These days, they crowd the back of the shop and the former barbershop next door that Next-Gen took over when that barbershop shut its doors.

It looks like a lot! It’s overwhelming in a very real way, a way that is both compelling to those interested, but in a way that makes them go, “That’s probably expensive and hard to carry around. Think of how much storage you need! You know what? No thanks.”

And they’re right! That’s the thing about miniatures wargaming. Shit’s expensive. Or, rather, the more well-known ways to play are expensive.

Here’s the thing, though. It doesn’t have to be.

I have weekly Magic: The Gathering night with some buds. We get together most Wednesdays and play Commander at the local nerd bar (read: bar that serves themed “geeky” drinks and has table space for board games). It’s a group of guys I’ve known for like 30 years, and I’ve been in love with Magic: The Gathering for about that long, so it’s really nice.

Thing is, one of the dudes lives far away and another of them has a real job with real consequences for being bad at that he has to get up early for or whatever. So, most weeks, I make the universal sign for “one more beer?” to the remaining dude, and we play a round of something that isn’t Magic. Typically it’s a board game, but we’ve been branching out a bit.

To, wouldn’t you guess it, wargames!

Thing is, the remaining guy — who we’ll call Tim because that’s his name — isn’t all that interested in the gnarliness that comes with Games Workshop’s particular brand of wargaming. He, like me, is a lot more compelled by novelty than he is by competitive balance or highly tuned gameplay.

This has led to a lot of buying rule books, printing out terrain, and painting models both for specific games and ones that can used for a bunch of different rulesets.

Clash of Rhyfles might be my preferred game overall, but smaller, contained games have been drawing my eye for the past few months. Of those, Greathelm is perhaps the most compelling.

Greathelm is the smallest game in my collection, and that’s absolutely by design. Designer Malev Da Shinobi set out to make a game that is played entirely on a piece of paper, and achieved that.

At its core, Greathelm is a 6v6 knight skirmish game mimicking a medieval knight tournament. It’s not the a game about killing your opponents’ units, eschewing the bloody massacres of its contemporaries, instead representing the beatings that come from violent but friendly competition. The dice system is cool too, defining what actions you can take, rather than how your actions do when you tak ethem.

But that’s less important. What is important is its size.

Games of Greathelm are played on the surface of a single sheet of paper, with some light terrain scattered on top. Rather than taking up an entire table, it can be squeezed between shared plates at a tapas bar. Or, you know, just played on a coffee table. Whichever is more your speed.

Folks have gone so far as to design carrying 3D printed cases that can fit everything you need to play in a box about the size of a large hardcover book. One of those, plus the quick start rules is all you really need to play, and the (eventually printed) book only adds additional complexity and scenarios to the game. It’s the opposite of intimidating! It’s borderline welcoming!

Then there’s Space Gits, the new game from Mike Hutchinson, one of my favorite designers. There’s A Billion Suns, also by Mike Hutchinson. There’s Gaslands: Refueled, also by Mike Hutchinson. (Did I mention that he’s one of my favorites?)

All of these games only require a handful of models (or Hot Wheels cars, in the case of Gaslands), a small smattering of terrain, and some dice. Tokens, if you’re feeling fancy. Definitely not more than you can toss in a tote bag and hoof it to the local cafe.

And when you’re trying to convince people to join you in the dark depths of miniatures wargaming, that’s pretty vital. Yes, it’s cool to see a huge pile of miniatures on the table at the same time, but at the same time, every individual guy gets lost in the shuffle. If you’re trying to convert video game or board game players, it’s worth reminding them that there’s still options to “be” the warrior they’re used to being in those games.

A lot of time, hobbyists forget to appeal to the laymen once they get deep into the thing they love. They forget what brought them into the fold in the first place, that spark that excited them. Instead, they focus on the thing that makes it cool to them now — the depth that the hobby contains.

We forget that the best way to get people into something is to keep it simple, allow them to envision the possibilities of the space, rather than trying to convince them of the things that you enjoy.

That’s what smaller games do, they allow the space to be filled with the imagination of your players. Greathelm is a really solid simulation of a knight combat tournament, but it allows you to imagine the fans screaming, the conflict between the bands of knights. You don’t need piles of terrain and hundreds of units to imagine a war — you just need a couple rocks to represent asteroids and some toy airships.

The further you abstract the game, the more space you have to play. And so do the people you’re trying to convince to get into this horrible, horrible hobby we love so much.