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 Breotan wrote:
Wow. Are you aware of how cynical your statement is? No wonder GW doesn't see PP as real competition.

People were willing to buy 150 DPI files of a top-down view of some of their level maps for $10 during PP's video game KS for you to print yourself to use as a game map. Not crappy prints, not standard print res files, not crappy files ass freebies, certainly not nice prints for more money, but low res files with no markup for actual practical use, and fans very actively defended PP as a company that needs to make money like they were some sort of charity that deserved and needed their fans' money.

No, I don't put it past them to charge the most for the least, if they can get away with it, because of their die-hards.

edit: Oh, and for the record, no, I don't have a specific vendetta against PP. I think GW's practices are equally absurdly priced (such as their new 30th anniversary tactical marine with free super weapon) but usually around poor quantity rather than poor quality, and I think that GW's consumers' willingness to pay too much is just as bad. There are a lot of companies that charge a ton for luxury toys, I just think that those two, with large die-hard fanbases, are most able/willing to exploit them.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Please, there are plenty of other windmills to tilt at than this one.

I can tilt at more than one windmill at a time.

And please yourslef. Look at this:


Brightly colored plastic figures, a flat paper mat with pre-printed terrain, folded paper cardboard wall, a bunch of tokens, they aren't shown but there's cards too - That's a board game. It's the Undercity/Widower's Woods version of Warmachine. When you remove the pageantry from a miniatures game, what's left is Ameritrash.

Heck, take PP's recent online policy. Didn't Asmodee/FFG do something very similar because their intentions were to sell outside of FLGS and get their products into big box stores? Who's to say that's not PP's plan also?

And that's okay. If that's the direction PP wants to go with Warmachine, I honestly think MOST Warmachine players would welcome it with open arms. Just like people still paint their Super Dungeon Explore and Imperial Assault figures, the pageantry can still be had. It is not lost to those who want it. It just stops being the standard. But since many Warmachine players weren't taking advantage of the pageantry in the first place, the boardgame standard is an improvement. My FLGS carries only a handful of miniatures, but carries the whole line of Imperial Assault/Descent. They don't hold 40k tournaments in town, but they do hold Magic tournaments. You can buy X-Wing miniatures in the local big box store. By distancing themselves from the pageantry (expensive, time consuming, requires additional tools and skills) and going slightly more mainstream in presentation and expectations (ready to play, easily expandable, more streamlined rules, looks good at minimum effort), PP could make some bank.

My experience really doesn't match that Warmachine players don't paint.

Last year we went to Warmachine Weekend and of the hundreds of gamers there I can barely remember any unpainted armies.

And some of these new models/resculpts are visually really good looking. Hell, I started collecting mercenaries (which was probably gonna happen eventually anyway) because I love the new Fiona the Black and Cephelyx sculpts.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

Please, there are plenty of other windmills to tilt at than this one.

I can tilt at more than one windmill at a time.

And please yourslef. Look at this:

Spoiler:

Brightly colored plastic figures, a flat paper mat with pre-printed terrain, folded paper cardboard wall, a bunch of tokens, they aren't shown but there's cards too - That's a board game. It's the Undercity/Widower's Woods version of Warmachine. When you remove the pageantry from a miniatures game, what's left is Ameritrash.

Heck, take PP's recent online policy. Didn't Asmodee/FFG do something very similar because their intentions were to sell outside of FLGS and get their products into big box stores? Who's to say that's not PP's plan also?

And that's okay. If that's the direction PP wants to go with Warmachine, I honestly think MOST Warmachine players would welcome it with open arms. Just like people still paint their Super Dungeon Explore and Imperial Assault figures, the pageantry can still be had. It is not lost to those who want it. It just stops being the standard. But since many Warmachine players weren't taking advantage of the pageantry in the first place, the boardgame standard is an improvement. My FLGS carries only a handful of miniatures, but carries the whole line of Imperial Assault/Descent. They don't hold 40k tournaments in town, but they do hold Magic tournaments. You can buy X-Wing miniatures in the local big box store. By distancing themselves from the pageantry (expensive, time consuming, requires additional tools and skills) and going slightly more mainstream in presentation and expectations (ready to play, easily expandable, more streamlined rules, looks good at minimum effort), PP could make some bank.

What on earth are you on about?

This is how a starter set is supposed to be. Everything you need to play the game in the box.
Many modern wargames use cards for models. Most modern wargames use tokens. Its an eminently sensible solution to managing complicated rules and affects in games. Most of the 40k group I play with have made up their own tokens and cards for models to make playing easier.

Carboard terrain and paper mats? It gets you playing. Also worth noting is other wargames that are universally praised for coming with terrain and mats, like the Infinity and Dropzone Commander starters. Especially in Warmachine where terrain is a) well defined and b) extremely influential on games, its important that when people start out there is a minimum standard.
Coloured plastic? Who does it hurt? It means that you can have better games more quickly. If you were not going to paint models, your force looks a little better. If you were going to paint them, then it makes no difference.


Compare to GW's starter boxes. Thankfully they've begun the 'Start Collecting' line in the last few months which at least let you put a legal army on the table, but those still require you to buy a hundred dollars worth of rules.

 Sqorgar wrote:
When you remove the pageantry from a miniatures game, what's left is Ameritrash.

What does this even mean?


The new starters look pretty much perfect as starters, to me. The only (reasonable) thing that would improve them would be including actual terrain instead of the mat and folding wall... a decision I would assume was made for cost reasons, and still better than playing on a bare table.


OK, and maybe a couple of different-coloured base inserts, so players who haven't painted their blue models can distinguish them from the other guy's unpainted blue models.



Using a paper terrain mat no more makes it a boardgame than using a terrain mat made out of any other material.

All I'm really seeing here is the post-hoc justifications of someone clearly heavily invested elsewhere, characterized by some sort of faux superiority that the things they unfairly generalize in the player base don't happen in their game.

What we have here, folks, is a clear case of game envy!

 insaniak wrote:
OK, and maybe a couple of different-coloured base inserts, so players who haven't painted their blue models can distinguish them from the other guy's unpainted blue models.

Not a problem if the other guy has the unpainted red models

 insaniak wrote:
The new starters look pretty much perfect as starters, to me. The only (reasonable) thing that would improve them would be including actual terrain instead of the mat and folding wall... a decision I would assume was made for cost reasons, and still better than playing on a bare table.

I think a few reasons would be
1) Cost. Card is obviously cheaper
2) Space. A wall is ok, anything beyond that starts to get pretty bulky, making the boxes bigger and logistics harder
3) Playability. Something that a lot of 40k players don't seem to get, but in WMH terrain has a HUGE impact on the game (possibly too much) and very rigid rules defining how it works - so well defined, play-friendly pieces work much better than the more nebulous, pretty but difficult to work with pieces that 40k uses.
4) Re-use. These boxes aren't just for first-time players - every player will pick one up when they start the faction too. So PP probably doesn't want to over-invest in the more disposable items because they'll be completely wasted time players reach their 3rd faction box.

I don't think you guys quite get it. A wargame isn't a wargame unless you have to buy a $500 plastic skull gameboard, a $1200 plastic skull fortress, $30 plastic skull trees and $50 skull ruins to play. I thought that was obvious to everyone.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I don't think you guys quite get it. A wargame isn't a wargame unless you have to buy a $500 plastic skull gameboard, a $1200 plastic skull fortress, $30 plastic skull trees and $50 skull ruins to play. I thought that was obvious to everyone.

Do Steam Trees count? I feel like Warmachine should have steampowered trees.

Trasvi wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I don't think you guys quite get it. A wargame isn't a wargame unless you have to buy a $500 plastic skull gameboard, a $1200 plastic skull fortress, $30 plastic skull trees and $50 skull ruins to play. I thought that was obvious to everyone.

Do Steam Trees count? I feel like Warmachine should have steampowered trees.

As long it's cluttered with detail, made in HIPS and costs $65 USD ($599 AUS) then yes. Otherwise it's just ameritrash crap.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
As long it's cluttered with detail

would that be superfluous skulls, or superfluous rivets?

Why choose? Skull Rivets for all!

 Azreal13 wrote:
Why choose? Skull Rivets for all!

With tastefully dug skull pits in the base so covered in sculpted rocks and vines your models may as well be riding a unicycle on a ice rink for how well they'll stand up. Nothing says "epic" like some random looney who beheaded a bunch of people, cleaned off their skulls and just chucked said skulls in some out of the way hole in the ground for no discernable reason.

Getting back on topic, I disagree with the notion that 2-D terrain makes something a board game. Or even colored plastic models do. They're conveniences for a player new to the game and are entirely optional. If colored plastic offends you so much just spray them grey or something.

Hell, some 40K players (and historical gamers) have been using pieces of coloured felt for terrain for longer than half the people on this board have probably been alive...


While it doesn't look quite as spiffy, 2d terrain does have its uses. And it's certainly easier to maneouvre around.

insaniak wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
When you remove the pageantry from a miniatures game, what's left is Ameritrash.

What does this even mean?

Board games tend to be broken into two genres: Eurogames and Ameritrash. Eurogames tend to be abstract, minimal conflict, little randomness, and a theme which is largely unrelated to the gameplay. Ameritrash (a semi-insulting term coined by eurogame fans) is the exact opposite. Big on conflict, randomness, overproduced, and highly themed to the point where the theme drives the gameplay and not the other way around. While miniature games can't seem to abide the existence of games they don't like, board gamers have happily settled into two major camps the peacefully coexist (that snidely think the other one is wrong). Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico are eurogames, while Arkham Horror and Talisman are Ameritrash.

Due to the rise in 3D printing and kickstarter, not to mention copious expansions, Ameritrash games have been moving ever so steadily towards miniature games, to the point where the division between board game and miniature war game is pretty arbitrary. There are some games you can look at and say, "This is definitely a miniature game" and others you can look at and say, "This is definitely a board game", but some straddle the line quite finely. Why is X-Wing Miniatures a miniature game while Wings of War, the game XWM took its gameplay from, considered a board game? Largely, it is whatever preexisting community decides to adopt it first, with some of those line straddlers working as a gateway game to those communities.

But I think there is one major distinction between the two: one is just a game while the other is a game and a hobby. There's no doubt that the hobby element is important to miniature games, which is why some of the line straddlers like HeroClix and Monsterpocalypse have not been claimed by the miniature gaming community, despite being miniature games in all other respects. It's why Blood Bowl is a miniatures game while Ninja All Stars (perhaps a distant cousin of Blood Bowl) is a board game.

So, following this logic, if you remove the pageantry - the hobby - from the miniature game, what you have is a board game.

And, of course, all of this is just my opinion - my interpretation of the various hobbies from someone who is heavily invested in all of them. I follow all of gaming, and if I spend a lot of time in the Age of Sigmar forum, it's because I find the discussion ideological rather than qualitative, and I love ideological debates about the nature of gaming. I'm not saying THIS IS HOW IT IS and that anybody who disagrees with me can go play in traffic. Everybody is welcome to their own opinions, and I quite enjoy reading the opinions of people who disagree.

TheCustomLime wrote:
Getting back on topic, I disagree with the notion that 2-D terrain makes something a board game. Or even colored plastic models do. They're conveniences for a player new to the game and are entirely optional. If colored plastic offends you so much just spray them grey or something.

It's not that the 2D terrain by itself makes it a board game, or that the colored plastic by itself makes it a board game, but that the coordinated effort to remove the hobby aspects makes it a board game. And it doesn't offend me in the slightest. In fact, I think it is perfect for Warmachine. It lets the players ignore the hobby aspects they don't care about and focus on the competitive game rules that they do. I've already seen what happens when board games try to be miniature games (it's great), and I'm eager to see what happens when miniature games try to be board games.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

Please, there are plenty of other windmills to tilt at than this one.

I can tilt at more than one windmill at a time.

And please yourslef. Look at this:

Spoiler:

Brightly colored plastic figures, a flat paper mat with pre-printed terrain, folded paper cardboard wall, a bunch of tokens, they aren't shown but there's cards too - That's a board game. It's the Undercity/Widower's Woods version of Warmachine. When you remove the pageantry from a miniatures game, what's left is Ameritrash.

Come again? If anything, its Warmahordes that is the Eurogame, with it's tightly balanced rules, and AOS that is Ameritrash, with its herpaderp roll a hat full of dice, +5 dice if you fart, no point values, forge your narrative "gameplay".

Bossk_Hogg wrote:

Come again? If anything, its Warmahordes that is the Eurogame, with it's tightly balanced rules, and AOS that is Ameritrash, with its herpaderp roll a hat full of dice, +5 dice if you fart, no point values, forge your narrative "gameplay".

I'm not sure you are using the Eurogame and Ameritrash terms correctly there. They are both Ameritrash.

 Sqorgar wrote:
There's no doubt that the hobby element is important to miniature games, which is why some of the line straddlers like HeroClix and Monsterpocalypse have not been claimed by the miniature gaming community, despite being miniature games in all other respects.

I suspect that this may depend on your local community. I've never heard anyone describe Heroclix or Monsterpocalypse as anything other than a miniatures game. Likewise with Mechwarrior, which along with Mageknight was at one time huge amongst miniatures gamers.


The hobby aspect isn't intrinsic to miniature gaming. I tend to view it as a separate (but related) hobby to the actual gaming. Painting and modeling is a hobby. Gaming is another.

It's not that the 2D terrain by itself makes it a board game, or that the colored plastic by itself makes it a board game, but that the coordinated effort to remove the hobby aspects makes it a board game.

I don't feel that having a game mat and using coloured plastic constitute a 'co-ordinated effort to remove the hobby aspects'. I would take them more as an effort to make the game more accessible. Making the miniatures blue, red or green instead of all grey makes the game experience slightly better for those with no interest in the modeling aspect of the hobby, while having absolutely zero impact on those who want to paint the miniatures.

Perhaps because 'Ameritrash' is an obviously unhelpful term that's going to stifle any conversation it's used it?


I guess you're seeing what you want to see... your bias is pretty obvious by the terms you're using. I don't see any 'coordinated effort to remove the hobby aspects' from Warmachine. I see a coordinated effort to lower the barrier of entry - which is a good thing! Games that take hundreds of dollars and days/months of preparation to even try out are bad games!

Having colored minis isn't going to remove the hobby aspect from the game unless you believe there is a significant portion of people who's sole engagement in the hobby is to spraypaint their grey plastic to faction colors.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
There's no doubt that the hobby element is important to miniature games, which is why some of the line straddlers like HeroClix and Monsterpocalypse have not been claimed by the miniature gaming community, despite being miniature games in all other respects.

I suspect that this may depend on your local community. I've never heard anyone describe Heroclix or Monsterpocalypse as anything other than a miniatures game. Likewise with Mechwarrior, which along with Mageknight was at one time huge amongst miniatures gamers.


The hobby aspect isn't intrinsic to miniature gaming. I tend to view it as a separate (but related) hobby to the actual gaming. Painting and modeling is a hobby. Gaming is another.

Agreed.
I don't think Miniatures Games are an opposed category to Board Games. You have board games with minis, and games without.
The big difference in categorisation IMO is the movement type. Are you constrained to a grid / node system of movement? Then its a board game. Is movement free-form and limited by real distance travelled? Then its a war game.
(Although there are those who consider games like Risk or Smallworld to be a war game because you're 'fighting' enemies. Meh. I think the term is more generally applied to free-movement style games though)

Bossk_Hogg wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

Please, there are plenty of other windmills to tilt at than this one.

I can tilt at more than one windmill at a time.

And please yourslef. Look at this:

Spoiler:

Brightly colored plastic figures, a flat paper mat with pre-printed terrain, folded paper cardboard wall, a bunch of tokens, they aren't shown but there's cards too - That's a board game. It's the Undercity/Widower's Woods version of Warmachine. When you remove the pageantry from a miniatures game, what's left is Ameritrash.

Come again? If anything, its Warmahordes that is the Eurogame, with it's tightly balanced rules, and AOS that is Ameritrash, with its herpaderp roll a hat full of dice, +5 dice if you fart, no point values, forge your narrative "gameplay".

Its non of these it is a wargame, it can be a boardgame or a miniature game, the main think with board games is that the plastic figure is just a game token while in a wargame it is an active play piece. The eurogame/Ameritrash point is completely irrelevant.
I guess this also just a board game

Boy this thread has gotten off the rails. Pfffttt Euros and Ameritrash are for babies, real games use hex and counters, everything is just baby stuff obviously. Now let me pull out my giant ASL rulebook and push up my glasses.

Seriously though the new starters are a great bit of marketing honestly. And they may actually draw in new players who have never done any type of miniature gaming. Whether we like to admit it or not, assembling and painting minis can be a huge limiting factor for customers. Why do you think X-Wing comes preassembled and prepainted, because that's the best way to make a game about such a mainstream IP. It wouldn't be half as successful if you had to assemble and paint those ships. So going back to the new starters, I think they strike a great balance, and that balance may help previously non miniature gaming folk get past that daunting feeling when they look at a beautiful table with custom terrain and lovely painted miniatures.

 Breotan wrote:

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
If it turns out that people don't give a crap about PP's minis other than tokens to push around the table, then maybe it doesn't make sense for PP to cater to people who like their models to be above-average.

Wow. Are you aware of how cynical your statement is? No wonder GW doesn't see PP as real competition.

That assumes "game is focus, miniatures are just tokens" is somehow inheritently bad. If not then that's not cynical. People have different preferences and that's why there's different companies. If everybody wanted same thing there wouldn't be room for more than 1 company in the first place!

Ameritrash has an intrinsic lack of choice (not 40k, definitely not PP) that is often based on experienced players knowing there are objectively best options (both do suffer a lot from imbalance), but I wouldn't call either ameritrash, because i think they do have choice, regardless of whether it's list design or actual play.

And IDK about AOS... it's just such an anomaly that I'm not even sure I'd call it a game by conventional standards, it's like a semi-competitive pastime, at least how GW frames it.

THIS IS WARMACHINE!!!

*KICKS TOPIC INTO WELL OF RELEVANCY*

Nah, you don't get to shout now that there's no page 5, didn't you get the memo?

 Eldarain wrote:
Taking stock of my collection/accessories this might be very expensive. Might be switching over to Modcube tokens if there is a lot of change there.

Aren't PP tokens completely generic and made to use with dry erase markers?

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Taking stock of my collection/accessories this might be very expensive. Might be switching over to Modcube tokens if there is a lot of change there.

Aren't PP tokens completely generic and made to use with dry erase markers?

Only the spell tokens are generic (so you can write the name of the spell or effect). All other tokens IIRC have their specific uses.

There are differnet kind of tokes out there.
The one PP sells are indeed generic.

Lots of other third party shops sell special and 100% MK2 tokens which MIGHT become useless.

Regardless of the board game/ameritrash debate which is mainly semantic, I do think it would be very interesting if PP started moving WMH more towards the gaming end of the spectrum and de-emphasizing the hobby aspects, with pre-assembled, pre-colored miniatures for example. No one would play 40k without the model design and fluff, whereas I think you would have to look around a bit to find a WMH player who got into the game because of those aspects. After all, aren't many (most?) WMH players disenfranchised GW players who want a more robust game and less focus on "forging the narrative" with fluffy armies and custom paint schemes, random is fun and fairness is secondary mentality? I can completely understand that, even though I am the complete opposite (the game is secondary to me, I don't care about testing my skills, getting better etc). Going in that direction doesn't even have to mean you de-emphasize the story and the world, just look at X-Wing. You're just catering to gamers rather than hobbyists.