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How do!

Nice big open question for everyone. And hopefully, all I need do is attempt to define what I mean by traits here, and offer an example.

So by Traits, I mean mechanics wise. The bits and bobs that provide the tactical and strategic challenge you find appealing, if not outright crave.

For me? It’s Positioning Being Important.

Examples would be Legions Imperialis, and Adeptus Titanicus.

In LI, you’ve pretty free movement. But the ultimate facing of your armoured units is important. Some weapons can only fire in your front arc, and your side and rear armour is easier to defeat. This of course makes your movement very important, as well as your deployment. And it’s then linked to the Order system, where I have to make a decision about what a unit is going to do in a given turn, and when it gets to do it - whilst also knowing I’m sacrificing certain actions entirely.

Adeptus Titanicus takes it much further, where it marries strict fire arcs to limited manoeuvrability, to the point where if you really botch your deployment, it can genuinely cost you the game against an opponent that’s better considered that aspect.

This is why I think modern 40K doesn’t appeal to me. Everything has a 360 degree fire arc, and there’s no need to consider where your opponent might be shooting your armour from, because it makes absolutely no difference. Worse for me, it reduces how sneaky I can be, such as looking for ways past tanks and walkers where maybe only one gun can target my unit. There is of course the other issue of “all my weapons can see and shoot you regardless of where they actually are” breaking of immersion, but that’s a lesser thing for me.

The exact level I’m kinda agnostic on. AT or 2nd Ed 40k’s limited movement and manoeuvre rules are fun and a welcome level of challenge, but aren’t entirely essential,

I've been reading the BattleTech: BattleMech Manual and while it has a LOT of detail, I like that a lot of the detail is optional. Want to play in a torrential blizzard at night on a low gravity world? Go for it. But if you want to play on the cloudless rolling green hills of a George Lucasian Droid battle. Feel free.

With mechs from pieces of
cobbled together by pirates to Super Heavy 3 legged leviathans, I enjoy the movement and most of all the simultaneous shooting.

You shoot, I shoot and both attacks are applied. So you don't have to worry that you will but troops on the tabletop that will never get a chance to shine.

Positioning and meaningful choices are my big ones, if we're purely looking at mechanics. That makes 40k pretty poor, but it does make up for it with the overall aesthetic and sheer size of the range and player base.

My favourite game of the last ten years is X-Wing as it really emphasis positioning, decision making without full knowledge and allows for good skill expression in multiple types of squadron builds. Epic is another favourite for similar reasons. Both those games have also typically been pretty balanced overall. One trait I hate is balance that's so bad you can feel like you're losing before a game starts, even if you take what should be a reasonable force background-wise.

I'm a big fan of positioning up to a sane point for the game. Ergo I don't want to have to perfectly face all 40 termagaunts each time I move one squad; but I'm content to do it for a tank or a titan model and it can feel pretty fitting that it can't just spin around and fire all its weapons at once behind itself. Of course with how wide many tanks are and bigger things on modern boards and if you want terrain to play other movement traps then it can fast become a situation were no facing becomes more practical and fun because otherwise bigger things become too cumbersome to control. Doubly so when you have factions that can take all big things as the army which would suddenly be at a disadvantage over a mob army that could skirt around behind them.



I think for me the key with positioning is that it links back to the core of one major element of fun rules - the sense that the player choices matter.

Positioning is by extension player choice in the game. For me I like winning and losing games where I feel like it was the choices I and my opponent made which contributed MOST toward the eventual outcome.

For me that's a win even if you lose because you can evaluate what happened after. You can review and have a chance at learning how to improve and what mistakes were made.

Random is fun but it should be the cherry on the top of fun moments not the entire cake

Even if I don't really have practical experience for tabletop Wargames, some preference from RPGs is applyable here: I like it when there is not THE best weapon/Tank/unit for a specific slot etc. but several meaningful choices. And when the difference is not just "hit harder"/"tank more"/"be cheaper" but some come with tactical gimmicks.

Like... Anti deep strike bubbles, "look out sir", etc.



Also when you have a setting with horde armies that are intended to be slaughtered en masse, try to include a mechanic that allows for some of the dudes to survive throughout the game. A good example (in my opinion) are the reinforces stratagem and similar mechanics. Instead of a pure infantry list being 250 models in the first round and <50 from round 3 onwards, try to make it that it is more like 100-150 in round one, but 50-100 still kicking in some form in round 4, unless you really botched it.
But that is completely personal preference. Feel free to hate that.
Edit: to clarify: I mean in both cases: let the Elite armies kill their 100 Guardsmen to feel super elite, but let the Horde-player still have enough guys running around to feel hordy, instead of dumping a truckload of units turn one just to shove them away by the hand fulls in the first two rounds never to be seen again.

I assume it's about miniature wargames?

Yes, positioning beating luck/stats. In my experience games where ranges and LOS are limited in significant way, good positioning is harder. If the game rewards it - it's on the right track.

I like when games are consistent in rewarding good moves/punishing bad moves. If you make a good move, you have a certain reward/advantage, not, say a 30% chance to get an advantage.

I like when randomness is to provide a certain variance of results but doesn't dictate success and failure of actions. So, if you made good decisions, you are rewarded with a success - randomised between a smaller or a bigger one, but never a failure, because dice say so.

Big impact, big variance rolls - like charge rolls, or damage rolls that vary between doing nothing or killing a strong target outright - are an instant turnoff.

I dislike something that I call GW randomness - probabilities built in a way, that makes them (not player moves) a pre-requisite of extraordinary results. To be more specific
-getting good positioning (or other good decisions) but average luck gives results like bad positioning but good luck
-to get extraordinary results you need perfect positioning and good luck

I'd rather have
-good moves with average luck beat good luck with bad moves every time
-perfect moves are hard to pull off but get you extraordinary results regardless of the dice

I quite like randomness in my games.

There is an appeal to say, fixed charge range or fixed damage. But for me adding the random factor can bring further risk and reward decisions.

For instance, let’s say I’m lining up a charge, and I’m 7” away from the intended target. I know the chances of me connecting with said charge are pretty solid, but there’s still a fair chance it might fail.

There, I need to consider what my mitigation will be should the charge fail, just as I need to factor in the eternal chance of “Rubber Lance Syndrome”. Which as we know crops up far more often than it ought to, because the Dice Gods have a certain sense of humour.

Maybe there is no mitigation. Maybe that change and subsequent bout of fisticuffs isn’t a key part of my current strategy.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely understand why others don’t enjoy it. And nobody likes being bilked out a victory due to an ill timed Snake Eyes on a 3” charge or similar “why now??” botched roll. Especially when, with 40K and WHFB something like charge reach is latterly changed to being randomised where for edition after edition it was fixed.

But it is something I can live with and embrace.

What I’m not keen on is Card Game Combos. All those buff bubbles turn me right off modern 40K.

I agree about positioning. One of the many things I like about 6th ed WHFB was that you could lose the game based on bad deployment or movement, or win because you guessed the opponents' plan or trapped them with your own scheme

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
I agree about positioning. One of the many things I like about 6th ed WHFB was that you could lose the game based on bad deployment or movement, or win because you guessed the opponents' plan or trapped them with your own scheme

At which point why bother playing the game? You won during deployment, gg, let's spend the next hour or two playing a different game where I have a chance.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
I agree about positioning. One of the many things I like about 6th ed WHFB was that you could lose the game based on bad deployment or movement, or win because you guessed the opponents' plan or trapped them with your own scheme

At which point why bother playing the game? You won during deployment, gg, let's spend the next hour or two playing a different game where I have a chance.

Well that's a bit of an extreme interpretation. What I meant is that deployment and movement affected the outcome of the game. You could recover from a bad deployment in 6th with skill. You could also trick your opponent with a fake bad deployment.

You only won during deployment if your opponent horribly botched their own. Which is true of any game where deployment, positioning and arcs are in play.

This is why I have such a distaste for the WHFB “Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitability”.

Typically deploying on and around a hill, it reduced a game which should be one of careful movement and timely charges to one of “well. I guess all I can do is cross the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough stuff left to win the resulting combats against a T4, 4+ save enemy that also has really solid leadership

Spyrers in the original Necromunda were another example of a force which felt like it missed the point of the game. Horrendously powerful in the battle, and then promptly all but ignored the rest of the campaign. Like a pro-wrestler that’s only there to be big and splungy, doesn’t work the mic and never really takes part in the soap operatics of it all.

Anyways I digress.

Suffice to say Really Bad Deployment isn’t something you do many times. And being an integral part of the game and how it plays out? Is something you pick up super quickly.

I want my game to be relatively model agnostic, and particularly, to be basing agnostic. I've grown to hate rules that make the base size important and I want to use whatever figures from my collection I want, not be limited by a concept of officialdom.

I want rules that make terrain relevant and interesting, so that it has a bearing on the game.

I don't mind command and control style rules for large battle games, but I think it's a bit much for skirmish level games.

I prefer a game size of 50 models or more, generally. I'm not against 10 a side games, but lower than that and I'd probably rather play an RPG rather than a wargame.

I like the rules to be somewhat simulationist, that is, even in a fantasy game I like cavalry, infantry and archers to work as you'd broadly expect if you have some knowledge of historical warfare.

But I'm happy to sacrifice detail for the sake of a game being easy to teach to non-wargamers. Broad strokes is enough for me these days, as long as the fundamental feel is right.

I generally dislike "stratagems" and so on, and always have even going back to 2e Strategy Cards. I think your stratagems should be on the table, not in a deck of cards or in your rulebook.

Oh, and I've grown to dislike special rules over the years too. Build the rules into the profile for the troops and the game rules, and try to keep the number of exceptions low. I am past the point where I really enjoy exception based game design now!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely understand why others don’t enjoy it. And nobody likes being bilked out a victory due to an ill timed Snake Eyes on a 3” charge or similar “why now??” botched roll. Especially when, with 40K and WHFB something like charge reach is latterly changed to being randomised where for edition after edition it was fixed.

But it is something I can live with and embrace.

What I’m not keen on is Card Game Combos. All those buff bubbles turn me right off modern 40K.

I'm all for some randomnes in my wargames - exactly as you say, to force having plan B and C. However, it doesn't apply to swingy but important situations I describe.

Unfortunately I have never seen randomness like this produce an enjoyable, satisfying moment :( Best case scenario it's resigned indifference, but most often it's just a disappointing and demotivating event for both sides, both players thinking "I didn't deserve this". Both knowing what should have happened and feeling robbed of the fun of watching a well executed strategy and a Neat Move! bear fruit in the form of an exciting, game-breaking result.

And I absolutely play for those Neat Move! moments You know, the moments when you congratulate yourself in your head "damn, I'm smart!" or you congratulate your opponent for the exact same thing.

Rules like these randomised charge ranges or, another really hated rule of mine - Insane Courage - seem to exist to sap all excitment from Neat Move! moments, as they are specifically and exclusively designed to randomly punish one player for playing very well (in the case of IC, engineering an overwhelming CP advantage so that IC even matters) while they reward the player who made bad moves (allowed this to happen) for zero reason.


As for buff bubbles or handing out buffs to target units, I fell in love with these in Warmachine. They play exactly into things I like in wargames
-mitigating probabilities
-player agency
-positioning
-timing

They also depend on what I wrote before about ranges - if ranges of these buffs are short, the entire thing becomes an interesting spatial puzzle where a worse player learns he's his own worst enemy as his models will lack movement to provide buffs where they matter, or they will not be able to pull off the best order of activations, as there are models in the way that need to be moved first, before the buff can be delivered, but they should move later, but now they are blocking the way, because the turn before they were moved forward willy-nilly without much thought...you know what I mean ?

A good player will show his skill by having all this well orchestrated, most likely by predicting the game state the turn before and planning the moves appropriately in advance.

But this only works if ranges of these buffs are short. If they are long, reaching their targets with little thought or effort on player's part, instead of an interesting, tight, spatial puzzle of interlocking positioning, we get an equivalent of just pushing a big red button and I absolutely see how this is boring and doesn't feel like a Neat Move! at all.

I'm much the same in that I like an element of random in the game, but I want the main emphasis of the win/loss to be choices the players made getting there rather than a couple of dice rolls defining everything.

If its the last two models facing off in a fight to the death then yeah the dice favouring one over the other is epic because the game got to that state through the players choices through the game up to that point.



It's why I hate things like the infamous "doubleturn" of AoS because to me it removes a MASSIVE chunk of player input from the game. Sure you still have to choose to take it or not (though honestly there are very few cases where you won't take it); but in the end the dice just has too much impact on the game.



Many other parts I see as individually or in moderation good; but when done in bulk they become annoying. Strategems is a great example of a simple idea that becomes a problem. A halfdozen of them is fine; a half dozen per subfaction and a dozen core ones and a few more from expansions and yeah then you've an issue. It's too many choices during the game to remember and juggle all at once.

The same is true of special rules.




That said I think another big part isn't just the rules themselves its hte presentation of the information and how you access it. This is something GW really fails at hard these days - they don't just make fiddly systems that are tricky to learn but they scattershot the information all over the place. Not just with expansion books and magazine updates but within the books themsleves. Why are codex entries not at least in alphabetical order? Why are there very few to no cross referencing page references within them; why isn't information repeated in key locations. etc...




Even a simple system can appear bad if the presentation and access to information is messy.

For me, a good game should emphasize player choice and interactions, with just enough luck to keep things a bit uncertain. Movement should be important, but I also want to see mechanics like suppressing fire or overwatch.

I like luck when it is a clear fog of war thing, or when it matters because the game is otherwise very close (4+, I kill your monster. 3-, your monster lives and wrecks me). I don't like randomness when it ultimately reduces player agency. I think random charges are an example of bad randomness, since every argument for them also works for ranged weapons, and you can lose the game because of a botched roll for something that isn't a cinematic moment.

I also wouldn't mind if wargames explored input randomness more. So far I have only seen it implemented in Malifaux and, in minor roles in some special rules in other games.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
This is why I have such a distaste for the WHFB “Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitability”.

Another trait comes to mind, that you don't have to play it with jerks.

Cyel wrote:
I also wouldn't mind if wargames explored input randomness more. So far I have only seen it implemented in Malifaux and, in minor roles in some special rules in other games.

I really liked the idea behind Malifaux and had a few kits for it. But the rules seemed really impenetrable, I just don't think I have the brain space for it.

My answer to this has definitely changed over time and according to big life changes. Young Fugazi wanted to see positional advantages, crossfire, suppression fire, etc. Basically, Squad Leader or ASL with miniatures.

Older, World-weary Fugazi with things like Disney and stuffed animals featuring much larger in the grand scheme of things? I need something easily digestible. I ain’t got time for a lifestyle game with a gazillion exceptions or special rules. Suddenly, One Page Rules seems much more attractive.

A lack of complication for the sake of complication, and makle rules standardised and intuitive.

Original 3rd ed 40K was amazing, streamlined but had depth, and when you came to a battle in seconds you could tell where the battle lines were and the ebb and flow of the game.
And you did not need paperwork to establish who was winning throughout the game.

I have tried AOS multiple times and it is awful in structure and style.
Current WTOW combat resolution is very countrintuitive and just damned frustrating

Warmachine however is complex but the rules were intuitive and standardised across the game. Yes there was points calculations each turn but it was seconds, and not looking up text to check the parameters. 1 demo game, a few small games and you are off and racing.

 Fugazi wrote:
My answer to this has definitely changed over time and according to big life changes. Young Fugazi wanted to see positional advantages, crossfire, suppression fire, etc. Basically, Squad Leader or ASL with miniatures.

Older, World-weary Fugazi with things like Disney and stuffed animals featuring much larger in the grand scheme of things? I need something easily digestible. I ain’t got time for a lifestyle game with a gazillion exceptions or special rules. Suddenly, One Page Rules seems much more attractive.

That's what I loved about X-wing. It was very focused on position, but also quite a simple game to get into, and all the special rules were recorded on reference cards that you could have right at your finger tips.

Narrative opportunities. Games have to tell a story and feature interesting scenarios. "Balanced" games with symmetrical terrain is okay for introductory games, but once you know the rules there should be more to explore than we line up and beat each other in the face. That's why I also like quirky special rules that convey a feeling about the faction.
Also the game should reward actions that feel logical and tactically sound. Like taking cover behind a wall. Or flanking. I don’t need a deep tactical simulation, but when I'm hiding my plague Marines behind a wall I don’t want to realize later on "they're Space Marines, they don’t care about cover" (pre 8th) or "that one guy is 1mm too far to the left. I can shoot the whole unit no problem."(post 8th).
Also, the game should inspire me to build and convert new minis. Miniature agnostic games tend to be better for that and GW actively fights it in their systems since a couple of years.
Choices in the game are important, too. Since 8th edition 40K choice making has vastly improved in the game, but at the same time units started to die instantly and the game became about "trading" units, counteracting said choices.
Star Trek Attack Wing currently is my favourite game. It has straightforward rules, loads of narrative scenarios, you can equip your ships with hundreds of upgrades to make them feel unique. Oathmark would be another example of an excellent game, very tactical gameplay and it encourages you to build your own world.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

 Fugazi wrote:
My answer to this has definitely changed over time and according to big life changes. Young Fugazi wanted to see positional advantages, crossfire, suppression fire, etc. Basically, Squad Leader or ASL with miniatures.

Older, World-weary Fugazi with things like Disney and stuffed animals featuring much larger in the grand scheme of things? I need something easily digestible. I ain’t got time for a lifestyle game with a gazillion exceptions or special rules. Suddenly, One Page Rules seems much more attractive.

That's what I loved about X-wing. It was very focused on position, but also quite a simple game to get into, and all the special rules were recorded on reference cards that you could have right at your finger tips.

Yep. X-wing and Armada really hit a sweet spot. Same with Attack Wing, as Sgt Cortez mentioned. Frostgrave seems to have simple enough rules too (at least the base game does—I don’t know what the expansion books do to it).

Going over some common traits of my favorite game systems:

- I tend to prefer games that have some kind of resource economy that allows for "big" abilities that are limited in use over the game.

- I like it when units have choices of which attacks they use or actions they take.

- I like abstracted terrain and LOS rules. They just seem to lead to more dynamic looking boards and miniatures. Accessible rules for elevation and terrain destruction are also a huge plus in my book.

- I prefer relatively low lethality with a greater emphasis on pushes and other ways of moving enemy models around than removing them from the board.

- I prefer objective based games with a couple types of ways to score or multiple routes to victory in some way.