If you think the market will experience more than usual volatility over say 6 months, would buying VIX options be the play if you were a bit of a gambler?

In a word, no.

The main reason is because VIX futures and options are not like stock index futures and futures options.

For a stock index, arbitrage can keep the futures value and by extension the FOPs values close to the current index level because stocks can be bought and sold. Further, since nobody has any better information, the most likely level of the index a few months out is the same as today's level, so that's where the future trade. This all means that trading the futures today is almost exactly like trading the future value of the index.

But VIX is an imputed thing, which can not be traded directly, so arbitrage isn't really possible. This has several effects, one of which is volatility. (we're speaking of volatility of VIX index itself: implied volatility going up and down quickly). Since the futures expire at some specific future date (and the options are just derivatives of the futures), the current value of the VIX does not track the current value of VIX: the market assumes some mean reversion is more likely than the current value, and there are no arbitrageurs to drive the two into parity. When the VIX spikes, the futures don't.

All this is just a long winded way of saying that a spike in VIX will not do you much good, since the futures and options won't move NEARLY as much as the current VIX print, unless you happen to be lucky enough to see the spike a day before the current expiry date.

In my book, a perhaps more sensible/profitable way to play volatility is to have a stance on the more appropriate or more desirable price of something you know about. If you think the frog is going to jump some time soon, put your hands where you think he'll land. Maybe put in stinker bids on BRK or your favourite other stock. Or, if you expect maybe a wee panic melt-down, buy some out of the money put options against something that seems to have a whole lot of air between the current price and value. They probably aren't too hard to find.

If there is a stock market panic, what 10 stocks are most likely to have big drops? A while back I suggested a slate of the wannabe second- and third-string EV companies. Perhaps too late for that now, several have already gone bust. Including Fisker, again, even though they aren't fools or charlatans like some of the others. Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to think up some third- and fourth-tier "AI" firms that are way ahead of their skis.

Jim