Poll Results

How all,

A while back, spurred on by a rather good discussion about background story and how it relates to miniatures product lines, I had posted a pair of polls to find out what peoples' thoughts on the subject were. Now, polls are never a perfect way to delve into a topic, but they do scratch the sruface and offer some insight.

The main concern of the polls revolved around whether or not a miniatures line's completeness was a factor in buying and then how often players used their miniatures for what the manufacturers intended. Both of these questions tie int othe background querie in that both are often issues that crop up or that are associated with a miniatures line's built-in background story.

It seems to me that, unless you are making a miniatures game with its own set of troops and background, a big done-up background can hinder your product. The polls I ran seem to show that at least half the people who responded (87) generally don't use their miniatures in the manner intended by the producers. These are the folks who are generally more motivated by cool figures and how they fit into their own plans and who are less concerned with the vision that the manufacturing company had in mind. They may like the fluff, but ultimately they are going to use the figures in the way they want to. This feeds into the other poll.

The subject of the completeness of miniatures lines is a bit more sore that the background issue. Where background can be ignored the completeness of a line of figures is a bit harder to and often the background chosen for a line limits the completeness of the line and narrows its appeal and usefulness. This is not to say that all lines of miniatures need to be created equal, but nearly 2/3 of the people respondng to the poll on the topic answered either "yes" or "sometimes" indicating that more often than not the completeness of a line of miniatures does make an impact on whether or not a person buys into a line.

In the case of wargamers, especially, a miniatures line become unappealing when it cannot be made to function as a playable military. If a force is given a limited number of tactical options, it becomes more of a novelty force that may be picked up by those looking for something different but may not attract as many buyers as those lines that have a number of options and viable force structure built in.

When it comes down to it I'd like to see companies, especially the small ones who seem to be aware of the limitations of their resources, stop wasting those resources producing incomplete or unusable miniatures lines that are made so by a heavy adherrance to background fluff. If they feel the need to build in heavy amounts of fluff, then perhaps they should come up with backgrounds that support more gamable forces and allows for the range in miniatures that will bring in more sales.

-Eli