization.

9:34 So skirmish games are the future and army style games are going away, right? Well, no. I just mentioned full spectrum dominance and that's a brand new army game. And then of course there's the 800 lb gorilla that is Games Workshop with uh Warhammer 40k and uh Age of Sigmar and the Old World and Legion's Imperialis and they still really want you to play some army games out there, right? But even they are making skirmish games like Kill Team and Necroanda and Blood Bowl. However, Mantic still has uh Kings of War and Epic War Path and and there's still a lot of Army games out there. I found a report online that said that skirmish games and kind of niche crowdfunding projects will be the fastest growing segments of the tabletop wargaming market in the coming years.

10:26 I'll put a link in the description below. It's interesting, but like most things on the internet, it was probably written by AI, so who knows, right? What I do know is stuff that I can see with my own eyes. And if you've been paying attention like I have, you'll see that skirmish style war games are great because they're accessible to new players. And new players are the future of this hobby. I'll admit I'm biased a bit. I love skirmish games and I always have. I just recently found the first skirmish game that I bought for myself back in like the late 1990s, maybe the year 2000. Shock Force: Battles in the Remnants of America. just kind of preioned uh by Demon Blade Games. Maybe I'll have to like go through and make some some uh forces for it. Kind of fire that baby up again and I don't know, maybe make some content about it. What do you think? Are skirmish games the future or actually just a really a fad?

11:18 Which style do you prefer to play and why? Let us all know down in the comments below. And while you're down there, hit, you know, some depressment of the like button or even the hype button if you're on mobile. uh you know it it helps the channel a bunch and I do appreciate it. And if you want to see more videos like this every single Friday, there's also a subscribe button down there you can hit. It's free. Thanks for watching.