So like, this is just, like..... your opinion man!

What makes a good wargame?

I don't want to lead the question too much, so I will leave it open ended. I am of the opinion that I have no idea what other people want to play, but I know what I like to play. Therefore, this is an attempt to get a better feel for what things "other people" like to play and why.

I am not looking for game recommendations at all. I am looking for the elements of a game that you enjoy.

For me it needs to be dramatic or tell a good story to be fun.

Oh, and it has to look good.

More dice and minis, less cards/counters and other table junk.

For a historical game, it needs to allow for period tactics naturally, not through special rules or exceptions. It also needs to capture the verisimilitude of the period and scale of combat. The events and flow of the game should somewhat match up to historical accounts.

For sci-fi and fantasy, I don't know. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

The bias of determining a winner is heavily on in game decision making and not a foregone conclusion based on army choice nor especially susceptible to massive dice swings.

First and foremost: it's fun. I mean, it is a game, and if it isn't fun, then that's missing the point.

What constitutes "fun" is definitely different for everyone, though. Generally, for me a system which has some intuitive mechanics that model what is happening reasonably well and is internally consistent helps a lot, so that I'm not having to constantly look up rules or remember weird edge cases. (This lets me concentrate more on things happening on the table and making tactical choices, rather than remembering obscurities in how things work.)

It also needs to have cool models on the table, but this doesn't necessarily mean a dedicated line; there are many mini-agnostic games that can still be fun and let me use whatever cool models I have, or some dedicated games that I have a collection for.

Related to several other threads I've participated in and some of the OP's other questions: it needs to allow me to make interesting choices. To a large degree that means it not being a forgone conclusion at the list building stage, but also not so heavily reliant on randomness that it all comes down to a dice roll. If I can play on auto-pilot, then it's not very engaging, and to me not very fun.

Relatively streamlined mechanics that still give some idea of simulation.
Morale is important.
Killing stuff is not the only way to win the game.
List building is not a major part of the game, most lists can do reasonably well against most other lists, edge cases excepted.
Decisions matter more than dice rolls, but dice rolls throw interesting wrinkles in the way of plans forcing creativity. This is important to remove the "chess" element of always doing a certain opening and so on that makes wargames more engaging.
I prefer alternating activation to IGOUGO these days, but IGOUGO is fine for games with limited "alpha strike" capability.

I’m into the GW shonky style. I don’t mind wonky rules provided the models are ace, the games are cinematic and chance plays a decent part.

I’m not so into X-Wing, as that’s so skill based it can be difficult to get into as your opponent literally flies circles round your ships.

Nowt wrong with either, I just have my preference.

It's nearly 4am so I'll try and come back to this but. A good wargame doesn't need a new edition every two years. But can be expanded on near Infinium.

Competitive games need more than just 'kill all the other guy's stuff to win'

And less random, and more reward for players making good tactical decisions.

And lastly a good wargame is playable at multiple levels (i.e. skirmish, intermediate, and massive model count).

Friendly for beginners to get in, as well without having to worry about ye who bought the most rare/expensive model wins syndrome.

Can't say about wargaming in general but about 40k to me the most important thing is to play with miniatures I like. Being forced to bring 4-6 HQs and 6-9 troops just to make my army work was the reason why I didn't like 8th edition and prefer 7th, even if orks were much more competitive in 8th. But I hated 8th editions lists, being competitive has never been important to me as I mostly play friendly pre-arranged games anyway.

Yeah I REALLY wish they'd bring back the force org tree of 1-2 HQ, 0-3 Elites, FA, and HS and 2-6 Troops. And that's IT. And no named characters under 2000 points and not without opponent's permission. That'd really help the spirit of the game and general fun.

Fun factor is most important. The tempo of the game matters alot for that. Things to avoid is if it's too slow to play, if it gets bogged down in rules referencing or dice rolling. I like a rule in warmaster, where combat also included movement, with units being pushed back or forward. This lead to new decisions opening up during the line battles, even if nothing died.

Game has to look good also, not clutter the board with too many markers or play without terrain, no too weird looking unit formations.

 Da Boss wrote:
Relatively streamlined mechanics that still give some idea of simulation.
Morale is important.
Killing stuff is not the only way to win the game.
List building is not a major part of the game, most lists can do reasonably well against most other lists, edge cases excepted.
Decisions matter more than dice rolls, but dice rolls throw interesting wrinkles in the way of plans forcing creativity. This is important to remove the "chess" element of always doing a certain opening and so on that makes wargames more engaging.
I prefer alternating activation to IGOUGO these days, but IGOUGO is fine for games with limited "alpha strike" capability.

I guess you must love playing A Song Of Ice And Fire, then

 Azreal13 wrote:
The bias of determining a winner is heavily on in game decision making and not a foregone conclusion based on army choice nor especially susceptible to massive dice swings.

Pretty much this, also actually having rules and mini's having reasonable availability (looking at you PP)

@ Doc. X-Wing movement is at bit simpler than you're making out its mostly eyeballing where the templates will take you, and the whole order of movement of different pilot skills (although to be fair for the tail end of 1.0 I played Hera on The Ghost, 360 fire arc and dial tweaking hi-jinx)

Not in any particular order

Good, stable, consistent rules mechanics.
That movement and placement matters, not just target selection.
Miniatures I like.
A reasonably varied selection in list building.
Some functional concistency in how randomization works in the game (I do love those bell curves).
Games that don't blob the miniatures up (see movement and placement)

I want:

1) some simulationist versimilitude. The units on the table should move, fight, and act in ways that in some way recall the thing that they are attmpting to represent.

The clearest example of a wargame doing this wrong that I've played was a Roman battle game that was very much one of those Beardfests of "We playtested these rules by having REAL ACTUAL PEOPLE do all the stuff out on a field!"

-Infantry moved 12"
-Cavalry/Elephants moved 18"
-Archers/Slingers fired 4"
-combat resolution was based entirely on number of models. there were 10 infantrymen on a legionaire base, 5 cavalry on a cavalry base, and 2 elephants on an elephant base

^I think you can immediately see the core problem with these mechanics.

2) the ability to create an army that is distinctively "Mine" through the rules, and an interesting decision making matrix in the realm of strategy prior to the game. I like list building, so sue me. Wargames where i basically have no way to vary my force or think about what I'm bringing really don't appeal to me.

3) mechanics that encourage interesting decision making and incentivize tactics that are more complex than simply destroying the opposing army.

Nothing in a wargame is more dull to me than line infantry wargames where you have ridiculously complicated turning and wheeling and maneuvering rules, so 99% of the time the best way to tackle a given scenario is line up your troops, walk into range, and start firing and rolling dice until one side wins.

1. Cool dynamic models. I'm playing with cool toys. I want them to be cool toys.

2. Dynamic table state. Models need to be moving around the board. That's the whole reason we track the position with said cool toys.

3. Mechanics that force models to choose which abilities to prioritize each turn and vary actions taken each round.

4. Scenario elements that alter the goals of each game and keep them varied.

5. Pieces that have an outsized impact on the state of the game to focus the sense of story.

6. Developers that show an interest in fixing problem and making the game as fair as possible while pushing new ideas.

I look for a faction I like, and that the rules for the game have some bite, I'm not a huge fan of the simple rules trend.

Define what "bite" is please? I am not sure I understand.

 Easy E wrote:
Define what "bite" is please? I am not sure I understand.

Rules i can spend a while examining, i like rules that there are tons of layers of.

For me it's:

1. In-game decisions are more important than list building. I want list building to play some part in the game but decisions on the table should be the most important part of the game.

2. Relatively quick. 60-90 minutes is probably the sweet spot for me. Games that take longer can be fine but I find the longer a game takes the more the balance matters. If we have a blowout of a game and it takes 45 minutes that's fine, let's reset and try again. If the same blowout lasts 2+ hours that's just a waste of time.

3. Verisimilitude. The combat you're trying to represent and the various unit types should work close to how I imagine they should in real life. Ideally this ties into point 1 by allowing real-world tactics too.

4. It looks good. I like the visual spectacle of a wargame. It's what differentiates them from board games, IMO.

I could write a whole essay on this given my profession, so... I will!

Firstly, the real answer is "depends on the purpose of the game." There are many types of wargames - analytical (to generate data/insights about warfare), training (to educate about warfighting), hobby/entertainment (self-explanatory), and COA development (building theoretical courses of action as part of a theory of victory in a warfight).

Of these four types, I'm going to talk about the Hobby aspect, given the context of the forum - though I can go into more detail if you want.

Hobby/entertainment wargaming is a sticky wicket, given that the primary reason for executing such a wargame is "fun" and it is constrained by factors that the other games aren't really as constrained by (the need to declare a victor at the end and the absence of a GM). The first of these means that it naturally lends itself to competitive play - though that by no means is the goal, it's merely a consequence of a game in which there is decidedly a victor and a loser. The second of these is the most constraining, and that's because that means all the adjudication methodology must be contained on a piece of paper.

This constraint - tying the players to that game's specific adjudication methods and mechanics - is a challenge few designers can overcome. The rules must be simple enough that the average person can follow them, but complex enough to make the game more engaging than, say, rock paper scissors or a coinflip (e.g. ruled purely by randomness or pre-gameplay factors). This generally precludes complex mechanics such as ISR (or other methods of detecting the enemy). Sometimes, a good designer can capture an abstraction of ISR and good intelligence gathering on the tabletop without a flexible, complex adjudicator, but there are typically artifacts of the abstraction that are unrealistic. Perhaps the simplest of these is the "deployment blinds" common in some historical games.

There are also two philosophies about game design that you can see competing across multiple different games in the modern era - though this is a more recent phenomenon. "Back in the day" as it were (see the rules for Prussian Kriegspiel for example from the 1800s), wargames were process focused. This is contrasted with outcome focused. This is similar to the distinction between Discrete Event Simulation and Continuous simulation within computer science, though it is not identical. To elaborate and define:

Process games tend to focus on the process of the warfight in discrete time-steps. At any given moment, a player can walk up and say "what is happening?" and the players can point to exactly where they are in the process and in time. For example, Chain of Command is a fantastic historical World War 2 game that is process-oriented. When you shoot at a tank, you find out if you've hit the tank (applying several situational modifiers), then you see if you penetrate or perforate the armor (using a unique mechanic that distills complex physics into a stochastic combat-power comparison, essentially), then you find out what you've hit inside the tank/what beyond-armor-effect the weapon has (if you penetrated or perforated). At any point in this process, the step can be paused and examined. For example, if a 17pdr hits the armor of a Tiger, one could pause the flow of the game, go look up the "chance to perforate" on average of a 17pdr vs a Tiger's relevant armor facing at the relevant range (tables are 240 yards along their long axis for a 6x4), and then roll the dice and compare outcomes. This, in essence, can be used to "verify-and-validate" the game, as well as helping to tell the game's story.
The strengths of the process method are that it can be adjusted on the fly mid-stride (you could adjust the probability of success of the 17pdr penetrating a Tiger in-stream without affecting the game overmuch), verification and validation (the results can be compared to reality at any given step of the way), and narrative storytelling (the low level of abstraction aids the players in understanding what happened. Will the 17pdr hit the ammo, fuel, or compel the crew to bail out? Or will a second hit from another weapon be required? If so, what does that weapon do? etc.).
The weaknesses of the process method is that it can sometimes be laborious to execute and badly-abstracted phenomena stand out like a sore thumb. Badly-written rules can also hinder the execution process to the point where it becomes a chore to play, rather than a joy.

Outcome games tend to focus on making sure the events in the battle turn out roughly as they should "in real life" (or whatever the game setting is) but are less concerned with any individual details. The most famous modern game that uses this sort of mechanic is Warhammer 40k. Compare the tank resolution above to the following situation: Rather than hitting, determining penetration, and determining beyond-armor effects, 40k simply abstracts the internal components of the tank and the morale of the crew into a "wounds" stat, and the armored durability of the tank into a combination of a "toughness" and "save" stats. When a given weapon hits a tank, it doesn't "penetrate the armor" - rather, it succeeds a series of pass-fail checks against the toughness and save stats before doing some amount of damage to the vehicle's abstract "wounds". What weapon destroys a tank isn't determined as much by whether it can penetrate or its beyond-armor effects, but rather the order in which the weapons are fired. Take a Leman Russ for example - a trio of Lascannons may strip 11 wounds, but the Russ's last wound was lost to a boltgun. Did the boltgun "destroy" the tank? Or did the combination of anti-tank weapons and suppressive infantry fire force the crew to bail out? We will never know - and the system doesn't care. It's written so that the outcome of this engagement with the Leman Russ turns out roughly as it should, not so that we can find out exactly what happened to said Leman Russ narratively.
The strengths of the outcome-oriented method is that it is fairly simple to execute and very easy to balance. Badly written rules do not grind the process to the halt, because the abstractions are such that "good enough" is sufficient, since clarity is not a requirement. Furthermore, outcome-oriented games are easier to design, because it isn't important how any given mechanic works so long as it's sufficiently simple and the outcomes are sufficiently "good enough" relative to reality (or whatever the game setting is.).
The weaknesses of the outcome-oriented method is that it is very difficult to actually use it to tell a story. In vague terms, the lascannons and infantry fire above killed the Russ, but when it comes down to "who killed the Russ" the answer is "a marine with his handheld rifle" which is, of course, not realistic. This means that systems that try to track the performance of individual units in the army (like 40k's Crusade rules) are victimized, because they DO care about the specific, procedural interaction between units on the board, but the rules procedures themselves are more concerned with getting the engagement "generally correct". Additionally, such systems are harder to verify and validate. How effective is a Lascannon against a Leman Russ? Hard to say - one cannot kill a Russ at all, but Three are likely to kill it. That seems "roughly correct" in outcome, but the connection to the actual background setting is tenuous.


In conclusion, this means "what makes a good wargame" depends on what the players want out of it. If you want a narrative storytelling game where the individual actions of units and models are important, a process-oriented wargame like Lord of the Rings or Chain of Command or Prohammer is preferable. If you want an easy-to-play game that doesn't have much complexity but can provide fun and competition, use an outcome-oriented wargame like Bolt Action, Warhammer 40k or Age of Sigmar.

TLDR:
It depends on what you want out of the game, but it is possible to link game-type and design-philosophy to the desired outcome.

@Unit1126PLL That was excellent, thank you!

But Unit1126PLL- You never answered. What makes a game good to you?



As a Pro-Am designer myself, the question when designing is always:

"What am I trying to do with this design, and is this the right tool to do it with?"

Surprisingly, I almost never ask myself if a game is "good" because as this thread shows there is no clear definition of what that even means. Since I do not know what other people like to play (only what I like to play) I started this thread to help me get a better understanding of broad range of the "Voice of the Customer" for games.

For me, a process-oriented design is better.

For all types of wargames, I love doing informal postgame analyses on to find out what went wrong and how to improve. For process games, this is easy because I have a step by step picture of how success and failure is determined (even if the process is stochastic, I can determine that "more often than not, the armor on my tanks is being penetrated by enemy guns. I have to shift tactics to change this by x" f.e.).

I also like specific battle narratives (Strelky Illya blew up the pillbox with a satchel charge!) rather than just determining outcomes (blue won because the pillbox was destroyed, doesn't matter how).

Process-oriented for me.

I view wargames rules as a chance to play with my painted miniatures and terrain. It's not an exaggeration to say that for me the toys and fun with friends is the point, with a good story being a close second. I'm not looking for granular complexity, nor am I looking to buy into a Bradford-Exchange-like buying program that will have me continually purchasing more rulebooks and supplements. I am however, willing to buy game expansions occasionally if they add alot of useful units or scenarios and are affordably priced.

I look for a ruleset that creates a good feel for the era/setting/etc with the least number of rules as possible. Speed of gameplay is very important. If -after a couple games- gameplay isn't under 2 hours that's too long. Preferrence given to rules that do without (or with as few as possible) tokens, chips and markers on the gaming table. That stuff just clutters up the beauty of painted figures and great terrain.

I want it to include either a unit builder or enough unit profiles that I can use what minis I've got without having to buy another book. Rules that are miniature-agnostic or cover a wide swath of miniatures are preferred. Balanced gameplay and factions is more important than special rules and individual unit "flavor". However, I don't game often enough to work into the minutiae of rules blalance so whether or not a game is tournament-tight is irrelevant to me.

It should include interesting scenarios. In fact, scenario play is far more attractive to me than extremely-equalized generic missions.

To that end, I lean toward games like Mech Attack, Song of Blades and Heroes, Dragon Rampant, Kings of War, Necromunda (NCE edition please).

All of these games do a great job bringing a great overall flavor to the game without getting bogged down by special rules or expansions and do so in a relatively quick amount of time. They are all affordable as are their supplements which generally add useful armies or scenarios to the game rather than just over-complex-ifying a specific faction or slowing gameplay. Most of them are not to tightly tied to a specific set of miniatures.

Deleted - double posting

I think there's definitely things that make a wargame objectively good. One might think that 'good' is subjective, but it cannot be purely subjective because we can share things and recommend them to others on the basis of their quality. The trick, it seems, is understanding how differences in perception translate into differences in evaluation.

Unit1126PLL lays out what a wargame is, or rather what wargames are as a collection of related activities. It's a similar question to what tool is good, that we must ask what tool is good for what task. So in asking what makes a good wargame, we must understand the question to be asking what makes a good wargame for entertainment purposes (or analytical, or educational, or etc).

I think that what makes a good wargame for entertainment purposes are the following characteristics:

(1) Agency - players want to be able to bring what they want to a game, and so a player that wants to bring the Ultramarines 2nd Company circa the 38th millennium will think a game good when it allows them to do so, and likewise if they want to bring their own custom Chapter, or say replay a western gunfight or whatever.

Likewise players will want a game to allow them to do the things they want to do, and for those actions to matter. The game needs to meet their expectations, so if they see a sniper in a war movie, they're probably going to want to see snipers in a wargame behaving in the same way depending on whether they prefer the process or outcome side of things. It's also where you get all the complaints about Warhammer 40,000 in that the media around the game sets up one's expectations and the game does its own thing. Me, I used to rationalize that the protagonists in novels used to roll all 6s, and the mooks would only roll 1s, whereas in a game the players agreed to roll honest dice. Ideally the process and outcome should meet the expectations that the game and its surrounding media set up - that's the crux of the 'realism' debate.

A game is good when it facilitates this sense of agency, facilitating the process and outcome to match the expectation it initially set forth.

(2) Usability - Something of a counter-balance to agency is usability, because while a game may allow players to do everything and anything, the work required to do so may subvert the game's ability to satisfy the expectations of the players. There's a specific cognitive load that players can have or they'll essentially become stressed by a game instead of it reducing their stress-level, and likewise time constraints. That'll be different for everyone, but again the variation doesn't mean there aren't broad swathes of audience that share most of those constraints. And that's not including things like clear rules, table space, and so on.

Games involve effort, and the better ratio of effort to reward the better the game.

(3) Engagement - Wargames as entertainment need to engage the players, which is to say that they need to either facilitate engagement between the players, so that the players are playing with each other rather than simply trying to operate the game, or playing with the game rather than trying to operate it in the case of solo play. A player is engaged when they're exploring the space of agency in the game; it's not enough for a game to give a player agency, and to make it easy enough to play out that agency, but the procedures making up the game need to reward the players for enacting them. A good game encourages you to think about it, and to enjoy thinking about it. It's also ethically interesting because this is where game design can turn into a Skinner Box design...

(4) Pop-cultural franchising. This is the secret sauce of GW games. People like games. They also like buying stuff, painting stuff, photographing stuff, talking about stuff, reading and writing stories about stuff, watching movies, and so on. A good wargame sits at the intersection of a bunch of different things, and it's arguably why Warhammer is so successful when games fulfilling the other three better exist. Wargames aren't abstract things floating around in a Platonic space, but activities that intersect with a variety of other hobbies and activities. A good wargame takes those other interests and ties them together so that players can play out conflicts together in a shared space (or play them out solo like a weirdo, I don't judge, much). I think people making wargames, and particularly sci-fi or fantasy wargames, tend to miss this; Warhammer got lucky because it collected a ton of pop-cultural tropes at a time when stuff was less tightly exploited as vertically-integrated franchises (and has a great variety because it wasn't limited to one franchise). It's evolved into its own thing, and demonstrated a space for wargames and games with miniatures on a tabletop, and how a pop culture franchise can also be a Hobby. WWII games do this to a degree, because of the historical impact of WWII sustains a fascination with it. People want wargames to be about stuff they're interested in, is what I'm saying.

being enjoyable "out of the box", i mean wihtut needing to tweak things yourself

I like how nobody described 40k but probably everybody plays 40k

I like short rules with lots of tactical depth and everything that's not about making tactically meaningful decisions filed off.

My holy trinity are X-wing, Monsterpocalypse, Deadzone (all first editions)

Warhammer Underworlds is pretty close for a GW game.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I like how nobody described 40k but probably everybody plays 40k

Sometimes "what makes a good wargame" is just being able to find other people to play it with.

That's a practical requirement rather than a philosophical statement about wargames, but it is the reason everyone seems to play 40k after all.

I think saying 'has played' might be more accurate. I don't play anymore and I don't think Easy E does anymore either (going by memory, could be embarrassingly wrong).

Finding people to play seems to be more of a function of technology these days. My local had a Facebook page that was pretty diverse, and now it has a Discord server that's even more diverse (at least in terms of games people want to talk about). It's easier to find people online.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I like how nobody described 40k but probably everybody plays 40k

Sometimes "what makes a good wargame" is just being able to find other people to play it with.

That's a practical requirement rather than a philosophical statement about wargames, but it is the reason everyone seems to play 40k after all.

And roll credits. Perfectly stated.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I like how nobody described 40k but probably everybody plays 40k

Sometimes "what makes a good wargame" is just being able to find other people to play it with.

That's a practical requirement rather than a philosophical statement about wargames, but it is the reason everyone seems to play 40k after all.

I’d go beyond that it’s just being able to find opponents. It’s the opportunity to find the right opponents for you.

If your local community is predominantly WAACaNooB, and don’t see you so much as someone in need of training as a series of quick and easy wins? You may not be hanging around very long. I mean, I wouldn’t in that situation. Others may have the opposite opinion, and fair enough.

If you can’t find anyone else to play on a more sporting level at least while you learn the ropes? What are the chances of you sticking around?

This is where X-Wing, GW and PP have a shoe-in. Their games are big enough that you may have more than one local gaming group, and as such a better chance at finding opponents you enjoy playing against. Some might really like their tournament play. Others might be more narrative heavy. Even within the same club you might find the variety to suit.

But when it’s a small number only playing a specific way? That is how people are going to see the game. From WAACaNooB to Complex And Incomprehensible Years Long Narrative, it can put people off. The game itself might be incredibly solid. But if you don’t have fun playing your opponents?

Cyel: Sorry, I don't quite get the joke. I don't know anything about the ASOIAF game. I used to be a huge fan of the series but I've really cooled on it over the long wait between books (only watched the first season of the show, thought it was pretty cool). My favourite version of that universe is what's presented in the Hedge Knight short stories.

I thought of something else, as I was writing my initial post I was mostly thinking about rules, but there's a couple of other things that are important to me.
1. Models - I want to be able to use any of the models I own, within reason, in the game. At least, I don't want to be limited to only one manufacturer's models. I think that mentality promoted by companies like Privateer Press and Games Workshop is anti-gamer and giving in to it is silly. There's loads of great minis out there and why not use as many as you can for your games? For sure you can use whatever you want in home games, but it's also true that the "official models" stance impacts game rules (no model, no rules) and game communities when people buy into it. So I prefer to play game systems that are open about allowing people to use whatever they want.
2. No churn - I don't really want my hobby to be researching, buying and reading rules supplements. I'm kinda past that stage in my hobby. I like painting, making terrain and playing. That means I'm generally happy with a core book and some army lists, and I don't want a threadmill of releases to keep up with that constantly alter the state of the game.
And related to that:
3. Setting, not story. If my game has background material, I vastly prefer the idea of a setting that is an open sandbox to play around in and alter and create stuff as you like, than an ongoing narrative where I follow along as a consumer of the narrative and the models represent the major characters in the narrative. The latter approach is fine, it's not anti-gamer or anything like that, but having played games with both approaches I find the former approach much more satisfying.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I like how nobody described 40k but probably everybody plays 40k

I like short rules with lots of tactical depth and everything that's not about making tactically meaningful decisions filed off.

My holy trinity are X-wing, Monsterpocalypse, Deadzone (all first editions)

Warhammer Underworlds is pretty close for a GW game.

40K 3rd edition is an example of a good wargame. Modern 40K and really 6-9th now, have been some of the worst games ever made. So speaking for just me, it's USED to play 40K cause I don't right now.

Not counting RPGs I think my favorites are X-wing 2.0 (Still love 1.0 but there's so much more stuff in the game now. Though I miss my harpoons.) Gaslands (which is quickly becoming my absolute fav.), and then it's a toss up between Dropzone Commander and Frostgrave 1.0 (simply cause I don't have the 2.0 book yet.)

I think for me the best wargame I have played is 'King of the Battlefield'.

Why?

The rules mostly fit on 4 sides of A5. Despite this Ian managed to capture the way battles of the era played out fantastically. I can in an evening command a large army, be rewarded for using period tactics and come to a historically plausible result.

The simply rules don't get in the way of the tactics and the use of reserve lines (why did all those colourful armies form up in multiple lines?). I have genuine choices to make in selecting the quality of my troops and deciding how to best employ them.

In short over an evening I can have a tactically engaging game that rewards basic knowledge of the period, stops powergaming and feel skill was the biggest factor (outside terrible dice rolls) in what outcome occurred.

Having a good opponent......which is a rarity for the past 20 years....effing wargamers

Balance - I want to be able to pick a faction for its aesthetic. I hate when that decision turns all my games into losses.

Simplicity - 75% of my games over the last few years have been with new players or non-war gamers. Games like X Wing, Warcry, Bolt Action, and Underworlds are easy to teach. Tried to teach/play 40k and we had to quit because it took too long, they lost interest, and the rules aren’t intuitive.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I like how nobody described 40k but probably everybody plays 40k

I like short rules with lots of tactical depth and everything that's not about making tactically meaningful decisions filed off.

My holy trinity are X-wing, Monsterpocalypse, Deadzone (all first editions)

Warhammer Underworlds is pretty close for a GW game.

Huh. I was extremely extensively into Monsterpocalypse 1E for a long time and I would NOT have ever described the rules of that game as "short". "tactical depth" yes, tons, but INSANELY complicated and bloated to all hell in that classic PP fashion of giving you tons and tons and tons of choices most of which are always or almost always bad ones.

Also, the joy of having such a limited strategic layer was almost entirely based on the blind-box system. Monpoc 1e games where either player had unlimited access to whatever buildings they wanted to use would be utterly miserable experiences.

Have you tried the 2nd edition?

It has to have rules and mechanics that help me feel like I'm commanding an army and not just playing a magic the gathering game with expensive miniatures.

It has to be about playing the game as opposed to trying to win in the listbuilding phase.

It has to be immersive to me / believable. If I have men hiding in cover, and you can target them freely because one of your guys can see one of my guys' toenail, that is a problem to me.

It has to be at least somewhat balanced. If there are lots of obvious takes and trash units that no one ever takes, its not good. And invalidating purchases on a regular basis is a hard no to me.

I don't care about popularity or finding people to play as long as I can play with one or two others. Because what is hugely popular is often also very sub standard rules-wise to me.

I agree that accessibility of opponents is a huge consideration.

As listed above, my tastes run to generic, fast-play rulesets and at times I've been fairly successful at finding opponents for such games in a major metropolitan area.

However, if I found my self in a more rural, or suburban area where 40k was the only option and I wanted to game, I'd probably break open my retirement account, buy all the necessary books and put my old 40k armies back on the table.

Almost any war game is better than no game.

I don’t agree that any wargame is better than no wargame. A good conversation is better than many wargames. Some Wargames get in the way of having a good time, having a fun social interaction, fully realizing the fruits of the hobby and painting tables as time well spent...

That’s assuming you are playing in good company. There’s no such thing as a good wargame when you’re stuck playing a donkey cave.

Oh, absolutely agree with that. There have been wargames that I've walked away from that I've genuinely disliked, either because of the game itself or certain players.

 Easy E wrote:
So like, this is just, like..... your opinion man!

What makes a good wargame?

I don't want to lead the question too much, so I will leave it open ended. I am of the opinion that I have no idea what other people want to play, but I know what I like to play. Therefore, this is an attempt to get a better feel for what things "other people" like to play and why.

I am not looking for game recommendations at all. I am looking for the elements of a game that you enjoy.

The story that it is telling must be compelling, and for any success and longevity of a game that story should appeal to a broad group.

The mechanics should be easy to grasp and not read like a divorce agreement or merger agreement. I guess I am looking for elegance. I care less about the process as I do about the effect.

The miniatures should be cool, or if it is a board game the pieces/map should be immersive.

 auticus wrote:
It has to have rules and mechanics that help me feel like I'm commanding an army and not just playing a magic the gathering game with expensive miniatures.

It has to be about playing the game as opposed to trying to win in the listbuilding phase.

It has to be immersive to me / believable. If I have men hiding in cover, and you can target them freely because one of your guys can see one of my guys' toenail, that is a problem to me.

It has to be at least somewhat balanced. If there are lots of obvious takes and trash units that no one ever takes, its not good. And invalidating purchases on a regular basis is a hard no to me.

I don't care about popularity or finding people to play as long as I can play with one or two others. Because what is hugely popular is often also very sub standard rules-wise to me.

Personally in the best case of listbuilding: it should enable me to get my strategy down on the table via handing me the tools i will need, that should come with tradeoffs associated to pts / ressource allocation. Alternatively it should allow me the option to make my army my army (more relevant in fantasy / Sci-Fi settings) .
Basically i should only really be able to lose a game in listbuilding if i set out with no strategy in mind which can be allright but it should never just make the game into a solveable in the listbuilding phase. At most it should present me with problems later down the line on the table wich i may be capable of resolve through creative play.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I don’t agree that any wargame is better than no wargame. A good conversation is better than many wargames. Some Wargames get in the way of having a good time, having a fun social interaction, fully realizing the fruits of the hobby and painting tables as time well spent...

That’s assuming you are playing in good company. There’s no such thing as a good wargame when you’re stuck playing a donkey cave.

I disagree with your disagreement, if only because I really enjoy wargaming as a hobby. The sound of dice hitting the table and the urge to build narratives for my little men (even in my historical games I can make some stuff up to give battles a bit of flavor and meaning, like my platoon lieutenant graduated from uni ROTC or was a battlefield promotion in Italy that stuck, etc.).

A good conversation is as good or as bad as your conversation partner, just like wargaming. A bad conversation can be worse than a bad wargame, because at least the game offers a structure and I can bring uncomfortable topics back to the issue at hand.

Some wargames DO get in the way, as you say, but that's cause to try to modify those games and lobby for their improvement, not just give up on the hobby altogether.

I play 40k because I set aside time each week to play, and while I'd rather be playing other games, the playerbases are so low that between kids, wives, and work, my friends that play them aren't reliably available at the same time I am. For 40k? There's more players than there are places to play at the FLGS.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I don’t agree that any wargame is better than no wargame. A good conversation is better than many wargames. Some Wargames get in the way of having a good time, having a fun social interaction, fully realizing the fruits of the hobby and painting tables as time well spent...

That’s assuming you are playing in good company. There’s no such thing as a good wargame when you’re stuck playing a donkey cave.

I agree with that. I suppose there was a bit hyperbole in my statement. There are certainly some games for which I would simply choose an activity other than wargaming and I have other hobbies to happily fill my time.

We both agree, good company is far more important than the activity of gaming, but over the years I've had generally quite good experiences easily finding friendly gamers across a variety of big-name and small-shop games so maybe it just hasn't been an issue for me.

All that said, my point was simply that broadly speaking if I wanted to be wargaming and 40k or infinity or AoS or Legion, etc.. (not games I'm particularly interested in) or some other big game were the only game in town I'd prefer them to not gaming at all. I'm a cheapskate gamer at heart but -setting that aside- with the exception of some prepainted games, I can't think of any big-name games that I couldn't enjoy playing.

Sometimes 'good enough' is good.

 Easy E wrote:
So like, this is just, like..... your opinion man!

What makes a good wargame?

I don't want to lead the question too much, so I will leave it open ended. I am of the opinion that I have no idea what other people want to play, but I know what I like to play. Therefore, this is an attempt to get a better feel for what things "other people" like to play and why.

I am not looking for game recommendations at all. I am looking for the elements of a game that you enjoy.

If we operate by abstract terms, "fun" is definitely the most important thing for me in a wargame. Fun, however, has different definitions for different people, and I always double-check with my opponent that we both agree on how we're going to achieve this ethereal state of "having fun". On the matter of general attitude it means that both sides agree on having a fun game without abusing clear rule holes and overpowered tactics that essentially negate any good things about chosen system. The system itself should also present itself as casual-friendly, WAAC "play like you've got a pair!" attitude written on the pages is enough for me to turn away and never look back.

A good wargame, in my opinion, should have these important traits - in no particular order of importance but complete abscence of one of each usually means it's not the game for me.

1. Be aesthetically pleasing, both in how models/gameplay look and what's the story behind everything is. I don't care for Malifaux' design and will never play it, regardless of how popular it is around me (and it is) or how good its mechanics are. Similarly, I don't see me collecting forces for Napoleonics regardless of how well known it is in historical wargaming circles or how good models are in technical sense, I just don't care. Mortal Gods, on the other hand, is perfect from visual standpoint, and I can forgive a lot of grievances I have towards this system, because I like how units in this game look and how engaging battlefield pictures can be.

2. Be a good breeding ground for interesting stories. The more random events and modifiers it has (not necessarily positive), the better; it's also good if they are somewhat evenly distributed across the random events table or any other tool the game uses to draw random events from (for example, I really like Joker card mechanic in Blood&Plunder and how many different modifiers it can apply on the battlefield if you draw it from the pile, but receiving "Angry locals" at the start of turn one and watching 1/4 of my force evaporate gave me mixed feelings).

3. No IGOUGO. Either card-based mechanics or alternate activations, I can swallow both. The only IGOUGO exception I really loved was Mordheim (probably my most favorite skirmish system, come to think of it), but that's generally because of huge variety in terms of fighting forces and scenarios, not necessarily rules themselves.

4. Rules shouldn't be bland and overly simple. I can digest both short rulesets and long (100+) rulesets equally if they have fun interactions and/or allow me to recreate interesting scenarios; I love special rules' flavour and unique objectives on the battlefield. What I detest, however, is a lot of calculating, applying bonuses and substracting damage all the time (note: I DO NOT dislike modifiers as a concept, I just dislike when there are dozens of them piling up atop of each other). I like Mortal Gods, B&P and Zona Alfa because their weapon/combat mechanics are simple and intuitive (despite somewhat lacking in one case or the other), but playing Ronin or mathematical exam which is Father Tilly Escalade on larger point costs quickly makes me lose my patience.

5. Bonus points if the game leans heavily towards maneuvering and principal contact with the enemy doesn't necessarily occure on the first turn. There is nothing more dumb than just standing and shooting or rushing through the battlefield and immediately wiping out half the enemy force. No alpha strikes, units should have breathing room and chance to withstand enemy attacks. Attacking enemy from behind or on unfavourable conditions should be important.

6. Additional bonus points if the ruleset in question was proofread at least a little bit. There's nothing more annoying than stopping midgame on a critical moment and looking through the rulebook in hopes of finding out what you should do when different rules are clearly in conflict with each other. Of course, sooner or later you and your opponent can come to an agreement and move along, but if there are too many gaping holes, errors and wonky RAW it makes me question what's the point of playing these rules at all if I constantly have to invent new interactions original authors didn't think about. Same with balancing. I've seen so many rulesets with completely inadequate point cost/stat balance (better weapon costing less than worse weapon and being more freely available - what?) I'm now completely sure 90% of rule makers never bother to doublecheck random numbers they wrote down when they first made up their units and arsenal.

I almost forgot. Community usually has nothing to do with wargame itself, but it can very easily be a dealbreaker if both me and them seek for different things. For example, I've played two games of Conquest: TLoK and really liked the system (miniatures and background not so much, but I could handle that - not bad enough for me to reconsider). However, local community's sport-like attitude and refusal to play anything but barren grey plastic was complete turnoff. I'm not interested in finding ways on how to break game's mechanics while shuffling unpainted and partially unassembled models around.

What I really love in wargames is simple mechanics that leads to advanced gameplay.

I like tactics and outcomes to roughly align with what I expect of the setting/situation.
I find that, in pursuit of this, more abstraction is often better. When you have very detailed rules each abstraction sticks out like a sore thumb.

For example, WW2.
Some wargames just say "all LMGs roll 3 dice" or similar. Okay, I get that. Each LMG had it's own pros and cons and I can see those averaging out.
Other wargames go a little deeper, they'll say "all LMGs roll 3 dice, except the MG42 which rolls 5 dice".
Okay, the MG42 had a higher rate of fire so I see where they're coming from. But hang on, it also used more ammunition, it used more crew to operate. Those aren't represented! Trying to be more realistic has caused all the necessary abstractions of a tabletop game to just look more glaring.

Simple mechanics are also easier to learn, easier to remember.
I like the resolution of actions to be quick and snappy. More time playing, less time resolving!

@kirotheavenger: Can you give an example of 'simple mechanics that leads to advanced gameplay?'

Nurglitch wrote:
@kirotheavenger: Can you give an example of 'simple mechanics that leads to advanced gameplay?'

Turnip 28's morale?

If you lose you automatically retreat, it's a simple morale system utilising "panic" markers to determine the distance + a D6 directly in opposite of the unit it lost too.
This can lead to morale juggling, it makes powder weaponry not always the best option despite being more damaging.

A good player can use it to jugle an opponents units and punish him, it also makes corner camping automatically dangerous. And makes initial movement into engagement range quite difficult. It also facilitates a use for light infantry.

Chain of Command has rules like that (belt fed LMG roll 8 dice, regular LMG roll 6) but the number of crewmen varies historically.

For example, a German LMG team may have 1 crew and a rifleman, because historically they had 3 men and one was just an ammo hauler.

Conversely, a Bren team has 2 men, no riflemen. So the crew is smaller, but the 3rd crewman can fire his rifle so he doesn't feel like an extra man for the German gun.

I don't consider this that unrealistic - and an interesting consequence is that they are more even on the move (4 dice to 3) which is an interesting mechanic. Moving with a belt-fed LMG loses you more than moving with a more portable LMG.

Again, advantages and disadvantages.

Blood Red Skies (WW2 dogfighting) has a mechanic where aircraft at higher Advantage (think a more abstract take on altitude) activate first in a round, before aircraft at lower advantage levels.
This creates a really interesting dynamic of playing for altitude.

To also tie this into the 'more abstraction for better realism' I mentioned;
Aeronautica tracks altitude directly, and in fact generally rewards flying low because it makes it awkward to lose altitude without damaging your aircraft. Aeronautica has added more realistic mechanics (actually tracking altitude), but it's led to less realistic gameplay imo.

 SgtBANZAI wrote:
3. No IGOUGO. Either card-based mechanics or alternate activations, I can swallow both. The only IGOUGO exception I really loved was Mordheim (probably my most favorite skirmish system, come to think of it), but that's generally because of huge variety in terms of fighting forces and scenarios, not necessarily rules themselves.

I'll make the case for IGOUGO if it's either restrained (by some sort of command points that limit how much of your force can go, or test-based activations that randomize which units will activate in a given turn) or gives the opponent some sort of reaction mechanic.

You're right in that full-on IGOUGO is outdated and only in games that have it due to legacy, like 40k or Kings of War.

Like all tools, IGOUGO has a place but it needs to be the right tool for the job.....

I wrote a lot more on this topic here for those interested in wargame design:

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/06/wargames-design-igougo-does-not.html

IGOUGO? Isn't that...taking turns?

IGOUGO is generally understood as the process of a turn being Player 1 activates all their units and does everything with them (move, shoot, fight), then Player 2 does everything with their units.

This is usually in contrast to alternating activation, where Player 1 would activate a number of units, do everything with them, then Player 2 would activate a number of units. They would go back and forth until all units have activated, and that would be the end of a turn.

IgoYgo can work, but only for short turns, or when rules present significant counter play mid turn (eg held actions like overwatch).

Bloodbowl is IgoYgo and I feel it works very well, probably better than AA for that game.
You have only a few minutes (almost never more than 5) whilst your opponent considers and executes their turn, many people play with a 4 minute timer.
There's also limits on what players can do with their turn, there's only one Blitz (basically a charge action) allowed per turn across the entire team.

But something like 40k should NOT be IgoYgo. As the inactive player you can easily be sat down with nothing to do except roll saves and remove models for over half an hour, even up to an hour in some circumstances.
How many times have people seen their opponent wander off during your turn in a game of 40k?
On top of that there's no restriction on unit actions at all, in fact they've steadily removed restrictions so units can move further and attack more than ever before.
That like text book "how not to IgoUgo"

Some great responses here, following along, taking notes.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
@kirotheavenger: Can you give an example of 'simple mechanics that leads to advanced gameplay?'

Turnip 28's morale?

If you lose you automatically retreat, it's a simple morale system utilising "panic" markers to determine the distance + a D6 directly in opposite of the unit it lost too.
This can lead to morale juggling, it makes powder weaponry not always the best option despite being more damaging.

A good player can use it to jugle an opponents units and punish him, it also makes corner camping automatically dangerous. And makes initial movement into engagement range quite difficult. It also facilitates a use for light infantry.

This is interesting. I don't know if it qualifies as "Advanced Gameplay" but I really appreciate a simple mechanic that inspires strategic decision making.

An Example From Song of Blades and Heroes, my favorite fantasy, small warband, fast skirmish game.

-The gambling activation mechanic. Player chooses 1,2 or 3 dice to roll to activate each figure rolled against a quality number. However, roll two failures and play passes to the opponent. It's not a hard mechanic to grok, but that simple mechanic makes the order in which you activate important and each activation has a risk-and reward built in so you're always thinking about whether to play it safe or push your luck.

Further, once a decision is made, combining several results or effects into one dice roll or decision is a plus in my book.
Why should their be rolls to hit, damage and save? Those rolls are actions that a ruleset may require you to take, but in most situations, none of those is a separate decision or choice a player is making. The choice was to shoot and the faster one can see the results of that choice, the faster the game can move to the next meaningful decision.

An example of doing this sort of thing right, again from Song of Blades, a single opposed combat roll (plus or minus modifiers) determines:
1) The winner of combat -Bigger number
2) Whether the opponent falls down or falls back -Even or odd result
3) Whether the loser survives, dies or is so brutally slain as to cause nearby friends to roll for morale -magnitude of difference in results.

3 useful results coming from one chosen action/decision.

Both of those are what I would call elegant mechanics in that they that maximize meaningful decision making and minimize the process of results determination. Put another way "More action, less meaningless dice rolling."

It's nice when simple actions or decisions do lots of work, and less so when you need to follow a 15-minute procedure that ends up not changing the state of the game.

 infinite_array wrote:

I'll make the case for IGOUGO if it's either restrained (by some sort of command points that limit how much of your force can go, or test-based activations that randomize which units will activate in a given turn) or gives the opponent some sort of reaction mechanic.

Only "restrictive" IGOUGO game I've played was Pikeman's Lament, and I honestly hated how the game handled this activation mechanic. In order to activate units during your turn, you had to roll tests. The rule was, if you fail a single activation test, your turn ends. Which led to me receiving a beating with no way to retaliate two turns in a row because I've failed my first rolls both times.

I'm ok with IGOUGO if the game is fast enough for it to not result in a long wait and/or if it's intentional.

KoW IGOUGO is very fast, enables chess-clock play and is a true IGOUGO in that there are NO actions taken by the opposing player during your turn. They can actually go grab a beer while you play if you have access to their stats. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it exists for a reason, makes some sense and moves fast.

Most other IGOUGO however is a mess where it lowers game interaction without noticeably speeding up the game and doesn't seem to exist for any reasons other than tradition or the laziness of the game developer.

 SgtBANZAI wrote:

Only "restrictive" IGOUGO game I've played was Pikeman's Lament, and I honestly hated how the game handled this activation mechanic. In order to activate units during your turn, you had to roll tests. The rule was, if you fail a single activation test, your turn ends. Which led to me receiving a beating with no way to retaliate two turns in a row because I've failed my first rolls both times.

Funny enough I was thinking of the latest implementation of the Rampant series of rules (of which Pikeman's Lament is one). Rebels & Patriots has that same system, but it only stops that one unit and not your whole force. I think it'd be worth applying that to previous versions.

I still hold up 2nd Ed Epic as a brilliant game.

Each army had its own perks and downsides, despite the relative simplicity of the rules.

Victory was determined by a First Past The Post VP system.

VPs were awarded for breaking enemy units, and for holding Objectives, and the target was tied to game size. Objectives were a solid way to get close to your target, but you still had to damage the opponent.

Combat was also really simple. Each unit had weapons, with range, to hit and armour modifier. Close Combat was 2D6, plus your CAF. If you rolled higher, the enemy unit or stand was removed.

Even the biggest games were pretty quick to play, and rarely frustrating.

It had alternating activation, tied to Orders. The orders determined what actions the unit could make, and importantly when they could do them. They were also placed secretly, so there was a lot of strategic guessing as to what your opponent might be up to.

Marines were pretty Vanilla, but really fast.

Eldar could wait to place orders for units near Warlocks.

Orks were a sod to break, as army selection was by Big Mob, with any supporting units being added to it, increasing the break point accordingly.

Imperial Guard were stupidly shooty, but needed a chain of command to place orders.

Squats were slow, but had excellent firepower and a higher than average break point.

Chaos got bonuses so long as they had more VPs.

Tyranids? They were weird. They couldn’t benefit from Objective VPs, but scored twice for destroying units, once for breaking, again for a wipe out.

These relatively minor differences really changed up how each army approached the game.

I loves it, I do!

I feel like Epic Armageddon made a number of crucial improvements over Epic Space Marine 2nd ed:

1. The actions - no longer just Charge (double move into combat), Advance (move, shoot), and First First (move, shoot first) but Advance (move, shoot), Double (move, move, shoot in any combination), March (move, move, move), Overwatch (shoot after an enemy move), Sustained Fire (+1 to hit, indirect fire), and Engage (move, initiate engagement!).

2. Engagements - instead of charging double speed into combat and surviving first fire, and only fighting with stuff in base-contact, Epic Armageddon has engagements, where each unit rolls either its CC for base-contact or FF for within 15cm - and it doesn't need to be part of the attacking unit to contribute that FF within 15. This is crucial, because small detachments of Space Marines can surround a vast Ork mob, shoot at it, and then another small detachment can engage to push the Orks back while supported by the surround detachments. I loved how Devastators were FF3+ and CC5+ while Assault Squads were FF5+ and CC3+. Extremely rewarding play

3. Initiative system, so you activate detachments, but you roll for their initiative (1+ for SMs, 3+ for Orks) modified by stuff like combat stress (blast markers) and whether you had previously activated a detachment, to see if you could do one of the actions above. But if you failed, you could still do actions involving a move or an attack - it just wasn't optimal, and usually helped you shed blast markers.

4. Air units - you would choose a role for aircraft, including ground attack, landing, or combat air patrol. If someone chose ground attack and activated their squadron, your CAP fighters could drop on their 6 and try to shoot them down, and likewise you could have a CAP squadron escort a landing craft by activating when someone tries to shoot it down. Thunderhawk Gunships worked!

5. Orbital support. Choose from the range of Battlefleet Gothic ships to provide ortillery fire to soften up those big Ork mobs, or pin down a Space Marine detachment while you eat their friends.

6. Crossfires! I can't stress this enough, but an additional -1 to saves when shooting the enemy because you can draw a LOS through the enemy to your own, combined with the above ability to support attacking detachments in engagements made position so important. Where each unit in a detachment had a 5cm area of control that an enemy unit couldn't enter unless engaging, area control and position were as important as shooting and saves.

7. Blast markers! Combat stress added up. Being shot at sucked, adding a blast marker, and a blast marker on a detachment meant one of its constituent units couldn't shoot. Space Marines, naturally, required 2 blast markers to prevent their units from shooting, but they rolled around in such tiny numbers they really needed it. Add a blast marker for units being destroyed, coming under a barrage, etc, and having a detachment broken once they had a blast marker for each surviving unit meant that spreading the hurt was a better strategy than just concentrating fire on each enemy unit in turn.

8. The unit typology (infantry, light vehicles, tanks, aircraft, war engines; correspondingly anti-infantry, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and macro-weapons). Space Marines in particular felt like they were supposed to, with a company's sized force able to re-position and chew apart forces several times larger if you were well-supported (transports, artillery, good mix of Tactical/Assault/Devastator/Terminator), clever, and the dice supported you.

Sadly Epic 40K left such a bad taste in my mouth (oooooeer!) I never really got into Epic Armageddon.

I’ve got nothing against it like. Just that Epic 40K, like 3rd Ed 40K took everything I loved about a game and lobbed it out the window.

It was like being used to having a three course steak dinner, then someone only ever serving you kale and avocado. What I was used to wasn’t necessarily good to me, but what replaced it was so anaemic and boring.

You really should try it then. It's meatier than 2nd edition.

Fair. I think I’ve got the rule book in my extensive archive of Stuff.

But 2nd Ed Epic was still The Mammeries.

Well if you are in the vicinity of London can give you a game Alternatively there are events all over.
http://epic-uk.co.uk/wp/

Includes all the rules as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and check out the free wargames illustrated for best wargame mechanics.

https://www.wargamesillustrated.net/get-wi400-for-free/

 infinite_array wrote:

Funny enough I was thinking of the latest implementation of the Rampant series of rules (of which Pikeman's Lament is one).

Well, my overall opinion of Rampant rulesets is that they are very lacking in rule variety and too stiff/abstract for my tastes, but some ideas like commander traits and oaths given before battle are neat. Original Lion Rampant is the only one which got some traction around here, though.

@sgtBANZAI- Too stiff? Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

 Easy E wrote:
@sgtBANZAI- Too stiff? Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

Very little unit variety, units all feel the same due to full = 12 dice/half = 6 dice mechanic, their interactions with terrain and each other are pretty limited. I guess it wins in sheer simplicity, but not my preferred type of game.

MDG and Nurglitch - just thought I would wade in on the Epic discussion!

I think both games have got something going for them! When I first played Armageddon I was blown away by how 'tight' the rules were. Nurglitch has put a really good list there, but I think it's probably the most 'tactical' game GW have ever made. You really, really have to think about combined arms, ranges of weapons, support, crossfire and things like that. I can totally understand why it is the predominant Epic tournament game because it excels in that environment. But, for me it lacks some of the 'soul' that SM 2nd Ed/NetEpic has (I'll clarify that before I just sound like an donkey-cave ) A friend of mine I think summed it up best when he said it feels like a range measurement exercise, or a simulation of warfare.

The armies in Space Marine had a lot more variety, and some in particular (Orks and Chaos) are so much fun, they managed to pull all of the character of those armies as described in the background into the unit choices; Evil Sunz, when their command chain is removed, will go roaring across the battlefield. A Weirdboy tower absorbs the energy of Orks around it to make one of the most devastating weapons in the army, but pack too many Orks around and it explodes taking your clan with it! In EA it just 'counts as' a macro-weapon (I think, something like that). War Engines and Titans in SM have hit charts and damage tables, while in EA they just essentially have a hit-points bar. In SM your titans can be stumbling having weathered massive amounts of incoming fire, with no arms and trying to step on stuff, or can get taken out with a single lucky shot to the head. Gargants sit there on fire, you know it's going to pop but you just want one more shot with the belly gun before it goes! Things like that, I'm sure there are more that will come to mind, make SM a much more fun game to play for me. I also think it's a more strategic game in terms of ordering of troops (and therefore represents the 'epic' scale of commanders trying to give orders from high up above) as you have to place your order tokens and guess what your opponent will do with their units.

But, like I say I enjoy both games. For the purposes of this thread, it really shows you can have quite different mechanics and produce a very different type of game even when you are using the same miniatures and representing the same setting.

I wouldn't have gotten into Epic Armageddon if it hadn't been for Epic Space Marine, and a fun variant of the game is to assign orders before the game, as playing through those constraints as the faecal-fan interaction unfolds is hilarious.

I am reminded of a phrase used by a certain game reviewer, about how certain games are, to use the technical terminology: "pissing-about simulators."

This discussion on Space Marine, Epic and Epic Armageddon got me thinking about a key element for me of what makes a Good Wargame - flavour. This might be related to the old gaming concept of chrome.

Epic deliberately stripped out the flavour of Space Marine/Titanicus. The mechanics were tight and dare I say innovative, but it was like eating a bowl of sand compared to the old game in terms of flavour. Battlefront did a similar thing to Flames of War when they transitioned to V4 from V3.

I liked Epic, but I couldn't get the Space Marine/Titanicus players to engage. I kept all my stuff and would happily play, but they killed the system with the 97 reboot.

Epic 40k stripped out all the flavour that, while fun, made the game something of a crap-shoot, and turned it into a much more systemic wargame rather than the creative conglomerate of rules it had become. I liked it, but then I prefer systematic and holistic rules over, shall we say, pissing about. Epic Armageddon added it all back in and then some. Warhammer 40,000 is a very successful commercial product because it straddles this line between wargame and pissing-about simulator, and straddles it well enough, rather than doing either well.

Nurglitch wrote:
Epic 40k stripped out all the flavour that, while fun, made the game something of a crap-shoot, and turned it into a much more systemic wargame rather than the creative conglomerate of rules it had become. I liked it, but then I prefer systematic and holistic rules over, shall we say, pissing about. Epic Armageddon added it all back in and then some. Warhammer 40,000 is a very successful commercial product because it straddles this line between wargame and pissing-about simulator, and straddles it well enough, rather than doing either well.

Good points. I feel that with a wargame the whole is more than the sum of the parts. I am not a game designer, but I think its a bit like alchemy. There are a lot of "perfect" wargames collecting dust.

This might sound funny, but things like the box art matter. Look at the OG Warhammer box art - makes you want to get into the game. The art on the Space Marine box had a similar effect. Showing my age I suppose, but it speaks to flavour. I have to want to play your "good wargame." I could care less about the mechanics - I don't care how I get there. I just want to enjoy it. So the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

I think this "systematic wargame" and "pissing-about simulator" discussion has established a false dichotomy - as though both exist on opposite ends of a common spectrum. To refute that, I present to you Battletech - a game that is at once both a pissing-about simulator AND a serious wargame.

Nowadays though, if you don't have buddies who will even try non-GW (heck non-40k actually) games, it doesn't matter about flavor, mechanics, artwork, whatever. The inertia is in GW's favor and there's a good chance it will be for decades to come.

Even knock-off games like Grim Dark Future largely cater to green alien horde savages, power armored dudes, space elves, and so forth because that's what people have in their collection and what people expect off brand stuff to support.

Case in point: Reign in Hell by Uncle Atom apparently has stuff so your four classes of chaos demons (plague, lust, violence, and change/deceit will feel right at home.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/798620.page
I get why it's done but it's fundamentally difficult to be different with your stuff when their IP is so saturating in the fantasy/sci-fi market

GW’s market dominance (which has really always been there since the 90s, even at their pre-CEO change nadir) has long been an issue for the fantasy and sci-fi miniatures wargame scene. Unless you go whole hog on We Are Not Gw it is going to ensure some degree of conformity.

But it is also an aspect of what GW has sold since their inception - being very rooted in older and well established tropes and concepts. The four demon flavors are, after all, just a framework for long-established demonic tropes. At heart, GW embraces a fairly «generic» set of concepts, tweaked slightly to look just a bit different.

Deviate from that style/framework at your own risk... That said, there's stuff well outside the GW house style of Tolkenoid fantasy: anime and all its various permutations is probably more popular. Then there's styles like in the boardgame Root, or even Kingdom Death that are appealing and have no direct GW analog.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I like how nobody described 40k but probably everybody plays 40k

I like short rules with lots of tactical depth and everything that's not about making tactically meaningful decisions filed off.

My holy trinity are X-wing, Monsterpocalypse, Deadzone (all first editions)

Warhammer Underworlds is pretty close for a GW game.

Huh. I was extremely extensively into Monsterpocalypse 1E for a long time and I would NOT have ever described the rules of that game as "short". "tactical depth" yes, tons, but INSANELY complicated and bloated to all hell in that classic PP fashion of giving you tons and tons and tons of choices most of which are always or almost always bad ones.

Also, the joy of having such a limited strategic layer was almost entirely based on the blind-box system. Monpoc 1e games where either player had unlimited access to whatever buildings they wanted to use would be utterly miserable experiences.

Might be because my group got in on Day 1 and played literally every week until the game got axed, adding a sheet of new abilities every 3 months we were never overwhelmed by too much at once. Getting in later was tough for sure. We did have all the things, all the buildings, all the Megas including the box topper promos, everything, and we never felt this was in any way a detriment. And there were some useless models for sure but the rules were slick as all gak, you just had to really understand the timing of different types of powers.

I understand that they cut out most of these 'dead' choices in the 2nd edition of Monsterpocalypse?

 Da Boss wrote:
Cyel: Sorry, I don't quite get the joke. I don't know anything about the ASOIAF game.

It's not a joke. The game ticks off all the boxes that you mentioned in your previous post. Maybe you should try it out, then ?

 Da Boss wrote:
Relatively streamlined mechanics that still give some idea of simulation.
Morale is important.
Killing stuff is not the only way to win the game.
List building is not a major part of the game, most lists can do reasonably well against most other lists, edge cases excepted.
Decisions matter more than dice rolls, but dice rolls throw interesting wrinkles in the way of plans forcing creativity. This is important to remove the "chess" element of always doing a certain opening and so on that makes wargames more engaging.
I prefer alternating activation to IGOUGO these days, but IGOUGO is fine for games with limited "alpha strike" capability.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nurglitch wrote:
@kirotheavenger: Can you give an example of 'simple mechanics that leads to advanced gameplay?'

I say - Gloomhaven action cards

What a player does can by summed up in one sentence - choose 2 cards from your hand to play this turn. That's all you'll ever do.

But the decisions involved are abundant:
-which cards to use this turn. They will go to the discard and you'll not have access to these actions for some time
-which actions to choose from each card (each has 2 and you have to choose one top one bottom), which can be used to their maximum potential this turn?
-which Initiative value do you need?
-do you want to use "one use only" powerful actions or do you want to save them for later
-how many turns you have before you run out of cards
-quick rest or long rest to recover spent actions. Which card to sacrifice to rest.
-how does it combine with what the other players are doing
-what kind of back up plan the cards offer if the situation changes before you activate

Yeah, card-based action systems are cool. I've used them, and what got me hooked was Tactical Assault: Combat Cards. I've heard good things about Gloomhaven too, and managing hands of cards works in lots of other games.

I would slightly disagree with Da Boss' assessment of dice though, as they just add extra cognitive load because they don't do anything truly unpredictable. If you have enough going on in the game, like more than 9 elements, I think dice just become a hassle.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
Epic 40k stripped out all the flavour that, while fun, made the game something of a crap-shoot, and turned it into a much more systemic wargame rather than the creative conglomerate of rules it had become. I liked it, but then I prefer systematic and holistic rules over, shall we say, pissing about. Epic Armageddon added it all back in and then some. Warhammer 40,000 is a very successful commercial product because it straddles this line between wargame and pissing-about simulator, and straddles it well enough, rather than doing either well.

Good points. I feel that with a wargame the whole is more than the sum of the parts. I am not a game designer, but I think its a bit like alchemy. There are a lot of "perfect" wargames collecting dust.

This might sound funny, but things like the box art matter. Look at the OG Warhammer box art - makes you want to get into the game. The art on the Space Marine box had a similar effect. Showing my age I suppose, but it speaks to flavour. I have to want to play your "good wargame." I could care less about the mechanics - I don't care how I get there. I just want to enjoy it. So the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

I agree, 2nd edition Space Marine boxset had just the coolest bit of art on the cover of the box. It didn't matter that the miniatures inside were mono-pose and 6mm tall, when you played that was what you imagined.

That actually brings forward another consideration which is the importance of imagery and atmosphere created, especially for Fantasy and Sci-fi games. I know a lot of people still enjoy 40k because of that very strong imagery and the universe that has been created for the game, and want to be involved with it despite the game mechanics and any impendence they create for the experience (I was certainly in that category for some time!)

Less of a consideration for the most part in historical games as most of us have grown up watching WW2 films and don't have to think too hard to imagine a Tiger vs. Shermans or Vikings pillaging a Saxon village.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
This discussion on Space Marine, Epic and Epic Armageddon got me thinking about a key element for me of what makes a Good Wargame - flavour. This might be related to the old gaming concept of chrome.

Epic deliberately stripped out the flavour of Space Marine/Titanicus. The mechanics were tight and dare I say innovative, but it was like eating a bowl of sand compared to the old game in terms of flavour. Battlefront did a similar thing to Flames of War when they transitioned to V4 from V3.

I liked Epic, but I couldn't get the Space Marine/Titanicus players to engage. I kept all my stuff and would happily play, but they killed the system with the 97 reboot.

For me Epic A captured brilliantly the flavour of certain armies. I think it reflects how systems lend themselves to certain styles and flavour.

I have yet to see for example a better implementation of Space Marines in one of GWs wargame (not space hulk) systems. I could launch a combined arms aerospace attack by hitting an area with orbital bombardment, drop pod down and support with thunderhawk inserted troops and teleporting terminators. If I wanted to harass the enemy I could teleport in terminators, then extract them by thunderhawk, then reinsert the next turn on a different area of the board. I could also with a small supported unit of marines 'clip' a larger formation and rout it in an assault, winning assaults where I was outnumbered 4-1.

Tau were also handled brilliantly, delivering an army that was a real combined arms force and of course have the option to orbital drop Manta (who had a fantastic UFO hovering like vibe)!

But other armies didn't have the flavour people expected. For me for instance I like Epic A Orks, but some 2nd players didn't, I think because the randomness was removed to streamline them.

The game also 'broke' at the extremes, handling armies of a few tough units poorly and armies with a horde of resilient units even worse. Some armies like feral Orks could rarely win, but equally would often draw without losing. You couldn't do the horde of units you could in 2nd, in practice the game could only handle 100 odd models a side (tanks or bases of troops).

There are a few rules tweaks I would love to do, streamline the save system into a -/-/-, have an alternative mechanic for barrages (as games without them were so much faster movement and deployment phases) and solve the activation numbers issue. Still it remains my favourite GW wargame system for delivering the feel for me of the background in a fun tactically challenging game. Warmaster comes a close second, but that really only delivers a feel of command decisions and not always the army differences.

Personally, I like short easy to get into rules with some tactical options. Tho I still enjoy things like 40k, Infinity, Warpath.

Good?

Which ever wargame satisfies my value requirements.

Rules that make sense is top.

 Pacific wrote:

That actually brings forward another consideration which is the importance of imagery and atmosphere created, especially for Fantasy and Sci-fi games. I know a lot of people still enjoy 40k because of that very strong imagery and the universe that has been created for the game, and want to be involved with it despite the game mechanics and any impendence they create for the experience (I was certainly in that category for some time!)

Less of a consideration for the most part in historical games as most of us have grown up watching WW2 films and don't have to think too hard to imagine a Tiger vs. Shermans or Vikings pillaging a Saxon village.

This is a huge aspect of successful games. I still love a good thick rulebook with great pictures and art.

For myself however, once I began to really get into building terrain the universe and imagery provided by a game became somewhat less important. I'm more interested in what the table and miniatures look like than what a book shows and when I'm not constrained by mass-produced terrain or a proscribed miniatures line what's on the table is mostly up to me.

Thus my choice of wargame goes back to the aspects I mentioned earlier related to speed, streamlined gameplay and meaningful decision making among others.