Kings of War Kickstarter - the end and a review

My final Mantic Games Kings of War Kickstarter box has arrived, leaving me in a position to evaluate the campaign as a whole. I haven't opened everything or assembled anything yet so I am in a better position to judge some things rather than better than others, but my current position is summarised below.

Very Good
Gargoyles
Trolls (I know some people don't like the stumpy legs, but I like my Trolls to look odd an misshapen)
Ogres
Obsidian Golems
Goblin Mincer
The heroes, with one notable exception
Goblin Fleabag Riders

Good
Elf Palace Guard
Mummies
Cat Cavalry
Abyssal Dwarf Infernal Guard
Orc Chariot/Fight Wagon
Werewolves (Unfairly maligned, in my opinion. Probably because of the sample paint job in which the furry areas and fleshy areas are painted in different colours. Painted in one unified colour they look much better)

Okay
Mounted Paladins
Foot Paladins

Flawed
Battle Sisters
Mikayel (Twighlight Kin Hero)

Is that supposed to be a rocking horse?

Um...
Men at Arms

Reserving Judgement (Mantic haven't put out any pictures of these yet and they come in too many pieces to easily evaluate)
Dwarf Badger Riders
Elf Cavalry
Twilight Kin Cavalry

The Basilean Men-At-Arms are not good, to put it mildly. There's been a lot of criticism of the faces, which look a bit wrong, but to my eye they just look ugly. That's not necessarily a problem, in an army full of shining paladins, warrior nuns and angels, making the rank and file look a bit lumpen seems fair enough.

But there's a lot more wrong, both in sculpting and production. The arms and legs look too long for the bodies. On the face of it this is a sculpting problem, but it could be that they were sculpted for resin plastic, which shrinks a lot more in production than hard plastic. If that's the case, the conversion process for hard plastic hasn't been done very well. Then there's the plastic itself, which looks cheap and shiny and tends to obscure detail, particularly on the chainmail. And then there's hands and weapons are separate components, which means they don't look like they have a proper grip on their weapons. On the positive side, the weapons are very nice pieces that will be useful as spare parts.

Beyond sculpting and production, there seem have been problems at the concept stage. We get five bodies, one running, two advancing, one standing and fighting and one stock still. This makes it impossible to assemble a single box into a regiment that looks coherent. Mantic haven't bothered, their sample units use either the standing and advancing or the fighting and running bodies. Also, other than the weapons, we get no spare parts. There's enough for five models with nothing left over, which, frankly, feels a bit stingy.

The final, and most egregious, problem is that they're just too big. They stand taller than Games Workshop's Empire soldiers, while most of Mantic's models are smaller and less 'heroically' scaled.

Compared to Mantic's early plastics these are very poor. There earliest, the Elves and Skeltons combined good detail, casting and a wealth of extra pieces. They weren't quite at Games Workshop's standards but more than justified the price. Later sets, the Dwarfs and Orcs reduced the number of figures and parts, but were still well cast. The casting quality of the goblins is, to be generous, variable (and to be less generous, crap), but at least the sculpting was good.

Until the goblins, Mantic always used Renedra. I'm not sure why they stopped, if it was an issue of cost, time, Renedra are, apparently, snowed under with work from Warlord, Perry and Gripping Beast among others and responsible for much of the wargaming industries non-Games Workshop plastic, or something else. But Mantic's post-Renedra efforts haven't been promising, and leave me slightly worried about Deadzone and its plastic buildings. I don't blame Mantic for sending a team out to China.

Mantic do seem to have noticed the problems, even if they're are not quite acknowledging them openly. The final overview update to the Kickstarter from Ronnie Renton includes this rather telling paragraph:

We used a new process from the one with which we made Goblin plastic sprue, and I think the Men at arms are a big step up in quality from those. While I think they meet the reasonable price for a good number of army figures, I am still not happy that these are at the level I want to see our hard plastic figures. We are still working on this. Until we can find a method that takes the details back to those we have had in the past we will not stop. Every time we learn more and we get better, but we are not there yet, and I thank you for your patience.

Translated from marketing speak, I think that reads "our Men-at-Arms were crap, we don't want to make that mistake again."

Given that Mantic started off trying to compete with Games Workshop producing hard plastic, fantasy miniatures, it's troubling that this is the area where they appear to be struggling. On the plus side, the resin-plastic models have generally improved over time and their prices still give Games Workshop a run for their money, particularly when you take advantage of the larger horde and army boxes.

Moving rapidly to a tangent, this is the first Kickstarter I have seen through to the end, so what can we learn about Kickstarter (and crowd-funding in general) from it?

I have written before about how the relationship between wargames companies and their customers can be weirdly personal and how this can be both a blessing and a curse for both parties. Kickstarter intensifies this relationship.

Backers or Pledgers (not customers note) have to offer money for a product largely sight unseen, which may never be delivered based, substantially, on the company's prior reputation. In return they get a bundle of freebies, exclusives, the promise of getting things before anyone else and a sense of personal involvement with the company thanks to some direct communication. Mantic, in particular, have been very good at communication, responding to comments and incorporating requests into their plan.

The drawback is the sense of entitlement this breeds. Pledgers feel special and that means they expect special treatment and woe betide the company that does something to upset that. Delays rapidly lead to grumbling and Mantic found themselves the subject of serious hostility with their Dreadball Kickstarter when a few copies of the game found their way into the shops before all pledgers had gotten their copies.

Speaking of delays, the other problem with Kickstarter seems to be an obsession with delivery dates. Much of the complaints surrounding Kickstarter in general relate to delays and slipped delivery dates. It's not surprising, Kickstarter already feels less real and concrete than a proper purchase and it feels like a short step from delayed shipment to no shipment to company skipped town with all your money. The consequence is that many companies are obsessed with not missing their deadlines.

Ronnie Renton referred to CNN's article listing Mantic as a successful Kickstarter as a proud moment. But it's significant that this article is all about delivering on time. Part of Mantic's delivery slipped back to August and they felt the need to add extra models to the earlier shipment by way of compensation.

If you look at my list above, its worth noting that its the Bassileans who are slipping into the Okay and Flawed categories and the worst of the bunch is also Bassilean. I wonder if this was because they were rushed out to meet a deadline and suffered as a consequence. The men-at-arms really aren't good enough and, given more time, might Mantic have gone back to the drawing board? I don't know, but I can't imagine rushing is good for the models or for customer satisfaction.

As crowd funding matures, and feels a bit less ephemeral, maybe the focus will shift. Backers may stop worrying about whether their rewards will show up at all, and more about what  state their in when they arrive.

On the other hand, given how strongly gamers can feel about games companies, and given how a Kickstarter tends to intensify those feelings, if gamers find more to complain about than just delivery dates, we could end up with a very bitter and angry community.

A big ol' box of fun

Look what I found waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday.

It's my second reward bundle from Mantic's Kings of War Kickstarter, including a good sample selection of all the KOW models Mantic have up for pre-order at the moment. I knew that they had posted these out at the weekend, but it always feels good to come home to a parcel of goodies.

As my original pledge was worth $175 I knew I would be getting a good selection of free samples. I had also ordered some Ogres, to add to my historical Normans to make them a bit more fantasy for KOW, some Mummies for my Undead and some Elf Palace Guard for MLB (for which he will be compensating me). What I hadn't expected was for Mantic to add this on to my original pledge total meaning that I beat the $225 limit for the next batch of freebies. So I ended up with 3 extra Ogres, 3 werewolves and a goblin mincer I wasn't expecting. Plus there's more to come.

 Basic freebie bundle

There have been some delays, so the Elf cavalry, Abyssal Dwarf Immortal Guard, Gargoyles and most of the Basilean humans (Battle Nuns, Cat-riders and Angels mostly) aren't going to be here for another month or two. But, by way of compensation, Mantic have doubled up my goblin fleabag-riders and Dwarf Brock-riders, so I ended up with ten of each. The dwarves are certainly welcome.

 Extra stuff I paid for

I have only glanced over the models so far and haven't opened or glue anything together yet, but everything seems to be pretty well cast, though there are some frighteningly tiny components.

 Bonus freebies

Now that I have the rather lovely new trolls, the Fight Wagon and the Orc Wizard from the previous bundle of goodies I am seriously thinking about a KOW Orc army. I am sure this is all part of the plan. Nothing like a big bundle of freebies to get you to spend lots more money.

 Lady Ilona the Vampire

Double Duty

Do you use the same miniatures for more than one game?

Obviously there are some companies who have actively used a range of miniatures as for more than one game. Rackham did it with Confrontation and Ragnarok, Games Workshop with Mordheim and Warhammer and soon Mantic with Deadzone and Warpath, to name but three. Not to mention the venerable history of borrowing models from a tabletop army to use in a Dungeon Crawl board game (Advanced HeroQuest, Warhammer Quest, Dwarf King's hold and so on).

But what about using the same, or almost the same, army for two different table top games. Mantic started out making models that were blatantly usable in Warhammer and Avatars of War have done the same, but now they have their own games would you still use the models for Warhammer?

I have to admit I have always felt a bit funny about this. I can't pretend its rational, but somehow I feel as though each army should be tailored for a particular fantasy world. I don't like the idea that my Mantic Undead should have a kind of cross dimensional existence in both the Warhammer and Mantic worlds. Weirdly, the rule even applies to games that aren't associated with a particular range of miniatures. I have been looking at Song of Blades and Heroes lately, but even there I think I would have to use a specific set of models for the game. It makes no sense, and its costing me money and shelf space.

Strangely, this self-imposed rule doesn't apply, or at least doesn't apply as strongly, to historical games. I have now issue with the idea of using my Normans and Saxons for Clash of Empires or Hail Caesar, or my (very slowly) developing Samurai army for Taiko or Osprey's forthcoming Ronin. Maybe, because historical miniatures represent actual people, they cannot be coupled to a rules set in the way that an invented fantasy or sci-fi range can?

Maybe there's hope for me in this direction. Just recently, I tried playing Kings of War using my Normans as a human kingdom, and now I have ordered a bunch of Mantic's Ogres to bulk them out in fantasy gaming only. The big test will be if I ever use them for Warhammer.

Too much rules makes my brain hurt!

When getting used to a new set of rules, the first few games tend to be a pretty uneven affair, characterised by a lot of flicking back and forth through rulebooks and checking stats. I'll admit that these early games are not always a lot of fun to play; I'm far too busy trying to keep track of the rules to think about tactics and victory or defeat all to often depends on whether you got the rules right.

It's for this reason I find myself gravitating back to Warhammer so often. It's not that I think it's the best set of rules, it isn't, but for most of the 1990s it was, for me, literally the only game in  town. I have played it so much over the years that the fundamentals are second nature and when new editions come along, I just have to be on the look out for the changes.

This is why I think Mantic have been very smart with Warpath and Kings of War. Here we have two examples of a set of rules that are designed to be easy to learn and play at the exclusion of all else. This can lead to some odd quirks. Nevertheless, I am more willing to play these two than a number of games I have previously played more, simply because I know I am not going to have to look very much up and I can concentrate on the business of actually playing.

The trend in Fantasy and Sci-Fi gaming in recent years has been towards smaller scale skirmish games. This has the advantage that I can build a usable force more quickly and cheaply, even when individual models cost more than Games Workshop (at least until the advent of  Finecast). If you I need five to ten models a side, you're much less likely to baulk at paying £10 a model. And you can focus more time and effort painting individual models and still get them painted more quickly. I have a larger proportion of my Anima Tactics models painted than I ever have with Games Workshop.

The drawback is it does tend to split my collection across lots of different games. Money and time I would have spent building up one army, ends up diffused across multiple gangs, crews or factions. And this means more rules to learn. Unsurprisingly, I find myself gravitating towards the systems where the rules are easiest to learn.

I have all but abandoned Malifaux, largely because it combines an unusual random mechanism, based around playing cards, with a large number of special rules for most models and a complicated abbreviation system for keeping track of them. Then there's Bushido, a game I like and really want to play more, but which, unfortunately, has one mechanism for activation (two short or one long action per turn), one for special abilities (points that are accumulated turn by turn, but which can be stored across multiple turns) and another for combat (a pool of combat dice that have to be divided between attack and defence and which can be sacrificed to produce additional effects).

One of the things I have always liked about Anima Tactics is that it has very few mechanisms to control things. Activation is based on action points that are renewed at the start of the turn, special abilities are mostly special actions that work in the same way and most effects are resolved by rolling a d10 adding a stat and modifiers and comparing it to a target number or the opposing players roll. Dreadball, and soon Deadzone, use a similar mechanism of rolling multiple dice, trying to equal or exceed a target number and counting the number of successful rolls. Even the badly presented Infinity rules, have the advantage of a single dice mechanism which covers most situations.

I wonder how often 'ease of learning' is factored into rules design? I know Jake Thornton has said he favours rules that are quick to learn but with plenty of tactical depth. But with some designers it feels like depth is being confused with complexity. I also wonder if my experience with Warhammer tells us anything. When your playing the same game day after day it becomes second nature and it's all to easy to forget how baffling it can appear to outsiders.

The numbers game

With Mantic's open day last weekend and my recent foray into Realms of Chaos I have had both Warhammer and Kings of War on the mind. One of the more distinctive features of KOW is the way in which it treats units. In Warhammer the basic element is the model and units are made of groups of them, while in Kings of War the basic element is the unit, it has its own stat line and is moved and removed as one element.

When playing a KOW style game, you tend to assume that the unit does not necessarily represent the number of individuals on the table. There might be twenty models, but your would tend to assume that that represents several hundred or even thousand individuals. The exact number is less important than the unit's abaility to project power on the field. For that reason the unit is removed all at once. The fate of individuals doesn't matter, when the unit is removed it is assumed that the unit is no longer able to fight effectively either because everyone is dead or has run off.

You wouldn't necessarily think this in Warhammer. When each model has its own stat line, it feels like an individual. But this doesn't actually make sense in practice. For a start, the units in Warhammer behave like much larger bodies. There may twenty men (or Orcs or Elves) on the table, but they move and fight like formations of several hundred. They stay in formation, can't manuevere easily and don't break formation except in route.

Looking at things on a larger scale, Warhammer-style games use maybe 100 to 200 models. Real historical armies run to thousands or even tens of thousands. Even the largest Warhammer battle represents only a skirmish in historical terms. And yet the conceit of the Warhammer game is that battles involve Emperor's, Kings and Warlords.

Both styles of game involve an abstraction. In KOW style games you assume that each unit represents more individuals than seen on the table. In Warhammer style games the abstraction happens almost in reverse. You assume that units and individuals behave like much larger formations than they actually represent. Either way, the effect is to simulate a massive battle with a much smaller number of models.

This division of model versus unit is common in historical wargaming. Warlord's Black Powder, Hail Caesar and Pike and Shotte all use the unit as the base element. Field of Glory and its successors as well as DBA and DBM use a similar system, of multiple models on a single base, even if they are not necessarily called units. In the other side, Clash of Empires follows a similar system to Warhammer, with units of individual models.

While the unit versus individual concept cuts across fantasy and historical gaming, in one area historical games usually fall on one side and fantasy on the other and that's in the handling of characters. In the Black Powder family, Clash of Empires, Field of Glory characters are essentially order givers. They enhance the fighting ability or units and/or are required to allow them to activate, but they don't fight units directly.

In contrast Warhammer treats characters as particularly capable individuals able to join and leave units and fight on the same level as other individuals. Kings of War goes even further. Characters are units in their own right and a single hero can fight on even terms with a unit of 20 or more models. This makes sense, while in the real world no individual, no matter how capable can fight more than two or three at a time successfully, in a fantasy world mighty heroes really can take on entire armies and win.

So many games use abstraction to deal with numbers, but the exact way it's managed varies from game to game and genre to genre.

Underwhelmed by Warpath

So after months of build up Mantic has finally released Warpath. One thing you can't say is that they've failed to generate sufficient buzz. The release strategy has a been a master piece of slowly released data. You might quibble over the final product, but not with the way the release has been managed. And yet I find myself unlikely to start on Warpath any time soon.

Regular readers of this blog (I think there may actually be some now) may have realised that I have a fair bit of time for Mantic. I applaud their ambition and am glad to see a company attempt to take on Games Workshop at their own game (in more ways than one). I have generally found their miniatures to be well sculpted and good value. In spite of this I have not invested in Kings of War, at least not yet.

The reason for this had little to do with the quality or value of the product and more that it felt like more of the same. After nearly twenty years of Warhammer, I don't have much enthusiasm for starting on another army of generic fantasy types, however, cheap or well sculpted. So far I have acquired Dwarf Kings hold and left it at that.

Warpath, however, was of greater interest. I have been a Warhammer 40,000 player in the past, but not with anything like the same dedication. I have one fully painted army and a few scraps of others. Also, Warhammer 40,000 is a much more distinctive setting and, while they share the same Fantasy in Space, concept Warpath does seem to be aiming for a different style. What we know of their humans is that they represent ruthless capitalists rather than excessively gothic, bigoted, religious fanatics. So, initial impressions were good.

I have not been put off, as some people had, by the discovery that the Orx sprues are essentially Orc sprues with different arms. This isn't exactly a selling point, especially as the Orcs sprue offers only three different bodies, but isn't a deal breaker either.

When Mantic first started out, they released their first miniatures with no game of any kind. Kings of War had a logo and that was that. The miniatures were co-opted for Warhammer, mostly, and any other game players liked. The releases trickled out steadily, Undead followed Elves, and then Dwarves. It wasn't until the last release that we saw any game rules at all. By this point all the major armies had several plastic boxes. When the Kings of War starter set appeared, it came with two substantial armies and was followed by army boxes that put Games Workshop's battalions to shame.

In contrast, with Warpath the rules were out months before the models. We know that eight armies are planned and we have a good sense of what's going in them. The first of the Forge Fathers and Marauders have been released, but so far there isn't much. It's at this point that Mantic have put out a starter box and two starter armies.

Compare and contrast the Kings of War dwarf army box with the Warpath Forge Fathers box. The former has 85 infantry figures and 2 artillery pieces, the latter 30 figures and 2 artillery pieces (admittedly, huge artillery pieces). The former is a really stunning amount of figures for the price, the latter is a decent deal. The story is the same with the Marauders. The Orcs get 84 figures, the Orx get 50 and 2 vehicles.

A good part of the reason for this is the inclusion of resin-plastic figures in the Warpath boxes. While the small number of releases so far mean would mean that including more plastic would mean much less variety. But the contrast is still striking and presents a very different idea of the game. Both are meant to be based around big armies, but while Kings of War makes a big army look achievable, for Warpath it much more of a challenge.

Putting it simply, I was expecting to be wowed by Mantics Warpath starter sets. So far I haven't been wowed. They look like decent value, but that's all. And to really grab me from the word go Warpath needed to be more than decent.

I go, you activate

When Mantic Games released its Kings of War rules there were complaints from some quarters about its use of the IGOUGO turn sequence. The phrase, an abbreviation of "I go, you go" refers to a game in which one player takes a turn moving, shooting and fighting with their miniatures and then the other player does the same. This is contrasted with something that might be called "alternating activation" in which one player chooses a miniature and does something with it, then the other player, then back to the first and so on until the turn is over.*

IGOUGO has been criticised for being unrealistic as it does not allow players to respond to their opponents actions and because the 'passive player' has to wait for long periods of time before being able to do anything. These long waiting periods can make IGOUGO seem dull or jerky in contrast to AA's fluidity or dynamism. There is even a tendency to regard IGOUGO as slightly old fashion or out of date, a complaint that was leveled at Kings of War and at each edition of Warhammer that continues to use it. When Privateer Press announced their new big battle supplement for War Machine, stating that it would use AA, many applauded it as a step forward. As though the move represented a progressive shift, instead of a simple rules choice.

Alternating activation often goes along with the abandonment the of traditional turn sequence. Specific movement, shooting and fighting phases are usually lost in favour of allowing units to move, shoot and fight when they are activated, before another model does the same. One notable exception was Rackham's Confrontation, which used AA in its movement phase, before having separate shooting and close combat phases afterwards.

AA is very common for skirmish games, possibly because the quick back and forth between players better mirrors a dual or brawl than the careful maneuvering the characterises a big battle. There are, however, some big battle games that use this approach. Games Workshop's Epic Armageddon is one example and soon War Machine will follow. However, one aspect of large scale battles that is not easily modeled by AA is co-ordinated attacks.

In a game that uses IGOUGO game, with the turn divided into stages, it is easy to have one unit or miniature attack another and then be joined by a supporting ally. The actual combat resolution doesn't happen until later allowing multiple units to join the attack. This is much more difficult to model in AA. If one unit or character activates at a time, with no separate phases, then one unit completes its attack before another can join. It is possible to have combat engagements last over several activations, but this requires the initial attacker to survive the first attack.

Imagine a situation in which two weak units attack a stronger one. In IGOUGO they can both engage and the combat is worked out in one go. In AA, the first unit has two attack and survive a potential counter attack before its ally joins it.

There are ways around this problem. Malifaux has a companion rule that allows some groups of models to activate together, for example. However, these are generally compromises or fudges that work around the natural flow of the rules and arguably undermine the fluidity of Alternating Activation.

The point is that AA feels more fluid and sometimes more real, because the way the miniatures or units activate feels closer to simultaneous. However, the fact that allies cannot easily act in concert undermines that by demonstrating that it is still turn-based. Wargaming is necessarily a fudge that does its best to simulate the effect of real warfare whilst allowing players to actually play a game. Ultimately, Alternating Activation is as much a compromise as IGOUGO, they just have different strengths. Alternating Activation simulates the back and forth of combat, IGOUGO is better for co-ordinating strategies and careful maneuvering.

*This is a slight simplification as many games that use some variation of AA have a mechanism that allows one player to activate two or more miniatures or units in sequence. Broadly we are talking about a system in which one player gets to activate some, but not all, of their models and then the other does.

Tipping the Scale

A while back I wrote a post in which I commented on the price and perceived value of Games Workshop's miniatures versus other company's. Eventually, I concluded that the price of a model was less important than it's value within a game. I have been trying to come up with a way to quantify this and rate various different games.

Today, I'm going to write about 'scalability.'

This can be defined as how easy it is to start and collect miniatures for a particular game, or how scalable it is. I will subdivide it into three areas:

1. How much does it cost to get enough bits (miniatures, rules, scenery) to play the game?
2. How much does it cost to add a new element to your army/ gang/ crew/ squad?
3. How big can the game get?

When I refer to cost, I don't just mean in purely financial terms, but also the time cost in collecting assembling and painting the necessary miniatures.

A game with good scalability allows you to start from nothing and expand your collection as far and as fast as you like.

The first element is the most straightforward - how much does it cost to start playing? How many models do you need and how much will you have to pay for them? As I have mentioned a few times before, Warhammer has high start up costs. You now have to spend over £60 on rulebooks, never mind the miniatures. Games Workshop has attempted to soften this with a high value starter set containing as many plastic models as can be sensibly squeezed between two sheets of cardboard. But this is of limited value if you don't plan to collect the armies included in the starter set. Mantic's Kings of War does a good job in reducing the cost of the models, but still scores quite low in this area because of the amount of time you have to spend painting them.

In contrast, skirmish games like Malifaux, Helldorado, Anima Tactics or Infinity can be played with as few as two or three models and a decent sized force may be no more than half a dozen. Anima and Infinity have expensive rule books, but both compensate with free downloadable startup rules (which actually cut out very little of the detail in the main books). So, while individual metal miniatures may be a lot pricier than plastics, you need very few to play the game and can devote more time and effort to making each one look that bit better.

Warmachine and Hordes, although based on larger armies than the skirmish games, make good use of starter sets and quick start rules to draw players in. It is at least possible to play a game with the contents of two starter sets, even if these games are a bit limited in tactical options.

My second criteria is slightly harder to explain, but in essence it's about how much it costs to add a new element to your army or force. By an element I mean the basic number of models that has to be added to an army to make it viable. In Anima Tactics or Malifaux that will usually be a single figure, but in Warhammer you need a whole unit. Anima Tactics and Malifaux miniatures cost a lot, but each one operates as a separate individual within the game, in contrast Warhammer and Kings of War use models in groups.

What this means is that although Games Workshop and Mantic's models are comparatively cheap, you need to buy them in large numbers. For Warhammer you now need two or three boxes , costing £30 - £45. For Anima, you can have a miniature for £8 and have it assembled, painted and on the gaming table the next day. So although the cost of a Warhammer miniature is lower, so is its value in the game. This means that Anima scores higher on criteria 2 than Warhammer.

Warmachine and Hordes sit somewhere in between. They sell units in boxes, which means one box usually gets you one unit, but the boxes are often very expensive at £30 or more (though the UK does seem to suffer due to the exchange rate here).

My final criteria is how big a game can get. How well does it support large armies? Or at what point does it become pointless to buy any more models? This is where the Games Workshop games, and Kings of War score highly. Games can get very big, very easily without becoming unweildy and Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 even have rules specifically to support extra big games.

Most skirmish games start to become unweildy when they get beyond twenty or thirty models, creating a natural cap in your collection where models can only be swapped not added to your force.

So skirmish games tend to score well for criteria 1 and 2, while mass battle Warhammer scores better for 3. Warmachine and Hordes score moderately well on 1 and 3, but not so well for 2 and sit as something as a compromise.

Companies have tried several ways to address the scalability problem. One approach is to produce 2 or more games to cover different scales of conflict. Games Workshop have tried it with the Lord of the Rings strategy battle game and War of the Ring and the late Rackham, famously, had Confrontation and Ragnarok. The idea is that you start with the skirmish game and, as your collection grows, you naturally progress to mass battles.

The problem with this approach, is that skirmish games tend to require only 1 or 2 of any individual miniature, while mass battle games require units, usually of at least five, if not ten or twenty. This means that the progression is rarely natural. Looking at Lord of the Rings, 1 or 2 plastic boxes is likely to give you as many of one particular trooper as your likely to need for the strategy battle game, but for War of the Rings 4 - 6 is more realistic. Meaning that you will probably have to double the size of your collection to make it viable for War of the Ring. This is simply not a natural progression.

So, what is my point here? Well essentially, creating wargame rules is a compromise and creating a game that scales well is very difficult. Games Workshop plays to its strengths by pushing bigger and bigger armies, while the skirmish games listed above are newer and benefit from a pool of players who still have plenty of models to get before they exhaust the possibilities of the smaller scale. In the end, perfect scalability may be impossible and it a company has to make the most of the rules they have.

One Book to Rule them All

The Arrival of a new army book for Warhammer Orcs & Goblins has been met with much excitement and a little cynicism. It's the first new book for Warhammer 8th edition and the first printed in full colour and hard back. I have seen the book up close and it's certainly lushly printed and produced (although the large format, light page count gives in the feel of a Christmas annual). One advantage of hard back is that you can leave the book open on a particular page without having to break the spine. At the same time the price has gone up from £17.50 to £22.50, making it Games Workshop's most expensive army book ever, a price certain to be matched by future books.

While all this has been going on, Mantic Games have released the army list for their new range of Abyssal Dwarves. It's one page long and can be downloaded for free from their website.

If I stopped writing here and left the obvious implication hanging then I would fully expect a raft of comments from people telling me how much they like big shiny rulebooks, how they add to the gaming experience and they love reading through the background drooling over the pictures, not to mention the lovely new book smell that can never be reproduced in a download.*

There is no denying the appeal of a nicely produced rule book. Enough of my treasured wargaming memories are tied up in the thrill of pooring over page after page of charts and tables, evocative world descriptions and endless pictures of battles I can only dream of recreating. I still remember devouring every last page of the 4th edition Warhammer Armies: Orcs & Goblins, right down to the mail order catalogue pages in the back. I acknowledge that, to some extent, my cynicism about the new book stems from the fact that this is the fourth Orc & Goblin army book to be released since I started playing Warhammer and for me, very little of the material is entirely new.

But at same time, I have tried to consider things from the perspective of a new player. In order to start an Orc & Goblin army in Warhammer 8th edition you have to spend £67.50 before you even get a single miniature on the table (£45 for the rulebook £22.50 for the Army book). In contrast, Kings of War, Mantic's game, is available for free and a printed copy is handed out with any reasonably substantial purchase.

I find myself wondering how I would feel if I had just started gaming now. Mantic have nothing as evocative as the Warhammer world background to draw on, their background consists of a few paragraphs on a website and a couple of magazine articles, nor do they have anything that matches the sheer impact of the Arachnarok Spider. But you need a lot of models before you can use the Spider in a game, and with Mantic I get a lot of models for my money and don't have to spend anything on rules.

I think of my little brother, just turned 15. He loves rulebooks, devouring them with enthusiasm I can't match any more. He falls asleep reading through them. But he owns almost none. Of the many games he plays, Anima Tactics, Infinity, Malifaux, Secrets of the Third Reich, the only books he bought himself are his Warhammer Army books and he had to be pushed hard to get those. Otherwise, he borrows my copies. Why? Because if he has the £15, £20, £30 or even £45 required for a rulebook, he'd rather spend it on models.

Of course, not every 15 year old has access to the library of a 31 year wargames addict, but I do wonder how many of them would make the calculation outlined above if given the choice (not to mention how many would just say forget it and buy a new X-Box game). Might their be some logic in a two tear rule distribution system. GW already includes cut down rule book in the Isle of Blood starter set, would their be some sense in making that available separately?

I don't think the era of the nice shiny rulebook is over by any means. But given Games Workshop's explicit focus on the younger end of the Wargaming market, it's method of distributing rules seems to belong to an earlier age.

*Actually I fully expect to get these comments anyway. If I wanted people to read what I had written before commenting I wouldn't be writing on the Internet.