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@Tony - glad to bring a smile.

I think the question for STAW is whether you want to play the second game vs the primary game. X-Wing gets a lot of support, so there's the whole network effect of more players and so on.

Sure, but nobody ever open-mouth kissed their sister on the Enterprise

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Who cares if Afterlife is barely supported? They are beautiful hard sci-fi minis and there's a thousand indie rulesets to use them with. Have fun!

But that is half of my point; Bolognesus has some some sort of bitterness about the fact that Anvil Industries are doing Regiments as well as Afterlife, and more than once has made posts suggesting that Afterlife is the tabletop equivalent of abandonware, which it isn't. Afterlife IS supported. I know this, because I am peripherally involved, and see the handwritten updates that Joel is writing in his master copy of the rules during further playtesting. I've also playtested the vehicle rules with him, and he has told me about future plans. Instead of suggesting that Afterlife is not supported, and damaging its prospects, I'd like to see Bolognesus take a more positive approach and encourage Joel to focus even more on Afterlife. Simple fact is though, that Regiments makes more money for Anvil in the short-term, and whilst Afterlife is the long-term objective, it can only happen if the company is profitable enough to continue and even expand.

Attack Wing had major, major problems, not limited just to the quality of the models but also including terrible game balance and rules creep, extremely powerful limited edition cards, some blind buys plus model/card rotation. Heroclix is worse not only do they have all of that but blind buys are at the core of that game and, occasionally the blind buys contain*part* of a model, so if you want to finish it, you need to keep buying more and more of that single set.

I've often described wizkids as "GW at its jerkiest but actually run competently" - there no interest in the health and fairness to the game, just keep *buying* the newest shiny.

Conversely, Fantasy Flight work hard to keep all the models released for X-wing as viable as possible and if/when rules creep happens, they'll release a card with spare to make your older purchases viable again.

Oh and also there's 3 X-Wing factions, not two.

I'd agree with ST clix being awful. Do Not Recommend.

Dropzone or Dropfleet commander.

i just got into warmachine. They even have a new 2 player starter box. the rules are pretty solid, and i love the world.

 Compel wrote:
Attack Wing had major, major problems, not limited just to the quality of the models but also including terrible game balance and rules creep, extremely powerful limited edition cards, some blind buys plus model/card rotation. Heroclix is worse not only do they have all of that but blind buys are at the core of that game and, occasionally the blind buys contain*part* of a model, so if you want to finish it, you need to keep buying more and more of that single set.

I've often described wizkids as "GW at its jerkiest but actually run competently" - there no interest in the health and fairness to the game, just keep *buying* the newest shiny.

Conversely, Fantasy Flight work hard to keep all the models released for X-wing as viable as possible and if/when rules creep happens, they'll release a card with spare to make your older purchases viable again.

Oh and also there's 3 X-Wing factions, not two.

I loved Clix (back at the Infinity days), sure there's a lot of blind purchases, but you can buy open singles pretty much anywhere, and even that wasn't a big deal unless you were particularly competitive. Plus the starter sets were a pretty decent basis. I did hate that you needed duplicate mini's for the different experience levels, but I can't think how else you'd do it with the integral bases.

I certainly wouldn't rule out clix over the blind bags.

STAW is either a great or a terrible game.

My wife, some friends and I play it casually, we play faction pure. We have a blast. The tourney/Events seem to be a different kettle of fish and have been highly problematic.

 luky7dayz wrote:

I always suggest Song of Blades and Heroes.

Fun!

However, difficult to find players.

Dead Man's Hand.

2 gangs is £40. Rules are about £12.

Terrain is easily made (it's Wild West) or there's cheap MDF (Sarrissa), or the high-end pre-paint stuff by 4ground.

And it's stupidly good fun.

Also, because it's generic Wild West figures are not really limited to the gangs they're packaged as.

 Compel wrote:
Attack Wing had major, major problems, not limited just to the quality of the models but also including terrible game balance and rules creep, extremely powerful limited edition cards, some blind buys plus model/card rotation. Heroclix is worse not only do they have all of that but blind buys are at the core of that game and, occasionally the blind buys contain*part* of a model, so if you want to finish it, you need to keep buying more and more of that single set.

I've often described wizkids as "GW at its jerkiest but actually run competently" - there no interest in the health and fairness to the game, just keep *buying* the newest shiny.

Conversely, Fantasy Flight work hard to keep all the models released for X-wing as viable as possible and if/when rules creep happens, they'll release a card with spare to make your older purchases viable again.

Oh and also there's 3 X-Wing factions, not two.

I think of the Heroclix stuff more as M:TG in mini form. At least in ST:AW I don't have to deal with blind packed. I'm sure I'd look at it less fondly if I wasn't attached to the IP as much, but as it stands it's one of two tabletop versions of Trek out there I can do.




Also, Kings of War is shaping up to be my non-GW mini game of choice. The free version is impressing me, and I may be picking up the full version soon.

The thing I found was it only takes one person to turn up with Attack Wing cheesy OP prize of the month plus fancy resource of death, then the club turns immediately into an arm's race of cheese.

The only reason I haven't sold my attack wing stuff is laziness and the potential for doing a fancy scenario if I felt like it, where I'd be making both sides of the fleet and asking my opponent which he wants to play as

Tried to read all the advice.

Best choice is go to the local hobby shop and find out what is being played and how many people show up for those games.

X-wing - Is fast and fairly inexpensive to play with lots of players.

Malifaux - appears to be the latest fad with quite dedicated players, the game plays well enough. You only need a few models to play.

Infinity - Good game and looks very nice, good break from the grim-dark to the shiny slightly cyber-punk new age.

Warmahordes - Not hugely different hobbywise from 40k, more competitive rules however not a huge difference in cost.

Frostgrave - I getting a lot of attention, a bit like Mordheim in a snowy ruined city, may get expensive as you build up all the various monster models.

Batman / Marvel: If you are into your heroes hard to go wrong here. The rules are excellent to give the feel of the various characters. My difficulty would be getting proper scale buildings.

Good luck!

I think warmahordes can be much cheaper...IF....you are very specific about what you buy. If you go the gotta catch me all route than ..yesh ..it gets pretty costly...but you don't have to field as many units so ..you can ease into a really solid fighting force for maybe..75% of the cost.

The best thing that happened to my local WM/H group was that the small group of guys who traveled to every major tournament in North America stopped doing so. It really sucked having every group event be tournament practice. MK3 has done an okay job making things more viable (especially jacks) but it really helps having people not build the most powerful list possible and try to make every game a practice game for the next event.

 Just Tony wrote:
(...)

Also, Kings of War is shaping up to be my non-GW mini game of choice. The free version is impressing me, and I may be picking up the full version soon.

Welcome to Kings of War then. ^_^

In case you or other are wondering, the free rules have everything except for the following :

1- the sample free army lists are fully playable but the rules include move units for each army
2- the full rulebook has a list of artefact that can be equiped on your units.
You can only give one per unit, but note that most can be equipped on any unit, not only heroes, so great potential for customizing your army, or even to get a way to use some exotic model without a perfect profile otherwise. For exemple the KoW dwarf list has no flying unit at all that could represent a gyrocopter, but many players simply put the wings of honeymaze artegfact on a ranger captain to represent a small gyro (fly, mobile, small ranged attack ...) or ally a big flying unit (like elve drakons) with maybe something like the diadem of dragon kind (give the unit a breath attack) to represent a gyrocopter squadron.
3- the free rulebook only present one scenario : Kill!, the full rulebook has a total of 6 with varied objectives.

Also, there are two new balanced scenarios in Mantic Clash of Kings tournament ("Cointrol!" and "Push!") that are very nice and recommended to use in place of the "Kill!" and "Kill and pillage!" scenarios in case your meta give too much importance to simply killing stuff.

The full rulebook also has the fluff (the "gamer edition" rulebook has the complete rules above but without the fluff), plus maybe some minor things (like a page on timed games), but the 3 points above are the main elements.

Finally I will strongly recommand http://kow2.easyarmy.com , this only army editor has support for all armies, including those from the supplements and all options including artefacts (after adding an unit to your list, click on the green "plus" icon aside the unit name to add options or an artefact)