Perceptions and Realities

[zovs66]

When the internet exploded and PCs replaced our table tops, we suddenly perhaps perceived the hobby to be bigger than it was, so in comparison today we may view that it is shrinking and dying.

I would tend to disagree here, the "tabletop" community and the amount of wargames still in production or being produced is still very much a thing. The biggest contributors right now to the board wargaming jantra is Compass Games, Decision Games, GMT, MMP and a whole host of independent publishers. The most successful in my mind is both GMT and MMP. GMT still holds tournaments and conventions once or twice a year and so does MMP, but the winner and king if you will as the Advanced Squad Leader community and MMP and all the third party publishes for ASL.

I am on several Discord channels and all they talk about and play are board wargames. Granted a vast majority of those folks are using VASSAL or VASL (for the ASL side) to play board wargames.

But to your point about recruitment of young blood, there is a series of dialogs in the Discord community on the same topic, in the ASL ones in particular. 

At any rate, board wargaming (tabletop if you will) is certainly not dead and has not been replaced.