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or how much stuff is too much stuff ?

For the last few years I've been playing games that are for the most part fairly component light (X-Wing, Guildball, EDH Magic) with the odd WMH game from time to time

I'm finding the amount of stuff I have to lug to my games club having quite an influence on what I choose to play, even my Circle army which is 25-30 models top is considered a faff

Is this a consideration for other Dakkas or am I just being a fat lazy 'obbit ?

It's not so much about lugging stuff to the club, but having all that crud littering the table. X-Wing was OK in the beginning - especially if you put the tokens on the ship cards rather than the table, but all FFG's other miniatures games seem to delight in mangling the visual appeal of the game. Also, the more counters, the more likely I am to lose them, which is particularly annoying if you only get exactly enough in the box.

I actually was thinking about this over the weekend when I was punching out the components for Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. There are a lot of tokens and chits involved in game play and I was actually getting a little anxious about the logistics of not only playing games and keeping those tokens in place, but also the chore of packing them up between games and keeping them all contained. The starter box comes with some handy baggies for the tokens, but not enough to keep them individually separated, and I am not sure what will happen if table bumps cause the chits to flip or otherwise get displaced from their associated models.

Can't say that I like the clutter of all the components even if the mechanics they represent seem fun.

I think my "sweet spot" for tokens on the table would be 1 or 2 MAXIMUM per model. Anything more and I think it would not only clutter the game table and kill the aesthetic of the game but also make actual game play a bit laborious.

Yeah, I started playing Star Wars Legion, and the amount of chits, cards, measuring tools, and custom dice is actually kind of staggering. WMH could get bad with effects, but as a cygnar player was never all that bad.

40k might take a ton of models, but at least it avoids tokens! Well, for the most part...

That's assuming there's terrain wherever you're going to play of course. If you've got to take that with you...

Nope. Physically it's honestly not a consideration, if I've had a busy week then sure I might take a smaller, simpler game that I can just kick back with whilst playing, without hurting my brain.

I walk to my games the majority of the time. It's about 1km.
Over that distance I'm happy to carry a couple of large gaming cases and a bread crate or two of terrain if necessary.
It's been known for me to do two trips for bigger games or if I'm providing a load of terrain for something specific.
If im going elswwhere, I'll walk/public transport up to 5km from any two points with just a pair of cases and a rucksack.
I'll also take my car if it's out of town, horrible weather, an enormous game or if I'm in a rush.
Packing/unpacking the stuff can be a hassle but I'll generally have 6 days at home to get that sorted between games.

I always play prearranged games so that's a factor. If I were to play pick up games then maybe I'd take multiple skirmish games rather than one big army.

 Polonius wrote:
Yeah, I started playing Star Wars Legion, and the amount of chits, cards, measuring tools, and custom dice is actually kind of staggering. WMH could get bad with effects, but as a cygnar player was never all that bad.

40k might take a ton of models, but at least it avoids tokens! Well, for the most part...

Yup - I don't mind transporting stuff to play games even if it's a hassle, but I balk at games that demand I spread vast quantities of doodads all over the table. I love Star Wars* and actually like the FFG models for Legion, but I'm not sure I'll ever actually play that system with the miniatures given how cluttered it is.


*Sequels aside.

Yeah, I am not a fan of table clutter and dislike token heavy games.

Depends on how you do the frippery, I think. I love how blast markers work for Epic Armageddon and Battlefleet Gothic, for example, and the fact that they look like blasts.

This is an exaggerated problem. Every miniature game out there requires, at least, a measuring device, a bunch of dice, necessary templates, and unit stats (be it by card, codex, or app). Almost every miniature game has additional tokens on top of it, ranging from basic damage tokens to status effects to magic points to silhouette templates - Infinity has like 300 different tokens, and pimping your token collection is a favorite Infinity pastime. 40k doesn't explicitly call for tokens, but it does have status effects and you do need to track damage somehow (seems like most people just use dice).

I'll bet that if someone were to list out the components needed for playing every miniature game, they'd have roughly the same number of components you have to lug around. Invest in Plano boxes. I'd also believe that, generally speaking, they have roughly the same amount of clutter.

 Polonius wrote:
Yeah, I started playing Star Wars Legion, and the amount of chits, cards, measuring tools, and custom dice is actually kind of staggering.

Legion has a custom measuring tool and custom dice, but how is that more cluttered than having a tape measure and regular d6s? I guess it matters if you are playing more than one miniature game that session and benefit from standardization, but it still seems less unreasonable than carrying around two different armies.

 Sqorgar wrote:
This is an exaggerated problem.

No it isn't. Have you seen what comes in Fallout:WW? There are tokens for various states a model can be in during game play, and many of those tokens are double sided, meaning if you bump the table and the tokens move/flip you can feth up the organization of the game. Not to mention sorting the damn tokens can be a chore because, again, they are double sided and there are lots of them representing various status effects, so it can get very convoluted very quickly.

Some games are component heavy. I am not sure why that is a controversial stance, but whatever.

There are definitely games that require more tokens and clutter than others. I don't mind a few reasonable tokens, but I do get a little annoyed with having a whole bunch of different things out there to keep track of cluttering up the table.

The amount of tokens and templates isn't what stops me from lugging games to the LGS, though; for me, it's more of how many damn models and possibly books I need to lug down. (Digital books help since I can shove all those on my iPad and that's not a huge thing to carry around). For like the weeknight game, I usually will prefer smaller stuff like Gaslands, Kill Team, Shadespire, etc. simply because taking that to work and then to the LGS on the bus is a lot easier than my big Table War case full of AOS, for example. A weekend tourney or something is a different story.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

No it isn't. Have you seen what comes in Fallout:WW? There are tokens for various states a model can be in during game play, and many of those tokens are double sided, meaning if you bump the table and the tokens move/flip you can feth up the organization of the game. Not to mention sorting the damn tokens can be a chore because, again, they are double sided and there are lots of them representing various status effects, so it can get very convoluted very quickly.

My copy of FWW is coming tomorrow (or possibly next week), but the unboxing videos don't look too bad. A good Plano box and everything is sorted and easily transportable. At a quick glance, I'm not sure how many of those tokens are relevant to every game (some look like campaign tokens), or whether the tokens are meant to be evenly split between two players. Regardless, it looks about on par with something like Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures game, which I just punched out three cardboard sheets of tokens for last weekend.

Also, how hard are you bumping tables that you are flipping cardboard tokens over? Wouldn't that also knock your models down? I can't think of a tabletop game around that wouldn't suffer from a table bump of that magnitude.

Some games are component heavy. I am not sure why that is a controversial stance, but whatever.

The controversial stance is that the component heavy games are egregious or that they represent some undue burden to the player and game. As I said, pretty much all miniature games contain cards, tokens, dice, measuring devices, and templates. The difference between the "svelte" games and the "heavy" games is not that large, and it is mostly a perception problem.

That's just wrong. Like, demonstrably.

How is SW Legion different than a measuring tape? Because it's a measuring tape, while Legion requires you fanny about with three bespoke "movement tools" as well as a multi-part measuring stick, no less than fourteen different types of token, three different kinds of dice, all your unit cards, all the equipment cards to put on/next to those unit cards, your command cards, and the mission cards.

And as for the contention that "svelte" games are only different to that kind of clusterhump in terms of "perception" - you know what I need to play a game of Mordheim? One rulebook. One sheet of A4 paper and a pencil. One tape measure. One handful of D6s. That's it, no tokens, no big piles of cards, no different-for-the-sake-of-different bespoke movement doodads, just a couple of basic things that take up very little room and don't intrude on the actual gameplay area at all. Dragon Rampant is the same. WHFB was the same. And many more, even before getting into historicals systems which dwarf the sci/fantasy world numerically speaking and are mostly devoid of tokens and other doodads.

But even then, even if we accept the farcical idea that almost all games are riddled with faff; there's faff, and there's faff. SW Legion and games like it require you to spread all the nonsense around, you have to have status tokens and order tokens and movement stuff all over the table, and a big chunk of space near the table for all the cards and piles of extra faff you'll need later. Contrast with AT2018, which has tokens, and cards, and bespoke doodads(not as many, mind, but still it has them), but contains almost all of them on the fairly compact command terminals and designed the bespoke doodads to be as far from obnoxious as possible.

For me, I feel Underworlds is about right. Yes it has counters, but the core set has little bags to keep them in, one for each type.

Crucially, no additional counters in the warbands. So you’ll never end up with oodles of duplicates flapping around the place.

Yes there are extra cards, but you need only set up the deck you like, and take that with. So whilst the game does need the tokens because of how it’s designed, you’re not overwhelmed with gubbins.

Heck, I dare say that you can do away with most if you trust your opponent to use pen and paper.

 Yodhrin wrote:
How is SW Legion different than a measuring tape? Because it's a measuring tape, while Legion requires you fanny about with three bespoke "movement tools" as well as a multi-part measuring stick, no less than fourteen different types of token, three different kinds of dice, all your unit cards, all the equipment cards to put on/next to those unit cards, your command cards, and the mission cards.

You can replace the measuring stick with a tape measure easily. Each segment is the same size (either 4" or 6"). Yes, there is custom dice, but there are not appreciably more dice than 40k. You might have to roll 4 at a time, while 40k can have you roll over a hundred. And you can fit all the tokens from the game, sorted, in a small Plano box the size of your hand.

If you want to replace the cards and tokens with a piece of paper and pencil, you absolutely can. Print all the unit info out on a spreadsheet and use a pencil to keep track of their game state. Or you can stick your cards in those pocket pages designed for X-Wing (with the slots for one big card and 4 small cards) and put it in a mini binder to save space, or use them to create command terminals for each unit, and place the tokens on that instead of on the table. The table is only 6'x 3', which means that it has a whole extra 6" of table space per player just for storing cards and tokens and stuff while you play.

Or, you know, you could just choose not to use the tokens (with permission of your opponent). You can just remember which units have moved, are aiming, or whatever. If you can keep it in your head, go for it. Only one I'd want tokens for is suppression. For the most part, the tokens are a game aid, rather than a game requirement. They are there to make it easier for the players to keep the game state straight. If you don't need them, don't use them. The only tokens that I think you probably require are the unit tokens that you select randomly from each round.

It's like you are just throwing your hands up in the air, saying you can't figure out how to make the game work for you, when there are many options available beyond just staring at a pile of cardboard with a confused look on your face.

And compare Legion to any of the other (contemporary) miniature games, and I don't think it's that much worse. I mean, I've been buying a lot of Kill Team stuff recently. Do you have any idea how many tactics cards, mission cards, data cards, and god damned faction tokens I have now? Do you know how many are required to actually play the game? None.

And as for the contention that "svelte" games are only different to that kind of clusterhump in terms of "perception" - you know what I need to play a game of Mordheim? One rulebook. One sheet of A4 paper and a pencil. One tape measure. One handful of D6s. That's it, no tokens, no big piles of cards, no different-for-the-sake-of-different bespoke movement doodads, just a couple of basic things that take up very little room and don't intrude on the actual gameplay area at all. Dragon Rampant is the same. WHFB was the same. And many more, even before getting into historicals systems which dwarf the sci/fantasy world numerically speaking and are mostly devoid of tokens and other doodads.

Morheim and WHFB aren't being sold today, and if they were, they'd undoubted contain more tokens and cards than they used to. Necromunda, for example, has a new edition with multiple tokens, unique dice, and unit cards. Age of Sigmar, which isn't even that old, now has dice to work as scenery tokens or wound counters and the unit cards now come with a selection of tokens too. Games have tokens now. Dragon Rampant doesn't because it is just a book. It doesn't even have models.

But even then, even if we accept the farcical idea that almost all games are riddled with faff; there's faff, and there's faff. SW Legion and games like it require you to spread all the nonsense around, you have to have status tokens and order tokens and movement stuff all over the table, and a big chunk of space near the table for all the cards and piles of extra faff you'll need later.

It's not NEARLY as bad as you are suggesting. An investment of about $15 for a small Plano box (splurge for 4 pack - you'll use 'em) and pocket sleeves (put the tokens on these like one of your lovely command terminals) and you'll find your side of the board completely organized.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For me, I feel Underworlds is about right. Yes it has counters, but the core set has little bags to keep them in, one for each type.

Underworlds has the ugliest tokens out there though. Those square moved/charged/guard tokens are ugly.

The worst token offender there is and ever has been is Ninja All-Stars. There's about a dozen status tokens - and they stack. If someone has a confused token and you do something that causes the confused status effect, he now has two confused tokens. It's not uncommon for a unit to have 4-5 tokens on it. Stacking them physically is worthless, since you can't tell what they are from the side (considered using colored Sharpie on the sides) AND the game spaces are exactly the same size as the unit bases, which means there is physically no room to place the tokens on the board!

I've been thinking about getting some colored wood blocks to act as generic tokens specifically for my collection of LCGs (like L5R, Arkham Horror, Netrunner). Almost all board games have some sort of damage token (red) and money token (yellow), usually some sort of victory point token (green) and activation token (grey), and you can assign other colors as necessary. I find the 3D cubes a little easier to manipulate than flat cardboard tokens, and having a generic set means that I could just bring a single Plano box along with whatever decks I have.

Its part of the reason, not all but a part, why I gave up on FoW in 4th edition, I dislike games where you need little reference cards all over.

a few tokens I can cope with, but when the table is cluttered by them it just gets distracting, if I wanted to play a card counters wargame I would

 Sqorgar wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

No it isn't. Have you seen what comes in Fallout:WW? There are tokens for various states a model can be in during game play, and many of those tokens are double sided, meaning if you bump the table and the tokens move/flip you can feth up the organization of the game. Not to mention sorting the damn tokens can be a chore because, again, they are double sided and there are lots of them representing various status effects, so it can get very convoluted very quickly.

My copy of FWW is coming tomorrow (or possibly next week), but the unboxing videos don't look too bad. A good Plano box and everything is sorted and easily transportable. At a quick glance, I'm not sure how many of those tokens are relevant to every game (some look like campaign tokens), or whether the tokens are meant to be evenly split between two players. Regardless, it looks about on par with something like Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures game, which I just punched out three cardboard sheets of tokens for last weekend.

Check back in when you've read the rules and punched out the chits. The game uses a lot of chits. So, you know, when you actually have the game in hand form your opinion. As I stated in my original post, the components were easily secured in the ziplock bags provided with the game, but it doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of tokens, and that the game requires models to have multiple tokens on the table representing various game effects.

 Sqorgar wrote:
Also, how hard are you bumping tables that you are flipping cardboard tokens over? Wouldn't that also knock your models down? I can't think of a tabletop game around that wouldn't suffer from a table bump of that magnitude.

I've had donkey-caves bump tables at the LGS that sent models and tokens scattering. I've had cats jump/slide on tables at home that sent models and tokens flying. Gak happens. So, when that does happen, it is annoying for the players involved to figure out where all the god damn cardboard is supposed to go after the fact. And to head off any, "but if your models fell, you have to re-position them" counter-arguments, placing models back after a table bump is infinitely easier than remembering every effect counter and status counter for every model in the game. Typically, players have a good idea of the table positioning for the current turn. If a table bump happens and models fall or move, you can get them back into place fairly easily. Now, do that and also try and remember which of your 5-10 models had their activation tokens present, which ones were spent, which ones had bonus or penalty tokens, etc. It becomes much, much more difficult to reset the board when there are multiple chits for each model that you need to track.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
Some games are component heavy. I am not sure why that is a controversial stance, but whatever.

The controversial stance is that the component heavy games are egregious or that they represent some undue burden to the player and game. As I said, pretty much all miniature games contain cards, tokens, dice, measuring devices, and templates. The difference between the "svelte" games and the "heavy" games is not that large, and it is mostly a perception problem.

Anything that makes a game more difficult, finicky, or harder to jump in to playing is by definition an extra burden to players. So, what's up? If players find placing, tracking, and organizing pea-sized chits burdensome what then? Are they just wrong in their impression?

And even taking your argument that "svelte" and "heavy" games are divided by a thin line component-wise, (which I don't agree with) isn't what you label a "perception problem" actually just a problem? If the components of a game make the game more difficult to play in any way, regardless of whether or not the game play is fun, that isn't a problem with the player's perception. The player doesn't need to re-evaluate the game in order to get the right perspective on the matter. They either like or dislike the extra effort the game requires. If they dislike the extra effort required, then the game is problematic for them.

on the subject of tokens..

Did anyone else ever play Federation and Empire?

and I mean actually play it, not give up after setting half of the 1,500+ counters up....

leopard wrote:
on the subject of tokens..

Did anyone else ever play Federation and Empire?

and I mean actually play it, not give up after setting half of the 1,500+ counters up....

/me raises hand.

Granted, we only wound up doing about 2 turns each, which still took forever.

played "longest day" by Avalon Hill, the "longest day" was setting it up

I am surprised by all these tokens in modern games. Many very detailed and realistic historical games get by without them. For example, Impetus is generally considered one of the more historically accurate simulations of Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance warfare yet it has only type of token and plus a single dice per unit to count damage. Or Fleet Action Imminent, one of more realistic Great War naval games has two turning templates and no other tokens on the table (though you need print out between 1 to 4 a4 pages per game). I am not a token adverse person since I mainly play hex and counter games with 500+ tokens, but you can get very realistic minature games without employing many tokens.

 Samsonov wrote:
...but you can get very realistic minature games without employing many tokens.

Well, generally speaking, tokens convey a specific type of information (usually binary and transitory) in a succinct way. For mass warfare games, the models themselves form units, with each model representing a single "hit point". But when playing a skirmish game, you don't want most units to either exist or not exist - you want some in between states. Tokens (or using some other counter, like dials or dice) are an okay answer to this problem, but there's other solutions (Necromunda has to place models on their side, for example, and you can't always use a pencil and paper).

What makes tokens the superior answer, however, is that you can use them for things other than between states. You can use them to count things (focus, health, victory points), indicate states (prone, activated, readied), and even use them to stand in for miniatures (objective markers, camo markers, supply drops). Because tokens can be two sided, you can even occasionally hide information on them (supply markers that have a random item on the underside) or represent a binary change in state (spending glory points to buy upgrades). Even better, you can stuff them all in a bag to shuffle them and randomly select one (selecting units in Legion). If you design the tokens well, you can write game rules in a shorthand, using icons of the tokens (something like Imperial Settlers, where you can trade tokens of one type for tokens of another). Tokens are also self descriptive, meaning that they convey information about themselves with their shape, color, and graphic - to the point where a very complex game state can be instantly communicated to the players very easily. And, let's be honest, tokens have a tangible quality to them that makes them more fun to manipulate than scribbling on a piece of paper.

You already know how to use tokens. Once you've introduced tokens to the game, all of the above becomes something you can have for free without greatly increasing the complexity of the game design. The design space for the game is considerably widened without adding more pages to the instruction book (except for Infinity, when spends dozens of pages describing tokens). In a weird way, they actually make the game more complex but EASIER to understand.

Can you make a war game without tokens? Sure. But you would limiting the kind of game you could make. They do a lot for tabletop gaming. They are a superior alternative to other forms of record keeping.

I don't know why tabletop gaming has replaced sheets of paper with cards, as far as army building and game rules are concerned. Seems like there's probably a reason for that preference. But stuff like proprietary dice and measuring tools is just annoying.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
How is SW Legion different than a measuring tape? Because it's a measuring tape, while Legion requires you fanny about with three bespoke "movement tools" as well as a multi-part measuring stick, no less than fourteen different types of token, three different kinds of dice, all your unit cards, all the equipment cards to put on/next to those unit cards, your command cards, and the mission cards.

You can replace the measuring stick with a tape measure easily.

So why didn't they? That's the point; FFG put half a dozen pointless bits of plastic in the box for no good reason. As for custom dice, it might only need three rather than a couple of dozen, but I can only get them from FFG; If I lose one, that's a pain in the fundament, whereas D6 are easily obtainable and substantially cheaper. You couldreplace all the on-table tokens, but again that misses the point, which is for reasons best known to themselves, FFG deliberately designed their miniatures games to look gak.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:You can replace the measuring stick with a tape measure easily.

So why didn't they?

If you look at all of FFG's products, they don't use measuring tape for anything. All their miniature games (Legion, Runewars, X-Wing, Armada) use templates of some sort to measure movement. They are cardboard in the others, but Legion requires a longer measuring template than they could reasonably do in cardboard, so they created the longer, sturdier, modular whippy-stick. It was also probably cheaper than outsourcing a tape measure for the box too.

Why use templates and not measuring tape? I'd only be guessing, but I think measuring has a very negative connotation to board game people. It is an instant turn off, and I personally know people who won't even play games that use measuring for movement. It's probably one of the top 5 reasons why board gamers don't play miniature games (cost, assembling miniatures, painting anxiety, competitive gamers - and tape measures).

 Sqorgar wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:You can replace the measuring stick with a tape measure easily.

So why didn't they?

If you look at all of FFG's products, they don't use measuring tape for anything. All their miniature games (Legion, Runewars, X-Wing, Armada) use templates of some sort to measure movement. They are cardboard in the others, but Legion requires a longer measuring template than they could reasonably do in cardboard, so they created the longer, sturdier, modular whippy-stick. It was also probably cheaper than outsourcing a tape measure for the box too.

Why use templates and not measuring tape? I'd only be guessing, but I think measuring has a very negative connotation to board game people. It is an instant turn off, and I personally know people who won't even play games that use measuring for movement. It's probably one of the top 5 reasons why board gamers don't play miniature games (cost, assembling miniatures, painting anxiety, competitive gamers - and tape measures).

Well Armada has a card one for ranges, but uses a weird plastic one for movement that actually works for what its designed to do, for ranges the card one is just for the sake of it though, could be stated as distances and be done with it


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Valander wrote:

leopard wrote:
on the subject of tokens..

Did anyone else ever play Federation and Empire?

and I mean actually play it, not give up after setting half of the 1,500+ counters up....

/me raises hand.

Granted, we only wound up doing about 2 turns each, which still took forever.

Got about as far as me with the basic game then, wonderful system, but gods it needed to be on a computer to keep track of it all.

the "Total war" expansions (with even more counters, splitting the carrier groups up) tried some more basic scenarios that worked, Captains log had a pre-war one that didn't use fighters and was IIRC four turns long that worked nicely.

main game? lol.. the box reckoned four hours+ to set up

 Sqorgar wrote:

Why use templates and not measuring tape? I'd only be guessing, but I think measuring has a very negative connotation to board game people. It is an instant turn off, and I personally know people who won't even play games that use measuring for movement. It's probably one of the top 5 reasons why board gamers don't play miniature games (cost, assembling miniatures, painting anxiety, competitive gamers - and tape measures).

Using templates instead of a measuring tape means you also don't have to worry about providing measurement numbers based on whether a country uses the metric system or not. Very useful when having to do localized translations for the game.

Anyway, I think it's worth noting that even some games that don't officially use tokens, actually still use them, even if they're just in your mind. Was that unit in 40K falling back? How many wounds has that unit taken and what bonuses do they have for combat resolution? Are they under the effects of some psychic buff? And so on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:
on the subject of tokens..

Did anyone else ever play Federation and Empire?

and I mean actually play it, not give up after setting half of the 1,500+ counters up....

Federation and Empire? No, but I still have my copy of World in Flames.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Using templates instead of a measuring tape means you also don't have to worry about providing measurement numbers based on whether a country uses the metric system or not. Very useful when having to do localized translations for the game.

Ah, very good point. Didn't think of that.

On that note, how are measurements localized between countries? In the US, everything is in inches, but I assume in countries with the metric system, they are in centimeters? One inch = Two and a half centimeters. Do they just stick with inches, or round to the nearest cm and just travel different distances in different countries, or just go with a direct conversion and you can't move within 7.56 cm of an enemy without charging?

Anyway, I think it's worth noting that even some games that don't officially use tokens, actually still use them, even if they're just in your mind. Was that unit in 40K falling back? How many wounds has that unit taken and what bonuses do they have for combat resolution? Are they under the effects of some psychic buff? And so on.

Exactly. More often than not, tokens are a game aid, not a game mechanic.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

Why use templates and not measuring tape? I'd only be guessing, but I think measuring has a very negative connotation to board game people. It is an instant turn off, and I personally know people who won't even play games that use measuring for movement. It's probably one of the top 5 reasons why board gamers don't play miniature games (cost, assembling miniatures, painting anxiety, competitive gamers - and tape measures).

Using templates instead of a measuring tape means you also don't have to worry about providing measurement numbers based on whether a country uses the metric system or not. Very useful when having to do localized translations for the game.

Anyway, I think it's worth noting that even some games that don't officially use tokens, actually still use them, even if they're just in your mind. Was that unit in 40K falling back? How many wounds has that unit taken and what bonuses do they have for combat resolution? Are they under the effects of some psychic buff? And so on.

Wait, whut? Tokens are, you know, tokens. Physical objects. Some people choose to use tokens to keep track of things in games that do not actually require tokens to play, but that's a choice they made not something that the game requires them to do. What you described are what's known in the trade as "game mechanics"

Mordheim had wyrdstone shard tokens! Of course any sensible player replaces these with green jelly babies / jelly beans.

I actually still use a few of the tokens that came with my 40k 2nd ed / Necromunda 1st ed while playing GW games.