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Good minis get me interested, but good rules keep me coming back.

1) Rules that are immersive and make sense that reward tactical gameplay moreso than clever listbuilding gotchas as well as emphasize battlefield management and maneuver over alpha strike and other over simplified but obvious actions.

2) All Factions that have multiple viable builds and the ability to at least make you feel like you have a chance to do something before the first die is cast.

3) Good narrative to explore

4) Moderate to good looking miniatures.

I've seen it mentioned a few times, so I'll just explain: I thought about putting "fun to play" as an option, but it seemed redundant. To me, the question I asked is another way of asking "what makes a game fun to you?"

I didn't see "I have too much money and free time and it was either this or heroin", so I just voted "quality/variety of miniatures".

 EnTyme wrote:
I've seen it mentioned a few times, so I'll just explain: I thought about putting "fun to play" as an option, but it seemed redundant. To me, the question I asked is another way of asking "what makes a game fun to you?"

What if it is a combination of above.
Good models are or can be part of the fun.
Good rules certainly don't impede on the fun and if they added multiple easy ways to change it up, then the more power to that ruleset.

Well, that's why I asked for most important and then asked people to rank their choices if they want. I was honestly expecting rules to be the most popular choice by a large margin, so I'm surprised at how the poll is going right now. Enjoying the responses so far.

I think, the models are there for the First initial start.
The rules, if done correctly keep people in.

Or that is waht i'd imagine.

Engaging, immersive narrative, that is captured in miniatures, terrain and rules driven interactions. No oversimplified gamey nonsense can satisfy my taste for wargames - that’s what highly abstracted board/card games are for. Because of that it’s not the size but the particular focus of community is what is important. The same with rules - it is not „tightness” or „balance” but the emergent playstyle is important. Quality of miniatures as in miniatures aesthetics is one of the fundaments - I strongly dislike generic feel of many settings...

 EnTyme wrote:
Well, that's why I asked for most important and then asked people to rank their choices if they want. I was honestly expecting rules to be the most popular choice by a large margin, so I'm surprised at how the poll is going right now. Enjoying the responses so far.

Why?

There are plenty of cheap games with great rules and no miniatures, so it seems to me the most ardent rules-firsters would have filtered out of the hobby. Everyone left may love the rules, but the miniatures have to be important enough to overcome the significant cost of miniatures gaming in hobby time and money.

Their votes get diluted by those of us who just use the game as a beard for our love of mins and fluff books.

 EnTyme wrote:
I've seen it mentioned a few times, so I'll just explain: I thought about putting "fun to play" as an option, but it seemed redundant. To me, the question I asked is another way of asking "what makes a game fun to you?"

That's a good question, and a lot harder to quantify.

For me, I have fun when there are interesting choices to make during the game. If there are nothing but "obvious" choices, and mechanically rolling things, it's not terribly interesting. I want to have choices available, though I don't necessarily expect every choice to be a "path to win." At the same time, choices for choice's sake is also just cumbersome if there's not much difference in the actions you're taking (I've seen games that have a load of "available actions" but some are so situational or duplicate of others that it's just over-complex for the sake of having lots of choices).

And of course, I'm drawn to miniature games in general because of the spectacle, which means there should be cool models and terrain on the table, but that's possibly doable with rules that don't have bespoke models, and a great ruleset that has their own crappy models can be easily substituted in most cases with better models.

So when it comes to the system, clean well-written rules are paramount. Its why I loved warmachine and mantic's Kings of War systems. Next up is probably the lore/background, but some systems like Frostgrave work well with just a sliver of that.

Here's the hypocritical part though, above the rules system is whether or not I can get a game in at my local FLGS. I love Warmachine, Other Side, and Battletech but I can't get games in with those systems as the local player meta has collapsed for them. I can get a game in with Warhammer 40,000. Its a creaky, loose rules sytem seemingly designed to create rules debates and house ruling, but there's a dozen players at my FLGS every monday night. In the end, availability and the shepherding of a player meta by a few hardcore players can make even the worst game system paramount over even the best ones.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
Well, that's why I asked for most important and then asked people to rank their choices if they want. I was honestly expecting rules to be the most popular choice by a large margin, so I'm surprised at how the poll is going right now. Enjoying the responses so far.

Why?

There are plenty of cheap games with great rules and no miniatures, so it seems to me the most ardent rules-firsters would have filtered out of the hobby. Everyone left may love the rules, but the miniatures have to be important enough to overcome the significant cost of miniatures gaming in hobby time and money.

Their votes get diluted by those of us who just use the game as a beard for our love of mins and fluff books.

Mostly because Dakka has a lot of rules-focused discussions, but about the only place I see threads about models and lore are in the News & Rumors threads. I figured this forum would skew towards a rules focus with minis being a distant second and lore close behind that. If I did this same poll on Reddit or TGA, I would expect minis and lore to be at the top with rules being way down the list.

 EnTyme wrote:
Well, that's why I asked for most important and then asked people to rank their choices if they want. I was honestly expecting rules to be the most popular choice by a large margin, so I'm surprised at how the poll is going right now. Enjoying the responses so far.

This was where I was earlier this year. I expected rules quality to be one of the top, and found out - at least in the GW universe - that that was hardly the case (though if you go to a more KOW or Bolt Action or WM dominated forum, you will find the rules quality option to be a lot more dominant or at least I have when I have asked this question over there earlier this year)

 EnTyme wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
Well, that's why I asked for most important and then asked people to rank their choices if they want. I was honestly expecting rules to be the most popular choice by a large margin, so I'm surprised at how the poll is going right now. Enjoying the responses so far.

Why?

There are plenty of cheap games with great rules and no miniatures, so it seems to me the most ardent rules-firsters would have filtered out of the hobby. Everyone left may love the rules, but the miniatures have to be important enough to overcome the significant cost of miniatures gaming in hobby time and money.

Their votes get diluted by those of us who just use the game as a beard for our love of mins and fluff books.

Mostly because Dakka has a lot of rules-focused discussions, but about the only place I see threads about models and lore are in the News & Rumors threads. I figured this forum would skew towards a rules focus with minis being a distant second and lore close behind that. If I did this same poll on Reddit or TGA, I would expect minis and lore to be at the top with rules being way down the list.

That makes sense. However, there seems to be more room for bashing out rules than discussing the models. Lore inspires a lot of discussion here and on other forums I frequent, at least for GW games. Smaller games don’t seem to generate much lore discussion either because not many people are familiar with it, it isn’t developed enough to have a big thread, or it isn’t compelling enough to be thought provoking. Might be part of the reason those games stay smaller.

From that list, I would say rules.

I think once you take a certain stance though, your priorities change entirely. If you decide "I am just going to organise my own hobby, with the minis I like and the rules I like" then the other questions become irrelevant. I will use whatever miniatures I like the look of, and whatever rules I think are best to use with them. And I can use whatever background or story I like for them, too. So by doing so, I am essentially turning my back on the established community and resolving to create my own, even if it means I have to provide both forces and the terrain and shop around to find an interested opponent. I sacrifice ease for having the best experience I can in all other aspects.

But it is a pretty "all or nothing" approach. I think it is pretty reasonable to look for a compromise approach, and you might be lucky and have a rules set that is not strict about minis and a large group of people to play with - that would be my ideal situation but I think for the moment unattainable for a variety of reasons. But I have started 2 wargames clubs before in my life, both successful, so I think I can do it again (and in fact, do it better than the previous two times).

I wrote “hashing out rules” but autocorrect saw i was on dakka and substituted the word appropriately.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
From that list, I would say rules.

I think once you take a certain stance though, your priorities change entirely. If you decide "I am just going to organise my own hobby, with the minis I like and the rules I like" then the other questions become irrelevant. I will use whatever miniatures I like the look of, and whatever rules I think are best to use with them. And I can use whatever background or story I like for them, too. So by doing so, I am essentially turning my back on the established community and resolving to create my own, even if it means I have to provide both forces and the terrain and shop around to find an interested opponent. I sacrifice ease for having the best experience I can in all other aspects.

But it is a pretty "all or nothing" approach. I think it is pretty reasonable to look for a compromise approach, and you might be lucky and have a rules set that is not strict about minis and a large group of people to play with - that would be my ideal situation but I think for the moment unattainable for a variety of reasons. But I have started 2 wargames clubs before in my life, both successful, so I think I can do it again (and in fact, do it better than the previous two times).

I find it interesting that your perspective is that the rules are the important part of gaming your way. I do exactly the same thing, using miniatures, background and rules at will, but from my perspective the setting or theme is most important, with the minis next, and rules chosen to service them. We both end up in the same place, but our priorities are polar opposites.

If nothing else I think this poll shows at least a bit why Warhammer retains a stranglehold. There seem to be enough people who put the quality of miniatures above a good game.

It's one of GW's greatest achievements that people think the two are even slightly connected.

1 Good lore
2 Good rules
3 Varied and quality minis.

The rest matters less, if a game is pricy i don't need to get 5 armies to enjoy it and can remain under a reasonable limits. I only play with friends of mine so the community as far as I'm concerned refers to something very narrow.

Complexity... I don't think of it as of an actual criteria: a tight, well written rule set does not necesseraly requires complexity to be the bulk of it to be enjoyable.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
From that list, I would say rules.

I think once you take a certain stance though, your priorities change entirely. If you decide "I am just going to organise my own hobby, with the minis I like and the rules I like" then the other questions become irrelevant. I will use whatever miniatures I like the look of, and whatever rules I think are best to use with them. And I can use whatever background or story I like for them, too. So by doing so, I am essentially turning my back on the established community and resolving to create my own, even if it means I have to provide both forces and the terrain and shop around to find an interested opponent. I sacrifice ease for having the best experience I can in all other aspects.

But it is a pretty "all or nothing" approach. I think it is pretty reasonable to look for a compromise approach, and you might be lucky and have a rules set that is not strict about minis and a large group of people to play with - that would be my ideal situation but I think for the moment unattainable for a variety of reasons. But I have started 2 wargames clubs before in my life, both successful, so I think I can do it again (and in fact, do it better than the previous two times).

I find it interesting that your perspective is that the rules are the important part of gaming your way. I do exactly the same thing, using miniatures, background and rules at will, but from my perspective the setting or theme is most important, with the minis next, and rules chosen to service them. We both end up in the same place, but our priorities are polar opposites.

For me that is because I like a variety of different settings and themes, and I like to make my own settings and so on, and find that easier than making my own rules. Making a ruleset is the most work in my opinion, so I want to find one that is fun to play and fits the rest. There are so many rulesets for every genre, historical period or scale that I find it easier to find something to work with.

I would say theme and setting are important to me, but that without a good rule set I will probably not "play" much in the setting, rather build and paint stuff. And eventually, I will burn out on that without a game to play with my stuff at the end that I enjoy.

At the moment I am working on stuff for Grimdark Future and Age of Fantasy, the two One Page Rules systems. They suit me because I will be training in new players, and they are simple and flexible enough to teach while showing off what I think is cool about wargaming. I would like to do some historical stuff with Saga and Hail Caesar at some stage too.

Rules quality.

I can write my own backstory. I can find my own miniatures. But I don't have the time or the group to try and fix poorly written rules.

That's not to say that I don't mind doing some work on my end, like creating profiles or scenarios, or even "fixing" a rule or two, as long as the rules states upfront that those are part of the game. And as long as the rules themselves are crazy expensive or insist on getting yearly, "must-own" updates.

 EnTyme wrote:
I've seen it mentioned a few times, so I'll just explain: I thought about putting "fun to play" as an option, but it seemed redundant. To me, the question I asked is another way of asking "what makes a game fun to you?"

The thing is, being fun to play isn't necessarily linked to any of the things you've listed. The only structural option you have included is having 'tight, well written rules'... Which overlooks that a game can still be fun to play, meaning that the structure of the game creates an enjoyable play experience, while having technically badly written rules. See, for example, multiple editions of Warhammer or 40k.

 Da Boss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Spoiler:

 Da Boss wrote:
From that list, I would say rules.

I think once you take a certain stance though, your priorities change entirely. If you decide "I am just going to organise my own hobby, with the minis I like and the rules I like" then the other questions become irrelevant. I will use whatever miniatures I like the look of, and whatever rules I think are best to use with them. And I can use whatever background or story I like for them, too. So by doing so, I am essentially turning my back on the established community and resolving to create my own, even if it means I have to provide both forces and the terrain and shop around to find an interested opponent. I sacrifice ease for having the best experience I can in all other aspects.

But it is a pretty "all or nothing" approach. I think it is pretty reasonable to look for a compromise approach, and you might be lucky and have a rules set that is not strict about minis and a large group of people to play with - that would be my ideal situation but I think for the moment unattainable for a variety of reasons. But I have started 2 wargames clubs before in my life, both successful, so I think I can do it again (and in fact, do it better than the previous two times).

I find it interesting that your perspective is that the rules are the important part of gaming your way. I do exactly the same thing, using miniatures, background and rules at will, but from my perspective the setting or theme is most important, with the minis next, and rules chosen to service them. We both end up in the same place, but our priorities are polar opposites.

At the end of the day, a broken game system is no fun to play. You may be on the good end once, but eventually you'll get flushed by it. Balanced is the way I go.

Twenty years ago, I'd have said lore. Ten years ago, I'd have said rules. Now, the most important thing is time: how long does it take to set-up, play, and pack away again.


It doesn't matter how good a game is if you never have a big enough window to play it in. These days, I paint models for games that i'll never play. Computer games, board games and card games get played a lot more than war games in this house.

 infinite_array wrote:
Rules quality.

I can write my own backstory. I can find my own miniatures. But I don't have the time or the group to try and fix poorly written rules.

This fits my perspective to a T.

I used to be all 40k all the time, as the models and fluff were something I was deeply immersed in. Overtime the rules drove me away to other games.

 WaveyRaven wrote:
Twenty years ago, I'd have said lore. Ten years ago, I'd have said rules. Now, the most important thing is time: how long does it take to set-up, play, and pack away again.


It doesn't matter how good a game is if you never have a big enough window to play it in. These days, I paint models for games that i'll never play. Computer games, board games and card games get played a lot more than war games in this house.

I'll second that, decent rules are a big plus but I'm very much in the 'skirmish' mindset these day so anything under 2 hours has a head start

 EnTyme wrote:
Well, that's why I asked for most important and then asked people to rank their choices if they want. I was honestly expecting rules to be the most popular choice by a large margin, so I'm surprised at how the poll is going right now. Enjoying the responses so far.

Depends how you look at it, I suppose. There's plenty of people who define the game by the rules - "playing 40k" means using the rules as published by GW. But to me, "playing 40k" means fighting a battle in the 40k setting. After all, there have been ten different published rules for playing games in the same setting with the same miniatures, so IMO the ruleset doesn't define the game. If I don't fancy the rules on offer I'll find some other ones.

Two things for me.

1) The game has to be interesting. AOS did not interest me, as most steampunk and/or skirmish games fail to interest me.

2) There needs to be enough of a community for said game that I can find games. It ultimately does not matter how great I think a game is if no one else in a couple hundred miles plays it.

Unable to select one.