I saw that we had a thread about MTG, the physical card game, so I thought I’d see if a thread about miniature gaming, the physical tabletop variety, would pull any interest. Feel free to discuss anything and everything related to whatever you happen to play.
I primarily play 40k (an Eldar Flying Circus atm) but that has more to do with the composition of my local gaming group that personal preference. I’ve also got armies for Hordes/Warmachine and Warhammer Fantasy that occasionally see some play time. Lately I’ve been kinda annoyed at the changes to the 40k meta-game. GW keeps bringing in armies that have a significant deepstrike component (drop pod marines and daemons being the biggest offenders) and it’s effectively removed distance as a player resource. If you don’t want to run deepstrikers you’re forced into using Orks or mechanized whatevers. It’s gotten a bit silly.
So ya, are you a tabletop gamer? Did you play in the before times when gaming was young and Squats were more than a story with which to bore younger gamers? Have you ever wanted to play? Were you put off by the price? Perhaps you bought some miniatures but couldn’t make it past the smell of rotten ham that seems to permeate most gaming stores. Whatever it is, post about it here!
Warhammer was my main game. Even got really good at painting my dwarves and skaven.
My other was Battletech, cause nothing is more fun than fighting with giant robots.
I don’t play any longer. Don’t have the time anymore.
Smell of ham? I always thought it was the smell of virginity and acne cream.
EDIT: One thing I’ve always wanted was a TBS for Warhammer or Battletech (I have Mechcommander 2 but I don’t play it(it’s RTS not TBS). There might be already, I’ve just never heard of any.
AH’s Caesar at Alesia (Fantastic game–easy mechanics, great ebb and flow and very assymetric)
Blitzkrieg (kind of overrated, I thought)
Wooden Ships And Iron Men (What a great, great game that was)
Anzio (more complicated than it needed to be)
Hitler’s War (SSI’s wonderful “Clash Of Steel” for the computer was heavily influenced by HW)
South Mountain, a great pre-Antietam small Civil War battle game designed by West End Games. A little game, easy to play, but so very given to a variety of strategies and ebb and flow (control of the mountain would frequently switch hands 2-3 times in a game). A real favorite.
I didn’t include fantasy setting games, like Starship Troopers, Freedom In The Galaxy, OGRE, GEV, Car Wars, or the inscrutable Magic Realms. Yes, I grew up with one of the best game shops on the planet down the street from me, and it just happened to be owned by friends of the family. We’d have at least one gaming session a week during school, and sometimes 5 times a week on summer break if there was nothing else to do.
paper maps and cardboard counters is my board gaming life. so much good stuff out there, even a few things that are playable in 4-5 hours, the future of board war gaming.
I’ve really wanted to break into Warmachine/Hordes for a while now, but I can’t make the investment. It’s too much time and money considering the likelihood that I will just give up on it after a couple weeks. If I could ever convince more people that it’s worth playing, I would probably do it; playing with random nerds at a game shop is the polar opposite of appealing.
I used to be huge into 40k, and played well at the tournament level. I’m pretty sick of what the game (and largely the players) have become on that scene. I tend to play games very competitively and the 40k rules are just not strong and balanced enough to support that. I still play for fun once in a while. I have some nicely painted Eldar and daemons. (Won best painted at the Great Lakes Masters Tournament Circuit invitational last year). Despite their name, it’s important to remember that Games Workshop is a miniatures company that puts out a game, rather than a games company that puts out some miniatures. All changes and army tweaks are built solely to sell models - not to make a good game.
I used to be in a battletech RP campaign. We’d roleplay with a loose interpretation of the mechwarrior ruleset, but mostly freeform as mechwarrior kinda sucked as an RPG, and then do battle with the battletech rules. We played a mercanary company taking on contracts and whatnot.
My FLGS owner convinced me to put together a Hordes army he was going to start supporting it and running tournaments and stuff. So I bought and assembled and mostly painted a Skorne army. I think I played the game once.
A few months after mostly finishing my Hordes stuff, the FLGS discontinued Hordes and became a GW reseller. So I foolishly bought a 1500 point 40k ork army* that is now sitting on my painting table still in the boxes and shrinkwrapped. I played a game using someone elses army once.
That’s my experience with tabletop miniatures. I don’t regret not playing as I do enjoy painting and assembling and modding. But I wish I had picked something other than Orks. They’re really cool. You start painting a few and look at them all standing there looking Orky. You keep painting hoping you’re going to be finished soon. Then you look beside your desk and realise that although you’ve just assembled and painted fivehundredthousandgoddamnedminis, you haven’t even completed 100 points worth of units.
*There is a running joke at this particular store that all anyone there has to do is put something in front of me and I’ll buy it and that I single-handedly keep the store in business. I have tonnes of useless crap (especially board games) accumlated from that store, some of which I’ve actually played!
I’ve recently started playing The Lord of the Rings, both the skirmish-based Strategy Battle Game and the newly released War of the Ring large-scale battle game.
I went on a shopping spree and put together four 1200 point armies and some terrain, and am now looking at 2+ years of painting ahead of me. :p
It’s actually possible to finish board games to completion before the rest of the family gets annoyed and moves the board off the ping pong table, scattering the US Navy from their bases in Hawaii to the middle of China?
Wow.
Despite my legion of game books, I really never did more than a few Battletech games.
I bought books and minis for Flames of War its my first tabletop game and I’m slowly learning how to assemble and paint my minis, one day in the not to distant future I’ll be ready to play my first game. I plan on making my own terrain as well which will take time but I see this as a long term hobby.
The biggest kick I get out of tabletop games is seeing a nicely painted army playing on well crafted terrain this is the reason I got into the hobby. If my FoW miniatures and terrain turn out well I plan on expanding into other historical periods such as the American Civil War, American Revolutionary War or even World War 1 depending on what I can find in the way of rule-sets and miniatures.
I’m a bit like this. I had 10,000 points worth of Chaos Dwarves, Orcs & Goblins and Dark Elves for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I’m sure I’d enjoy playing now, but have no way to actually play the tabletop version.
I remember when I first learned about the development of Shadow of the Horned Rat I was overjoyed to imagine that I could experience the Warhammer gaming I remembered liking so much (at the time, no more than a few years ago). It, Mark of Chaos, and everything in between have been no more than Warhammer-themed RTS clickies that captured nothing of the turn-based tactics and careful army creation that formed the core gameplay in my opinion.
I’m very glad Blood-Bowl is showing that you can take a Games Workshop game and convert it to computer-based and it can be grand. Perhaps within the next 15 years, there will be a computer-based Warhammer game, even if I have to get stinking rich and fund it’s development myself, darn it :)
I’ve been playing Warhammer Fantasy for years now. Orcs and Goblins for the most part, though I’m currently putting together a small Warriors of Chaos list for warbands/escalation league.
I think its not really about the money, I think its more fear from GW that people will no longer buy their miniatures in great numbers to play their game if they can play on the PC instead. Which is why i’m surprised that they did it for bloodbowl, but then I guess its old enough and fairly niche that they’re willing to try other things for revenue.
I forgot who it was who posted up above how GW is a company that sells miniatures first, makes a game second, but I’m in total agreement, and its really sad, because I think they lose customers that way.
Oh and to contribute to the thread in a more positive note, I’ve played:
Warhammer Fantasy and 40k and Bloodbowl
Battletech
Star Fleet Battles
At-43
And I’ve always wanted to try the Heavy Gear game, had the books, just couldn’t muster a group.
I’m the opposite of the folks that like to paint and assemble models, I prefer playing the games, which is why I’m all for computer TBS games.=)
I think you are totally right, and I have no rage to vent against GW. I understand their reluctance to enable what could well prove to be a substitute to a core revenue generating product line.
I still cannot help imagining a collectible online Warhammer, like Poxnora but with Chaos Dwarves and those lovely Warhammer Fantasy Battles rules.
