Weekender XLBS: Can Miniatures Ruin A Game?
November 25, 2018 by dignity
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![Warcradle Studios Reveal TINY New 10mm Festive Marker! [Updated]](https://images.beastsofwar.com/2025/11/christmas-kyle-main-600-338.jpg)
Come on first surely!
Happy Sunday! man, that thumbnail is disturbing.
yeah, gonna need brain bleech … and lots of it. 😉
Is that what they meant by martian mysteries?
Well, that ‘miniature’ featured in the cover image would certainly ruin any game that I might be about to play.
Happy Sunday!
Regarding Oumuamua – watch this video from Harald Lesch, a well know professor from germany that does a lot of scientific tv shows. English subtitles seem to work fine if your German is not good enough:). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ei2WxeujUSs
Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
This is the second week in a row for a thumbnail that will scar us for life….
I can think of a game that doesn’t need minis to play it but has minis in the box.
‘Big Trouble in Little China the board game’. It could easily be played without minis, using cardboard chits and not even standees. But the game elevates by having them in there to use.
I own this game and can tell you that I would not have bought it if there were no minis in the box. I’m a table top miniatures gamer first and for most. My interest was in getting the minis for my ‘Big Trouble in Little China RPG’ that we play here.
Now that I have the game i have played it and you know what I like it. But I would never have known it was any good if the minis hadn’t caught my eye.
Another very disturbing front page for an early morning Happy Sunday start.
Great show guys.
I think it’s important to define something quickly.
A miniature can be a token but a token cannot be a miniature.
If I have a token representing a 6 Pounder and I replace it with a mini of a 6 Pounder I haven’t added a miniature I’ve substituted a token for a more aesthetically pleasing token.
If I have a 6 Pounder Miniature in a miniature game with true line of sight and I replace it with a token then I’ve changed the game.
@dignity when you talk about being able to recognise a Panzer IV as representing a Medium Tank battalion that’s a piece of knowledge you have that you’ve transferred over to hex and counter games from somewhere else. From a blank slate point of view a person looking at a Panzer IV mini (used as a token) would be just as confused as if they had looked at a Medium Tank symbol on a token. So from a veteran wargamer’s point of view minis are more helpful while from a noobs point of view both are equal.
I’m a huge fan of substituting tokens for minis (or minis for tokens whichever is the one where you remove the tokens and put down a mini). I’ve been playing a few games of Panzer Leader 1940 and I’d love to make a giant hex board with minis as tokens but if the game was converted into a proper miniatures game it would absolutely lose part of it’s core mechanics.
I spoke to a games designer years ago at a convention and I think it’s an interesting thing to share here.
He had made a boardgame (honestly I can’t remember his name or the game) and was talking about how switching from tokens to miniatures basically halved the size of his rulebook. No more abstract line of sight rules, no more piles of height markers and each miniature having to fit into a rigid category. Instead slightly bulkier minis were harder to hide behind terrain not based on a half dozen rules or some game breaking special abilities but based on their size alone.
From a “Time Invested” point of view we can’t really say “Well if they didn’t add miniatures they could have improved X or Y”. Designing something isn’t a linear thing and the closer you get to perfection the more effort you need to put into that thing. It might be more productive to add in miniatures to your game rather than polish the rules. It might add more immersion to a game to add in miniatures than to spend the same amount of effort polishing your mechanics. So in a way this is hurting the “game” in so far as the “game” is just the core game mechanics which might suffer from a lack of polish but it could be greatly improving the “game” if we look at the “game” as a whole immersive experience.
Example. D&D could have forgone miniatures and instead added maybe ten pages of extra fluff per class. Would that have added more immersion to your characters than being able to physically hold your wizard in your hand, paint him in the robes you like and convert him to be your own special character? That’s subjective to the person I suppose.
Hold up, @elessar2590 – you’ve been playing Panzer Leader 1940?
😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
As long as you stay away from Scenario 30. It’s literally a tongue-in-cheek, inside joke.
It still Saturday here in Vancouver 😛
The Preview GIF reminded me of this classic bit of Simpsons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2bvmjZqCKA
Dang. That’s one disturbing thumbnail!
Happy Sunday!
Yes! I’ve seen more of a tendency on KS especially to add minis for the sake of it when cardboard tokens – or even simply fancy plastic 3d tokens – would be enough. Sometimes they offer minis as an option, but I’ve tracked a couple of KS projects where stretch goals became mainly about the minis and the underlying core game doesn’t get the love maybe it deserves.
Happy Sunday,
miniatures are nice to have for the most games, as mentioned even 40k doesn´t need miniatures to be played. Most of the Boardgames like Joan of Arc or Kingdom Death Monster don´t need miniatures. But honestly, we do this hobby because of those nice sculpts.
KD:M is an interesting example:
– From a game mechanics perspective they are unnecessary; even during the showdown you’re on an orthogonal grid moving tokens.
– From an immersion perspective having impressive looking minis helps; but the survivors are not wysiwyg and in the early days before I’d hobbied it up you could run it through several lantern years with the original survivors and sometimes just the Monster’s base as a token. Shows that the minis are just fancy tokens.
– from a commercial business model and the core purpose and values of Adam Poots the minis are essential. Their ideation and design are intertwingled with the world that the mechanics have been evolving to support. Minis are at the heart of the business model and in many ways the game is secondary. How much could they charge for an expansion with the cards, rules etc but no mini – only a token – that would be playable? It’s a rhetorical question because put simply they wouldn’t because that’s not their core purpose.
In contrast we have Battle Ravens by Plastic Soldier Company. If anyone had the capability to add unnecessary minis to a game on KS it’s them. The only plastic I can see are the standee-stands.
Good on them! Minis wouldn’t add anything to the boxed game and if anything adding them would have diverted resources away from their core purpose – creating plastic models for table-top wargaming although I bet someone has suggested it, both internally during their ideation stage and externally from a backer.
If I back it I might try subbing in some Saga minis, but they wouldn’t help the game.
Indeed. The miniatures in Kingdom Death : Monster are the ’boutique’ part of the tagline ’boutique nightmare horror’.
Arrgh! Gratuitous otter shot on the thumbnail. Too early in the morning for that
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-46310975/sci-fi-plane-with-no-moving-parts-flies-successfully
future is getting closer.
Justin for Parliament?. Well if Sammy Wilson can get elected anyone can
Morning folks
I’m mainly a Wargamer so I prefer a good miniature over a token even if it’s only a basic one,
And warren, I remember reading a few years ago that for the most part seti wasn’t as concerned about radio waves, they would be ecstatic to find them but the civilisation in question would either be dead…. as radio waves travel so slowly or have moved to some other form of communication past digital. Though it’s early and I could be wrong …
Happy Sunday 🙂
The front page guys……………..Why!!??
My eyes are burning, where’s my snippers?!
I like quite a few of CMON’s games, but I find they tend to be a bit samey. The quality of the components is incredible, but I’d actually prefer the company to focus more on developing long-term playability. People mainly seem to back their Kickstarters for the insane number of minis they throw in, but for the games themselves the minis are little more than glorified tokens (something I never thought I’d say). In Rising Sun I thought some of the larger models were unnecessarily large. Great to look at, but completely impractical
I think this is a good example. In some places you get the feeling that the game is a means tto mmarket a big box of sculpts, but the longevity of the game itself is not a design priority.
Disturbing!
Happy Sunday! Another interesting discussion. I think it’s pretty clear to me that the most elegant gaming mechanics don’t need miniatures. I can’t think of a Spiel de Jahres winner that was a miniatures game. BUT I’ve never seen a Spiel de Jahres winner that I actually wanted to play. In fact just looking at them makes my blood run cold. Gaming for me is making cinematic moments with my collection of miniatures. As long as the game is cinematic, and the rules are thematic, I’m more than happy.
40k 8th Ed is now pretty simple. Star Wars Legion is very slick to play, I actually think the ruleset is pretty elegant, but it’s not complex. Fallout Wasteland Warfare is more complex but the complexity is very thematic. But all of these games make for fun cinematic games. You can keep your chits and meeples – I’m really not intrested!!
Card games potentially interest me if the art is spectacular and immersive – so there is hope for me yet when it comes to rules-focussed games – we will see!
Completely agree with you points. I have come to realise that i have no interest in any game that doesn’t have a miniatures in it, as they are an abstraction too far.
In my head (which i am well aware is not representative of society in general) I can’t understand why you would settle for a pile of cardboard chits when you could have cool minis to collect, paint, daydream over instead!
The US Navy has huge r&d departments and are massively funded.The Navy developed TOR for use by US spies, obviously TOR is no use if only the US secret service uses it, so they opened it up to the public, and the deep web was born.
That picture is so wrong Guy’s Sharon Stone dreams will be Nightmare’s now.!
The moving picture’s were worse ! One mind wipe please Doctor.
Arrgh! My eyes!!
Happy Sunday all you lovely people
A few points about miniatures
If and I suppose I’m talking about miniature board games didn’t have miniatures but used cardboard tokens how much cheaper would the game be and isn’t the game play more important than the miniatures. Would Reichbusters be less of a game if it used stand up cardboard counters?
If the designer wants miniatures does the quality of the miniature matter?. On a lot of forums you here people complaining about a game and it’s usually about the quality of the miniatures. Not sure how widespread this is and if it’s just a minority of keyboard warriors being over vocal. If you had heard a fantastic game and the miniatures were poor in sculpting would you still buy the game?
For me personally the miniatures doesn’t really matter. I’ve played games over nice terrain with wooden blocks so if you were playing for example Kings of War and the units were wooden blocks with symbols painted on them would you still play?
I wonder if all this is a Kickstarter phenomena with start up companies trying to get noticed with the miniatures included in the game to attract attention
It’s not kickstarter … it’s human nature.
Watching shows like ‘the profit’ and ‘bar rescue’ and the one thing that they often mention is how perception of value is important when selling products.
ie : good looking stuff that looks expensive is what sells.
A lot of people may claim that mechanics are enough, but I’d say that an analysis of sales figures would prove that the vast majority will be more likely to buy a game based on initial impression.
I couldn’t play ‘Kings of War’ without miniatures. It would be too much like chess.
I can safely say that I have never sat and watched a chess match played out that I wasn’t playing.
But I do like watching a good miniatures game being played out on good terrain. It’s a story being told visually.
Whenever you buy a new game, your first impression is set by your unboxing experience. If you open it up and discover that the components are low quality then your first thought will be that the manufacturer didn’t much care about their product and it sets low expectations of game play.
If your box contains minis that are poorly cast or badly put together it will be a cause for disappointment. Fallout Wasteland Warfare got some stick for the PVC minis in the starter, although the crest of the range is in resin. Those first impressions count,as some people have been turned off the game before even playing it.
If this were a Fallout board game on the other hand, would you care so much? FFGhave made one and only include minis for the player characters. Would that game be less fun if it were all cardboard? What if they had included minis to put on the board for encounters with hostile raiders, mutants and creatures? Would it be a more immersive experience, or just more fiddly?
If they released KD:M with standees only for a fraction of the cost and let people buy the minis later if they wanted a lot more people would be able to afford it. They buy in to even find out if you like it is ridiculous. I would like to see more games adopt this kind of strategy.
I’d love to comment on XLBS this week but i can’t as i have been blinded and mentally scarred by the thumbnail…..Someone pass me the mindbleach for the love of god…
Between the thumbnail and @warzan ‘s sybian I thought I was on the wrong website this morning…
I agree with Warren and Ben.
There are a lot of games that have miniatures in them that don’t need them and would function with a meeple or token. But I am sure that the miniatures help sell the game to some type of players. I know that on some KS they even do this as an upgrade and you can see that a lot of people support the game because they can get minis.
I have to admit that the minis (especially if they are done good) give an extra wow factor. They have the added benefit that you have more than just a game and hobby time as well if you like painting minis.
On the other hand games with minis are starting to have the reverse effect on me as I have already a lot of games with minis and they take up a lot of space and I have to be more selective.
Happy sunday guys
LoL, Ben, if you can sort and catalogue your models for selling, then you most certainly do not kave a plastic and metal mountain 🙂
Nah, model make the game, wouldn’t be interested in a game if it didn’t have good models to admire.
ohh – its justin – first i thought its sharon….what bet did he lose
I called into the visitor centre on opening night, looking great, i think you missed a trick though not having Justin in a white dress crossing his legs to greet everyone at the door.
I’ll be down for some gaming throughout the year no doubt. Are the sybian chairs exrra?
you have to pay extra not to sit on one while Justin crosses and uncrosses his legs
That image is just disturbing.
For many people miniatures are immersion and there is clearly demand for miniatures. We will see over time as shipping costs and other costs go up if cost will do away with miniatures.
KD:M had a standees version that they tried to sell at GenCon and it did not sell. People want the miniatures. I will also refer to the original Mythic Battles: Pantheon used standees and tokens and it did not sell well. Version 2 used miniatures and I cannot see playing without them. Non-gamers instantly want to touch and play the game. Are miniatures required? No. However, it immersive with the miniatures.
Are miniatures necessary? No. V-Commandos, Machina Arcana, Pandemic, Axis & Allies and many other games use standees and tokens.
Do miniatures sell a game? Yes, see Assassins Creed KS. Why? because people want the feel of the video game.
The D&D 4e sucked not because the game sucked but because WoC wanted a reason to sell miniatures plain and simple. That does not have to be that way the motivation for the designer/publisher changed.
Miniatures can add theme, they can immersion, they can invest a user in the character and so depending on the game miniatures can add value.
I am looking at Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon and I am wondering why they need miniatures except that miniatures sell games. In Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon the miniatures are like the figures in Chess. Just so you can identify the purpose of that piece more quickly otherwise not strictly needed.
@dignity, I mostly agree with you. I believe that the minis in a game create a more emotional connection with the game. Any mini game could be done with a meeple. Having the mini at hand, building it, creating a lore behind it, gives a personal connection. If you are more invested in the game, it will be a better experience. For game rules purposes, minis should probably never matter.
To add to this, as an OG D&D player (40 fricken years ago), minis were not in any way needed for the game, but it was so damn cool have a representation of your character to put in front of you. It had nothing to do with A vs. B , it was just an extra attachment between you and the fantasy you were playing out. It just added to the immersion. Like KD:M, the minis drag you into the world. Not needed to play really, but needed for the flavor of the world. I, being a hoarder, probably would never have looked at the game twice if it were not for those minis. The aesthetic of 40k minis brings you into that world. I want more from things in the books. Always more minis, lol.
I don’t remember the game but a recent (or possibly current) Kickstarter had its basic edition, with a “Deluxe” edition that included miniatures. Although this makes it very obvious they’re not required, had I backed the game I would definitely have chosen the edition with minis.
I do find I have a few games (mostly from KS) that I’ve not played because I’ve yet to make time to paint the minis. The most recent one is Village Attacks, which does have minis and (I suspect) would play just as well without them. I also think I’d be less interested in such a game if it did just have cardboard components.
That’s ignoring the gameplay side of things, but another aspect to this topic. So speaking for myself, it’s that some games would be better without them, but perversely I’d be less interested in them.
@somegeezer Was it MourneQuest? I noticed that the card standees pledge had 45 backers, while the minis pledge had 285 (inc the added signed book pledge).
@jpmax I think that is the one – and very telling on the proportion of minis to cardboard pledges.
A good XLBS the thing with game’s now is they get figure’s to draw more people in because they have computer game’s competing for players even more than ever and models can help selling games to new player’s. That asteroid/ship may just be a scout scaning for intelligent life ! running silent ?
Great show. Delighted to see @warzan back in the chair. On the topic of the annual awards I’m glad the editiorial team will take charge of appointing initial nominees – you guys see much more than all but the most devoted members anyway. However, it would be nice to have one award which is a community nomination, the OTT Community Award. Steering clear of the commercial stuff, (we get to vote on them anyway) how about letting the community pick out their favourite community submission to the site? It could be a project, a contest entry, an article or one of the golden button winners. Anything really as long as it isn’t commercial or produced by the BoW team. We could pick out a long list using the old system and then vote for the winner live on the night (if you fancy taking a chance on the tech working!). It might add a reason for higher live watching figures and greater interactivity.
I think in the case of Kingdom Death the miniatures have caused most of the issues with pricing, production and availability. Whilst they do likely add something to the feel of the game I rather wish that a token based version was available at a much lower price point with increased production. The miniature game then becoming almost a collectors edition. Even as a miniature gamer (or maybe even because I am!) I’m not a fan of having to build and paint miniatures for a Board game.
As an owner of several board games with miniatures, as much as I love them, they see the table a lot less than my other games generally because they can more of a hassle to get out and put away.
Well he did an experiment past GenCon with selling the KDM box with just tokens no minis at a vastly reduced price and guess what, he sold two while selling out of everything else, I guess this is a definite result of an experiment.
UFO with Sam sized seats? Has @dracs let slip that he’s actually an alien not a hobbit? ?
?
Technically there was a cover up in LotR; remember the whole point of Aragorn leading the forces of Gondor and Rohan on a march on the Black Gate was to make Sauron think Aragorn has the Ring and cover up Frodo and Sam’s covert sneak attack.
Didn’t Tperry also say the speed of dark was faster than the speed of light because darkness always gets out of light’s way before it gets there? Or was that someone else? ?
Household staff wielding a frying pan – so Samwise Gamgee? ?
Sam’s a goldfish in Justin’s alternate universe? So he’s Klaus from American Dad!?
?
As for the main topic; I’m not sure including minis inheritantly alters the rules. Take BFG for example; from a rules perspective the minis are superfulous and all that matters is the bases so you could easily play it with counters with facing and arc markings on them, but if you did I think the game would suffer for it because it would lose the spectacle. There’s be no change to the rules so mechanically it would be the same but adding the minis in makes it s more satisfying experience.
Ultimately I don’t think it matters if the rules lose some depth by including minis, provided the experience is enjoyable. Minis may subtract from the rules, but they add to the experience. There’s also the fact that minis look more appealing to prospective players; imagine we set up two tables, one with a minis game and one with a similar game that uses tokens with the only difference being the token game’s rules have removed the concessions made to accommodate the minis – if someone with no experience of the game then entered the room, which table do you think they’re more likely to gravitate towards, the one with nice looking minis, or the one where the players are pushing bits or cardboard around?
One advantage that minis can have over tokens is the 3D element; with minis and 3D terrain when a unit goes to a higher level then they are physically placed on that higher level and you can see at a glance that is the case, whereas with tokens, you then have to add tokens to the unit token/card/dashboard/etc which then means you’ve got to look at those extra tokens and parse what they mean to tell where the unit is and it makes it more awkward to fight on multiple levels as you’d have to pile unit tokens on top of other unit tokens (or cram them into the same square/hex, or whatever) while with minis you just place the other units on the other levels. I suppose you could play with tokens on 3D terrain, but at that point, you might as well use minis, so ultimately it comes down to what you find more satisfying.
Just googled it and I was right about Pterry and the speed of dark:
“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
Disappointed in you that you forgot this @dracs .
?
There are games i like that don’t have miniatures and that i think would suffer aesthetically by having them, quite apart from the fact that they’d be superfluous. Pandemic is a good example of this. Someone did release some miniatures that were clearly meant to be ‘compatible’ with Pandemic and could replace the meeples, and i would perhaps consider buying those miniatures if they were available, but not for playing Pandemic with. To my eye there would be a clear juxtaposition with the rest of the aesthetics of the game.
That said, what i like most are ‘simulations’; games that simulate imagined realities in particular. I like that type of game, and i also like the hobby of miniatures. Miniature and role playing games, along with the associated hobbies, are one type of activity to me, or one set of activities, that is/are separate to board and card games of the Android Netrunner and Pandemic type. One does not fill the hole left by the other.
On the idea that miniatures suggest and encourage physical, combative, in game play, i think there is likely some truth to this, but i think this is probably more true, if not only true for the type of players who are more susceptible to becoming munchkins and murder hobos in whatever ( role playing ) games they play anyway, and these are not the kind of people i want to play with, so that’s neither here nor there for me.
Glad we change that lexicon.
The worry seems to be are miniatures being shoe horned into some games to the detriment of the game. But you could say that about anything to do with game design. For example where the designer has tried to include as many cool mechanics as they can think of but the game would have been better if they had stripped most of that out.
Whilst you can play operational games with just tokens I’d say I’d prefer it if the thing I was moving was actually representative of what it was (for example a tank unit was a tank model or an infantry unit was an infantry model). So that the deployment of forces and what they are can be easily seen and understood.
Some games equally benefit from the inclusion of miniatures – they can make you more immersed in that world and / or invested in that character. They can also simplify the rules (as well as complicate them). So it’s going to depend on the game you are making
That has to be the most disturbing picture yet.
Eclect Justin! All hail our new Supreme Leader! 😀
Happy Sunday guys,
Interesting topic today and laid out really nicely by the community members post. Nice job buddy.
I think the diversity of games out there now gives us so many options we can cater to most of the variations listed in this topic. That being said the board gaming world grosses more than the miniature gaming one. A lot of those games make do without miniatures, instead having card, tokens, markers or a combination.
One game that immediately came to mind which uses a transition from token to miniatures during the game as a successful mechanic is Space Hulk. For me, that has been a great use of the tokens transitioning to miniatures and adds a key component to the game, suspense. I always cringed a little in anticipation of a turning token wondering what I would end up facing.
Having read through some of the comments its clear line of sight could be an issue for some games but to be honest, that’s not really true of all miniatures games. A few games determine a miniature to have a volume for line of sight purposes (e.g. Infinity). If you then placed a token on the board identifiable as the character matching it’s base size and added a number indicating its height in inches then for gaming purposes that would be the same as not having the miniatures there at all. Sadly the same could be said of your scenery and your play area would become flat as a pancake. Whilst we all have an imagination to some degree the visuals of playing in a 3D environment such as the new tables in the visitor’s centre is something I personally love and find helps to bring a game to life.
I think miniatures will always complicate a game but like anything, a good designer can find ways to work around or incorporate whats needed by other mediums. Cards can become special attacks, equipment changes, different forms of movement, mutations, the list goes on. If not then surely RPGs is the way to go where you can imagine and design to your heart’s content.
I wonder how many D & D players transitioned from pen and paper to playing the same games with miniatures from the range or other suitable products from companies and if they reverted due to the miniatures ruining their games?
Have a great week everyone.
Flat scenery is I think the point @warzan was going to mention when he brought up warmahordes to Justin. On the tournament scene it’s mostly 2d terrain
Can miniatures ruin a game ? More can a photo of @dignity ruin your eye sight – What been seen can not be unseen 😉
Well done BoW, I enjoyed that! For the record I a) pretty much only buy stuff with minis I want to paint and b) knew that Justin would defend his minis to the bitter end! 😉
Gooooood morning, OTT / Beasts of War.
Okay, as the designer of World War 2.5 I’d like to chime in.
@brennon is correct right out of the game. The importance of minis relies largely on the level of the wargame being played. So if we look at …
Level 1: “Pure Tactical” (WYSIWYG, skirmish, etc., one man/figure = one troop / vehicle) – yes, miniatures can really add a lot. I’ve honestly played skirmish modern wargaming in counter form, and as much as I love the counter side of the camp, it’s not the same. Level one is anything up to and including, say … Flames of War.
Level 2 – “Command Tactical” – still a tactical wargame on a single battlefield but bow each piece = more than one man … Miniatures are not that important. In fact, they can be harmful to immersion because they are not to scale with the terrain. Also, they represent 10, 100, or 1000 men, and so they are effectively “lying” to you. Examples would be Panzer Leader we’ve been playing via webinar lately or the Waterloo battle game Justin and Warren played with Alessio. Some people DO play Level 2 with miniatures very successfully. The best example I can think of off the top of my head is GMT Microarmor – 6mm moderns and WW2 – they’ve been doing it since the 1960s and still one of the best tactical wargames out there.
Level 3 – Operational – minis are completely NOT required. They’re not necessarily harmful … IF the wargame is simple enough (World War 2.5 I’m not ashamed to say is a VERY simple operational level wargame), but any miniatures won’t have nearly as much information on them as the counters do. There are pitfalls to what’s Justin’s talking about, where you may have problems putting more than one unit in a hex if they are miniatures, you have to make “counter bases” for the miniatures anyway to contain all the information required on the unit (there are usually MAAAAAAAANY more types than we see in World War 2.5), with a LOT more detailed information. Could you play with minis as playing pieces? Theoretically yes, if you made the map large enough and didn’t mind flipping through reams of paperwork to tie your “numberless” minis to the rather large amount of data that most operational wargames require.
Level 4 – Strategic. Ehh … again, the rules and specific data points per piece, variety of pieces, and hundreds or thousands of pieces (not kidding or exaggerating) on a given map are usually just too complicated for miniature play, unless you figure out a way to put numbers / data on the miniature. The only possible example I can think where this works in a Level 4 strategic game is Axis & Allies, which honestly is barely a wargame.
RISK is not a wargame. 🙁 It’s a board game. If it was a wargame, it would be Level 4 Strategic. I suppose you could “house rule” it up to a bonafide wargame, and I honestly can’t speak to the expansions and variants that have come out. Some of them might push the system up into the wargame level.
Point #2 (yes, there’s going to be a lot of these) … 😀
@dignity mentions that the playing pieces in World War 2.5 weren’t very recognizable to him.
Fair point. They’re extremely recognizable to people who have “grown” up playing this kind of wargame, those symbols are certainly not my invention, they are the actual NATO standard symbology used by real-life military planners to this day.
But I totally get that if you’re not used to them, you might have a tough time reading them.
MANY hex & counter wargames “get around” this by having the counter, with all the advantages that a counter presents (numbers, classifications, game values, etc … ON the counter, and usually there are dozens or even 100+ TYPES on a given table) …
BUT … rather than the symbology, they have an actual picture that aids in the very quick and easy recognition you guys were talking about. 😀
Having in part grown up with the symbols, I in part find them easier to read that images – but that might just be force of habit
Personally I will say that being used to reading the symbols on the counters of World War 2.5 make it faster to recognize the units.
But the hobbiest in me love the minis
I completely agree, @rasmus, but at the same time I can see where players unfamiliar with that language of symbology might have an issue.
By the way, have you seen where we’re playing these games remotely and in real time via web conference?
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1303724/
@oriskany Not before now but if you need another opponent …
@rasmus – we’re trying Darkstar on Saturday. Sunday is open, or of course any weekend after that. Absolutely no rush or pressure. I have plenty on my plate, after all. 😀
Sunday is free for me too
[Comment posted before watching the video] Yes I believe somethimes the miniatures can play against the game.
I would totally buy a half price (or less) Zombicide with cutouts or tokens instead of the miniatures, for example.
Those kind of games look great with all the minis, but because of kickstarter they are less appealing when they hit retailer, in my opinion…
i was actually scared to click on the thumbnail…. this is a whole other level of wrong!!!
but im still here as i enjoy the XLBS to much, so i closed my eyes and clicked on in…
Came for the hobby, stayed for the newtonian physics. *insert twilight zone music*
Hmm…. an alcohol infused live stream…. I want that… what could possibly go wrong? Attendees must be 18+ of course… Make it happen @avernos !!!
Minis in games:
* In a game like Mice & Mystik they are eye candy. Could do without but since there are so few minis it doesn’t drive the cost up the wall so it’s ok.
* In a game like Doom or Imperial Assault they are essential. Not only for the look but the feel. That big ass demon doesn’t scare you if it’s a flat token.
* In most other games you could do without. Especially when the miniature count goes past 100 and eats a lot of the money. Those aren’t board games anymore. Those are miniature games.
Can miniatures ruin a game? no they cannot, can bad designers or bad design decisions ruin a game regardless of miniatures? sure all the time.
Lets start with a few basic principles any miniature in a game is a glorified token, by their nature they can add a 3rd dimension to the game without creating complex rules to make it work, but that is just it, a token can convey more information in a more contained space.
So why do we have miniatures in our game why do we even include them, simply put they sell games, why do people play X-com with full graphics when a simple graphic interface with maybe some artwork would work? why consumers complain about standees not been miniatures, especially in hybrid games like Gloomheaven? why KDM no minis edition (an experiment run by Poots by chance really) sold so poorly when the only thing missing was the minis? Why all battle colours series except ancients have miniatures and not cubes with sticker artwork on them?
Simply people like the miniatures, they convey an easily identifiable figure to look at, have more character and are more acceptable than a boring chit with stats on it.
Since @warzan mentioned them why do we even have meeples? they are expensive, harder to produce than cubes or cylinders and take more space to store, simple, because they are more aesthetically pleasing than a simple cube and consumers prefer that.
Chits, standees, cubes, meeples are done mostly as a cost cutting measure for space and weight and shared components, expect specific cases were the components are used in gameplay like flicking games or the famous cube tower a game upgrading basic components to miniatures can sell more, if it does not price itself outside of its logical price range.
Now I have to resurrect the memory of many that “chit” style “miniature like” wargames have been tried in the past and they failed, even though on paper they would be great, already “painted” (printed in card) all stats on card, no real gameplay change from a miniatures game (ancient/ medieval/ fantasy mass combat), and one can carry several armies on a small organiser, people simply preferred miniatures over flat cards, despite all the “perceived” inherited flaws.
I also have to point out that in recent Kickstarters and a few non Kickstarter endeavours the “deluxe” edition that includes miniatures is vastly preferred over simple non miniature editions despite the price difference.
Now lets see from a design perspective how they miniaures actually change design decisions and games, space mostly, miniatures take a physical space and this tends to make games require more space to play, given the recent excellent gameplay videos of @oriskany games, the WW2.5 game if it included miniatures instead of tokens would probably require hexes twice the size plus datacards on the side and the Darkspace could maybe have much smaller hexes if it had just chits, but the visual of the game would be vastly diminished and would not look as interesting as it is.
Now there are several cases were bad design decisions ruin games, but this is not really because of miniatures
CMOn Zombicide branch for example does indeed change gameplay witht he amount of zombies one has purchased, this makes the game more difficult with playing with just the game box and more easy for Kickstarter buyers/ anybody who bought more zombies, that is partially because of a mentality make them buy/ shove in more miniatures, but really is bad game design, one could fix it with limiting the amount of zombies allowed in each scenario to a specific number, GWs infamous WHFB miniature removal is more or less addressed in Mantic’s KoW system, LoF is an interesting issue, but true LoF is easier to implement than a plethora of abstract LoF systems that have been used in the past.
It is not the miniatures that ruins games and games will not be better without them, its designers who fail to understand the pieces they have to work with that make games bad, the general trend shows that in most cases, as far as the miniatures and other 3D objects do not price the product out of its market, they vastly improve any game they are included in.
Belated thanks for a another great topic. Have touched on this very this subject with the guys I game with regularly and though I’m at risk of sounding hypocritical given what populates my shelves it does now seem that scaled minis have become too much of a focus lately. Abstraction within games is unavoidable and the scaled mini craze has diminished the variety of creative abstraction as it relates to boardgames. I think the call to make things more tactile often comes at the expense of other levels of communication and ideas. Some of us older gamers would be familiar with thimmbal vs race car arguments but at what point does it really make a difference.
Can miniatures ruin a game? Yes, absolutely and I can’t think of any game where the miniatures could not be removed completely and replaced by counters or such. It wouldn’t be as visually appealing but the game would still function as designed.
To some extent, I think the views depend upon whether you come from a boardgame or war game background. I could see more war gamers wanting/needing miniatures where as board gamers are more likely to feel that miniatures ruin the game. Certainly with the inclusion of miniatures, a rules designer needs to include consideration for the actual miniatures, the bases and the interactions with each other. Depending upon how these rules are put together, it could certainly ruin a game.
I also see a lot of games, particularly on Kickstarter, where it looks as if the creators have a lot of good sculpts looking for a game. As a consequence, the rules sometimes (not always) play second fiddle to the miniatures. While a great looking model is always something to be admired, I do believe that having a solid rule set first underpins the success of the game.
Finally, I can understand how miniatures add flavour and immersion to a game and the back story. This can certainly enhance the gaming experience and make the game more enjoyable as a whole. Kings of War doesn’t need the miniatures but looks so much better for having them. But then the rules were written with the handling of miniatures in mind and provide a solid foundation for the game as a whole.
So miniatures can ruin a game, but only if the designer doesn’t plan in how the miniatures will work as physical game pieces properly.
So I think miniatures make a game like Reich Busters or Sword and Sorcery better. I do think they can make a game worse especially if you are going to add expansions and try to shoehorn new things in that were never thought of in initial design. In general I believe that is a bad design decision, but that also can be seen as miniatures limiting the design.
What I want to look at is three Fantasy Flight games that have different levels of miniatures. Arkham Horror, Fallout the board game, and Mansions of Madness. So we go from a token game, to miniatures for players, to miniatures for everything. I feel the miniatures in Mansions of Madness are completely unnecessary, and for the most part I have taken the tokens out of their bases and leave the miniatures at home. I also feel the necessity of miniatures have limited options that could be added to the games if they didn’t have to produce it in plastic. I do not feel gameplay is impacted by the existence of miniatures, but it does make it a pain in the butt to transport and play. Arkham Horror (pick the edition) on the other hand is the opposite where everything is a token. I think this game would gain when it comes to miniatures for the players. I think Fallout has found a good medium, I can see who I am and get an idea of what I do by my representation, but everything else is represented by a token.
So I think a game can be both enhanced or detracted by miniatures. I think once you get to skirmish level, when you go from a “board” to a “table”, I find miniatures almost a necessity. Including things like Kings of War, where you only interact with the miniatures as a unit. Until you expand unit size and scope that the “table” becomes a “board” again. It really becomes a space issue, the miniature becomes an abstraction anyway, so counters can convey more information again.
Happy Sunday on Monday as usual 🙂
Anyway, on the minis and game depth topic.
Despite all the effort Privateer Press is putting into making people play with the use of 3D terrain it seems that, at least, the tournament scene within this game went the other way around. 2D is common to represent forests, buildings and even walls. There are 2D with removable 3D parts mixes included as well. All this for the sake of precision measurement and planning. Before the 2017 Steam Roller Tournament package that banned more than 2 measuring devices of a one player at the same time on the table the battlefield was often cluttered with measuring sticks, proxy bases and alike. This is one example that a game can go without the miniatures if you focus on clean play. In my humble opinion it takes away the joy of tabletop gaming. Miniatures that are here to represent the units, heroes and so on are the backbone of this hobby. Yet, playing clean ^^ and by the rules often needs them swapped for a proxy base because of the pieces that don’t allow base to base contact etc. I know this is mainly a tournament scene problem but still.
Such a complex subject that has great value, but difficult to comment on without offering an essay. But let me offer that in some cases it does matter. Two compatible games, Avalon Hill’s Third Reich and their Axis and Allies. The former use cardboard pieces which carry values (strength) in combat. The latter are purely symbols of utility (land, air, sea, etc.). In my view both games are great and only work successfully due to the mechanic imposed by the playing pieces. On the opposite spectrum, where would Bolt Action, Black Powder, Blood and Plunder, etc. be in popularity if no miniatures? This topic is going to keep me up at night while I argue with myself.
Final note, Zombicide’s miniatures has allowed the makers significant market for expansions, so from a marketing point of view their decision could be seen as a success. At least in my neighborhood its a very popular game and the expansions appear to sell well.
Really great show, thanks.
thumbnail had me thinking of kenny Everett, as for do miniatures ruin a game? well the easy answer is no.
forgive me if i missed it (im currently battling nurgle) but i didnt hear the view discussed from the persons input to the game and the following.
The hands on hobby part of the game painting the miniatures to add your own personal investment into the game as a whole. The developers make and distribute the game but for most gamers they want to see past the grey plastic and invest their time and effort to paint and add their own unique contribution to the game experience. A theme if you will of how they see the game universe in their minds eye. likewise this spills over and fuels the generation of scenarios and terrain. Usually its only this aspect of the game a person can invest in without homebrew rules and then we are talking its a different game.
There are also gamers who are so enamoured with the game and its minis, who are inspired to create those dioramas we wonder and drool over in white dwarf and other publications. The game minis simply spark an avenue of creativity which runs alongside the actual games playing. a bridge if you will to the hands on hobby.
we are also lucky to be living in an age when technological improvements to the hobby process and the sheer number of remarkably talented sculptors, regularly produce awesome sculpts for games. Its not like in the old days when the pieces were uninspiring. i myself only get inspired to do something more than open and play the game when i see good minis,
Happy Sunday! (or Tuesday). A few points.
1) Miniatures = Combat Game: While I believe this is true, I think its a victim of the audience. Tabletop wargames/combat games use miniatures. Most of the BoW people participating in this discussion are former wargamers. So take people who play combat games using miniatures, and of course, to them, a game with miniatures = a combat game. If you had a took a group of primarily card gamers, they might not have that same perception of what a miniature means for a game. Its a variant of the old statement, “if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
2) Zombicide vs. Dead of Winter. Ok, wanted to chime in here. I need to disagree with Ben’s discussion on the Dead of Winter vs. Zombicide, but using the logic you guys yourself used during this discussion. At its core, Zombicide is a combat game. While there may be other objectives in the game, one of the primary goals is combat. It seemed like Ben was saying Dead of Winter was a better game because it wasn’t just a combat game, and then made the logical leap that Zombicide became a combat game rather than another type of game because it had miniatures. I would argue the two are just meant to be different types of games, one combat-focused, one not. Just because they are both “zombie games” doesn’t mean they have to be similar in their gameplay style/approach, and which is “better” is up to personal taste. Is Dead of Winter a “better” game than Walking Dead because walking dead is combat-focused? Or are the two just different types of games?
As an analogy, there are both story-driven Role Playing “fantasy” games like DnD, and Wargame “fantasy” games like Age of Sigmar. To say AoS is a “worse” game than DnD because the miniatures made it more combat-focused than DnD, is comparing oranges and apples. Its two very different types of games that just happen to share a genre.
I personally believe miniatures are key to Zombicide, because the game is about completing gameplay objectives before you are overrun by the “horde”. You can’t completely “defeat” the game in zombicide, as eventually the game will spawn enough zombies that the players will be overwhelmed. I believe the use of zombie miniatures acts, in a way, like a timer for the players. That mass of plastic is a visual indication to players of how little time they have left to complete their objectives before being overrun. It starts adding urgency to actions, and I don’t believe that urgency would be as accurately conveyed if they used cardboard or tokens. Its that cinematic effect from zombie movies where the characters look down a street and just see an approaching wall of zombies heading towards them.
Guys, your topics spiraling down from week to week.
Next week: Are we needing glasses to drink water? Or is it allowed to be drinked from the bottle? Maybe we should return drinking from the river, nah! Fishes pissing in there. Next mindmelter, every molecule of water we drink was possible part of a dinosaurs metabolism, think the next step 😉
Oh. My. God.
I am not convinced that miniatures can ruin a game but increasingly they are putting me off buying new games.
I already own 1000+ miniatures just from the miniature games I play so the last thing I really want is more figures, I’ve got plenty!
So if I go and look at a new game on kickstarter and a huge focus is on the miniatures, the game has to work extra hard to win me over and get me to pledge.
Also miniatures in games usually means the game has combat of some description and I feel once a game goes that way it narrows the scope of the rules.
I agree with Ben in the way he talked about dead of winter and Zombicide. Dead of winter gets to explore different game mechanisms because it is not shackled to combat. They are very different games in terms of design and I am sure Ben picked them to highlight the differences there can be between 2 zombie games.
Tabletop gaming is a very tactile experience and quality components certainly make a difference (otherwise people would not pimp out terraforming mars so much) but I think there comes a point where the component is good enough and any further improvement on it is pointless. This is a very personal thing and is completely subjective, for example If we played 40k and you had used 20 kits to kitbash you’re space marine captain, I would look at it before the game and say how cool it looks but once we were playing the game that would matter very little to me as he is just another space marine captain rules wise and a stock figure would be just as good.
Finally got round to watching – interesting topic. I think in a way Justin hit the issue at its key area, some people need the models. I attempt to be a historical gamer in a predominantly sci-fant club, and whilst I have a large lead pile, I rarely get off my arse to have painted armies to push around a flat surface. I hit on the idea that the scale of game I was gravitating towards (corp plus) and where fig removal, firstly the miniature issue around scale and range diminished from a logic point (for example, get say 400 inf mins and line them up in two ranks as a quasi nap Brit battalion, and do a similar thing but in ranks of 6 for a french unit and then seeing that reread som battalion/divisional rules in particular the unit footprints) but getting back to topic I could get a pack of multi coloured index cards and make standins. Game wise this worked for Polmos, To the Stongest and arguably is encouraged with Blucher by Sam mustafa (although I believe he would prefer you buy the unit cards made by his partners!) however trying to take a willing victim from say 40k into this and gain traction is difficult as there are no minis is difficult and I am lucky for the one I have but is not a done deal.
Ultimately it depends on who you’re playing with and finding a gaming partner who shares you ethos is the key to how much it matters. I don’t care if there are minis if the game can be played without (but I still wants the preciouses) but others like Justin (apologies @dignity if I am doing you a dis-service by the way) will care and the gaming experience will be lessened by the absence of figs. Rant over good night
BoW awards – I do not like the move to BoW choose the awards, I understand it streamlines and makes it easier and I know that you are impartial, but it becomes a very much potential for things to be missed by the BoW team and in the end if someone pays into you enough they get themselves nominated. The big thing about music awards and film awards are some say that they are the best because it is the public that nominate them, for me by removing the public input, you make the awards meaningless. I would like you to have a very defined category still open for public, so even if you close the public input to all awards, please have a peoples choice award – limit it to backstagers, and let us still vote for an overall game, you can then keep your own awards about who you want to include but remain a more independent award called backstagers choice or something.
Any game can be over complicated by components, components can make or break a game, whether that is miniatures or tokens. Some games the over engineered components disguise gameplay, others the gameplay is ace but the components make it unplayable as it isn’t visually appealing. There is a hug balance to resources spent on components, and sometimes and elaborate components will make me scrutinise the gameplay more in case they are hiding behind it.
Warchest for example could have gone for miniatures, so you pull the poker chip but have a model on the board, but they didn’t and stuck with using the abstraction of the poker chip and it works superbly.
KDM for me would lose so much without the miniatures, KDM goes for immersion and it needs that, yes the game would still play fine with tokens but takes away from the story and the world, which is really important for KDM – plus as a business model KDM have nailed it with miniatures and can exploit it as extra revenue, which is fine for a company to do.
As another thought on miniatures – I think the game needs a very strong idea of what it is, to then include miniatures.
I have Mythic Battles, and I could easily play that game with no miniatures, just chits with the unit logo on them would work fine, easier in some ways when you try and squeeze all the models into a space, however, would the game be an enjoyable? I think not, there is something about immersion that a sculpted model gives you, But that being said I think Mythic B had a very strong game and I get the impression that the miniatures were an elaborate way of making the game more appealing for boardgamers and wargamers and to be able to retail at a higher price – but those guys are sold on using miniatures as it took a lot of investment from them. This is a game where I think you can class it under a well sculpted meeple. The game uses miniatures to represent a token, the game can be played with no miniature, but the experience is enhanced by them.
Where games suffer, like you said is wanting sculpted meeples, but than because you have a physical 3D element, they try and use that and become a hybrid game which loses a lot of potential gameplay joyness just to have fancier components.
Interesting about KDM too, maybe they could have had a card battle system with deck building and still have immersion and amazing art work, however could they have captured that in a self contained game?
The new harry potter game is an example for me, the gameplay is a bit weak, with some odd rules, it fails to really capture for me, how magic has been represented in the films (so an issue for me), but the miniatures are amazing, they do add to the immersion into the potterverse, but I think the game would be much better played on an open world rather than grid based. As soon as you have Line of site being driven from the square or hex the mini is on, but a mini there, you really want to measure base to base, so for me it was the miniatures that sold the game to me, but they are certainly the highlight and masks a weak game – but it is a game I will play and tweak because of the miniatures and that they do capture a slight part of potteverse that draws me back in.
For the love of Christ that thumbnail is terrifying.
Happy Sunday! Great show as always.
On the topic of Minis in boardgames – the draw to KDM for me was it was a well founded game WITH great minis. Without the minis I wouldn’t have bought the game. Having said that, I don’t feel the rules made any sacrifices to accommodate minis.
I can’t really comment on Gloomhaven because with or without minis, I actually think it’s an utterly awful game. I would rather play Advanced Heroquest, or WH Quest – both of which have more depth and give more scope for creativity. And I really dislike the card mechanics!
Additionally I would ask – does the miniature aspect assist with longevity of a games player base? Will Gloomhaven still be around in 10 years time? I’m confident games like KDM will be. But even if there are expansions, I cannot see Gloomhaven being around that long. There’s a very good chance I’m wrong (I usually am), and time will tell.
Happy Sunday all, fantastic show as always.
I think there was a proof not that long ago that the Quantum Entanglement thing could not be used to break the speed of light for communication. I can’t recall the details, but it might have been to do with how you have to create and separate them in the first place.
Regarding the miniatures conversation, I think there is clearly a cost in production, time and effort in including miniatures that if you choose to do that, you are not choosing to put that effort elsewhere. There is a knock-on effect on the price and scope you can achieve as a consequence of that. I think Gloomhaven is a great example of a game that just could not have the scope that it does in that one box if it had to represent all the creatures as miniatures.
That being said, I love miniatures, and I think it’s totally fine to go down the glorified meeple route (I actually prefer this in a lot of ways). Certainly, Deneb can be played without any miniatures (in fact cardboard standees was key to initial play-testing). However, it is fun painting miniatures, its fun converting them, and they look great on the tabletop. They can certainly enhance the storytelling as well when you are inspired by how the look, or the effort you have put into customising them.
On the other hand, I agree on the RPG thing, its a problem with maps and terrain as well. The more concrete you make something (like some classy carved foam dungeon) the more you sort of force the world to be limited to the scope of what you can represent with miniatures and terrain. That is a bit of an issue for RPG’s, it can make for some beautiful looking sessions, that help immerse people, but it can also really restrict where you go. Personally, I was a big fan of the design ethos and combat in D&D 4e, but it did suffer from detracting from that mindseye gameplay that I think is really where RPG’s shine compared to other games. A lot of the good ideas in D&D 4e might have been better served in some kind of high-fantasy Necromunda campaign game.
All in all, I don’t think miniatures are automatically a good or a bad thing, but I think as a designer you need to think about what you want to the game to be about, how you want to make people feel, and weigh up whether overall miniatures add or take away from that goal.