Another great topic. Mass battles are dead?
To give you my 2 cents worth I have to wear two hats, the gamer and the retailer.
As a gamer I’ve run the gambit. Warhammer, 40K, historicals, Kings of War, AoS, etc. There are two factors at play here, time and expense. A large army can take thousands of dollars to buy and hundreds of hours to paint. Then there’s the play time. The reality is that I have a family, work and everything else in life competing with hobby/play time. Every hour I spend painting is an hour I’m not playing. Similarly, every dollar I spend on troops is money I could be spending on scenery, storage or other expenses like food.
There’s also the psychological aspect too. 5 models are a lot easier to get finished and to give you the feeling of satisfaction of a completed job than a legion of metal or plastic. I’ve covered this in my project blog, but Kickstarters showing up at your door can be amazingly exciting, that is until you start painting them.
Finally though, I must say as a gamer that there is nothing as breathtaking as a mass battle of two beautifully painted armies. I think we all know it’s every wargamers dream. It’s one thing to be a sergeant in charge of an elite squad, it’s another to be a Chapter Master, a warlord, a general or a King.
As a retailer the current zeitgeist is undoubtedly skirmish games. For retailers skirmish games ultimately suck. Why? Because what we sell to customers in mass battle games is far more than what we sell you in skirmish games. That was until Kill Team that is. Why do games like Infinity suck for us? Because there’s nowhere for enthusiasts to go. No vehicles, no bigger battles, no need for more….. Saga is the same. If you want bigger battles, you leave the rules system and go looking for something else. Definitely a lost opportunity by Infinity and Saga.
So why has this happened? I think GW screwed up. What originally happened is that GW failed to link up their games and allowed for the increase in scale of games. Had players been introduced to Warhammer with Mordheim, been encouraged to move to Warhammer games of 500-1500 points then introduced a Warmaster style ruleset (taking off stands rather than individual models,) for truly massive battles, I dare say Warhammer would have lasted another 20 years. Let’s face it, it’s clearly their business model now for Kill Team to 40K and there will be Apocalypse games rules. Mantic has tried it, but made the dual mistakes of not producing their own unique IP and/or quality models for players to buy into quickly enough.
I watched as GW stumbled tripped and fell flat on their face with AoS. First they Killed the Old World and alienated 12-15% of their customer base in a matter of months. Had they informed the community they were moving the story forward, starting a new game in a new setting they could have left Warhammer players playing that and kicked off AoS.
They originally pushed AoS as a skirmish game, but the sales reality was that skirmish games don’t lead to big sales unless they lead to bigger and bigger battles. Have a look at the photos in White Dwarf of AoS in the first few months. It quickly goes from maybe 30-40 models to tables full of them. The problem with hundreds of models that aren’t on movement trays is that they take hours to play. Then there was the lack on new factions except Sigmarines. The community really had to house rule the game to get it to work at larger scales.
Thankfully there was finally a change at the top of GW and they started listening and engaging with their customers again. The General’s Handbook came out and finally the rules were revised. I suspect that in the not too distant future both AoS and 40K will get ‘Apocalypse’ (massive game) rules.
In the historical gaming scene a few companies are beginning to get it. Warlord recently put skirmish rules in it’s Dark Ages supplement. It allows you to fight a skirmish or larger battles without learning masses of rules. Great idea. Then they released Tank War in the Bolt Action World. It allowed people to fight with the best stuff, without hundreds of models. Battlefront released ‘Tanks’ which is effectively a skirmish game without infantry.
Mass Battles aren’t dead, just out of fashion.