I often hear about people lauding theater of the mind. This sometimes from the same crowd of people who chastise others for "doing it wrong." The fact is, TotM is often, in this industry, doing it wrong. Not playing RAW is expressly going against the designer's wishes of the game in question. Most games put in the effort to actually be tactically minded, so most games, and all games worthy of praise, should be played with Minis on a Mat (MoaM). This includes all versions of D&D.
The reason is because TotM is prone to errors or lapses in explanation and judgment. Perhaps there's two groups of three orcs, and one or more players mistakenly believe there is only one group and make dumb decisions because of that. Perhaps they don't fully understand the terrain they are in. Whether the group is at an advantage or not. Minis and a mat sort out all these issues without discussion. While you do front load some effort into drawing the floorplan and setting out minis, that effort is returned one hundred fold in the form of clarity toward the situation at hand.
The retort I often get is "you can't just imagine that? lol" My retort is that I still have to imagine the action taking place, as minis are just a placeholder and a tool to collaborate the entire group's TotM. Yes, in essence I still use TotM, but I don't ONLY use TotM. Using less resources than me results in a poorer experience than me. I've played in both types of games enough to know which is fundamentally a better approach. To the point that I consider games inferior if they don't go through the effort to make minis and mats a default setting. Because they should be.
To deflate the elfgamists who think TotM is a more adult than MoaM, I must remind them that they are playing a fucking kid's game regardless. Half the time these same idiots are those who love the shooka shook and clickety clack of rolling a handful of dice in the fake games that use these. Some of these people will claim to enjoy RAW and then decry MoaM nonsensically and not realize that makes them hypocrites and at baseline fail to understand the concept of RAW. RAW isn't just "use the rules you like". RAW is use all the rules. This is an argument they themselves would make and then go on to say "Oh no I don't use minis, TotM all the way!"
EDIT: I later explained this better.
