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Golem Arcana A New Gateway Game? Tabletop Minions Finds Out!
August 8, 2014 by brennon
Long running friend of Beasts of War Adam Loper of Tabletop Minions has got his hands on Golem Arcana and after a series of play-throughs has presented his opinion on Golem Arcana that was on Kickstarter not long ago. See what he thinks of the game and whether or not it really is a new gateway game for our hobby in the video above!
The game has taken a bit of a beating online but it’s also had it’s supporters – it made its funding goal after all – so let’s see what opinion a wargaming veteran has on this interesting gap-bridging game. Give it a watch and head over to subscribe to Adam’s channel for more ace musings.
What do you think of Golem Arcana?
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Was this th eone that plays on the table-top with the help of an app??
… yes it is!
from the looks of it and when I looked at it in the past I really prefer Ex Illis’ interaction. however both of these games are just stepping stones into what future tabletop gaming could be.
he is true in stating that it is a gateway game though, more so then Ex Illis was as well. Also it coming out now when tablets/smartphones.etc are more prevalent will help it.
I am still massively unconvinced.
The big warning was “there is a lot of math and the tablet does it for you”. To me that means the game is a big excel chart and everything is just adding, removing and so forth of percentiles. Which means, to actually understand the game deeper is going to be hard.
What I have yet to be shown is the “added value” of using a tablet for a tablet top game. Digital tech should enable gameplay that has previously not been possible on tabletop games – unless you have a gm (see Leaders the Comined Game), or creates entirely new gameplay.
I get that there needs to be more gateway gaming for people to transition from boardgames to wargames, but I would say Dust seems more like that than this.
This is pretty much an exact copy/paste of the reply you left on YouTube (except here at Beasts of War, you can’t disable replies to your comment like you did on YouTube) and I’ll reply, much as I did on YouTube: this isn’t a replacement to Warhammer, Warmachine, and the like. It’s a gateway game (as I said in the video) that still gives the new-to-miniatures player the social experience of playing a tabletop wargame without the steep learning curve that most minis games drop in front of the new player. Models are already painted (but one can repaint them if so inclined), the app helps you learn the game (through demo scenarios that allow you to ramp up the rules as you go), and the player can focus on enjoyment and strategy, versus rules and math. However, as the player learns, understanding the math (which yes, is percentiles) will help players to better understand their strategy.
I’m not sure what your problem is with the game (but I have an idea) but everyone should understand that this is not a contender for the hardcore wargaming market, but a gateway to hopefully get more players, eventually, interested in the hardcore wargaming market. I don’t see what would be wrong with that.
Thanks for watching, everyone!
Only a copy paste for discussion purposes because people will chat here and on the youtube. I had a look at the replies to comments and you should be able to reply so, as I said, not sure what is going on with youtube?
I was able to reply to your recent reply (and did over on YouTube) but I still can’t reply to your initial comments. Must be a glitch, my apologies.
Thanks for the vid, never saw Golem Arcana before.
I can maybe see the appeal of this as a gateway game. I’m not really asking this to be a “hardcore” game though. I want a game/tablet combo that makes sense, that adds something to the tabletop experience you can’t get without a digital tool. So far, nothing about Golem Arcana feels like that to me. The tablet/app/stylus feels more gimmicky than useful, and the UX of the product feels actually more cumbersome than rolling dice and keeping track of things with cards, tokens or record sheets.
It reminds me the initial version of War Room from PP. That app has, thankfully, improved greatly since its initial release and now feels like a useful game aid, but initially the play interface was so difficult to use (due mostly to tiny tap targets and hard-to-read text/icons) that good old cards and markers were preferable. There is nothing I’ve seen in any demos or explanations of Golem Arcana that seem easier to me with a tablet than they would be with normal gaming tools, and certainly nothing that mechanically demands a small computer.
I just don’t see it. Maybe an in-person demo could convince me by showing me something that I haven’t seen in the demos online, but I feel like if that stuff were there, they’d be showing it. I’m afraid my gateway game of choice will remain X-Wing for the foreseeable future.
Dust Tactics, X-Wing, Super Dungeon Explore, Zombicide, hell even Kingdom Death to an extent, are all games that bridge board game and wargames.
mpopke, if you get a chance, try out a demo. As I said in the video, I was dubious when I first saw it at Gen Con last year. After playing several demos a month ago at my local store with several different players (many of whom had never played minis games before) I was pretty convinced. It just helps to mitigate a lot of the extra bookkeeping that can scare away beginning players, and allows seasoned players to focus more on the strategy and combos, rather than the work. Thanks for watching!
Brilliant game. Try it before bashing it online, the app is an improvement, it is not as complex so you can still calculate everything roughly, it just speeds up all decision making when you need to try few targets by giving you all odds right away. There would be a mess on the board because of tokens if you haven’t got the app try to keep track of all cooldowns, it’s just busy work the app is relieving you from. You would have to check your opponents cards all the time, here you just tap on an enemy golem to see all its stats on a shared screen, you can even hook it up to a tv or projector.