Warhammer/Warhammer 40K, What are your thoughts? Options

[Zhan Shi]

So, I was in my local game shop and had a brief look at the the Warhammer/40K miniatures games. While it does look to be an interesting and exciting hobby, I must admit that the books left me feeling a little intimidated. How would rate the ease of play?

Also, while I was impressed with the work that Fantasy Flight Games has done with the Warhammer 40K rpg, the Warhammer rpg gave me pause. My understanding is that FFG is a company that focuses on boardgames and card games, and it seems as though they took an rpg (Warhammer) and have turned it in to a board/card game. I have nothing against board/card games, it's just not a format that I'm used to. Has anyone had any experience with this game?

I am eagerly awaiting the release of Black Crusade. "KILL! MAIM BURN!"

[Stahlseele]

WH40K comes with 3 different rulers and 3 different kind of dice.
And you need to assemble and paint all of the miniatures.
And you need to buy several books to play what you want.
And horribly expensive paint and other stuff for the minis.
So it is, basically, like most any other miniatures game that does not use a fixed grid gaming map.

[X-Kalibur]

WH40K comes with 3 different rulers and 3 different kind of dice.
And you need to assemble and paint all of the miniatures.
And you need to buy several books to play what you want.
And horribly expensive paint and other stuff for the minis.
So it is, basically, like most any other miniatures game that does not use a fixed grid gaming map.

All of it is terribly expensive and I recommend not getting involved with the miniatures unless you're willing to drop a bare minimum of $500. It is really quite fun once you get involved (although I can't stand painting and assembling) but have some people you know play with you to get the rules figured out before you play with other people... the ones that like to scream and do front to back of base for movement.

Okay, so I'm really rather fickle on it. But I do enjoy it.

[capt.pantsless]

So, I was in my local game shop and had a brief look at the the Warhammer/40K miniatures games. While it does look to be an interesting and exciting hobby, I must admit that the books left me feeling a little intimidated. How would rate the ease of play?

The actual play itself isn't too bad, there's a good deal of rules to remember, and there's plenty of arguments to be had about what counts as cover vs. hull-down etc. But the play itself is rather fun. A normal game does take 4 hours or so to play, so there's that to think about. It's all tactics and stratagy, so if you don't like playing chess, you're probably not going to like miniature wargames.

As others have said, getting ready to play can suck. For one, you need to lug around a bagfull of mini's, each of which you need to painstakingly paint and assemble. Not to mention that you'll need to find somehow to transport these delicate little bastards to the place where you're trying to play. Which is its own problem - you need a fragging big table to play on. Oh, and there's terrain to think about as well. Hills, trees, and burned-out fortresses don't make themselves you know!

The prep-work is why I haven't played in a decade or so. It takes too much work to get to the fun-stuff. RPG's are an easier way. That said, if you really like the idea of all that prep-work, painting and building stuff, it can be very rewarding. The fiction's pretty sweet too.

and it seems as though they took an rpg (Warhammer) and have turned it in to a board/card game.

Minor quibble which you probably already know: Warhammer started as a mini-based wargame. There's been several iterations of Warhammer fantasy RPG's over the decades, some published by Games Workshop, then by others, and now the license is owned by Fantasy Flight Games. Who seem to be doing a pretty good job with their Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch triumvirate of Warhammer-y goodness.

[Critias]

Who you play with is much more important than what you play.

If you've got some laid back buddies that are gonna be cool to sling some dice and play toy soldiers with, go for it: I'd still check eBay or Craigslist for search titles like "40k lot" or "Space Marine army" or whatever, and save a ton of cash, personally. The 40k rules are on the surface fairly straightforward, you'll roll a bunch of dice, make the occasional dakka dakka sound, and a bunch of miniatures will die bloody deaths. Everyone'll have fun, you'll spend some time hanging out, you'll get to paint some cool miniatures and build up an army that feels like it's yours, and it'll be a win/win.

If you don't know the local wargaming group: be prepared for pedantic rules quibbling and min/maxed armies that will sap the fun from your game. Like any wargame or RPG, Warhammer 40k has its fair share of rules lawyers, rules loopholes, poorly phrased rules, and folks who love nothing so much as the devour the fun of strangers in order to win at a game. You just might spend several hundred dollars and hours upon hours of your life on miniatures, paints, brushes, all just to get XBox-Live-teabagged by an irritating 12 year old (or 35 year old with the mentality of a 12 year old) who can't be bothered to paint his miniatures or be a decent sport. It's gotten better than previous editions in terms of the first-round-win nonsense, but it can still be pretty startling the first time you find an army that's built around something silly in the rules, that totally just gnaws your face off. Against a friendly and gracious player it can still be called hobby time. Against a douchebag, it can be infuriating and make you hate the game.

Be careful who you game with, find an army you want to spend hundreds of dollars and countless hours working on, and remember in the end it's all just toy soldiers? You can have a good time, though.

[Bigity]

Don't do it man, resist the temptations of the ruinous powers.

What do they ruin you ask?


Your wallet



I never painted my armies, I'd get a squad half done here and there and sucked at it so my armies always looked like a rainbow vomited over some plastic mans.

[Stahlseele]

Don't do it man, resist the temptations of the ruinous powers.

What do they ruin you ask?


Your wallet



I never painted my armies, I'd get a squad half done here and there and sucked at it so my armies always looked like a rainbow vomited over some plastic mans.

sounds err, scratch that and replace with looks like noise-marines.

[Bigity]

I always called it Cretan camouflage

[hermit]

Like any wargame or RPG, Warhammer 40k has its fair share of [...] rules loopholes

Creed makes mechs jump up from behind bushes and ambush the poor chaos marines passing them by. CREEEEEEEEEEED!!

Don't do it man, resist the temptations of the ruinous powers.

What do they ruin you ask?


Your wallet

WIN!

[Tanegar]

If you're looking for a miniature wargame, I can recommend BattleTech unreservedly.

1) Lower buy-in. At most, you need a copy of the rulebook, some record sheets, a map sheet, and some paper counters. That's right: unlike Warhammer, the rules do not specify that you have to have miniatures, let alone painted or WYSIWYG miniatures. That said, BattleTech does have some pretty awesome minis. Nevertheless, the minimum buy-in is about $100, compared to $500 or more for Warhammer/40k.

2) Giant robots blasting the crap out of each other.

3) See 2. What the hell else do you want? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Stahlseele]

Best thing about Battletech?
Technically, you need some sheets of paper(record sheets of the units playing), one pen(to mark damage etc.), some D6(rolling and putting in front of units) and one map sheet with hexes on it and you can play.
Well, if you know the rules. Otherwise you need the Rule-Books. And if you want some minis, those too, of course.
And there's a starter set out there. With plastic minis that you do not need to glue and paint yourself i think. Which is a HUGE plus in my eyes.
But if you want to be IN the BT universe . . just try and get some of the Unseen Mechs as Minis . .

[Grinder]

If you're looking for a miniature wargame, I can recommend BattleTech unreservedly.

1) Lower buy-in. At most, you need a copy of the rulebook, some record sheets, a map sheet, and some paper counters. That's right: unlike Warhammer, the rules do not specify that you have to have miniatures, let alone painted or WYSIWYG miniatures. That said, BattleTech does have some pretty awesome minis. Nevertheless, the minimum buy-in is about $100, compared to $500 or more for Warhammer/40k.

2) Giant robots blasting the crap out of each other.

What about Warmachine? Giant robots plus infantry, cavalry and zombies. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

[Critias]

The Battletech buy-in can be much, much, less than $100. Boxed set FTW! You get 24 or 26 (24 in the old, 26 in the new, I believe) pre-assembled minis, ready to be primed and painted, along with all the rules, a basic fluff/setting book, maps, etc, etc. $40, I think? It's a steal, at any rate. Lots of the basic rules and such for BTech can be found on-line for free right from their web-site, so you can take a look and get a basic feel for the rules if you want. Battletech also runs a ton of "intro" level stuff at GenCon (and everywhere else). Look for a "Boot Camp" session if you're hitting Indy this summer, and maybe a "Grinder" session while you're at it, and you'll be all set to have a good handle on the rules, and have plenty of fun.

Warmachine and Hordes are a lot of fun...but be prepared for a level of competition (encouraged by the sourcebooks/rulebooks themselves) that can quickly wreck the fun. Everything I said earlier about wargaming being fun depending on who you wargame with? Very much true with the Privateer Press contingent. They're a little more complex and "gamey" than 40k, on average, so can get frustrating that much quicker if you're not careful (or if you're playing with douchebags).

[Stahlseele]

As for getting a Taste of BT for free with most of the complicated being done for you:
Megamek.

[Tanegar]

As for getting a Taste of BT for free with most of the complicated being done for you:
Megamek.

Holy shit, how did I forget that? Bow down before the distilled win that is MegaMek!

[hermit]

I got a question of 40K relevance.

Is this a complete list of all fluff sources on the Night Lords?

Novels:
Lord of the Night (by Simon Spurrier)
Soul Hunter (by ADB)
Blood Reaver (by ADB)

Short Stories:
Shadow Knight (by ADB)
The Core (by ADB)
Nightfall (by Peter Fehervari)
The DArk King (by Graham McNeill)
Savage Weapons (by ADB)

Audio Drama:
Throne of Lies (by ADB)

If there is any other source that is not a Codex, it'd be nice if you'D point them out to me.

[Critias]

Index Astartes II, but it might be more Codex-y than you're looking for.

[Stahlseele]

Holy shit, how did I forget that? Bow down before the distilled win that is MegaMek!

for shame! *snickers* ^^

[hermit]

Index Astartes II, but it might be more Codex-y than you're looking for.

Probably, but thanks anyway.

[Thanee]

Also, while I was impressed with the work that Fantasy Flight Games has done with the Warhammer 40K rpg, the Warhammer rpg gave me pause. My understanding is that FFG is a company that focuses on boardgames and card games, and it seems as though they took an rpg (Warhammer) and have turned it in to a board/card game. I have nothing against board/card games, it's just not a format that I'm used to. Has anyone had any experience with this game?

It is not as much of a "boardgame-rpg" as D&D4E is, actually.

All the cards and tokens are useful additions (many of those were used in RPGs already for several decades, they just have it further formalized here).

The cards are not much more than "cheat sheets" for all the stuff you can do. The recharging of powers is a bit MMO-like, but that's fine.

The whole game definitely is an RPG more than a board- or cardgame. The props are just there to support it.

The one thing that it does though... it limits the options quite a bit, since it makes it more difficult to increase your options, invent new spells or actions or careers or whatnot, since then you do not have those nice cards for them. That's the biggest disadvantage I see in that approach.

Bye
Thanee

[mister__joshua]

I've got the latest edition of Warhammer Fantasy also. I'd agree that most of the cards and tokens and shiz are useful. Also, they're releasing a book-only version after community cries for traditional rpg-ing. We played the system for 2 or 3 months and really enjoyed it before moving on to something else (which we do from time to time, no critisizm of the system)

My one problem with the system is character advancement. We wanted to try a fantasy game that wasn't level based, plus our GM is an avid Warhammer player and reads the books too so he knew the world well, so we decided to give it a try. I found that character advancement was both very fast, and left you nowhere to go. Most careers are basic, with only 4 intermediate in the basic set, and there are 10 advancements for each. You gain 1 advancement per session. If you start as a Mage Apprentice, 10 advancements later you're a Bright wizard initiate etc, then another 10 and you're.... what. A commoner? After you finish a career you start a new one, but the system for moving through careers doesnt have a logic. What Wizard would want to become a non-wizard? But there is no-where further to advance as a wizard...

This problem I believe may have been solved with some of the expansions, but still, you want to get more than 20 plays out of your basic set.
Also, the rate of character advancement means that by picking and choosing your character classes you can become very powerful very quickly, to the point that failure rarely occurs (though there are varyig degrees of success).

Things I really liked were the dice mechanic, thought some people said it was unballanced I have always found it to be fun and varied in play, and the severe wounds which result in character death and are hard to heal back. Definately not DnD.

[baronspam]

It has been many years, but I used to play 40k and enjoyed it a great deal. I knew someone who had a good job and no girlfriend in those days, so he collected a bunch of the minis, and we would build our armies out of the stuff that he had, which was fairly extensive. There is no rule that says you must paint them. Honestly I don't remember much of the mechanics, other than I usually played Space Marines, I usually won, and that the Orcs were funny.

It has been even longer since I have played Battletech. I agree it has a massivly smaller buy in, but that is in part because you have far fewer units on the board in a typical battle(there is also the option to play with counters rather than full minis as well). Its a mech or a few mechs vs. a mech or a few mechs. You want to get crazy you throw in a tank or something. But that means you tend to have very different feel, its really a squad level game, even though your "soldiers" are giant battlesuits that can level a small town. 40k is more of an army with many more pieces on each side and more a combined arms strategy, where you are using infantry, vehicles, artillery, sometimes even aircraft as well.

[Warlordtheft]

The Battletech buy-in can be much, much, less than $100. Boxed set FTW! You get 24 or 26 (24 in the old, 26 in the new, I believe) pre-assembled minis, ready to be primed and painted, along with all the rules, a basic fluff/setting book, maps, etc, etc. $40, I think? It's a steal, at any rate. Lots of the basic rules and such for BTech can be found on-line for free right from their web-site, so you can take a look and get a basic feel for the rules if you want. Battletech also runs a ton of "intro" level stuff at GenCon (and everywhere else). Look for a "Boot Camp" session if you're hitting Indy this summer, and maybe a "Grinder" session while you're at it, and you'll be all set to have a good handle on the rules, and have plenty of fun.

Warmachine and Hordes are a lot of fun...but be prepared for a level of competition (encouraged by the sourcebooks/rulebooks themselves) that can quickly wreck the fun. Everything I said earlier about wargaming being fun depending on who you wargame with? Very much true with the Privateer Press contingent. They're a little more complex and "gamey" than 40k, on average, so can get frustrating that much quicker if you're not careful (or if you're playing with douchebags).

Regarding battletech--that scene is dead (at least in my area) as I have not seen a group playing it in ages. That would be my main concern. If you have a group of friends though, and they wanted in you could mitigate this. Can't comment on play as I haven't played a game in 10 to 15 years, and even then it was with other peoples stuff in a pick-up game.

Warhammer/40K and Games workshop: Minitures are good, but as someone pointed out to be able to field a force it is going to take you about $500 bucks. Other issues:GW's business model is to eventually remake the game, scrap the old codexes and then gradually rerelease them. This may mean that your stuff doesn't get updated to the new rulesset if ever. IMHO-a crappy way to treat its customers. Another issue is play time, you need a good 4-5 to play a standard point game. Also, models in their line have a tendancy to become obsolete.

Warmachine/Hordes: Effectively the same game (the only difference is how warcasters/warlocks work). Unlike GW it tries to maintain balance between factions. They recently released MarkII, and put out updated army books containing updated stats for all the models previously released. Privateer press does expansions that include all factions at the same time rather than specific army codexes (there are pros and cons for this I'll agree, but this is the one thing that helps keep factions balanced).

Your tactics matter in this game more than Warhammer or 40K. Granted I have not touched 40K since my first game of third ed, but even in 2nd ed I was losing interest and trying other games to get my fix (Warzone, and others) and looking for more thought provoking gameplay. A 35pt (a standard point break) game can last 2-3 hours, which makes it easier to play after work. It would involve around 20 to models and cost less than $300 to put together.

I don't find many douchebag players in warmachine at my FLGS (I've heard that there are more in 40K--but again that's hearsay and something tells me there are douchebags involved in every wargame), it happens sometimes but then you just don't play them again. Also fun and competitive play are not mutually exclusive. The rules interactions are not that complex, usually it is listed on the units card.

PS: Painting is part of the hobby-I enjoy a nicely painted army roving the battlefield. It does take time and patience to do effectively.

[Bigity]

It has been many years, but I used to play 40k and enjoyed it a great deal. I knew someone who had a good job and no girlfriend in those days, so he collected a bunch of the minis, and we would build our armies out of the stuff that he had, which was fairly extensive. There is no rule that says you must paint them. Honestly I don't remember much of the mechanics, other than I usually played Space Marines, I usually won, and that the Orcs were funny.

It has been even longer since I have played Battletech. I agree it has a massivly smaller buy in, but that is in part because you have far fewer units on the board in a typical battle(there is also the option to play with counters rather than full minis as well). Its a mech or a few mechs vs. a mech or a few mechs. You want to get crazy you throw in a tank or something. But that means you tend to have very different feel, its really a squad level game, even though your "soldiers" are giant battlesuits that can level a small town. 40k is more of an army with many more pieces on each side and more a combined arms strategy, where you are using infantry, vehicles, artillery, sometimes even aircraft as well.

Actually at tourneys minis are required to be painted with at least two different colors. So I'd slap a coating of ultramarine blue and then slap some yellow on the shoulder pad rims or paint the helmet red. I wasn't there to win any awards for making them look pretty.

[Drace]

As a former WH player from early 5th and a 40k player from 2nd Ill tell you one thing.

Stay away.

I can not stress that enough. While the lore and basis of the game is absolutely amazing, within a matter of two to three games you will be at the edge of throwing your army away and punching some little shit who has the money to spend 750 every codex/ab to get the newest and best army build. While I have some of the best memories of my childhood early teenager-hood playing this, I soon learned that unless you playing with good friends, the games get bogged down and hair pullingly bad. People really don't play for fun at store and higher levels, but to win, with people using fractions of an inch, a degree of angles (using compasses even in some cases.....).

And thats not even getting into the way the company is running the game now. Imagine every persons complaint ever about the way catalyst has done things over the last bit, true or not, and make them all true and just scratching the surface. Corruption, huge bonuses for the head ups while firing and letting go their best talent. Driving away modellers and firing writers for working on products for the company to sell on their spare time rather than using their spare time to work on what they were told to (yes, some were given quotas for work done outside of waged hours). That plus continually raising the prices, while the materials are getting cheaper. You could pay 35-60 for 10 plastic models or the same for 10-50 of different companies.

If you do want to play a game in the fantasy or 40k setting, I would advise you look into the specialist games sections. While most are skirmish level games, they are much more affordable and fun, if you can find a group to play with.