Given GW appear to be on a high at the moment, I'm curious if the GW/AOS/40K faithful have been tempted by or play, or did play, non-GW games, and why you stopped or carried on
Note this isn't a my games better than yours thread, if you are having fun you are doing it right, just wondering about the dissonance between the Geedubs idea of 'the hobby' and my less GW-centric dogma
I'd argue the biggest reason for GW's success is that wargames require other people to play with and the massive cost to get into and maintain them. GW's market saturation comes in large part because they're what 95% of people began with - outside of historicals who don't really 'count' as they're more their own, separate thing - so will always have something tying them back to their products. mostly 40k. This creates the effect where people don't dare step out of GW's circle because, well, there's either nobody else to play that new game with or they paid too much money on their GW armies. In the UK I've found this to be a huge problem because Games Workshop stores make this even worse. 8th Edition has pretty much wiped out anything else where and AoS' sudden insurgency hasn't helped either. Why would people spend money on Warmahordes and Legion when all that people are playing is 40k?
This brings me to my directly reply. Trust me, I'd love to see the diversity of games in such abundance that the US has. I'd avoid GW products like the plague, but I enjoy wargaming too much. Luckily I got most of my Imperial Guard before I turned on them, so it's not too bad. Unfortunately there's not much of a choice where I live.
I'm a big GW guy, but I have dabbled in other systems. My biggest departure is with Battlefront. I used to play Flames of War, but have given that up. I'm really getting into Team Yankee now, and most of my buying money will be going into expanding those armies.
I have enough Wrath of Kings that I played a ton before that game went out. I played Armada but they quickly went overboard with that and I dropped it. I play Kings of War but only in 10mm as I don't need that kind of space hogging.
Outside of that I generally play GW. Because I can only get games in generally on a weekend and want to get as many in as possible it means tournaments. Which means GW. Plus I'm actually enjoying both AoS and 40k right now. Which is more than I could say for 7th ed 40k and I couldn't find a game of 8th ed fantasy in our area.
I am not a fan of the direction the games have taken since 7th edition WFB and 5th edition 40K. So I kinda stopped playing by default as my life got busier and I moved away from my long term group, and I have never really started up again.
I went to one KoW tournament a few years ago, and enjoyed myself, but I spend most of my time now painting stuff for Dungeons and Dragons and playing that game with a small group of friends. I would be open to wargaming again, and still have my armies, but I feel much less wedded to the GW system and would likely play something like This Is Not a Test or Frostgrave, or KoW rather than a GW game.
I am paying attention to whatever the plan is for AoS 2e, but I am not too optimistic given the stuff I have seen so far, it looks like lazy design is still the GW way.
To slightly turn the thread on its head, I still adamantly refuse to get into AoS. I'm gonna walk into a GW store for the first time in a year next week, and I know exactly how it's going to go: "Hey Creed, how were the exams? Good? Great, have you heard about AoS 2nd ed?" "I'm just here to play 40k and buy overexpensive paint and rattlecans man, I want no part in this sigmarine crap." But more polite.
I still buy every GW starter in the hopes this time will be good, but it hasn't been for 10 years now. In that time I have dived deep into Monsterpocalypse, X-wing, Warmahordes, Kings of War, Gaslands, Deadzone, Wraith of Kings, Relic Knights, MTG and probably others I'm forgetting, plus wargame-lite board games like Summoner Wars.
No game is perfect but GW is continually the furthest from it.
Since 2015, I've mostly been playing Guild Ball and Bushido.
The key difference between these games (aside from the low model count) and GW stuff is the dice mechanics.
GW... roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. Just an ever decreasing dice pool where probability determines the outcome without much input from the player
I'm not going to go into the dice mechanics of Guild Ball and Bushido, but they are far more interesting and thus so are the games.
A 25 year fan of GW stuff, but lately have been playing in the 40k and Sigmar universes with the rules from One Page Games instead, as they are much more casual and dead easy to teach, while still letting me enjoy the settings and the minis from GW.
In my honest opinion, I'm not sure the hobby would exist in its current state without GW. Not because of the games, but because so much of the hobby is supported for and by GW. My local comic book store carries a full suite of GW paints, miniatures, and books.... and a handful of Warmachine, Army Painter supplies, and Malifaux (with a lot of X-Wing/Armada in their board game section). A place where everybody plays their miniature games is mostly Magic the Gathering with a few extra tables, but I don't think they'd bother to have even those if not for 40k night. Almost everybody who played Warmachine in my group was a lapsed 40k player. It's like GW is this giant pillar by which an industry is hung.
I think GW has by far the best models in the business - nothing else comes close. That being said, I'd rather play Infinity, Walking Dead, or Runewars. I'm looking forward AoS 2e though.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: To slightly turn the thread on its head, I still adamantly refuse to get into AoS. I'm gonna walk into a GW store for the first time in a year next week, and I know exactly how it's going to go:
"Hey Creed, how were the exams? Good? Great, have you heard about AoS 2nd ed?"
"I'm just here to play 40k and buy overexpensive paint and rattlecans man, I want no part in this sigmarine crap."
But more polite.
Yeah, I will not play AoS either. Despite my outright hatred of what they did to Fantasy, I gave it a try, and still hated the system. GW will never get another penny from me along that chain.
I quit 40k a few months before 8th was announced. I got sick of the poor balance, the high prices, and the lack of player agency in the mechanics.
I had the MEDGE starter already, and picked up a crew box for Malifaux and would be playing those like crazy if I had any opponents. And I've gotten back into MTG the past couple months.
I'm still paying attention to GW, and looking for a reason to get back into 40k, or even start AOS, but the rules and cost are keeping me away.
Yeah, I will not play AoS either. Despite my outright hatred of what they did to Fantasy, I gave it a try, and still hated the system. GW will never get another penny from me along that chain.
Yeah. I think I heard it put best as just not scratching the same itch as WHFB. I really enjoyed the massed ranks, and in 40k I enjoyed the more free form units which made sense with guns everywhere. Now the two rulesets are almost identical as far as I can tell, and I don't need to play the same game with different minis. When you were playing WHFB it was a very different experience (and frankly often more enjoyable) to 40k.
Sqorgar wrote: In my honest opinion, I'm not sure the hobby would exist in its current state without GW. Not because of the games, but because so much of the hobby is supported for and by GW. My local comic book store carries a full suite of GW paints, miniatures, and books.... and a handful of Warmachine, Army Painter supplies, and Malifaux (with a lot of X-Wing/Armada in their board game section). A place where everybody plays their miniature games is mostly Magic the Gathering with a few extra tables, but I don't think they'd bother to have even those if not for 40k night. Almost everybody who played Warmachine in my group was a lapsed 40k player. It's like GW is this giant pillar by which an industry is hung.
I think GW has by far the best models in the business - nothing else comes close. That being said, I'd rather play Infinity, Walking Dead, or Runewars. I'm looking forward AoS 2e though.
I think thats pretty local, GW is virtually extinct around here, army painter and p3 are the big paints, very few stores even carry GW/. AoS 2e looks good and for the first time with an edition swap our entire group is good for it. gotta say though I am exact opposite in opinion on GWs model, other than LOTR I think they are among the worst available.
thekingofkings wrote: I think thats pretty local, GW is virtually extinct around here, army painter and p3 are the big paints, very few stores even carry GW/.
That's like saying all the movie theaters around you only play French art house films because nobody there is interested in Star Wars and Marvel movies. I mean, it's possible, but I doubt it's a particularly typical occurrence.
gotta say though I am exact opposite in opinion on GWs model, other than LOTR I think they are among the worst available.
??? I mean, you can disagree with the claim of the best (there is competition), but the worst available? Have you ever put together a Warmachine battle box? It's like trying to glue two opposite magnets together, and looks like someone scraped them along the sidewalk. That's assuming your box included all the bits it was supposed to. I'd rather put together Archaon the Everchosen using chopsticks then work with Warmachine restic models again.
gotta say though I am exact opposite in opinion on GWs model, other than LOTR I think they are among the worst available.
??? I mean, you can disagree with the claim of the best (there is competition), but the worst available? Have you ever put together a Warmachine battle box? It's like trying to glue two opposite magnets together, and looks like someone scraped them along the sidewalk. That's assuming your box included all the bits it was supposed to. I'd rather put together Archaon the Everchosen using chopsticks then work with Warmachine restic models again.
I would pay to see that last, but you would have to have blindfold, I am particularly bitter with so many of my stormcast not fitting together.
I would say that from a technical standpoint GW make excellent models, although in terms of price and design they're most definitely not the best IMO. Outside of a few gems (Blood Bowl, Daughters of Khaine) the recent releases are by and large over detailed for the sake of it, to the point where if it's not organic it's almost guaranteed to have as little of a flat surface as possible. I personally stopped playing GW games mid 7th edition, as I felt burned out with the power imbalance and moved on to smaller games (briefly Warmachine, but I had the same issues there and moved to Malifaux and Batman, where I am very happy now). I'm getting into Blood Bowl at the moment for a foray into GW again, but I can't see myself playing any of their other games with the way the rules are going, they're just too dumbed down for my liking.
My local group that I game with are very much ex-GW players though, and outside of Blood Bowl none of us play anything GW. If it weren't for my local groups though, I'd probably still be playing GW games, purely because I would have a social group to wargame with. I used to play in a GW store, and now that I've moved away from that setting it's opened up my horizons a lot more, which I'm lucky to have. I very much love the Daughters of Khaine models, but I just can't justify buying them unfortunately
For me it's always been the aesthetic and story that brought me towards things, not the rules, so I've never played Warmahordes or Mantic's stuff because I just have no interest in how their stuff looks (I own a few Cephalyx things as they're a bit Dark Mechanicum-y).
So outside of 40K (and Necromunda/Warhammer Quest), the only other miniature game I play is BattleTech. I own oodles of 'Mechs, vehicles and infantry. I've loved BattleTech since the Mechwarrior 2 demo that came on the Win 95 game demo disk, and I think the game is really cool.
The only other to almost tempt me was AT-43, but I never got into that. I do own a heap of Therian stuff because I think they're cool and they were the most unique looking minis from that game. Plus when I wanted something to visualise my homebrew 40K race (the Kyarie).
H.B.M.C. wrote: For me it's always been the aesthetic and story that brought me towards things, not the rules, so I've never played Warmahordes or Mantic's stuff because I just have no interest in how their stuff looks (I own a few Cephalyx things as they're a bit Dark Mechanicum-y).
So outside of 40K (and Necromunda/Warhammer Quest), the only other miniature game I play is BattleTech. I own oodles of 'Mechs, vehicles and infantry. I've loved BattleTech since the Mechwarrior 2 demo that came on the Win 95 game demo disk, and I think the game is really cool.
The only other to almost tempt me was AT-43, but I never got into that. I do own a heap of Therian stuff because I think they're cool and they were the most unique looking minis from that game. Plus when I wanted something to visualise my homebrew 40K race (the Kyarie).
Da Boss wrote: I am not a fan of the direction the games have taken since 7th edition WFB and 5th edition 40K. So I kinda stopped playing by default as my life got busier and I moved away from my long term group, and I have never really started up again.
I went to one KoW tournament a few years ago, and enjoyed myself, but I spend most of my time now painting stuff for Dungeons and Dragons and playing that game with a small group of friends. I would be open to wargaming again, and still have my armies, but I feel much less wedded to the GW system and would likely play something like This Is Not a Test or Frostgrave, or KoW rather than a GW game.
I am paying attention to whatever the plan is for AoS 2e, but I am not too optimistic given the stuff I have seen so far, it looks like lazy design is still the GW way.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: To slightly turn the thread on its head, I still adamantly refuse to get into AoS. I'm gonna walk into a GW store for the first time in a year next week, and I know exactly how it's going to go:
"Hey Creed, how were the exams? Good? Great, have you heard about AoS 2nd ed?"
"I'm just here to play 40k and buy overexpensive paint and rattlecans man, I want no part in this sigmarine crap."
But more polite.
Yup, my feelings on AoS are well known. And you know, I've tried, I really have, they've addressed a lot of the issues with the setting since launch and when they're not releasing yet another variant of Malibu Sigmarines(...but this time they ride birdies! ...but this time they have robes! ...but this time they have new hats! ) some of the models and faction concepts have been quite interesting even if they're still all a little over the top...but I just can't. Every time I try and dig into it, it just makes me miss WHF, and then I get annoyed at how they handled the whole thing and end up being put off the hobby for a while, so I just stopped. If folk like it, good for them, I'll stick with Mordheim and avoid GW stores so I don't have to listen to them pissing on WHF to try and upsell me some Blobernorble Deathkillers or whatever.
I've also drifted away from 40K, for me it was more the tone and setting than the mechanics which were never really the main draw for me anyway, but the time period of what I consider a decline matches when you started having issues Boss. Everything was getting a bit "noblegrim" even back in 5th and it just got more and more so until this whole timeline advance silliness turned it up to eleven.
That said, I've not stopped buying GW models or gaming, occasionally, with their systems and settings, it's just not been the systems and settings they're flogging right now. I still play and model and write rules for Mordheim, as I said. I do INQ28 stuff sometimes. Smaller-scale Heresy projects as well. I still go back to the other previous incarnations of Specialist Games too. Frankly though, if I was a game-gamer rather than an "I like Warhammer Fantasy and 40K as IPs"-gamer, GW would have lost me entirely years ago, as it is I'm just enough of a sucker that all they've lost is the portion of my hobby budget I spend on models from other companies that fit the GW aesthetic and scale. Until recently anyway - I've diverted almost my entire hobby spend towards Star Wars Legion since it launched and I fully intend to build up fairly substantial forces for both present factions(and Scum too, if they decide to do a third).
Not all doom and gloom though, before the Negativity Police swoop in to have a pop - while I have issues with the release model and maintain that I won't be fully buying in to N17 until they release a complete, proofread, ideally playtested compilation book containing at least the rules for the Houses and a functional campaign system, I've bought at least one of each gang that's come out and have no intention of stopping that(for now I only plan to take Goliaths and Delaques to actual campaign-playable gangs, but the rest make for great conversion fodder). I've put aside a decent chunk of change for Adeptus Titanicus. I'm intrigued by Kill Team, if it's sufficiently detailed it could serve as an excellent basis for INQ28 games for those of us who prefer actual games to the more "just roleplay and roll 4+ when you want to do something" attitude the community's bigwigs seem to have decided is the One True Way of Narrative Gaming, hell if it's sufficiently flexible it might serve as a good basis for porting GorkaMorka into which would be awesome. And Plastic Sisters, of course, is a big deal.
So, yeah, it's weird - I've never had more issues with GW than I do at the moment and they've never had a less absolute hold over my hobby spending, but they're not the same issues I had with the company during the Dark Times under Kirby, and at the same time they're also putting out a lot of stuff that really appeals. Honestly I don't ever see myself not being involved in GW in some way because WHF and pre-all this modern guff 40K are two of my favourite fictional worlds, but at the moment the reason they're still getting a reasonable amount of my money is that nobody else except FFG are producing games with settings I care about enough to spend such a lot of time & money on, and if that were to change? I dunno.
Battletech was my first wargame, 40K my second. I've always been a roleplayer first though, so I didn't play much of either game - and didn't play 40K after 2E, even though I still collected the models. I tried WHFB, but had such a bad experience I sold the models (and I've never done that with any other miniature game I've owned).
When I got back into 40K, I quickly realized the game was still as unbalanced as ever, so I started branching out - Dust, AT-43, Bolt Action, X-Wing, Blood & Plunder and a half-dozen others. Of the many games I have tried, Bolt Action and X-Wing are my favorite. 40K 8E is only fun because it's dirt simple and I'm limiting myself to games of 1,000 points.
I did try AoS, but wasn't impressed. However, I did just pick up the AoS starter box and do have a Seraphon army (...and an elf army and undead army) I'd like to use for something. I'm actually going to try and use the sigmarines as Custodes in 40K.
Honestly, I just like to collect and build the minis. The games are a lot less important to me - I've tried several rulesets and nothing has stuck, so overall I'm happy with what I've got instead of what I'm gaming with.
I play tons of other games, the main ones since I started were Bolt action, Flames of War, Drop fleet/dropzone, and X-Wing, but I've dabbled in several others. Like many I started with 40k but I hardly stuck with it to the exclusion of anything else.
40k is very much the gateway game for most people who get into tabletop wargaming these days, as historicals mainly appeal to an older crowd. It just has such a different look and setting that it stands out very easily from the crowd. Say what you want but no other game out there really has such a crazy amount of stuff going on at any given time. And for all the people who play it for the lore or models, you'll also see people who don't care at all about that, and play it purely because it's what is played in their area. 40k just has that combo of IP and momentum. That said, the crazy uniqueness it has with it's setting and models doesn't always extend to it's gameplay, so you see lots of people moving on to other games to scratch the itch they initially wanted in 40k.
So for example, you'll see people frustrated with melee move on to fantasy settings, players who prefer pure competition move on to games like warmachine, people who like imperial Guard move on to historicals, etc. In addition, sometimes people just get burnt out on a game and want something different. I'm hitting one of those spells for example, I've been playing lots of 40k since 8th dropped and I miss playing historicals, so I'm probably going to take a break soon and do bolt action for a while. I may also give X-Wing V2 a go and see if they fixed all the dumbness that crept into the game lately. Signs look good but I'm waiting till I see it in action.
Variety is the spice of life, so it really doesn't matter how good 40k could be, I'd still play other games and take breaks. Nothing wrong with that. The difference is back in 7th I mothballed a lot of stuff because I knew I didn't want to play, whereas in 8th it's more just to the fact that I miss playing other gsmes and still plan to play 40k as well.
I think there is quite the element of GW momentum and 'the only game in town' in making people adverse to dabbling outside the bubble, in my corner of the shire we haven't had a non-GWFLGS in over a decade so finding players can be tricky, although FB and the like help
My gaming club has pretty much given up on GW, not as any glorious hipster stand, just a sort of passive enough is enough groupthink (the mess of mid to late 7th was a nudge mind) although if someone was looking for a 40k game several players would be able to oblige
Most of what is played is usually picked up off Kickstarter or people's annual looting of the UK Games Expo
I started with "moderns" (mid 80s cold war era - not quite the "balloon gone up" of TY) in the late 80s.
Then I moved to Battletech, and a few others, including "Laserburn", which led me to 40k. Also picked up early WHFB at this time. The fantasy left in 1995 when my army was stolen off my porch when I was moving house. Other games played by other makers were Void, Warzone, Kryomek, Stargrunt and full thrust.
About 10 years ago, I started playing Infinity. I stopped playing 40k after 5th edition. I got back into WHFB in late 6th edition. I've tried KoW, but it wasn't for me. Not enough granularity. I played two games of AoS - again, not for me. Waaaaay too simple and the local meta were the people I never liked to play against in 40k anyway (odious personal skills and/or a flexible approach to the "rules")
The major thing that allows me to change from game to game is not being locked into a "store club". The majority of games clubs in this country ARE NOT located within stores (much like NZ or the UK). So wandering into a place and getting a pick up game isn't really an issue. WE are mostly grown ups who know how to use the internet to tee up games in advance.
I think there is quite the element of GW momentum and 'the only game in town' in making people adverse to dabbling outside the bubble, in my corner of the shire we haven't had a non-GWFLGS in over a decade so finding players can be tricky, although FB and the like help
My gaming club has pretty much given up on GW, not as any glorious hipster stand, just a sort of passive enough is enough groupthink (the mess of mid to late 7th was a nudge mind) although if someone was looking for a 40k game several players would be able to oblige
Most of what is played is usually picked up off Kickstarter or people's annual looting of the UK Games Expo
I mean, this is sort of true particularly if you do not have a club. Since I stopped regularly playing GW games I have stopped regularly wargaming. What GW has that most don't is the level of saturation that even if like me you have moved city or country a few times in a few years, you can still find someone to play with. I think this aspect of the games success is actually not well understood by the designers, hence the focus on gentleman's agreements and club play. For me, although I would like a club, Pick Up Games are kind of important to keep me in the loop of the hobby while things settle down for me. Unfortunately, the game as currently designed does not produce a satisfying experience in that context and has not for quite a while I believe. Privateer Press fell into that trap from the other direction, with tight rules but too much complexity and too steep a learning curve because of that to maintain a good turnover of newbies. PP has imploded where I live, otherwise I could be playing that. I think Mantic actually have some decent rules for this kind of play and I see a lot of X Wing and other Star Wars related stuff, but Mantic does not have the market penetration and I think likely never will have, making it essentially another "club game", and I am unfortunately not interested in wargaming in the Star Wars universe.
That is alright, I am not bitter about it really or anything like that, it is just an observation. I see people having fun with the game and I have moved on to other things which are quite satisfying for me in any case. But I would not have believed a few years ago that quitting GW would be defacto quitting wargaming.
I started miniatures war gaming outside Game Workshop games, but almost all the games I played were designed by former GW writers. However, I believe even without GW; I would still being playing miniatures games. It isn't the rules that convinced me but the idea of playing the fight part of tabletop RPG with only another player (as finding good rpg groups can be difficult). And yes, I know D&D started off more as miniatures war game that became an rpg. Chances are if GW didn't exist, modern miniatures war games would look to D&D as its base inspiration.
It wasn't until I lost interest in championing the games I did play or in the case of Dust when through a gak show Kickstarter followed by a gak show separation from Battlefront games followed by a new edition. With 40K, I don't have to do any work to find a game like I did with almost any other miniatures game. That is really all Games Workshop still has going for it. But that really is all it needs.
I only played the smallest fraction of 7th edition consisting mostly of the Dark Vengeance box set and a couple of Heralds of Ruin Kill Team games. For the intended scope of Warhammer 40K of about 1500-200 points, the 7th edition was awful. However, after HoR modified it for their Kill Team and mostly playing Loyal Marine vs. Chaos Marine skirmish games, I think 7th edition worked quite well. In fact, I like 7th edition HoR Kill Team more than I like 8th edition even though my personal favorite game scope is some where between the two and closer to regular 40K (think about 1000-1250 points).
I think 8th edition is good enough as rules go. Combined with market saturation and what a large majority of players have armies for I completely understand why it is so popular. Most miniatures war gamers I have met don't have the kind of income and/or time to invest in more than one or two games. Even less can be bothered to learn/try more than a single game system. I saw the same thing in tabletop rpgs pre-4th edition D&D. You might be able to play something other than Tolkien/D&D-equse fantasy but it better use the 3rd edition D&D rules as an engine. This issue is only magnified with the cost of miniatures and time commitment to build/paint them unlike rpgs where you could show up with a sheet of paper, pencil and handful dice.
The thing is 8th edition is only okay in my opinion. If I wanted to I could play a few games of week of it given the number of places that play it. However, I rarely can be bothered to do it. If it was any other game I already have (except Deadzone 2nd ed which I personally don't like) I would probably get in a game a least once a week. Like I said, I am tired of championing other games mostly since I have done it enough to know how it goes most of the time. I will play 8th edition, but even then I am not going to go too far out of my way to play it and more often than not would rather use my free time for something else.
TL;DR: GWs games mostly have a legacy of market saturation combined with tolerable rules sets which I believe is the reason why they continue to dominate the very niche, high-investment miniatures game hobby. For 40K, 8th edition is tolerable enough that many gamers rather play it that bother discovering/recruiting games they would like better. So long as GW can put out rules that are tolerable to most gamers they will continue to dominate the hobby with their legacy of market saturation.
Long may it continue. I don't want to be 40 with all these minis I've poured time and love into only to have them sit on a shelf because the game is dead.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: Long may it continue. I don't want to be 40 with all these minis I've poured time and love into only to have them sit on a shelf because the game is dead.
Same as I once thought. Now I'm in my 40's and my game WHFB was killed (Played from 1984 till its death). I know technically I could use my square based 25mm figures against someone's round based 40mm scale AoS models, but it would look silly and not be the same game I once enjoyed.
I hope for your sake that GW does keep the games you enjoy going.
Personally I'm happy they killed WHFB. It meant a voyage of discovery of so many amazing games... Kings of War, Deadzone, Frostgrave, SB&H, M&DRG, Gaslands, Warpath, Gates of Antares, Bolt Action, Saga, Rogue Stars, Dracula's America, TWD, Maelstrom's Edge, Dungeon Saga, Star Saga, Blood Eagle, X-Wing, and Silent Death. Not listed in any particular order, but I'd play any of those before touching any lousy GW rules again. I did buy Necromunda17, but it's so messed up with rules and contradictions across multiple books, I've yet to get to grips with it.
Turnip Jedi wrote: Given GW appear to be on a high at the moment, I'm curious if the GW/AOS/40K faithful have been tempted by or play, or did play, non-GW games, and why you stopped or carried on
Note this isn't a my games better than yours thread, if you are having fun you are doing it right, just wondering about the dissonance between the Geedubs idea of 'the hobby' and my less GW-centric dogma
Have at it Dakka's
I started with Historicals as a young fella (along with TSR's Chainmail with fantasy figures), but I resisted WH and 40K for some time. As a military guy, though, I move around a lot and I found that 40K was indeed everywhere. I picked up some Space Marines during 2nd Ed and found myself enjoying the gameplay and the fluff. Played solidly and my eldest son also got into it ten years later.
I found my interest in 40K dulled by 6th Ed and killed by 7th. I had gotten heavily into Flames of War, so I was still gaming. I would still check out the 40K scene in my FLGS, and it was in decline. Two years ago, something called Warmachine filled the store on Friday nights and sold out Saturday tournaments (we can fit about 40 players in our FLGS). I found myself missing 40K and briefly contemplated trying this Warmachine thing but I put the box back on the shelf and slowly backed away...
Now, Warmachine seems to have nose-dived in popularity while 40K is firmly back on top (in my town, but I also travel a lot and this seems to be consistent). 40K sells out tourneys and you can always get a game. Heck, the last Warmachine tourney had something like 8 players while there were probably double that number of 40K players just having pickup games. FOW is on life support after their V4 disaster, but Team Yankee is showing some spark. And me? I came back to 40K with a vengeance with 8th Ed, but I still play FOW and TY. I am also noticing lots of former 40K players coming back to the fold. Maybe its a cycle? If 8th Ed gets stale then some other system will spark interest and GW will have to find a way to compete again. Circle of life and all that...I'm just glad I didn't throw out all my old 40K models three years ago!
I would say at this point in my life (now 45) that I am over-invested in GW to seriously consider playing anything else.
By that I mean I have such a huge collection of GW minis built up over the last 30 years that I doubt they will all be painted inside of my lifetime.
This makes starting another game system difficult - I can't really justify buying more minis to paint when I literally have a house bursting at the seams with GW stuff.
As an example, I toyed with the idea of Star Wars Legions - but that's another wargame that I would end up buying a ton of minis for that would still be in their boxes years later...
I love GW and I love their products and, for a long time, they were really the only company I had any exposure to.
Now that's not the case - I also really like the models for Malifaux and Wild West Exodus but I'm still painting all my 40K stuff and have a Khorne army for AoS that needs doing.
So although I have thought about branching out into other companies I haven't so far.
However - board games I can justify. You only need to buy one set and for the most part, I don't mind not having painted minis.
So I have been playing Zombicide: Black Plague which has been great fun and doesn't require a huge investment of time and money.
So, in short, I won't start another wargame but board games or possibly a small skirmish game might be doable.
Turnip Jedi wrote: Given GW appear to be on a high at the moment, I'm curious if the GW/AOS/40K faithful have been tempted by or play, or did play, non-GW games, and why you stopped or carried on
Note this isn't a my games better than yours thread, if you are having fun you are doing it right, just wondering about the dissonance between the Geedubs idea of 'the hobby' and my less GW-centric dogma
Have at it Dakka's
I started off with GW games, but was aware of other games fairly early on; a school friend had some Battletech minis and old WEG Star Wars minis. Later, I branched out to just about anything going.
It's always the miniatures for me. Rules are ... eh, it's easier to write house rules than it is to sculpt and cast my own miniatures. Having said that, what's kept me coming back to GW games are the settings. Nothing else can really compete with the sheer longevity and thus depth of the setting except Battletech and the D&D settings, simply because the other games haven't had nearly so many words written by some many different people about them. I like the Warmachine and Infinity settings, but I find Infinity especially rather ... bland; all I know about the factions is a few pages of background in the rulebooks, a column of text for each unit. I don't really know anything about what goes on in a Human Sphere world that doesn't involve fighting. Hopefully the RPG will expand this, but since my friend's Kickstarter pledge is still held up for some reason, I don't know yet.
Played 40k since 3rd, where I only played one or two games. Sat on the minis through several moves and finally decided to sell them to get other hobby related items. I'm 40 now and thinking about coming back to 40k. I really wanted to try fantasy out but they killed that and replaced it with something I just can't quite bring myself to be interested in.
I started with Mage Knight, then moved to 40k, then to Warmachine, then to X-Wing (Which I still play), but I miss the hobby aspects of 40k.
I really like Warhammer, but I've played a bunch of other games possibly too long to list here because a friend of mine has a hobby of buying rules for games and then making prototypes. It's kind of neat to be exposed to all sorts of weird games and then coming back to Warhammer. It makes me wonder what the GW designers occasionally play. Crooked Dice's 7TV in particular seems like it was an inspiration for AoS and 40k 8th edition, although it's descended from the Doctor Who Miniatures Game which was a Warhammer-style action-rpg.
I really do jones for 40k though, for some reason.
My own Titanomachina is something I've made to try and capture that feeling of wanting to play again.
My reasons for continuing with GW despite the games itself not being solid:
* I have a 20+ year collection. A LOT of money sunk into my models. A LOT of time sunk into my models hobbying them. Starting over with a different line is disheartening. I have a huge investment in my GW models and I don't want to just discard them.
* Players. Like you hear everywhere, I can get in a game of AOS or 40k whenever I want. I can't get in a game of most anything else without having to put a huge amount of time and effort.
I am going to be getting into Para Bellum conquest though because I like the models quite a bit.
I think the majority of us here started with Games Workshops games initially - and who didnt really? They where readily available and everyone knew about them. Of course, we spent money on them and then eventually some of us moved on. The big problem GW always had was that it relied on its IP to attract and retain players, but at least the games where fun back then, and diverse in nature. Sadly these days GW is catering less and less to the hobbyist and more and more to the normie and the child, alienating the traditional target audience, and pushing away more mature newcomers.
Myself, I started back when Fantasy was Fantasy, but the prices pushed me away when I learnt of other game systems which where cheaper. These days I retain my GW stuff for fun and the memories, but that is it. Other games such as Infinity, Battletech, Kings of War and Bolt Action all fill my wargaming urge without robbing my pocket or forcing me to play at one braincell level (do not try to defend it, AoS and 40K 8th are both braindead games with no tactical depth at all. I have played both.), so they do me well.
Arbitrator wrote: I'd argue the biggest reason for GW's success is that wargames require other people to play with and the massive cost to get into and maintain them. GW's market saturation comes in large part because they're what 95% of people began with - outside of historicals who don't really 'count' as they're more their own, separate thing - so will always have something tying them back to their products. mostly 40k. This creates the effect where people don't dare step out of GW's circle because, well, there's either nobody else to play that new game with or they paid too much money on their GW armies. In the UK I've found this to be a huge problem because Games Workshop stores make this even worse. 8th Edition has pretty much wiped out anything else where and AoS' sudden insurgency hasn't helped either. Why would people spend money on Warmahordes and Legion when all that people are playing is 40k?
This brings me to my directly reply. Trust me, I'd love to see the diversity of games in such abundance that the US has. I'd avoid GW products like the plague, but I enjoy wargaming too much. Luckily I got most of my Imperial Guard before I turned on them, so it's not too bad. Unfortunately there's not much of a choice where I live.
Where exactly do you play? If you're in the Vienna area - there are quite a few people who are willing and able to play interesting things. (which sounds much more dubious than it's supposed to be ).
I mostly play non-GW games these days. Tons of different stuff, but the general theme seems to be "nothing what comes with its own range of figures". I feel that rules by actual "indie" publishers work better for what I'm looking for in a game, and I just feel too old for the whole "rules and minis from one manufacturer who lives off mini sales" hamsterwheel. I have my fantasy collections, I have my sci-fi collections, I have a bunch of historical collections. Of course I enjoy GW games too. Played some Gorkamorka few years ago - had a great time. Played 8th edition 40k - for what 40k aims to do it works fine and is good fun. Played Kings of War - for what it aims to do [be a Warhammer stand-in] it seems to work OK. It really is a very Mantic thing, that Kings of War. I played Lost Patrol and we had a very fun evening trying to fix it. Played some games of Space Hulk last year: I can see why it's considered one of GW's best games. Two years ago I got into Blood Bowl. What a clever, clever game. I really suck at it. Heck, I even played several scenarios of Deathwatch:Overkill. GW's really good at being GW right now. Which is nice and cool. If GW do well I'm happy. My own gaming interests lie elsewhere at this point in time. Rules sets which aren't written to sell figures and written in a mindset and based on understandings I'm interested in. Too Fat Lardies, Sam Mustafa, Ganesha Games are the three which got me covered mostly these days. Great fun.
Basically it's like it's always been - on the one hand there's GW and those who use the same marketing strategy, and those who don't. One chooses what one likes and is happy.
I like Warmahordes. I really wish my friends (long time 40k players) would give it a shot, but they have their armies they like and don't want to invest in a new game.
The store I like to go to has their Warmahordes night on Fridays, but they tend to be busy for me, so I rarely get to play it. But that's the game that has my passion and my paycheque right now.
I only "play" 40k. I put play in quotation marks because I really don't play it as often as I like, and haven't for several years.
After becoming a parent, starting a business, buying a home, and living in the middle of a VERY rural state, finding time and opponents for any game is a chore. 40k is simply the one I know I can count on to always be there for me.
Now, I've dabbled in Heroclix and Magic the Gathering in the past. I just only ever got to play once every 6 months or so, and it seems the game moves on without you. The problem was that the "pay to win" thing really got to me with Magic. Even if you got people to play against your outdated cards, your old deck never stands a chance against a new one. I didn't feel like pulping a majority of my deck to stay relevant.
I also have rule from Mantic for Warpath. Decent rules, but not a single game with them, as literally no one within 100 miles wants to play it. Trust me, I've looked.
Now, if you are talking models, I likely have one of the largest 40k collections in the state, and likely the whole Midwest. As long as a model looks cool and fits aesthetically I have no qualms about including it in a 40k army. I am used models from Warhammer Fantasy, AoS, Warmachine, Void, Warpath, Dreamforge Games, DUST, and many others. It's a super huge investment though.
Now, if there was ever a time where I could use my 40k models in another game, it had a decent rules set, and it was popular enough to find opponents, I'd give it a try in a heartbeat.
I deviated from GW briefly with Star Wars Legion and barely played that before losing interest. Not that it's a bad game, it's just i'm feeling the SW fatigue right now and the lack of variety just pains me. My Necromunda gangers feel very personal and individual and with games like SW legion or FFG games in general I just don't feel that attachment to anything.
I am kind of cautious of GW still cause they have no problem dropping or removing whole lines/ranges of models or even dropping games from production entirely if they *feel like it*.
I did come really close to getting into bolt action, but I don't know anyone who plays it and I don't know if I have the energy to try and jumpstart a whole club or something for a game nobody plays.
Funny, I was just thinking ealier today that it has been a while since I purchased a non-GW miniature.
I love smaller skirmish games so neither AoS nor 40k are really my cuppa. But with Shadow War, Necromunda, and the upcoming new version of Kill Team, it's like falling in love all over again. Unfortunately, AoS Skirmish is not on par with any of those games on the 40k side of the house. But I have enjoyed the new WHQ games. I am hoping GW will eventually revisit AoS Skirmish.
Prior to 2016, my miniatures game purchases were almost exclusively non-GW. Now it's back to the reverse!
Played X-Wing and Imperial Assault for a while, but the deluge of cards, tokens and cardboard nonsense just drained the fun. FFG power creep also makes even 7th "Formation" Ed. 40K look like chess, so there's that.
I also had a bit of Mantic stuff like Dreadball and Deadzone a few years back, but I suppose GW's plan of getting people like me back with re-releases of Blood Bowl and Necromunda worked for me.
So yeah, back to my roots and largely playing just GW stuff atm.
Manchu wrote: Funny, I was just thinking ealier today that it has been a while since I purchased a non-GW miniature.
The last non-GW miniatures I bought were the JSA army box for Infinity. Ever since Infinity came out, I've bought every Yu Jing release (and every Morat release, until they redesigned them), but recently, I haven't bought anything since the Hsien with Multi-Rifle model; I've not played since the first Beasts of War online campaign, so what's the point? I've bought nothing for Warmachine bar the rulebooks since 2nd edition came out, I drifted away from X-Wing and Armada was a disappointment and most of the new "boutique" miniatures games have no appeal, so back to the old stalwarts it is. It's so much easier now to just paint a small unit I like the look of and add it to my army.
For me personally GW hasn't even been a competitor in the wargames arena for over 10 years.
Thanks to its stagnation and very aggressive fanbase. I've played and enjoyed and still love dozens upon dozens of wargaming systems that I would of ignored otherwise.
I still try and paint GW models though. But it's extremely boring.
I've had 3 primaris sitting on my desk for 3 months now eith 1 sort of finished. And in comparison in that time I've painted 30 WWII infantry and 5 tanks.
From my perspective I started drifting away from GW when they abandoned Specialist Games but kept with WFB because I did enjoy the game and background (especially the older parts). When the writing was on the wall for WFB there was one last splurge on this.
Since then the only thing that really has interested me and kept something going to GW is the new specialist games so Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Space Hulk etc (not the Warhammer Quest garbage though). I also tend to pick up the scenery because it tends to be better than a lot of the other types available. I also tend to pick up any Made to Order stuff that I might have missed. A few bits on LoTR and 40k as well but nothing major.
GW in my opinion have moved away from traditional wargaming to more 'superficial' type gaming and their target audience has changed to younger adults/teenagers (we only have to look at the recent youtube videos to see that they are aiming at). The models whilst technically excellent lack 'character' in my view and I've tend to come to the view that when you are playing a game you rarely see the technical excellence anyway.
On the other hand since specialist games was dropped, I've picked up many other games. All Quiet on the Martian Front, Dropfleet Commander, Beyond the Gates of Antares, Xwing, Armada and starting Fallout shortly. I also mooch around ebay looking for any Specialist games bargains that I missed out on.
Although 40k is the game I play the most I do quite like to play other systems.
One current favourite of mine is SAGA, simple ruleset with a huge depth, easy to learn and really fun. Lately have been playing it nearly as regularly as 40k.
Besides that I occasionally also play Infinity, and used to play Warmahordes before the local meta died.
Anyway, if anything the main reason why I play mostly 40k is not because of any particular loyalty to GW but because it's easier to get opponents and lack of free time to play multiple systems regularly . (And dont get me wrong I do enjoy 40k a lot too)
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Played X-Wing for a while, but found the constant new cards not to my taste.
Still a good game, just not for me.
Other than that, local scene is pretty much just GW, with the occasional hand of Magic.
This is exactly where I am. I got into 40k because several friends of mine played 40K and nobody I know anywhere near me plays anything else wargame wise. We have 3 game shops relatively close to me, but the only wargame that's played at any of them that's not GW is X-wing and, while I loved that game initially, the power creep (or explosion) has really turned me off to it - not to mention that I don't really like a lot of the new ships and the classic ones just aren't very good any more. I find I play a lot more Pathfinder and Magic than wargaming at this point, but I still love 8E 40k and play when I can.
djones520 wrote: I'm a big GW guy, but I have dabbled in other systems. My biggest departure is with Battlefront. I used to play Flames of War, but have given that up. I'm really getting into Team Yankee now, and most of my buying money will be going into expanding those armies.
Same, but FoW 4th killed the game. I don't like the Team Yankee cards/ruleset. And went back to 40k after skipping much of 6th and all of 7th edition. Used to play WHFB, went to KoW when AoS killed that as well.
I originally played WH40K (and Space Hulk) back in the 90s because friends at school did. Nobody played non-GW games. Now I'm back, but fitting in wargaming around work and family life means there's no time for anything other than WH40K.
Around 5th edition Warhammer 40K I moved on to other games..... but even worse I moved onto creating my own games!
I still play a lot of those, but also play a lot of smaller indie or one-off rule book games. I love the Osprey Wargaming Series of rules as it gives me a lot of genres, styles, and games to play.
I really do not expect to ever go back to GW EXCEPT for Blood Bowl (or Aeronautica Imperialis if it came back in Epic scale). I have no interest in 40K/AOS games.
I started with GW, but never stopped playing different systems when my attention was caught. The trouble is to find players and time to invest in these new games.
As I'm aging and my circle of players dwindling naturally, I find less time to give to play lots of different game systems and collect the appropriate miniatures. After a period where I left GW to see if the grass is greener elsewhere, I have known a few games disappeared and investment "lost" as their player communities dried up. GW is the only one strong enough to still be there and still having their universes around.
So I went back to GW, and was overjoyed when they changed their attitude. Even if in the end, it's the same "tricks" to make you buy their products, I realize that as the market works now, games get shorter lifespans and replaced faster than before. Only GW still has a long term view (in comparison) with their core games. They are also more reliable to support their games in the future.
I don't want to see my collection taking dust as no one is playing that game anymore and there is no possibility to complete my armies since the miniatures aren't sold anymore, other than looking on Ebay and pray you don't get screwed by vulture speculators. At least, no more.
Sure, Privateer Press is still there, but I'm tired with the competitive scene. GW still has that more "relaxed" view with their games, and I also like it. So there's that as well.
It's a golden age for miniature games, but there are disadvantages as well. We are almost swarmed by new miniature games everyday and there's not enough time to play them all. Not even talking about Kickstarters and how the support suddenly stops as soon asthey are delivered...
So yeah, GW is the most "safe and stable" place right now, to me.
It's a golden age for miniature games, but there are disadvantages as well. We are almost swarmed by new miniature games everyday and there's not enough time to play them all. Not even talking about Kickstarters and how the support suddenly stops as soon asthey are delivered...
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Indeed, I'm trying to stick to 3-4 'main' games system which means I've had to skip games like Infinity or Malifaux, did cave on Gaslands mind as poundshop cars, glue and spare 40k guns is a silly cheap buy in
I think having a few systems on the go is mostly positive as sticking to one tends to lead to burnout, I'm fairly sure I overdid X-Wing
I play Infinity (very deep rules with awesome dice mechanics) and Frostgrave (nice beer/pretzels skirmish campaign game) and DnD.
I stopped Fantasy a long time ago and stopped 40k during 6th. Tried 8th, thought they'd turned it around and then the flood of codices came and killed any enthusiasm I had.
I play Infinity with a few local guys and have a ton of terrain for it (it needs a lot) . I travel for tournies since there's not many local. I played in a tourney a few weeks ago and had a blast getting my butt kicked (my first tourney with Infinity). Out of five games that weekend I got a rule book out maybe once. I love that, clear rules with lots of support. They have a free online wiki with built in FAQ. Really nice game if you can wrap your head around the possibilities in the rules. If you think you're a good strategist with 40k, try Infinity and it might ruin that idea. Lol
master of ordinance wrote: I think the majority of us here started with Games Workshops games initially - and who didnt really? They where readily available and everyone knew about them. Of course, we spent money on them and then eventually some of us moved on. The big problem GW always had was that it relied on its IP to attract and retain players, but at least the games where fun back then, and diverse in nature. Sadly these days GW is catering less and less to the hobbyist and more and more to the normie and the child, alienating the traditional target audience, and pushing away more mature newcomers.
Myself, I started back when Fantasy was Fantasy, but the prices pushed me away when I learnt of other game systems which where cheaper. These days I retain my GW stuff for fun and the memories, but that is it. Other games such as Infinity, Battletech, Kings of War and Bolt Action all fill my wargaming urge without robbing my pocket or forcing me to play at one braincell level (do not try to defend it, AoS and 40K 8th are both braindead games with no tactical depth at all. I have played both.), so they do me well.
Funny you say say this, I’ve heard GW being accused of living off the short term (attract “a 15-year-old”, get them to buy in for a couple hundred $$$ in about 2 years time , then drop them for the new suck...er, customer; rinse and repeat) since at least the days of 4E.
And to be honest, I do think GW STILL does not care about keeping their customers long term; as long as they can push the new shiny, that’s all they’re in for.
I started hobby gaming with card games, moved on to Games Workshop products starting with 40k 3rd Edition. I became interested during 2nd Edition (mid-late '97), but didn't have the wealth to purchase any of the boxed sets that were available.
When I did eventually start, 3rd Edition had been released, so I had the boxed starter set and started Space Marines, though I had considered Praetorians, Tyranids or Sisters as possible 2nd Edition armies.
As for alternatives, I played some 15mm WW2 games including early Flames of War, I tried Warmachine but I didn't enjoy it that much.
Locally, Games Workshop products I think went through diminished period around 7th Edition.
Warmachine was picked up as the replacement game with infinity being present but with fewer players. When X-Wing was released that kind of took over the entire war gaming scene here.
The local store owner told me right out that he got the sense that Fantasy Flight Games owed a lot of their financial success to Games Workshop driving customers away.
That trend has also reversed itself from the point that 8th edition was released.
I started GW games in 40k 3rd edition and left completely when 7th dropped.
I still kinda keep track on what's going on with the games and fluff, but I have no desire to play any of their game systems.
For reference, played WHFB in 6th (meta died completely before that 7th ed dropped), and dabbled in BFG when it was still being actively supported back then.
I found that GW games are the ones you’re guarenteed to find an opponent for. I’ve invested in so many miniature games only to find I have noone to play against. Which sucks, as I hate AOS, and swore off 40k(grey knights player). Frostgrave was barely played by me and dried up fast(not sure why, it’s a great game). Saga switched to an unnecessary and worse 2nd edition. Pulp Alley was around for a little while. Even D&D Adventure League sucks since as soon as you get to a decent level a new campaign comes out and it’s time to start a new level 1 PC.
Now I only play Necromunda with a small group, which I love now that they changed the ammo roll rule, and old school boardgames with the gf.
The only problem with debates like this for me is that it doesn't really matter if there's better stuff than GW, in my area there's absolutely no one to play anything with, and even if there were, the two game stores near me (which are half-assed at best), are each more than 20 miles away in opposite directions. I already have to collect and paint both sides of any game I'm interested in, lately I have to beg my couple of old opponents so hard I might as well pay someone to be an opponent, lol.
I love fantasy (not WFB, the genre) and I wargamed since mid high school. GW just had thier barrier of entry too high. Till AoS, just grab some dudes and play, before you know it you will have spent the amount that put you off anyway.
Getting into WoC/StD got me looking at daemons, then there was a good second hand deal on some daemons and suddenly I could play 40k. That got me into a gaming club, it is everywhere. Club exposed me to KoW and Infinity (became very appealing after I finally got fed up with GW's lack of balance).I still have the daemons for KoW, so csn and do play a Warhammer when asked or if I want a more casual game (choosing my opponents wisely though).
Malifaux was "not played in this city" if you asked, it was accepted that there was no community. Till someone started, turns out that there were a bunch of people interested, but we all thought no one was interested. Now that we're playing the models, theme and low barrier to entry attracts more players.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm seeing a lot of "I have too much 40k stuff", you know you can sell it, right? Skirmish games like Infinity and Malifaux don't need many models to play (less than 20), many people get more, but that's because the games and mini's are awesome.
I actually started boycotting GW in 2012 because I thought they were taking the proverbial. Questions about the quality of Finecast aside (I've not actually personally witnessed any dire examples), the fact they also combined it with the yearly price rise when part of the long time excuse for putting up prices had been the rising price of tin was just too much.
Also, 5th Edition 40k had invalidated my Space Marine army (which had been converted to use the 4th Edition Chapter Traits, which suddenly disappeared), the rumour that the same thing would happen to Doctrines (which it eventually did) caused me to abandon my Imperial Guard project, and that had left me with just an Eldar army... which because everything in the game could now run meant that it had lost most of its agility advantage. (I know people will say "But Fleet still let you charge...", but most of my models could do exactly the same as they had and didn't necessarily want to charge anyway, but everyone else's could now do more).
And 7th Edition Fantasy's change of making unit ranks 5 wide rather than 4 wide meant that I would basically have had to redone all of my unit-wide basing and I simply could not be bothered. There was also no support for Specialist Games, so even though I remained fanatical about Inquisitor, there was nothing I needed to buy from GW.
This eventually lead me in the direction of Infinity. I'd already been drifting in the direction of skirmish gaming for some time (The most fun I'd had with WH40K and WHFB was often 500- 1000 pt games), and detailed models where I could put lots of effort into each one, along with rules that encouraged a cinematic play-style, and transhuman fluff where digital reincarnation was a thing meant I could indulge my RPing side by actually believably developing up models as individuals.
... that went quite well until the release of the updated Human Sphere book for 3rd Edition, at which point they completely rewrote the background for two of my absolute favourite models. That put me on a real low for the game for some time.
Now it's become clear to me that Corvus Belli are set on constantly moving forward their background, even if those changes can heavily invalidate hobbyists' collections, which is enough that I really cannot build up any enthusiasm for actually trying to get back into the game. Why would I put in the effort and money if the company have shown that they'll decide that entire factions can break in two and potentially leave me with two half armies?
I've actually started putting money in to GW again, as I think that they're actually now behaving more like a reasonable company. Not *much* money, because I'm still very much on the skirmish end of things, so I've only got things like Shadow War and 28mm Inquisitor* to really go with, but they have become a significant portion of my wargaming expenditure again, including things like Made to Order.
*Although the new Necromunda is tempting, as far as I'm aware they've yet to release the dang rulebook on its own - while I know it is "out there" on the internet, aside from the ethics of pirating it, I do actually like my rulebooks in hard copy. (Including stuff I've written myself - I run off hard copies of my WIP fan edition of Inquisitor every few revisions, annotating other changes as they're playtested).
MarcoSkoll wrote: This eventually lead me in the direction of Infinity. I'd already been drifting in the direction of skirmish gaming for some time (The most fun I'd had with WH40K and WHFB was often 500- 1000 pt games), and detailed models where I could put lots of effort into each one, along with rules that encouraged a cinematic play-style, and transhuman fluff where digital reincarnation was a thing meant I could indulge my RPing side by actually believably developing up models as individuals.
... that went quite well until the release of the updated Human Sphere book for 3rd Edition, at which point they completely rewrote the background for two of my absolute favourite models. That put me on a real low for the game for some time.
Now it's become clear to me that Corvus Belli are set on constantly moving forward their background, even if those changes can heavily invalidate hobbyists' collections, which is enough that I really cannot build up any enthusiasm for actually trying to get back into the game. Why would I put in the effort and money if the company have shown that they'll decide that entire factions can break in two and potentially leave me with two half armies?
This invalidation thing often sound so silly. If your models have absolutely no use in the game (I mean like squats) them sure, I feel you. The rules changed and you can no longer do the exact things you could before the change? Get over it, you can still use the miniatures, they just work slightly differently. Either the new rules are meant to be better, or (often in CB's case) the company wants to get you excited by figuring out your army again. How long were you going to enjoy the same thing anyway?
On the JSA thing; CB actually checked their data and found that JSA players and Yu Jing players didn't mix the two very often and then made models that were used across the line legal proxies for an equivalent in the other faction.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Anyone know if there’s another miniatures company out there with their factory?
I know FFG and PP at least used to use factories in China, but haven’t kept up.
This isn’t intended as some sideways criticism. Any new company is gonna have to outsource, because your own setup ain’t cheap beyond garage casting.
Warlord IIRC, Wargames Factory is definitely one but it's tied to Warlord and I'm not sure if it's a subsidiary a la Forge World or its own thing that Warlord use. Wargames Factory, while lesser known, is probably just as big as GW production wise, if not bigger, because not only do they manufacture their own stuff (and the aforementioned Warlord kits), they're also used by other companies for production. Wyrd Miniatures is one that have in the past, although I'm not sure how much is Chinese made and how much is WGF
DarkBlack wrote: The rules changed and you can no longer do the exact things you could before the change? Get over it, you can still use the miniatures, they just work slightly differently.
I don't really give a damn about whether they nerfed my favourite tactics*. A lot of the models I used were models I used because I liked them as models (although I did find that, often, they were a lot more viable than people said).
I'm angry that a game that was developed from a homebrew RPG, including deliberate background elements to allow characters to survive death, has absolutely no consideration for players wanting to develop their own characters and stories in the universe and is prepared to entirely retcon setting background - three editions and a full decade (to say nothing of the time before Infinity was published) is a point by which they really should have got their poop sorted out.
* Okay, I'll be honest, there was something I was not at all happy about from a rules perspective, but it wasn't a profile change - it was them deciding that doctors were forced to activate servant remotes if they had any, therefore preventing those doctors from joining coordinated orders. I would have accepted if servants couldn't be activated in a coordinated order or if servants counted towards the limit of coordinating 4 models, but them forcing the doctors to not coordinate at all was taking the proverbial. Given that I often made heavy use of doctors/servants, making those profiles a complete double-edged sword was NOT popular with me.
It didn't even make sense - doctors could still only activate ONE remote even they had several, so apparently they could be disconnected from remotes...
Getting hit with background changes that spat in the face of characters I'd spent ages developing and their models that I'd put painstaking effort into converting (and that illogical rules change that made many of my favourite profiles half-useless at the same time) was definitely enough to put me off the game, and frankly, I don't have the motivation to get back in when for all I know CB might decide that one of my factions having a civil war and splitting in two would make a great plot for their next event season.
I've not even got the option to go find some "Oldfinity" community if I decide that I'd really prefer to continue playing with the old background that I'd invested myself into.
You may not agree with my point of view, but if you think it's silly, then you've not got any real grasp on why I'm involved in the hobby.
I'm an author and artist - my games tell a tale. You might say that "Ah, but these campaigns tell tales"... but they don't, not in that way. When it comes to war films, they're not documentaries, they don't try to tell the tale of entire wars (unless we're talking fantasy settings like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings where one small cast of characters has a grossly disproportionate impact).
For something like Saving Private Ryan, the greater war is irrelevant - it's a question of rescuing one man so that his mother doesn't lose all four of her sons.
Black Hawk Down is a battle that the US/UN basically lost when it comes to the big picture, but it's a tale of leaving no man behind.
Where Eagles Dare is simply about plugging an information leak.
The Train is about stopping the Nazis stealing art!
I want that out of my games. I want the small stories, the ones I can actually relate to, where the big picture is there to help tell those stories, rather than getting in the way of them. And, right now, Corvus Belli are handling Infinity in a way that gets in the way of my small stories.
Hence why I'm drifting back to GW - because they have actually handled even big developments like the Indomitus Crusade or the setting jumping forward two hundred years in ways that allow new stories (the next Inquisitor event I've got planned has actually managed to use the new background as part of the plot), but which haven't derailed the old stories I've been telling for the last decade.
Some people might call it stagnant, saying that nothing that happens in WH40K ever actually means anything, but honestly if you're writing a setting that other people are going to be telling their own little corners of, you shouldn't be making big changes on a regular basis.
TBH Marco, I don't get the impression GW are handling things any differently.
Look at how they introduced Primaris - Robute flies about personally commanding every chapter master to take them, and upon people pointing out that there are chapters who would hesitate to take orders from Robute especially given how he came back, they added a blurb into the Custodes book stating that a Herald went with Robute to tell every chapter that Primaris were a gift from the Emperor and could not be refused. They're very much in an "our way or the highway" mode with their new stories in 40K and AoS, we're long past the days of Armageddon and Imperial Armour style plots and soft retcons to include new gear and units where you could choose to take it or leave it.
And there's no sign they intend to stop advancing the timeline and focusing in further on "big name" players engaging in galaxy-quaking events, there are doubtless more loyalist Primarchs on the way, Cawl is waiting in the wings to cause radical shifts in the Mechanicus, they've completely rewritten how things are supposed to go for the Eldar and so on.
I'm firmly convinced GW are purposefully moving away from the idea of a shared sandbox where they flesh out a history leading up to a set "present day" and then let players tell their own stories - they want a much more saturday morning cartoon setup where they tell stories about the Big Damn Heroes(or Villains) and then sell you models of those specific larger-than-life individuals so you can "play along" with their story as GW tell it to you.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Anyone know if there’s another miniatures company out there with their factory?
I know FFG and PP at least used to use factories in China, but haven’t kept up.
This isn’t intended as some sideways criticism. Any new company is gonna have to outsource, because your own setup ain’t cheap beyond garage casting.
Warlord IIRC, Wargames Factory is definitely one but it's tied to Warlord and I'm not sure if it's a subsidiary a la Forge World or its own thing that Warlord use. Wargames Factory, while lesser known, is probably just as big as GW production wise, if not bigger, because not only do they manufacture their own stuff (and the aforementioned Warlord kits), they're also used by other companies for production. Wyrd Miniatures is one that have in the past, although I'm not sure how much is Chinese made and how much is WGF
As far as I understood, Wargames Factory is no more - the company got chopped up and parts sold out between Warlord and Dreamforge Games. That is, Warlord owns some of the molds, Dreamforge got the others - the rest of the company was dissolved.
Yodhrin wrote: TBH Marco, I don't get the impression GW are handling things any differently. Look at how they introduced Primaris
Honestly, I think Primaris are about the best compromise that could actually be struck between finally sorting the fact that Space Marines models aren't the right size compared to other models, but also not completely invalidating people's collections.
Even if you might think the Primaris have been handled heavy handedly, what originally put me off Infinity was retcons that would have been like GW just replacing Space Marines with Primaris as if they'd always been that way, with no explanation whatsoever.
That CB are now messing around with swapping units between factions or blacklisting models from events because of the central story is the barrier that makes me wonder if I actually want to bother to give Infinity a second chance, knowing that I could quite likely again have stories/models/characters I've put heaps of effort into completely derailed.
Yodhrin wrote: TBH Marco, I don't get the impression GW are handling things any differently. Look at how they introduced Primaris
Honestly, I think Primaris are about the best compromise that could actually be struck between finally sorting the fact that Space Marines models aren't the right size compared to other models, but also not completely invalidating people's collections.
Even if you might think the Primaris have been handled heavy handedly, what originally put me off Infinity was retcons that would have been like GW just replacing Space Marines with Primaris as if they'd always been that way, with no explanation whatsoever.
That CB are now messing around with swapping units between factions or blacklisting models from events because of the central story is the barrier that makes me wonder if I actually want to bother to give Infinity a second chance, knowing that I could quite likely again have stories/models/characters I've put heaps of effort into completely derailed.
As the phrase goes, "Once bitten, twice shy".
Well that's my point, there was a better way - introduce them the same way they always introduced things, as a new tool in the toolbox that players could make part of their force or not as they saw fit - introducing Primaris didn't require Robute making them mandatory additions to every chapter with the backing of a holy proclamation from the Emperor himself. Or better yet, just make properly sized Marines, which wouldn't have "invalidated" anyone's collections any more than 3rd Ed plastics did to 2nd Ed, or Deathwatch & Thousand Sons & Death Guard etc did to the 3rd-7th era plastics. GW have been increasing the scale of their models, sometimes in pretty big jumps, for decades, there's no reason they couldn't have again, they just didn't want to because the aim wasn't to avoid "invalidating" anything, it was to shove folk towards buying a whole new army.
Like yourself the appeal with GW's settings for me was always that they were just that; settings. GW established them, fleshed them out, gave them a sense of history, but after that they just played in the same sandbox as the rest of us and you had a "Shoredinger's Storyline" kind of situation where everyone's headcanon version of the setting was both accurate and not at the same time. Now though, they've opened the box, they've decided what version is "real", and they very much intend to keep making that decision as they see fit if AoS is any indicator - time jumps, political and territorial shifts, character deaths, locations destroyed, institutions altered, all by fiat. They're even wise enough now to recognise that big participatory campaigns have to offer merely the illusion of player agency so as to avoid messing up the plans they have, routing towards one or two predetermined outcomes like conversation trees in a Bioware RPG.
For me, I can't function creatively in that kind of environment. I can't muster up the energy to write up character backgrounds and army backgrounds and fictionalised battle reports and develop my own rules etc etc if two months down the line GW are going to blow up the subsector I was using, or fundamentally change the nature of the faction in question, or jump the timeline forward by a century so any baseline humans involved in my fiction would be dead or decrepit. It's dispiriting. In the end, I don't really see a difference between what they're doing and what CB are doing based on your description, the key commonality is that they're both simply uninterested in providing players with a genuine sense of agency - it's their world, the rest of us are just permitted to visit.
In order to keep enjoying their settings, I've had to basically disconnect 40K and WHF from Dark Imperium and AoS, treat them as different IPs entirely, and essentially do "historicals" for Warhammer. Easier with AoS since it's such an obvious and intentional departure, whereas with 40K they evidently learned from the backlash there and tried for a middle ground where they change loads of stuff but still assert it's the same setting. It's murder on getting a chance to play games because you're removing the one key advantage of GW - a big common world that you can inhabit equally well in your local shop or on a kitchen table on the other side of the planet - but at least it gives me back some semblance of structure and control.
And yes before the cavalry ride in - that is an analysis based on my own personal preference, and an ongoing "themepark" style plot under the explicit direction of GW/anyone else is not objectively bad
No I totally see the same thing with 40k too. I have a Lamenters army, you know, the incredibly unlucky guys sent on a penitant crusade straight into a hive tendril with no reinforcements allowed for 100 years.
It was really confusing opening the blood Angels codex and seeing a primaris in lamenter livery with no explanation about whether he was a reinforcement or just a new founding. Kind of screwed up that whole notion that they were completely boned and living on borrowed time.
MarcoSkoll wrote: Black Hawk Down is a battle that the US/UN basically lost when it comes to the big picture, but it's a tale of leaving no man behind.
I'd struggle to call the incident which black hawk down is based on a failure.
From WIkipedia: Reliable estimates place the number of Somali insurgents killed at between 800 and as many as 1,000 with perhaps another 4,000 wounded.
That's to 19 dead US soldiers.
Any army ever would pray for ratios like that. Seems to me the only reason they 'lost' was after 'Nam America was a little pissy about losing soldiers halfway across the world in something that didn't directly concern America, so they pulled out.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Anyone know if there’s another miniatures company out there with their factory?
I know FFG and PP at least used to use factories in China, but haven’t kept up.
This isn’t intended as some sideways criticism. Any new company is gonna have to outsource, because your own setup ain’t cheap beyond garage casting.
Warlord IIRC, Wargames Factory is definitely one but it's tied to Warlord and I'm not sure if it's a subsidiary a la Forge World or its own thing that Warlord use. Wargames Factory, while lesser known, is probably just as big as GW production wise, if not bigger, because not only do they manufacture their own stuff (and the aforementioned Warlord kits), they're also used by other companies for production. Wyrd Miniatures is one that have in the past, although I'm not sure how much is Chinese made and how much is WGF
As far as I understood, Wargames Factory is no more - the company got chopped up and parts sold out between Warlord and Dreamforge Games. That is, Warlord owns some of the molds, Dreamforge got the others - the rest of the company was dissolved.
To my knowledge, the actual production facility still exists; they simply became a producer-only rather than attempting to have their own brand which was mainly started when they essentially seized the Wargames Factory name due to non-payment by Tony Reidy. Their style of sprue makes it likely they're the chief plastics producer for Kingdom Death and a few of the Maelstrom's Edge kits, and legoburner put up an interesting blog post about his visit there.
In the scope of Doc's question though, they're not owned by anyone and thus are "just another Chinese outsourcer" (albeit one that can put some pressure on GW with the right designer).
Yodhrin wrote: Or better yet, just make properly sized Marines, which wouldn't have "invalidated" anyone's collections
That's not entirely practical from a production perspective, as it would have required completely redoing the Space Marine range in short order in order that units still due for a scale update didn't see a massive tank in sales.
It's also arguable whether that could be said to have not invalidated anything. Replacing everything would have forced the removal of the older models, and a lot of people simply would have ditched their old Marine armies, being unwilling to continue them in a new sizing. Primaris offer an opportunity to overhaul the range, and by making the difference between the models canonical, it avoids the issues some people would have had.
Pushing them into the story - well, I suspect that in the long run the intention is indeed that the original range will be phased out, so yeah, I can understand that they don't want to deal with the "Oh, but X chapter refused Primaris" further down the line.
For me, I can't function creatively in that kind of environment. I can't muster up the energy to write up character backgrounds and army backgrounds and fictionalised battle reports and develop my own rules etc etc if two months down the line GW are going to blow up the subsector I was using, or fundamentally change the nature of the faction in question, or jump the timeline forward by a century so any baseline humans involved in my fiction would be dead or decrepit.
Well, the Dark Imperium fluff does specify that the laws of time have really begun to fray after the Great Rift has spread across the sky, with some worlds experiencing decades as others experience but a moment. Not to mention that the Imperial dating system was really shaky anyway. With that in mind, there will be a large number of even the lowest dregs of society who may have seen those two centuries pass.
I take a "between the canon" rather than "in the canon" approach to WH40K story telling. I've almost always chosen to set things in my own sectors, worlds and characters, and for a long time I've been involved in the Carthax Sector project run by The Conclave forums. Keeping things in our own corner of the universe meant that GW wouldn't rule that any of those planets had blown up - and it meant we also had the authority to blow those planets up. (Also, having a cluster of sectors is more plausible than when people write Inquisitorial warbands with characters from all the most famous planets of the Imperium, regardless of where those planets are in the galaxy).
I tried taking that same approach into CB's universe, but eventually I just wasn't left enough safe corners in their setting.
MrMoustaffa wrote: Kind of screwed up that whole notion that they were completely boned and living on borrowed time.
Doubtless there are some people for whom this has changed things.
But, personally, it's all been stuff I can weather. Even for the fluff from the article from WD284 about the regiments fighting against the 13th Black Crusade that I loved so much that I made an exception to my normal rule of giving the canon breathing space and just outright pilfered the illustration and background about the 303rd Mordant Acid Dogs so that I could have that exact Sergeant in my Inquisitor games.
Did GW finally deciding to go with an actual version of how the 13th Black Crusade ended need me to adjust her background a bit? Sure, I had to slightly rethink how she ended up where she is now. However, it didn't make any fundamental changes to how she now is as a character, so it doesn't invalidate any of the games she's been involved in - and that makes it a rather better change for me than some of the background retcons CB have asked me to swallow, where regiments have been re-written from units who'd calmly and efficiently be the rearguard when retreating from Hell itself to hot-headed religious nutters.
Maybe things have been different for you, but as right now GW haven't done anything that's left me with steam coming out of my ears, but CB has.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: I'd struggle to call the incident which black hawk down is based on a failure. <snip> Any army ever would pray for ratios like that.
As phillv85 has already pointed out, inflicting enemy casualties was not the mission objective. (In fact, seldom is raw casualties an actual mission objective unless you're playing tabletop/video games... or perhaps a terrorist).
The mission was supposed to be a fairly routine one hour mission to grab some clan leaders, and it turned into a fifteen hour Charlie Foxtrot that killed 19 Americans, wounded 73 more, caused a few deaths and injuries amongst the supporting UN troops that had to be pulled in to get them out, killed a couple of hundred Somali civillians with stray gunfire, created several hundred martyrs for the Somali National Alliance, destroyed two $20 million helicopters, and helped stoke domestic sentiment that forced the withdrawal from the conflict entirely.
DarkBlack wrote: The rules changed and you can no longer do the exact things you could before the change? Get over it, you can still use the miniatures, they just work slightly differently.
I don't really give a damn about whether they nerfed my favourite tactics*. A lot of the models I used were models I used because I liked them as models (although I did find that, often, they were a lot more viable than people said).
I'm angry that a game that was developed from a homebrew RPG, including deliberate background elements to allow characters to survive death, has absolutely no consideration for players wanting to develop their own characters and stories in the universe and is prepared to entirely retcon setting background - three editions and a full decade (to say nothing of the time before Infinity was published) is a point by which they really should have got their poop sorted out.
* Okay, I'll be honest, there was something I was not at all happy about from a rules perspective, but it wasn't a profile change - it was them deciding that doctors were forced to activate servant remotes if they had any, therefore preventing those doctors from joining coordinated orders. I would have accepted if servants couldn't be activated in a coordinated order or if servants counted towards the limit of coordinating 4 models, but them forcing the doctors to not coordinate at all was taking the proverbial. Given that I often made heavy use of doctors/servants, making those profiles a complete double-edged sword was NOT popular with me.
It didn't even make sense - doctors could still only activate ONE remote even they had several, so apparently they could be disconnected from remotes...
Getting hit with background changes that spat in the face of characters I'd spent ages developing and their models that I'd put painstaking effort into converting (and that illogical rules change that made many of my favourite profiles half-useless at the same time) was definitely enough to put me off the game, and frankly, I don't have the motivation to get back in when for all I know CB might decide that one of my factions having a civil war and splitting in two would make a great plot for their next event season.
Infinity has moved very far away from a RPG. Expecting a company that is moving their fluff forward to do so in way that will always be consistent with what you have for your characters is not realistic though.
It pain me to say it, but by the sound of what you are looking for a tactical skirmish game (like Infinity) is probably not a good place for you, maybe a campaign based warband game like Shadespire, Mordheim or Frostgrave?
Does not make Infinity a bad game though or CB as bad as you make them out to be. Again, CB did research into what people bring to the table and only split Yu Jing after finding that very few players mix the Japanese with other Yu Jing (with the exception of ninja, which are still available in both factions).
I greatly enjoy Infinity and want other people to find the same enjoyment (really wish someone told me about it sooner); so reasons to play Infinity are:
-Balance, which I define as not being able to predict the winner based on the matchup or lists (unless one is really bad, which is easily avoided in any faction)
-Community; the rules keep even a WAAC in check, your list will not win for you. So the game does not appeal to the worst kind of donkey-cave.
-It's intense; there is hidden information and you are always involved (but at a disadvantage in your opponents turn). The rules translate well into the experience the designers were aiming for.
-Online support. There is an official army builder online, it has all the current (they get updates) stats, weapons, skills and equipment for all units in all factions. I you make a list with it then it has a nifty check mark in the corner, so your opponent knows your list is legal, even though you have hidden information. All the rules for said stats, weapons, skills and equipment are in the rulebook (which is why it is so thick, but you don't need a codex). Said rulebook can be downloaded for free (full PDF), you can get a hardcopy with fluff if you want it though.
-The core rules and mechanic is actually quite simple; there is just a lot of weapons, skills and equipment (many are unique to factions or even models). Everything is in the books (there is an expansion of extra rules, also free to download), so no having to "trust" the guy who "forgot" his codex.
For the "GW vs .." part of the OP;
The weaker balance allow people who would exploit it to get a cheap win the ability to do just that. People who go for cheap wins are poison to a gaming community IMO.
I'm getting a little salty about the number of books I need to keep playing GW games with active gamers.
I personally enjoy the experience offered by Infinity more. Which is a matter of taste and does not make any game or company better than another
Flashman wrote: Since 2015, I've mostly been playing Guild Ball and Bushido.
The key difference between these games (aside from the low model count) and GW stuff is the dice mechanics.
GW... roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. Just an ever decreasing dice pool where probability determines the outcome without much input from the player
I'm not going to go into the dice mechanics of Guild Ball and Bushido, but they are far more interesting and thus so are the games.
This is pretty much where I'm at. I l like games that give my brain a good workout and I just don't get that from most of what GW has to offer. I'm the same with video games, I suppose GW are like the AAA publishers of the video game industry to me, they have all the money, they make games that are pretty to look at, have high production values etc but there's not much there under the surface mechanically, little depth and strategy and mastery to their games.
I do hope they bring in better rules writers, maybe even make alternate advanced/competitive rulesets for existing games, but I'm just not sure that's who they are targeting as an audience.
SAGA,Warmachine,Infinty,Malifaux,Guildball,Bushido, Godslayer(just discovered this one) and quite a few others all have so much more going on than anything GW has to offer.
I play exclusively 8th ed 40k right now. I've played other games including GW and non-GW in the past and enjoyed most of them. I'll probably end up playing both other GW and non-GW games again, when time and interest permits.
DarkBlack wrote: Infinity has moved very far away from a RPG. Expecting a company that is moving their fluff forward to do so in way that will always be consistent with what you have for your characters is not realistic though.
It pain me to say it, but by the sound of what you are looking for a tactical skirmish game (like Infinity) is probably not a good place for you, maybe a campaign based warband game like Shadespire, Mordheim or Frostgrave?
I think you've still got the wrong end of the stick as to what I'm looking for. I want a game that I can tell a story with, not one that's trying to tell a story to me.
The way that most formal campaign systems are handled means that the player loses a lot of narrative control over their characters. You can't meaningfully develop a character in depth or over time if they have a statistically significant chance of dying in their first game.
Infinity should have been excellent. The rules don't require characters to permanently die (outside of spec-ops, anyway), the narrative devices of personality backup and cutting edge medical technology means you don't have to hand-wave deaths in-game, and the setting had already had the refinement of being considerably through its second edition by the time I got involved.
However, it wasn't - they made major changes to the background and style of the models/characters I'd put most effort into. If I decide that I want to tell stories in someone else's universe, it's a mark of both respect and trust. And, whether or not you think they did it intentionally or had any commitment to me, I felt my trust had been heavily betrayed by that.
I really haven't been able to build up any enthusiasm since - as they keep advancing the background, for me to even decide whether I want to get back in, I'd have to invest in new books and spend ages reading up background on campaign seasons. (And, to be honest, reading Infinity background was somewhat wearing even when I had the enthusiasm - although their English is infinitely better than my Spanish, it's still often telling that it's their second language, with the phrasing in the little vignette stories in particular often sounding somewhat stilted).
Right now, the stories I'm telling are either Inquisitor, where my groups can tell the tale of our own little corner of the Imperium, or my own original sci-fi/fantasy setting, where I'm no way beholden to the whims of anyone else. I can't see Infinity worming its way back in there at the moment.
Infinity should have been excellent. The rules don't require characters to permanently die (outside of spec-ops, anyway), the narrative devices of personality backup and cutting edge medical technology means you don't have to hand-wave deaths in-game, and the setting had already had the refinement of being considerably through its second edition by the time I got involved.
It is excellent,just not aimed at what you're looking for.
DarkBlack wrote: It is excellent,just not aimed at what you're looking for.
As the entire context of my statement was "what I was looking for", taking it out of that context to contradict me is both pointless and rude. A Ferrari 488 would be generally considered a "better" car than a Fiat 500, but why tell me how brilliant the Ferrari is if what I want is a small city runabout?
Infinity did, for a time, appear to be what I was looking for, but it ceased to be so very abruptly - I have far less ill-will for the GW games I've left behind, because I drifted away from most of them rather more gradually. A few of Infinity's mechanics will persist for me, as it inspired some of the features in my Inquisitor Revised Edition project, but it's no longer a game I'm prepared to recommend.
) some of the models and faction concepts have been quite interesting even if they're still all a little over the top...but I just can't. Every time I try and dig into it, it just makes me miss 
Having said that, what's kept me coming back to 
).
