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An interesting discussion from some well-known "indie" designers about how to get started making games.....




I am so offended I wasn't asked to join in! LOL!

That is very cool! Most innovative ideas come from indie designers. I'm going to listen to it with interest.

I can definitely recommend this channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Cutebuns09

Jamey is the designer of very successful games like Scythe (#14BGG) or Viticulture (#23)

Also, while this refers to video games, the philosophy of design can be well applied to tabletop in 9 cases out of 10: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B0CA00461BB187 (early videos are much more relevant for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg8fVtKyYxY&list=PLB9B0CA00461BB187&index=470 )

I should note, that the people in this video are specifically talking about narrative, skirmish wargames.

It's worth comparing other ideas, though, IMO as it helps with innovation and thinking outside the box about game mechanics. After all does it really add much to the genre if we get yet another wargame with tape measure for distances and dice for attacks?

For example CMON added the Politics Track to their A Song of Ice and Fire miniatures wargame (tape and dice are there too, though ) which is basically the worker placement mechanic straight from some Uwe Rosenberg eurogame! As a result they received a lot of praise for this addition as it offers more interesting gameplay options and is very thematic for the setting.

I think we'll see more of such mechanics from other genres being used creatively in wargames (or vice-versa).

Honestly I've enjoyed the "boardgamification" of wargames. I know its not everyones preference but there have been some real fun developments and designs as a result. Its a nice change of pace from the more stodgy traditional approach to wargame design. Theres only so many different iterations on dice-rolling you can do before those mechanics get stale and every game feels like a copy/paste of something you've already played.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Honestly I've enjoyed the "boardgamification" of wargames. I know its not everyones preference but there have been some real fun developments and designs as a result. Its a nice change of pace from the more stodgy traditional approach to wargame design. Theres only so many different iterations on dice-rolling you can do before those mechanics get stale and every game feels like a copy/paste of something you've already played.

Agreed, for the most part. Having something come into various miniature wargames that add something else to consider than how many dice are you throwing vs. how many dice your opponent is, is good. There might be some that go a bit too far towards abstraction/boardgamification for my tastes (e.g., I generally avoid "miniature boardgames" that are the big thing on KS a lot, where it's a gridded surface with cards and counters and really kind of completely unnecessary miniatures), but pulling in a few ideas from other types of games is a good thing all around, I think.

I picked up some Runewars stuff (Darnathi Warriors for Wardancer proxies) and I was really baffled by the sheer volume of little cardboard tokens and widgets, and all the cards. I couldn't believe the volume of tat that came with just one unit for a wargame.

To me that is totally superfluous and I much prefer a slimmed down and cleaner game with some basic core mechanics that generally only use dice, and not even bespoke dice. Cannot imagine actually playing Runewars, and I also can't imagine what the designers were thinking, making a game with literally so many moving parts.

I've never touched Runewars, but most wargames require tokens, markers, and other tools beyond a measuring device and some dice. They don't necessarily come with them and often leave it to the player to figure out a method to denote the relevant info, whether it be cluttering the table with extraneous dice to mark wounds, victory points, status effects, etc., writing hidden information on folded scraps of paper, or any number of other common gameplay mechanics. There are entire companies that exist basically to sell tokens and markers that can be used in other games, I really can't think of any mass market games that don't have tokens or markers available (40k and AoS included) - even most indy games require something of the sort in order to track game state. Its a bit silly to complain about a publisher providing you with all of the tools you need out of the box instead of forcing you to figure it out on your own like most others do.

Wound markers are one thing, the amount of markers in this box was really excessive. If a game requires that much book keeping in my view it should be pared down, so I don't think it's silly to complain about it from a game design point of view.

There's a certain amount of tracking or marking that I think is acceptable, but I think modern board games and board game style wargames have gone waaaaay overboard due to the cheap printing costs for components.

Looking through the rules for Rune Wars and the contents of the various expansions I'm not really sure what it is you're referring to. The Darnati Warriors contain all of 6 Tokens:

2 Inspiration (Boon) - A buff token spent by the controlling player to remove a Bane token during a specific phase of the game.
1 Blight (Bane) - A debuff token spent by opponent to cancel attacks.
1 Immobilize (Bane) - A debuff token spent by opponent to cancel a movement action.
2 ID - Used to identify the unit so you can keep track of it if you're fielding multiple of the same unit, you can substitute painting a marking on the units base or squad coloring, etc. on the models themselves

So the 2 ID tokens are basically a courtesy that you don't have to use, and the remaining 4 are effectively no different than the various psychic powers/magic abilities in games like 40k and warmachine that players use their own tokens or dice, etc. to mark anyway. Its no different than if you had two +1 LD tokens, a -1 to hit token, and a token that indicates a unit may not advance for 40k, all three of which are fairly common abilities that some armies can hand out like candy and which, again, people are using their own tokens for already.

FFG could have followed suit and simply not provided you anything, but instead they gave you a quality of life improvement at no extra cost to make your life easier.

Other than that, you get the command dial (used to issue hidden orders, sure as hell beats having to write them down on a scrap of paper like some rules in 40k/AoS and other games require you to do), a unit card (no different than a units datasheet/warscroll in 40k/AoS), and 5 upgrade cards (no different than if you had a card explaining the rules for a Strategem or an artifact or for chapter tactics, etc.).

You're basically complaining about nothing.

Uh, no, I'm complaining about a game that apparently requires 13 additional bits of cardboard per unit due to how it's rules are constructed.

That seems completely excessive to me. Obviously you can disagree, but I'm not complaining about nothing.
It's obviously nice that if FFG requires a crapload of tokens for their game, that they provide them. I'm questioning the design that leads to this many tokens being involved in a game. I prefer a cleaner design with fewer things to keep track of, hardly a crazy point of view.

Edit to add: Respect for going and looking through the counters though. I googled it myself for my first response to you and didn't find what I was looking for quickly, so I gave up.

Is the hybridization of wargames and boardgames together. It is a popular trend in the industry. See the rise of "Dudes, on a board" style of games and the increasing Buff/de-buff in wargames.

It is no longer enough for a unit to get injured and fail morale and run away. Now, they have to have a bunch of meta-game stuff to buff/de-buff them to add depth and crunch. The 4Ms and activation has gotten a bit stale to many gamers and they want more options, which does not always mean more meaningful choices.

It is also the difference between creating a "product" and creating a "game". Products require product support and an effort to maintain and grow, you have to give yourself space to do that mechanically. Games tend to be a bit more stand-alone and not developed with a life-cycle in mind at the start.

FFG creates products. Osprey creates games. See the difference? FFG has a production cycle and when it is over, the game is done. Osprey creates a game that is typically 1 shots, or a couple supplements and that is it. With a product a game is "dead" when the production run ends, with a game it ends when the players no longer play it.

It is part of the evolution of the industry, and evolution is not inherently good or bad. It is a necessity.

Edit: To be clear, I am not claiming one way is better than the other way. They are simply different ways and a level of hybridization between the two.

 Easy E wrote:
Is the hybridization of wargames and boardgames together. It is a popular trend in the industry. See the rise of "Dudes, on a board" style of games and the increasing Buff/de-buff in wargames.

Yup, this is definitely a trend, and one that isn't to my taste for the most part. To me, a miniatures wargame needs to have:

1. No grid/hexes. Tape measures or the like for ranges, and ability to move whatever direction you want (well, at least, not restricted by the grid).
2. 3d scenery as much as possible. I play minis games for the visual spectacle, and this extends to the terrain. While having some flat templates for certain things is fine, I think one of the big differences between a board game and minis game is the 3d element.

Now, there can still be great games that have miniatures in them that don't hit those 2 points, but to me that's a miniature boardgame, not a miniature wargame. Which, granted, is pedantic and pointless, and only applies to me.

It is no longer enough for a unit to get injured and fail morale and run away. Now, they have to have a bunch of meta-game stuff to buff/de-buff them to add depth and crunch. The 4Ms and activation has gotten a bit stale to many gamers and they want more options, which does not always mean more meaningful choices.

"Modern game design" does seem to have a lot of emphasis on all kinds of resource management and buff/debuff modifiers to pretty much every action, especially when it comes to wargames. Sometimes, this adds something interesting and should be praised. Sometimes, it's just adding a CCG-like combowomboing to an otherwise fairly bland game (I'm looking at you most GW games currently, and of course Warmachine was mega guilty of this), all in a search for so-called "emergent gameplay." I suppose that has its place, but that generally isn't my preference.

 Da Boss wrote:
Uh, no, I'm complaining about a game that apparently requires 13 additional bits of cardboard per unit due to how it's rules are constructed.

That seems completely excessive to me. Obviously you can disagree, but I'm not complaining about nothing.
It's obviously nice that if FFG requires a crapload of tokens for their game, that they provide them. I'm questioning the design that leads to this many tokens being involved in a game. I prefer a cleaner design with fewer things to keep track of, hardly a crazy point of view.

Edit to add: Respect for going and looking through the counters though. I googled it myself for my first response to you and didn't find what I was looking for quickly, so I gave up.

6 of those bits of cardboard are a direct replacement for a codex - the codex might or might not be more environmentally friendly, I don't know, but the cards are generally more convenient as you don't have to carry an entire book with you (you only need the cards for what you're using) and you will always have hte rules for the units you play with since they come with them, unlike a lot of other rulesets where the models and the rules come separate from eachother.

The Command Dial thing is basically essential to gameplay, and thats perfectly okay. For a time X-Wing was the most popular game on the planet and used basically the same system.

The rest of the tokens aren't really "per unit", they are generic tokens that you get in the starter box and every unit uses. FFG gives you additional tokens in every unit box, primarily to fill empty space on the sheet of cardboard with the command dials, but also to make sure you always have enough to cover all your needs no matter how large a game you're playing. Most people probably end up throwing away the extras (I know I did for X-Wing, after a while I ended up with over a thousand shield tokens, I never used more than around a dozen of them at a time in any of the games I played).

So again, it really is nothing. about half of those cardboard pieces are a direct replacement for the rulebook that you don't have to buy to play the game, the other half are more or less equivalent to the tokens that you would need to play just about any other game but dont typically get from the game designer (or, even more commonly, have to make yourself by photocopying the last page of the rulebook and cutting the pieces out).

The fact that you are really upset about these tokens leads me to believe that you probably haven't played many games outside of the GW ecosystem as the use of tokens and markers have been pretty much ubiquitous in tabletop wargaming for decades now (and at times GW itself has also sold tokens for use with 40k, AoS, and WHFB, typically as a $20-30+ accessory set or included with a limited edition codex variant, etc.), the only real difference here is that FFG is producing them in full color punchboard and including them with your plastic minis instead of making you figure it out yourself.

Is the hybridization of wargames and boardgames together. It is a popular trend in the industry. See the rise of "Dudes, on a board" style of games and the increasing Buff/de-buff in wargames.

You make this sound like its a new thing - it isn't. I have games designed in the 80s that require tokens to play them - as I said before, last pages of the rulebook (sometimes the first pages) + photocopier + scissors is the old school way of doing it, if you were lucky you got pre-perforated cardstock that you could tear off the page yourself. I would bet that there are more wargames that need tokens than there are games that don't.

FFG creates products. Osprey creates games.

Off the top of my head, A Billion Suns, Gamma Wolves, Oathmark, Frostgrave, Gaslands, and a couple other Osprey games all use tokens (which you have to DIY/photocopy out of the book, use dice as stand-ins for, or buy from a 3rd party vendor). It would be erroneous to try to say that only products use tokens and not games.

1. No grid/hexes. Tape measures or the like for ranges, and ability to move whatever direction you want (well, at least, not restricted by the grid).

I'm not big on hexes, but old-school miniature wargamers would tar and feather you for this one. Back in the day, if you weren't playing on a hex map then you were playing with toys for children, "real" wargames only ever put their miniatures on hexmaps.

"Modern game design" does seem to have a lot of emphasis on all kinds of resource management and buff/debuff modifiers to pretty much every action, especially when it comes to wargames. Sometimes, this adds something interesting and should be praised. Sometimes, it's just adding a CCG-like combowomboing to an otherwise fairly bland game (I'm looking at you most GW games currently, and of course Warmachine was mega guilty of this), all in a search for so-called "emergent gameplay." I suppose that has its place, but that generally isn't my preference.

Another thing that is decidedly less "modern" than people realize. This sort of design approach requiring resource management in tabletop wargames has been done for several decades, and the usage of modifiers in modern tabletop wargames is relatively tame compared to old school games where you would have a 2-sided 8-1/2" x 12" sheet in size 8 font to cover all the potential modifiers that might impact your unit during gameplay.

The combowomboing thing is relatively more recent but still has precedent in rulesets from the late 80s/early 90s era, at least.

Yeah, that's true that the "modern game design" is really not all that modern, but more a trend that indeed does feel like it harkens back 20 years or so. Which I guess really shows that game design kinda goes in cycles, really, with certain things falling out of favor for a bit, to be replaced by "new" ideas that are really just reworkings of old mechanics that nobody's used for 10+ years. And yeah, I remember the tons of charts that had all sorts of various modifiers (and, you still see that occasionally; like Rogue Stars).

Which is probably why I put it in quotes the first time. More accurate might've been "the current trend in game design."

Edit:

And oh, I don't mind hex games in particular (SFB is one of my faves, for example), and I totally recognize that old wargamers would fight me hard on that one. But, to me, it still isn't a "miniatures wargame" with hexes; but it most certainly can be a "wargame" (and some really good ones out there, in fact). Again, like I said, that was my own take as to how I classify things, and I'm not suggesting it become any kind of official definition.

Chaos, I really don't understand why you are characterising me as "really upset" here. It's a bit of a poor argumentative tactic to discredit me from where I'm sitting. I'm not upset, I just saw all these tokens and thought "huh, that puts me off playing this game."
I'm not rending my shirt or crying my eyes out or anything.

As to playing games outside of GW, I've played historicals, KoW, Privateer Press and a few smaller games in my time along with GW games. I don't even play GW games at all any more. I'm not saying tokens are evil, or that they are not popular - I know X Wing is really popular.

I am just expressing my personal taste about that style of design, which is that I don't like it, and prefer games which are less convoluted and require fewer tokens etc. The game already has terrain features and miniatures which act as tokens for play, and I don't like cluttering up the board with all of these other elements. Partially because I feel it is generally a sign of inelegant design, and partially because I think it visually looks pretty awful.
YMMV, you're not an idiot or wrong if you do like these things.

I dunno I just find your responses to me weirdly passive aggressive and personal? Did I offend you in some way?

 Da Boss wrote:
Chaos, I really don't understand why you are characterising me as "really upset" here. It's a bit of a poor argumentative tactic to discredit me from where I'm sitting. I'm not upset, I just saw all these tokens and thought "huh, that puts me off playing this game."
I'm not rending my shirt or crying my eyes out or anything.

Fair enough, I interpreted your post otherwise, moreso because the "I cannot imagine what the designers were thinking" seems like a bit of a hyperbolic take on something that is to me seemingly mundane/run of the mill.

As to playing games outside of GW, I've played historicals, KoW, Privateer Press and a few smaller games in my time along with GW games. I don't even play GW games at all any more. I'm not saying tokens are evil, or that they are not popular - I know X Wing is really popular.

So like Warmachine/Hordes from Privateer Press is an example of a game with an extreme reliance on tokens. PP sold them as $15-25 accessory packs for some time and I think eventually discontinued them because they were generally inadequate to cover all the things you would need tokens for during a game which lead to the rise of 3rd party token sets like this one with over 100 tokens in it: https://www.museonstore.com/collections/khador/products/faction-tokens-the-red-army-color

And thats just for *one* faction.

Kings of War also uses tokens, and If you've played historicals like Flames of War, Team Yankee, more or less any of Warlords games, most (if not all) of Sam Mustafa's games, etc. then you've definitely played other games that make sue of tokens to varying degrees as well.

I am just expressing my personal taste about that style of design, which is that I don't like it, and prefer games which are less convoluted and require fewer tokens etc. The game already has terrain features and miniatures which act as tokens for play, and I don't like cluttering up the board with all of these other elements. Partially because I feel it is generally a sign of inelegant design, and partially because I think it visually looks pretty awful.
YMMV, you're not an idiot or wrong if you do like these things.

I dunno I just find your responses to me weirdly passive aggressive and personal? Did I offend you in some way?

I'm just incredulous that you find Runewars to be egregious in its use of tokens when it seems to be relatively typical for the hobby, even moreso when you've professed playing a number of game systems that also make use of tokens (some of them to a far greater extent than Runewars does). I'm just having trouble parsing what it is about Runewars that you find offensive to your preferences and design sensibilities that isn't also shared by any of these other games.

Resolving things with dice can be a real buzzkill if you're looking for strategic planning.

Chaos: Yeah, I was a bit hyperbolic.

I didn't like the token requirements for PP at all to be honest and it's my least favourite thing about KoW. And if anything, my tolerance has decreased over the years. I really value "clean" design, and I get deflated when I see a gigantic stack of tokens in a game, be it a boardgame or a wargame.

Very much personal preference of course. It's not wrong to feel differently. I just prefer a stripped down game that looks and feels cleaner, with fewer things to keep track of than model removal for damage for example.

 Da Boss wrote:
Chaos: Yeah, I was a bit hyperbolic.

I didn't like the token requirements for PP at all to be honest and it's my least favourite thing about KoW. And if anything, my tolerance has decreased over the years. I really value "clean" design, and I get deflated when I see a gigantic stack of tokens in a game, be it a boardgame or a wargame.

Very much personal preference of course. It's not wrong to feel differently. I just prefer a stripped down game that looks and feels cleaner, with fewer things to keep track of than model removal for damage for example.

My take is that more often than not the models themselves are tokens. In most clean game designs the model itself is basically superfluous and the only thing that matters is in actuality its base, so whats a few more tokens amongst friends?

That being the case though, my preference is for tokens that enhance the visual appeal and table presence of the game. The resin splash markers for Cruel Seas from Warlord are a good example of what I mean, they are tokens/markers that have a relevant gameplay effect, etc. but rather than a piece of plastic or cardboard its a sculpted detail that looks like an underwater explosion launching a plume of water and vapor out into the atmosphere. To me thats the gold standard of wargame tokens. Other good ones are tokens or markers for hidden units/unidentified contacts that look like radar blips (similar to the ones used in Space Hulk), or smoke markers/tokens that look like actual clouds of billowing smoke made from steel wool or a clump of cotton, etc. At the opposite end of that spectrum is a piece of cardboard or acrylic that just says "smoke" or "boom" or whatever on it. Those really do detract from gameplay.

Yes, 100% agree! If you need to have tokens they should be something that adds to the visual spectacle, because a wargame is basically just a game about pretty tokens on a very fancy board at the end of the day.
The Blast Markers from Epic and Battlefleet Gothic are another good example, I believe Maelstrom's Edge does something similar. Those sorts of things I can definitely accept.

Templates are fine as they go on the board, and then leave the board. You do not keep them on the board forever.

I do not mind tokens either, but I do mind token heavy.

Clash of Spears is an example where it goes a bit too far, but it is on the edge. You have fatigue tokens, pin markers, and one other token that eludes me, and then model removal for casualties.

To me good game design does not need more than 1 token per unit. More than that and you should be devising a side board. An example on that end of the spectrum is Man O' War. Plenty of tokens and such on each ship, but it was all managed away from the main spectacle of the game on a side board.

I think more games probably need to implement side boards instead of more tokens/cards.

Again, just a design preference on my part,

 Valander wrote:
Sometimes, it's just adding a CCG-like combowomboing to an otherwise fairly bland game (I'm looking at you most GW games currently, and of course Warmachine was mega guilty of this)

While I agree with WM&H being special-rules-reliant, and now, when I tried out MTG on Arena (would never want to spend any actual $ on such a game) I can easily see how it must have been an inspiration to Privateer Press, I strongly disagree that the base game is "bland". I think the three most basic "decision points" in Warmachine
-resource management
-order of activations
-playing ranges, spatial positioning
are extremely well done and very interesting on their own. I actually get new players interested in just these aspects, we only look at the backs of the cards (where the special rules are) after a few test games. And I also wish WM&H could delete the rules bloat it has to make itself more accessible and less Gotcha!'y. The depth of the game comes from its basics. As the saying goes:
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
and another one
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."



On the subject of tokens - I don't like the clutter and I wish there could be more "themed" tokens. I loved the little explosions in Epic! But in many cases it seems to be a players' choice. For example in Warmachine or A Song of Ice and Fire the tokens/effects could easily be placed on unit cards, but players prefer them next to units for more clarity, so that you can see the effects by taking a quick glance at the board, not ask the opponent what they have there, on their side of the table. Warmachine tournament pack even states it explicitly that an effect/Focus not marked near the affected model doesn't exist, for clarity.

I've started to really appreciate hexes in my wargames. It just streamlines so much.
I'm a HUGE fan of simple mechanics creating deep gameplay. Further, I think the more time is spent making decisions vs simply carrying out those decisions is better.
So with hexes, they reduce the friction of playing the game by eliminating arguments of LoS or firearcs or anything like that.

I also really like games to be accessible. The ability to print off a hex grid is so much easier and cheaper than building and painting a table of terrain - hell I've printed off a bunch of grids and drawn terrain on with a pen. Works fine for a game, I can work on beautifying it later.
My 'minds eye' is very good so I don't notice the difference.

Cyel wrote:



On the subject of tokens - I don't like the clutter and I wish there could be more "themed" tokens. I loved the little explosions in Epic! But in many cases it seems to be a players' choice. For example in Warmachine or A Song of Ice and Fire the tokens/effects could easily be placed on unit cards, but players prefer them next to units for more clarity, so that you can see the effects by taking a quick glance at the board, not ask the opponent what they have there, on their side of the table. Warmachine tournament pack even states it explicitly that an effect/Focus not marked near the affected model doesn't exist, for clarity.

Yes, this drives me nuts. X-Wing has the same issues with the insistence that the tokens go on the board.

They belong on the cards. You already have them (cards) sitting on the table taking up real estate, USE THEM. It massively declutters the play area and theres less room for confusion ("What, no that X-Wing didn't have an evade token, you accidentally pulled that evade token off the A-Wing it was right next to") and keeps the game looking "clean". I understand that its done so you can see the playstate at a glance, but you could just as easily just ask your opponent "What tokens do you have on unit xyz?" if you're concerned about it.

Or..... the opponent could just look at your side board too! it is not that far away!

 Easy E wrote:
Or..... the opponent could just look at your side board too! it is not that far away!

Visibility at the glance can be a huge thing. When I was working on a board game a while back 90% of the changes from the first playtests must have been either 'easier to understand' or 'quicker to see'.

Personally, for me, a table surface cluttered with tokens and markers is not and has never been easy or quick to see or understand. I find it distracting and it actually triggers some sort of anxiety in me. I tried playing competitive X-Wing once and I just couldn't do it because the tokens litering the table became such a problem for me and a number of mistakes were made during gameplay because myself and my opponents kept associating the tokens with eachother units.

If the tokens can't be made "delightful" (to borrow a term Mike Hutchinson used in one of his design discussions about tokens in ABS) by making them representative of an "in universe" thing (radar blips, clouds of smoke, water splashes, etc.), then I don't feel they belong on the game board - much better to put them on a "side board" as Easy E says or keep them on your cards/a player dashboard, etc. There are of course exceptions to this - if the token is used to mark the location of an objective or resource, etc. there really is no getting around it, but these should be limited to only those that are actually positionally relevant. I'd much rather have status effect tokens and the like be marked on unit cards, etc. instead.

Cyel wrote:

 Valander wrote:
Sometimes, it's just adding a CCG-like combowomboing to an otherwise fairly bland game (I'm looking at you most GW games currently, and of course Warmachine was mega guilty of this)

While I agree with WM&H being special-rules-reliant, and now, when I tried out MTG on Arena (would never want to spend any actual $ on such a game) I can easily see how it must have been an inspiration to Privateer Press, I strongly disagree that the base game is "bland". I think the three most basic "decision points" in Warmachine
-resource management
-order of activations
-playing ranges, spatial positioning
are extremely well done and very interesting on their own. I actually get new players interested in just these aspects, we only look at the backs of the cards (where the special rules are) after a few test games. And I also wish WM&H could delete the rules bloat it has to make itself more accessible and less Gotcha!'y. The depth of the game comes from its basics. As the saying goes:
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
and another one
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

I'll grant that the resource management is not too bland, but would posit (especially with my time as an Infernal for the game) that all the rest really boils down to managing the combowombo. Yes, order of activation matters--in order to apply the best modifiers to pull off said combo. And the positioning, again, is to make sure you get things in various buff/debuff ranges. The core engine was really not all that and really was a pretty standard roll relying heavily on modifiers (again, part of said combo chaining usually). Even worse, the auras of various abilities led to the game becoming one of absolute micromeasuring, where people really would apply trigonometry to prove why you couldn't actually possibly be in range to do a thing. The system as it was inevitably broke down into trying to create a Rube Goldberg machine to pull of your caster assassination; only when that wasn't an opening did people bother trying to play to the scenario.

Edit: I mean, don't get me wrong, I was deep into that game for a long time. But the continual rules bloat and resulting loopholes and special cases made it a nightmare, and it just kept going. The core system, though, was very one sided since the inactive player rarely got to do anything other than mark damage and remove models, with few exceptions.

I agree, using unit cards or things on the side is much preferred to cluttering the field for me.

On WM/H, I thought it did a good job of simulating big monsters and robots fighting in an interesting way. Just the mechanics for what the big things could do were a lot more engaging and added a lot more meaningful decision making to the game than a lot of other games do for their big monsters.

It did get bloated, but it was surprising how well they held it together for all the bloat. I stopped playing at the end of Mk2 (having played since Mk1) so I dunno how it is in Mk3 now. They took some decisions on how to manage the bloat that are probably very sensible but were a bit off putting to me and I didn't make the effort to find a new group when I moved country.

But although the engine was a bit creaky in places I think it did what it wanted to do at it's core very well.