This May sound duh! but Play Strategic Games Tactically with small scenarios, I found I like tactical games better than strategic, so I did not play my strategic world domination games as much as games such as Heroes of Stalingrad, I started playing WitPAE corel sea scenario and I realy liked just messing about with it, so Ive started using small scenarios such as the tiny ones in some HPSimms games, and small harpoon scenarios, and its a blast, the complexity fell away and tactics worked well, so what Im saying is try playing your dusty heavy duty games tiny scenarios on purpose instead of as tutorials.
I'm sure that makes sense, and if I wasn't so obstinate . . . but it just goes so against the grain for me. I want my company-level WWII simulation to start as early as possible. If there's a 1919 starting date, you won't see me starting after the Washington Naval Conference.
Say you have a grand strategy game like AH: The Third Reich but when it came time to fight a battle instead of using the board pieces of Third Reich you instead fought the battle out using PanzerBlitz units and rules.
You could play 'Federation & Empire' and battle it out with StarFleetBattles :)
Unfortunately for my gaming sanity, I usually succumb to the desire to play the full campaign game. Of course I never finish them.
It should be no surprise that most of these games have either "Gary Grigsby" or "John Tiller" in the title.
I do this same thing with monster board games.
Can't tell you how many times I have started SPW's Der Weltkrieg Campaign (a division level, one turn = 3 game days, game of the entire European and Middle East fronts for WWI.
I find scaling down the battle frees you from strategy issues like recruitment or transport. I also play both sides hotseat that gives a more tactical feel to the games.
Steel Panthers are the sort of tactical games I like, I just cant play risk with large scale games.