Editions: War Gaming

Editions in war gaming are a little different than those in RPGs. This is because the major revenue for war game companies comes not from books, but from miniatures. So this means that a new edition isn't going to make a company any money, right? Sort of.

New editions cause people to modify their army list. This can lead to people who own complete armies going out to buy new miniatures for units they never used in the old edition. New editions also mean new army books, which usually involve the release of new miniatures. Combine this with a solid marketing push, and not only do you see people buying new versions of units they already own, but often times people become interested in a new army because of the increased attention. This means they buy another army, meaning more miniature sales. The increased attention around a new edition can also bring in gamers who might have left the game for one reason or another, and then found that they like the new rules, or just miss the game.

The change in rules has another effect, though. New editions change the way people play. Tactics that dominated in the last edition might not work so well in the new one. Things that were questionable (read, suicidal) under the old rules might warrant another look with the new edition. This is, to some extent true with RPGs as well, but there's an important difference between RPGs and war games. War games are competitive. There is much more of an incentive to analyze rules and tactics with war games: the other guy certainly is.

This keeps the game from getting stale. It breaks up dominant army lists, and lets new players feel less outclassed by veteran gamers, for about a week. It keeps the game from getting stagnant. If you want to play a game that hasn't changed in a while, look at chess. This game hasn't changed in 200 years. And that was so they could deal with a tie. That's great, but I don't really have the desire to try and learn several centuries worth of strategy just to move little monochromatic columns around a checkerboard. The least they could do is give those poor pawns some cover to hide behind.