Things you love/hate about table top war games

Hey Veeky Forums. I'm currently developing a war game similar to 40k/warmahordes. Our plan is to get everything ready to put up on Kickstarter and then after the campaign sell straight to consumer via our website. Things are still being built and balanced and I figured while we were still in this stage I would get a few ideas from the community. What are some things you guys love about the genre? Some things you hate? Anything helps, thanks!

For me, strict unit formation rules and fleeing after half+ squad is wiped just break the flow of the game. Units being their own thing and getting additional benefits for being in formation is the way it should be.

People who field unpainted miniatures

I hate that miniature gaming has become the face of tabletop wargaming. They're always half about making a good game, and half about painting your models. If you enjoy that, well and good, but I've found that hex and chit games as actual games are often enormously better designed. And getting people to play them, especially miniatures gamers, is like pulling teeth.

That is one of the most depressing images of a tabletop wargame I have ever seen. Up there with this abomination on the 40k wiki page. Paint your dudes guys, it's easier than ever.

Come to /awg/ anyway mate, plenty of homebrew stuff there.

but for real, though, I agree with the point on leadership checks and I honestly would prefer if they weren't in 40k to begin with. If you want tips a good thing for game design is saying it's done, not when there's nothing else to add, but nothing else to take away. Simple systems flow better and are generally more accepted and it also makes it so that you have less things to go wrong.

forget painting i would be overjoyed if my opponent actually has an army of miniatures even if they are from different army/game instead of paper slips and random objects

please kill me

I was joking, but okay. I think those games tend to be better because they were probably designed by actual game designers. I don't mind playing games with unpainted minis, especially board games because in that situation I am on board for the game, but I think that if you have minis that you have to build, and paint yourself then it's naturally going to develop that kind of community because people are going to focus on the hobby aspect which I prefer to the game to be honest if you want people to focus on the game itself give them the game first, and some pre-built and maybe even pre-painted minis like X-Wing, people who just want to play the game will gravitate towards that.

It's an older image of mine. To be fair I hardly have time to paint at all. I would love to, but time just isn't there.

I agree that simplicity is a good thing. You can have deep gameplay without having complex rules half of players don't know or use because they are only listed in the rule book as a single paragraph and not even referenced on a card.

You're missing the point. If you're focusing on the game as a game aspect, like I do, I'm throwing ALL the mini games, from X-Wing on down in the trash. Play some really good games, like Empires in Arms, or Advanced Civilization (The Avalon Hill one), Paths of Glory, When Eagles Fight, World in Flames, etc.

No minis, just little pieces of cardboard. Focus on the game.

Well, yeah, focusing on the game like that is great for the initial prototyping and design process but I don't see why you can't branch out into stronger visual design and miniatures once you have designed a good game.

OP here.
I'm a huge visual person. I'm spending quite a large sum of money on the models to make them look as nice as possible. Wife is a concept artist so she's mocking up quite a few things that I send over to our guy who is making some stellar models. I don't understand why both can't happen. A game with a good ruleset that's fun to play and not overly complicated with beautiful minis to boot.

That's good, having a strong visual style is a great way of having your game stand out.

You're overlooking how the physical design of miniatures inherently limits what you can do with a game. Like take World in Flames, a strategic level WW2 game I'm currently playing. The major powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, British Commonwealth, France, USSR, USA, China) have 5,165 chits between them, (Not all will see play) representing everything from individual capital ships, cruisers, submarine squadrons, fortifications, infantry (at least division sized), airplane concentrations, supply buildups, etc. I've never searched for the various minor countries, but there's probably a couple hundred chits, maybe even a thousand between them.

It would be physically impossible to set up a miniatures game with 5-6,000 pieces, unless you want it to take up an entire building and spend decades painting them all. There's a reason why miniatures wargaming is overwhelmingly focused on skirmishes and other small action, tactical games. What if you want to play something else?

Then there's the fact that the miniatures rarely if ever add anything to the actual game itself. You'll have all the strategic choices (such as there are) if I have a fully painted lance of Atlases or if I just have 4 slips of paper saying "Atlas" on each one. Sure, it'll look ugly, but when you're actually considering how to win and what your next best move is, that ugliness doesn't factor in, and you could have been spending that time and focus on your visual design trying to iron out more bugs in the game, of which there are always lots.

Then just have two teams, one works on the game the other works on the visuals, problem solved. I can tell you right now, as a game designer myself, that having a focus on aesthetics doesn't have to dig into the time spent refining the game itself.

>Then just have two teams, one works on the game the other works on the visuals, problem solved.
So now you're at least doubling the overhead that goes into making the game, and adding a host of new lines of communication that need to go into getting literally anything done?

>I can tell you right now, as a game designer myself, that having a focus on aesthetics doesn't have to dig into the time spent refining the game itself.
Unless you can literally design aesthetics at the same time as you're designing the gamedev without loss in efficiency in either, that's blatantly impossible.

And why is it that miniatures games never have the strategic depth of something like Hornet Leader, let alone some of the really big-tier stuff? Why do they tend to be so much more random and less skill based?

>Then there's the fact that the miniatures rarely if ever add anything to the actual game itself
I actually disagree with this wholeheartedly. I've had multiple discussions with many people asking questions like "Would you play MTG if the cards had no art" and most of the time I get a no. Visuals, art, aesthetics etc. are extremely important. It's important as an eye grabber, as a hook, or in general once everything is painted and on a proper board, the atmosphere it can create is something people play for.

You can argue a literal; the models don't add anything at all and the game could still be played with cardboard/paper strips. That's true, but if that's how the game was initially presented to you, would you feel inclined to buy into/play that game? Probably not.

TLDR; The visual part of a game is extremely important and adds a lot to the game. To think otherwise is silly.

I don't think you're grasping it. Putting this as basic as I possibly can, it's possible to design the game, get rules and shit done, test with paper strips, and once you are satisfied start modeling and make revisions as you do so. This isn't rocket science. Unless I'm severely misunderstanding your point...

I have designed games in small teams (4-5 people) and we haven't had any problems with dividing the tasks between gameplay people, and art people, it's not nearly as hard as you're making it out to be. If you want the most strategic depth possible in a game, fine, have nothing but designers and don't worry at all about aesthetics, but the OP never said they were making anything with that amount of strategic depth, they said they wanted something simple and fun to play.

Aesthetics is a huge component, because players rely on visual cues more than a line of data to judge conditions of the game.

>I actually disagree with this wholeheartedly. I've had multiple discussions with many people asking questions like "Would you play MTG if the cards had no art" and most of the time I get a no
That is literally changing the scope of the question.

I'm not saying that the art or the chrome doesn't add to the experience, but it doesn't add to the GAME. If you think the game aspect is the most important part, you're probably not the sort that would play something like Magic in the first place; and asking a sample of MtG players is dealing with a very self-selecting sample.

>That's true, but if that's how the game was initially presented to you, would you feel inclined to buy into/play that game?
Because again, you're dealing with a sample size of people who ARE playing miniatures games because they DO think that stuff is important.

If you shift venues, say to chess players, we have a lot of those. How many of them do you think got into the game because they really like the beautiful hand-carved mahagony pieces that you can get for hundreds of dollars and wouldn't play if they got cheap plastic pieces for a buck a set that are ugly? You think that stuff matters to most of them? I've hung out with a couple of GMs in my day, who are about as dedicated as you can get to chess, and I can't remember any of them ever making a remark about the physical attributes of the pieces. Hell, often enough, for casual play anyway, they'll be just as happy keeping the entire game in their heads and dispensing with the set entirely.

This too. If something looks menacing they are more likely to be cautious than if they were charging a grunt.

>Unless I'm severely misunderstanding your point...
Yes, you are. "Getting rules and shit done" is not the entirety of the game design unless you don't care about quality at all. How much of your game do you want to be skill based vs luck based? How are you even going to be able to tell the difference between skill tiers without extensive play-testing among groups of different skill level? Are there any exploits you've overlooked? What is the right balance between complexity and simplicity? Are features that you've thought of really adding enough to the game to justify their additional overhead and complexity? I'm not saying that these questions are necessarily unsolvable, but they take work to solve, and an attitude of "Well, the game's done, let's do art" means that you've necessarily taken a portion of your time and focus into the entire game design and put it on the aesthetics and not on the game.

OP asked for "things you love and hate about wargaming". Honestly, I think that my point was entirely made when whomever it was made post , responding to my irritation that miniatures games are the only wargames that seem to get discussed (especially around here) by suggesting one set of mini games over a different set of mini games; indicating that yes, to his mind, Wargames=miniatures.

I hate that you have to paint a bunch of shit like a little arts and crafts fairy to play what may or may not be a good strategy game without people getting cunty.

With out getting in to the whole painting and minis thing. From a game play side I love when their is some overall strategic thing. that you can use to overcome RnG, bad luck, or even can just be used to help insure a play. There is nothing worse / can put you off a game faster then when your bit win the roll fucks you and you just have to take it in the ass.

I hate how people can't take a joke, or read the other posts in the thread that point out that the previous statement was a joke.

I think you're over estimating how much work it is to hire a visual designer who can work independently of the game designers and occasionally have input on the game design aspects

I kinda agree. I'm ass at painting, but I love painted models.

The friend I conned into painting my stuff moved away.

Anyone advocating TLoS in miniatures wargames should be thrown off a cliff.

Look, I think I understand your point, and while it's not possible to capture both audiences (One being Chess/buy and play right away players and the other being build/paint/personalize players) I do think that a mix of the two is achievable.

A lot of casual players get put off by games that have a lot of rules. Among those are complicated ones which muddies the issue further. By eliminating the complex rules and putting everything about a unit on an info card we allow a playerbase that previously wouldn't be interested to play and have fun while understanding everything. "Read the card" kind of gaming.

I've played many, many games and have been included in development teams so lack of developmental experience isn't an issue I'm failing to grasp. Admittedly I've never developed a game before, but I've developed software for a very wide range of users. I understand the workflow of development and the thought process of clients.

Being a gamer for as long as I have also helps me understand. I'm not perfect obviously, hence the thread, but I think I'm onto something with this. A ruleset and design that keeps depth without sacrificing the flow of the game makes for an enjoyable experience that a casual can jump into and understand while also letting a chess player can strategize and take advantage of his army.

Typos but I'm at work so that's my excuse.

fuck TLoS.

That's completely understandable. You don't have to go for everyone in both audiences and I think that working for a simple system that can have a lot of depth in the player's hands is a good way to go, but hitting that benchmark can be hard. Play testing and having player input is incredibly important for developing a game. Also when you play test make sure that you basically just give them the game and the rules and abandon them to observe from the corner so that you can learn how the player goes about trying to figure out the rules and you can see what needs to be improved on for understandability.

That's what I've been doing and I'm happy where it's going right now. I just felt like I needed a little more to be... More unique I guess? I wanted another wow factor, something different and I'm struggling with that final piece and wanted to gauge opinions on what people liked/didn't like to spark some idea.

...Ray?

I'd say randomness is annoying as fuck. Like 40k 8th edition has tons of weapons with d6 number of shots that makes them basically unreliable and useless.

Also, turn order. In 40k, first turn is super overpowered if you have an army that can take advantage of it. This is because the opponent has no reaction at all. They just sit there and get shot.

I'd say you should do alternating unit activation, and the turn ends when every unit has completed their allotted actions (like 40k epic or bolt action),

Not Ray and don't know a Ray, sorry.

I don't experience with epic. I'll have to look into that.

I don't have experience*
God damn my grammar is fucked.
Though I'll also add that I agree. People say more dice is better but rolling 20 d6 for something and it's not a joke is just too much.

And I think you're
A) underestimating it
B) completely ignoring how much impact the decision to put miniatures into a game has even if you're not wasting development time and energy.

Say you want to do a strategic level game for a modern conflict. How do you want to represent an entire infantry division (let alone a larger formation) with a miniature or a group. A ww1 division could encompass between 10-20,000 men, do you portray it as a squad of dudes with period uniforms? But most of their firepower and casualty infliction would be caused by the divisional artillery, not those guys with small arms. Do you portray those guns? Do you make them the core of the representation since they did the core of the damage that unit would inflict? Do you make a million little figurines to represent it all and have nobody ever able to field a full army?

Difficulty answering these questions to provide both a satisfying game and visual experience is probably why I can't think of any strategic level WW1 mini games, and damn few strategic level mini games at all.

And what I've been saying (maybe badly), is that miniatures games tend towards a specific style of gameplay; they're almost always casual/beer and pretzel games, they're almost always low scale games, they're almost always tactical skirmish games. They tend to have low skill caps and high degrees of randomness. That is part and parcel of miniature gaming, and the system of miniatures works badly if you try to do much else.

And if you want to play that sort of game, enjoy with the best of wishes. But don't pretend that your format of game is not influencing your game design, don't pretend that designing a very well made game is difficult, and don't pretend that your subgenre is the only sort of wargame there is.

isn't difficult*

Wow this dude doesn't get it at all.

Well if you're talking about it on that scale then, yeah, miniatures wouldn't fit, I was under the impression that we were discussing games around the same scale as war games with miniatures. If you do something with that degree of complexity and scale then working on detailed miniatures is just a waste of time since the scale renders the details meaningless, but when making something more casual like miniatures games it's easier to have a stronger focus on art, and skimping on art tends to stunt the popularity of the game. That's the point I was getting at.

>Well if you're talking about it on that scale then, yeah, miniatures wouldn't fit, I was under the impression that we were discussing games around the same scale as war games with miniatures
My original post wasn't even directly responding to the OP, but rather to the subject header in the OP, "Things you love/hate about table top war games"

And through it all, even the post I'm replying to, there's this assumption that by default, when you hear someone say "wargame" they mean precisely a small scale casual miniature wargame. That's what irks me; miniatures are the face of wargames, and it's doubly annoying because most miniatures games, especially the ones that have the biggest market shares, are shit as games, and the painting and background aspect compensating for shitty game design (You don't play 40k because you want a good game, you play to show off Your Dudes, or to get involved in the setting lore), rather than the visual aspect complimenting the game design.

Furthermore, a popular game design is not necessarily a good game design. I would again point to 40k, which as far as I'm aware, is still the most popular wargame by market share by a fair amount, and this one where things like balance between factions, or making a luck based who goes first not dominate the game, are concepts only vaguely nodded at, let alone achieved.

While I realize I'm speaking anecdotally, I've encountered colossally better game design out of chit games as opposed to miniatures games. I admit I'm guessing as to the ultimate causes, it does seem like it would be something endemic to the format, not just random chance.

>Putting this as basic as I possibly can, it's possible to design the game, get rules and shit done, test with paper strips, and once you are satisfied start modeling and make revisions as you do so.

So, if we're talking about a company, what are the sculptors and visual designers supposed to be doing during this playtesting period?

Design the game around an objective that can be completed without completely wiping out the opposing force by attrition. It's too easy to get into a boat race situation where one player gets ahead early and stays there without an alternate win condition baked into the game.

>This faggot doesn't even carve his own chess pieces out of ivory.

Other wargamers.

Alright, I see what you're getting at, it's completely understandable. I always lent towards the painting and modelling parts of miniature gaming rather than the game itself so I don't mind the heavy focus on miniatures, but if I was in your situation I'd probably be miffed too. I agree that you get a much better game when you focus on the game and not the art, and companies would do well to focus on keeping the art a supplement towards the game rather than what the game is based around. That's always how I've designed games in the teams that I've worked with.

An actual company would be making concept art or starting with designs that aren't the final product. Drafts. Other art of scenery for whatever they needed. I'm just a few people...

Counter point. Chits are lame as shit and usually only encompass a single scenario or conflict so they're not 'modular' and usually only work for the conflict or scenario they were specifically designed for.

Oh sorry you don't want to play Dunfuckirk Hill Capture #6568? I guess we'll have to go buy a new box to play hill #6648.

Also the ASL rulebook is $100+ dollars. I could just go get another infinity army for that money. Which has free rules.

Not to mention Chits get worn down really fast unless you're autistic enough to clip the corners of Every Single Individual Chit. And that is seriously so insanely autistic that I would rather paint my minis badly then spend hours clipping corners.

I hate warmachine because it's miniature game that hates the fact it's a miniature game.

Don't design like that

After the absolute fucking shitshow that was the production value on Betrayal, Avalon Hill (read: Hasbro) gets zero slack from me. This is the boutique board gaming imprint of their tabletop franchise; there's no excuse for the character trackers to be worthless straight out of the box. Or the chits to be indistinguishable at a glance. The very first thing I did after my first playthrough is start searching for custom meeples to replace the burning dumpster fire I paid money for. It's such a great game and such an awful, awful product.

The thing is game design is fucking hard as shit and miniature companies are all full of artists and writers who know very little about game making. Miniatures themselves aren't inherently worse game pieces, they just target a different fun type from chit games. Miniature games are designed to target narrative and self expression where as chit games target a more competitive experience.
>designing aesthetic and setting to fit a rule set instead of setting and aesthetic in tandem with a rule set all designed to target a specific goal of fun type
Lmaoing at your life, this is how you get mediocre garbage

I'm so glad to see more and more people are turning away from that hideous abomination that is TLoS.

like collecting modeling and painting
dont like that i get to play around 4 times a year

You and me both.

Whiny little faggots who bitch and moan about miniature wargames every chance they get because they can't fathom the concept of spending time on anything other than the game itself