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So, what do you prefer for your wargames?

GW - style army lists where your units are more generic and you can add wargear, etc, to personalize it? And generic characters that you can build to your liking (not talking about special characters).

Or more like Warmachine, where everything you need for the unit or character is on a handy little card and about all you can add to the unit is a few extra men? And your characters are totally pre-built where nothing really can change at all?


For me I think I fall right in the middle.. I like being able to customize an army from scratch with unique units. But I also like Warmachine and Dust Tactics where you know what you're getting and you get just about everything you need in your box of men. How about you?

I prefer GW style army lists.

Can I vote both?

AT-43 used cards, but you still got unit options such as grenades, gear, heavy weapons, and specialists.

I prefer cards it makes it for me quicker to organise an army and i like being able to visually track wounds with check boxes and alike rather than dice.An advantage of army books is that you get alot more than just the game's required stuff you get alot of fluff and alike.

I dont think this will be a fair poll becuase I see more people playing warhmmer/40k compared to the other games (allthough they are still quite popular, and good)

I prefer cards, but I use Gear Garage to make sheets of cards for each combat group in a force.

Whichever is more appropriate for the game. Warhammer works great with army lists, Warmachine works great with stat cards.

I do love cards and even make my own for games that don't have a large degree of customization (Firestorm Armada, for example).

But honestly I would rather have customization - but so far GW is really the only company that puts enough options in the box to warrant the army list approach.

Some games are really enhanced by wargear. One of 40k's defining traits is the plentiful (and often excessive) wargear options, to strip those away entirely would be to take away part of the game's identity. Likewise, to take away a warmachine player's cards and add even minimal wargear options would cause pandemonium to break loose. I do not, however, believe the two features need to be mutually exclusive. It should be a simple matter to have a small wargear list on the back of a card when a game is designed for such a thing to happen.

Both systems, taken exclusively, have a downside. With cards, weapon upgrades have limited application and the slightly clunky design of adding a whole new guy just to add a flame thrower. With staggeringly large wargear lists, units can be varied too much and model designers have no hope of including every option for every build. Often times we see some options nonexistent entirely in gw kits when we might want to outfit an entire unit with said option -they still haven't even managed to put every option in their mainstay tactical marine box.

The quick reference of cards are too good for me to pass up, and get my vote easily. I can accept the lack of wargear options if there are varied units to make up for the variety and the game is built for it. I would rather just sit down and have fun with a game than play tetris with wargear and points trying to decipher my opponent's list before it begins.

Army lists, because I fiddle around with unit composition and load outs too much for a card to be much good.

I voted cards. They're quick and handy but I mainly like them
because they look cool and its something else to collect alongside my mini's.

I don't see how warhammer would work with cards personally (If using them to build an army). Too many variables where as with warmachine you have 2 options which is Min sized or max sized squads

Also Warmachine counting is easier as it only really goes up to 50 for most games!

I heavily prefer lists. I like the customization options and the scratch build process. It makes it a bit more personal and interesting and sets it apart from other systems. I think if GW went to cards, it would be a huge blow to 40k's (and WHFB's) personality and would be along the lines of simplifying the game to negative effect.

I like the GW style lists. I like the possibility of finding some new way of doing things. I also enjoy getting all kinds of little fiddly bits in my boxes that I can store in my bitz box and have somewhere down the line.

Dais wrote:
Both systems, taken exclusively, have a downside. With cards, weapon upgrades have limited application and the slightly clunky design of adding a whole new guy just to add a flame thrower. With staggeringly large wargear lists, units can be varied too much and model designers have no hope of including every option for every build. Often times we see some options nonexistent entirely in gw kits when we might want to outfit an entire unit with said option -they still haven't even managed to put every option in their mainstay tactical marine box.

The quick reference of cards are too good for me to pass up, and get my vote easily. I can accept the lack of wargear options if there are varied units to make up for the variety and the game is built for it. I would rather just sit down and have fun with a game than play tetris with wargear and points trying to decipher my opponent's list before it begins.

I've sort of moved away from games that have too many options in the list because of this - more often than not, people will find a combination of gear that works, and you'll never see any variance.

The only game that I like this for is Battletech, but there you only have a few Mechs to keep track of. And you have programs like Skunkwerks that allow you to quickly generate any sort of mech with any combination of wargear.

Kirasu wrote:I don't see how warhammer would work with cards personally (If using them to build an army). Too many variables where as with warmachine you have 2 options which is Min sized or max sized squads

In MKI you took a min sized squad and could add more models. For example, 6 models would be 160 points and each additional model adds an extra 10 points.

The problem I see with list-based armies like 40k is that many of the options are subpar while others really shine, which leads just about everyone picking the 'best' option anyway (unless you're new to the army). Stat cards takes out this element of evaluation and optimizing, which can be either a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective.

I make my own unit cards for every unit/vehicle in 40k. its a good way to keep track of what i have moved, shot, etc.....

Your poll questions are a tad leading.

I want unit cards so that I can easily see exactly what my opponent's units do in the middle of a game (note: I'm a 12 year veteran of CCG gaming).

As a 40k newb, I've already played too many games in which my opponent has shown up with an army list on his smart phone, no codex, and an army I've never seen before.

I see the appeal of both. I like making my own lists, but at the same time I always did like the old army cards that Epic had.

Depends on the game. For most games, I prefer an army list, however, for smaller games and some with alternating unit activation, I would prefer cards.

For example, Mech Attack (a mecha ruleset) uses playing card sized record sheets for each mech. They are kept in plastic sleeves so you can mark damage with a dry-erase marker. This allows you to reuse the cards and quickly arrange new force compositions.

However the most usefull advantage is being able to move or turn the card after you activate each figure. Mech Attack is alternating unit activation so each player moves one unit and then it's the next player does so until all units have been activated. Being able to use the cards to remind you which units have acted in a given turn means you don't have to use tokens to mark the units. I hate tokens.

If I could design a card style that could handle all of a units rules,gear,stats, etc and still be readable and can find a decent plastic cover for the card, then probably cards.