Do you use terrain or scenery with your miniatures (either for display or gaming).

Do you build all your own scenery or do you purchase it?

What type of terrain items do you tend to purchase most often?

Terrain cloths were the most popular other response. Roads, rivers and other water features rounded out the responses. It is important to note that many of the follow up questions showed that many respondents considered rivers and water features to be part of the Rocks and other natural features category.

Do you buy building materials to make terrain/scenery crafting easier? Example: Pillars, Molds, Tree Armatures.

What types of materials do you find to be most useful?

The other comments mainly referenced specific materials, however there were a number of requests for better tools.

What type of trees do you most often use?

Results for other mostly focused on specific brands of trees versus actual styles of trees. One of the more commonly mentioned brands being Woodland Scenics trees.

On a scale of 1-5, where 1 is the worst and 5 is the best - rate the following materials commonly used for terrain.

Would you like to add any additional information regarding scenics and terrain?

Another essay style question. This didn't receive nearly as much attention as other questions, most people had comments which related directly towards this survey. One thing of note here though, several respondents never buy material specifically for terrain and use found objects and other scrap for making terrain with.

Do you play board games as well?

What type of board games do you most often play?

Probably the most open ended question I have ever asked in a survey. Not surprisingly, strategy games like Axis and Allies and RISK ranked quite highly in the responses here. Nearly two thirds of all respondents included a game like those in their response. Other than those, it was a fair mix of your standard board games. Monopoly took top honors of being mentioned the most of any single game (over 50% stated Monopoly specifically). Many of the games (about 20%) were computer games that migrated to the table top (Age of Empires for example).

Do you play computer games?

What computer games do you currently play?

This question was left largely open ended due to the large number of computer games currently on the market as well as ones which have been sold in recent and not so recent times. With over 1300 responses, most of which have multiple games listed - this is a condensed version of the list:

The general break down of the categories I used does not necessarily correlate with computer game industry standards. Games like Grand Theft Auto are grouped with games like Planescape Torment. The reason for this is that going into a very detailed breakdown isn't too terribly relevant to the survey as a whole.

One of the more interesting aspects of this question is that a large portion of the games mentioned (over 50%) are old games as opposed to newer games with a lot of additional flash. In large part the newer games being played are multiplayer games which offer online play.

Is there anything else that hasn't been covered that you think would be useful to game developers and miniature manufacturers to know. Feel free to mention lines and genres that are not currently covered or are overlooked.

The answers for this section are not easily made into a form which is rateable, however I have worked through the answers (over 370 short essays) and boiled them down to the following points.

• More Modern/Near Future miniatures. They are popular in RPG and skirmish games, but other than military they are unrepresented
• More Post Apocalyptic games with cars in the 28 mm range (Mad Max style).
• More Pulp and Victorian Sci-Fi miniatures.
• More flexible game systems that allow for custom army designing.
• Better layed out websites. Use pictures, both painted and unpainted. If you use painted pictures though, make sure they are painted well.
• More Alternate History (beyond weird war/traditional pulp).
• Don't abandon painters in favor of prepaints. Keep selling unpainted versions.
• More scenery and flavors items. Civilians, refugees, livestock (both alive and dead), battlefield debris... All eras and scales.
• Finish a range when you start it. Many people have half armies because they purchase a new line and it never gets completed.
• More sports related miniatures. Rollerball, Blood Bowl as well as regular games like Soccer and American Football.
• Play test rules more. People get annoyed when they buy a book and then have to print off another several pages of corrections and updates.
• More games which have rules for both campaign level gaming as well as tactical level gaming.
• Mass combat modern/near future rules.
• Choose a scale and stick with it. Some companies have scale variations within a single line of miniatures.
• Larger selection of scenic components and better distribution of those products.
• More ability to buy individual figures as opposed to sets. Often consumers are forced to buy miniatures they don't want in order to get a unit of miniatures they do want.
• More Weird Wars and Pulp Weird Wild West.
• More attention to horses. Many horses are posed in a very static and boring pose (horse artillery being a major offender).
• More attention to converters and the ability to buy parts separately (weapons, heads and other items).
• Easily stored terrain and buildings (collapsible if possible). Paper models are good, but they do not tend to be as durable as other things.

Many of the responses to this question were clarifications to early questions (everything from differing educational systems, to civil unions for marriage). For the purpose of clarity, I have omitted these responses from the summary as they are of little interest to anyone but myself.

Other answers which were left out of the mix were opposing arguments. Some respondents claim that prepainted miniatures and terrain are the future and all others should be abandoned. Others state they will never buy prepaints. Along the same vein are issues related to costs of the hobby. Some say that the price isn't an object and happily pay for the miniatures. Others lament the day of miniatures costing under a dollar each.

Any responses that are directly tied to a specific scale/game system are condensed into broader groups. If you are a manufacturer who would like more information in regards to specific genres, eras or scales you can contact me for that information.

Would you like to be contacted for follow up questions regarding this survey?

The final question of the survey was to allow users to opt in for follow up questions and communication. 60.37% of users elected to provide their contact information for this purpose and I used that information to clarify various issues related to questions in this survey as well as to ask several additional questions which are not directly related to this survey.