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I'm just curious whether people prefer a game that has some really beautiful miniatures, but not that great rules, or a game with an awesome ruleset, but with kinda ugly and creepy minis.

What I mean under "bad rules" - rules, that are not really thought through, have a lot of holes, imbalanced and are generally not interesting to play. Rules, that need a lot of tweaking. Probably, over-simplified ones (like AoS), or over-complicated (like Infinity) to the point, where the game becomes nearly unplayable.

Basically...Warhammer as the first choice? Pretty minis, garbage rules? Good thing I can buy WH minis if I want and play them in MULTIPLE other game rule sets. I like having my cake and eating it.

Hmmm tough one.
I actually loathe the Malifaux and Infinity aesthetics but have heard they have pretty cool rulesets.
WMH falls kinda in the middle with some cracking minitaures and a decent enough ruleset.
Something like 40k whilst not as tight does have terrific miniatures imo and is still fairly playable.
Poll probably needs an inbetween option for me so.

 Ratius wrote:
Hmmm tough one.
I actually loathe the Malifaux and Infinity aesthetics but have heard they have pretty cool rulesets.
WMH falls kinda in the middle with some cracking minitaures and a decent enough ruleset.
Something like 40k whilst not as tight does have terrific miniatures imo and is still fairly playable.
Poll probably needs an inbetween option for me so.

The whole purpose of this poll is to give two mutually exclusive options - it's either one or another. No in-betweens.

*tucks tail and scampers off to a dark cave*

c) Find nice minis, and a good ruleset to use them with if the one they're attached to isn't any good (though in all honesty, I struggle to think of a widely available ruleset that is 'bad' to the point of being unplayable. For all their faults, even Age of Sigmar and 40k are fine if you approach them with the mindset they're designed around. But that's another thread...)

Minis and rules are really two separate entities, and the more options you have for each the better!

Please define "bad rules", because for me there are two levels of this:

1 - The current 40k level;
2 - AoS Level (aka the clusterfeth).

Is it level 1 or level 2?

Given only those choices and a gun to my head, I’ll take good minis, bad rules. Frankly I spend more time at the paintbench then the game table these days, so would get more enjoyment from them.

This also assumes an identical price point. If the cost is low, I’m OK with crummy markers as game pieces, as long as the game plays well.

But as others have said, there is a lot of wiggle room in this situation IRL. Bad rules can be tweaked, good minis can be used in other systems, etc.

I would gladly play (and do play) awesome and fun games that use wooden chits as the miniatures. Nice looking miniatures are a huge bonus, but in terms of game play, they're just a bonus.

If a game comes out with amazing miniatures, but terrible rules, I'll never play it. I might possibly buy some of the miniatures for conversion of general assembly/painting, but they'll never see use in their intended game.

I probably wouldn't play either, as presented there

If there was a woeful ruleset with excellent mins I'd probably buy and paint the minis, but I wouldn't play the game

(this is the most likely option for me to take if I had to do one or the other)

If there was a brilliant rule set with woeful minis that I wanted to play I'd go counts as

A bit of a non-poll.
I would take a good rule-set any-day and push bits of cardboard around.
The thing is: we play tabletop games for looks AND a good game.
I WANT to have good looking miniatures to play the game.
If I cannot have both, I would say I do not want it at all and go find a game that has both.
It is like getting a poll of who are the painters who happen to be gamers or gamers who happen to be painters.

Is this going to turn into another GW vs Mantic thread?

I honestly would choose neither.

Where the need both to be good option. I play Infinity and Batman they cover both way would I waste my the on crap models or rules that took a few days to make.

It's easier to fix bad models (to whatever standard you personally have) than to fix bad rules.

"Oh, I'll buy this and convert it to remove the boob window. And I'll buy that model from this other company to use instead of that one. And I'll just not buy that one faction because I think their tanks look terrible."
Versus spending endless hours debating with people in the rules forums, and spending several minutes before a game discussing which pot holes in the rules you're aware of and don't want to hit.

There is a third option

Ugly minis have no appeal for me. Even a bad mini in an otherwise good looking army won't get bought, no matter how good a unit it is.
On the other hand poor rules and unit balance irritate me.

So I'd choose the best of both worlds. Use the best ruleset I can find, and use and/or convert the minis of my choice to represent the units from that ruleset.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Basically...Warhammer as the first choice? Pretty minis, garbage rules? Good thing I can buy WH minis if I want and play them in MULTIPLE other game rule sets. I like having my cake and eating it.

You can use warhammer minis in other systems, an elf is an elf in d&d, sobh etc.

Great minis, poor rules any day. The rules give me an extra use for my models. I don't collect models in order to use rules.

Decision between pest and cholera, or GW and PP.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
I honestly would choose neither.

Pretty much.

I'm not going to waste my time playing a crappy game even if the miniatures are awesome and I'm not going to waste my time painting crappy models to play a game that is awesome.

Miniatures draw me in, rules make me stay.

If the miniatures aren't great, I probably wouldn't look at the game even if the rules are good.

If the miniatures are good but the rules are bad, it depends on how bad they are. If there no sign they'll improve, or only need minor tweaking then I might continue to stay. But if they are so bad they need to be completely overhauled then I probably would move on. The only other thing about good looking miniatures, I might use them as a proxy for other games but there are already a lot available without needing to purchase a new game.

I'll play the great rule set. As to wich system will get more of my money? The Minis. I'll happily proxy good minis from a lousy game in the great game with lousy minis.

No-brainer. Great rules, using whatever minis I deem appropriate.

Take the best minis, use the rules I like the most changing where needed. It's not an either/or choice, it's an open choice.

I'd go for the Miniatures. I don't think I've ever started a game based for rules instead of for the miniatures. In almost all cases I buy them before trying out the game, if I even ever play the game at all.

This is of course ignoring rulesets with no related model line. Those I get on the strength of the rules. Plus I can use any models that suits the game's setting.

False choice- I can play good rulesets with any minis I want.

How about 3. Game with Awesome rules and proxies for the bad minis?

shyzo wrote:

 Ratius wrote:
Hmmm tough one.
I actually loathe the Malifaux and Infinity aesthetics but have heard they have pretty cool rulesets.
WMH falls kinda in the middle with some cracking minitaures and a decent enough ruleset.
Something like 40k whilst not as tight does have terrific miniatures imo and is still fairly playable.
Poll probably needs an inbetween option for me so.

The whole purpose of this poll is to give two mutually exclusive options - it's either one or another. No in-betweens.

So black or white with no shades of grey at all?

Good luck.

If there was no inbetween for this question, then I would just stop playing miniature games and enjoy video/computer games.

Because the reality is that neither game could become popular enough to matter or exist for long.

 Vertrucio wrote:
If there was no inbetween for this question, then I would just stop playing miniature games and enjoy video/computer games.

Because the reality is that neither game could become popular enough to matter or exist for long.

We have proof that your statement is false.

So WHFB/AoS vs KoW.

I picked good rules over models. I'd rather have a balanced game than play a faction that has no chance of winning.