Cult Of Games XLBS: A New Perspective – What’s The Focus Of YOUR Hobby?
June 11, 2023 by lloyd
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it’s the XLBS Show…………Happy Sunday Fellow CoGs!
Napoléons Battles is/was a good game.You need a lot of figures for it we used irregularminiatures.co.uk 6mm I suggest 10mm wofun or something similar might be in order
Wofun are a great way to add scale to game as I understand 6mm isn’t for everyone although it’s my go to thanks to Baccus
6mm is my thing to. NB is figure heavy . We had 6 of us painting for 6 months and we barely had enough for something like Ulm
Happy Sunday one and all. The cult of the new as Ben puts it has become less important to me as I get older, maybe when I was younger I felt that instant thrill of some new Warhammer faction or item but the older I get and my turn away from grim dark to historical has led me to be attracted to quality not trying to one up my opponent with some new weapon system. I find myself thinking and planning more generic forces. For example, my 20mm zulu war British can be easily fitted to Egypt, the early Sudan and basically anywhere in the empire, real or imagined, on overseas service. Team Yankee can fit into any WW3 theatre or front and I even plan to somehow field my aftermath team from Spector in my friends Zombicide game which I have yet to try. I would like to eventually add a generic dwarf army as I’ve always wanted one for which I’m likely to visit the oathmark range. For anyone looking for a good read or listen by the way I highly recommend the James Mace novels on the zulu war. I’m very much enjoying. Ex American officer who also covers roman military history.
Happy Sunday!
Still unsure about VR as a technology at home. I’ve seen some valuable use of it in training situations, but ít’s an expensive tech for everyday stuff.
I suppose if there’s one use case in table-top gaming it’s two things…
a) Fog of War, the SIM controls what you can see.
b) immersive experience: zoom to your generals pov etc.
Happy Sunday!
I love that Lloyd now sounds like his Moonies army.
Oh Jeez no. I’m howling now.
I think he’s activated some curse. Expect his head to increase in size, his beard to become longer and pointed and for him to start wearing a gnome hat.
Happy Sunday!
I had a similar UKGE experience really. I was only there for a day so I really was relying on things that caught my eye as I shuffled up and down the aisles.
Not a lot did really, some fantastic looking art displays for a myriad of RPGs made me wish I played RPGs at times. Those stands and displays had some really gravity.
Aside from that I mostly found myself looking for things I already know, and seeing if there were any bargains I needed to buy. X-Wing and Legion bin ends for example.
There was a bit of a buzz around Shatterpoint on its release day but the demo tables weren’t any more prominent that any of their other games so it could have been made a bigger deal – they really would have had the show to themselves in terms of new miniatures games. Missed trick I feel.
There were a couple of new wargames which are finally getting released by their creators after years of struggle with covid, failed kickstarters etc, but they didn’t seem to be offering anything new. They looked a lot like generic sci fi or fantasy games.
One of the telling interviews from the live stream was the guys who made the neon tactile space invaders type game which played a bit like air hockey. That was the eye catching, innovative game of the show, and they can’t make it due to the tooling costs that would be needed.
I still very much enjoyed the show. It’s great being immersed in that environment. But it really was just a shopping trip for stuff I already do in the end.
Oh, and please end the queueing 40 minutes to collect a ticket I’ve already bought! That’s quite a chunk of the day wasted, especially when you’re only there for a day.
Yay Weekender XLBSers happy Sunday.
That’s not true you have the empty wallet/pockets @warzan
@warzan My experience was similar. In my youth and as a student I wargamed, when I had a family and work commitments were greater I became a console gamer. One day I was ruminating over my 43000+ gamertag points on xbox live when I realised how much time I’d spent with nothing but this number to show for it. I put almost all my games on MusicMagpie the next weekend, put the console away in the loft and dug out my old warhammer fantasy 6th edition starter box and re-entered the hobby space (to my joy).
You better clean out the John room Warren ?!?
Says you Ben ?
Certainly not sold on throwing augmented reality into board games. Have tried Table top simulator and found it distracting, everything the show mentioned about the pitfalls of these kind of platforms it quite accurate. Though it’s understandably necessary when distance or isolation is an issue and you’re desperate enough.
I have Golem Arcana. Which combines physical map and minis with an app. It balanced the physical v tablet assist well, was fun, and seemed to appeal to my younger players taking away the need to care for book keeping as well as controlling hidden elements can be definitely be a benefit but I’m wondering if bookkeeping isn’t part of the appeal for many games.
Understanding rules and systems and tracking your own situation is definitely part of the appeal for most if not all of the games I enjoy. My understanding was Golem Arana had a form of the Battletech engine underneath so it I could deduce a few things and I enjoyed playing with my kids and not handholding so much but it wasn’t the same as sitting down to table of some deep strategy game with my usual gaming group.
The latest tech/physical combo I tried, Destinies, could just as easily have been a computer based chose your own adventure, no physical components required. Not that I don’t enjoy playing with the components as the physical stuff is nice, but ………
VR implementations of tabletop games are gonna become a niche that appeals to a small minority, but it will find an audience. For example when I play video game I like point and click adventure games. This niche oof gaming is tiny in the grand scheme of triple A title gaming but it does have a market.
It’s the B5 SIM suit next ??
The game augmented by special effects is a gimmick that no one in our sphere really needs though, is it? Generally wargamers already have a greater than average capacity for imaginative thinking and minds eye visualisation don’t we?
Thankyou for the Golden Button! I did spam the project system as it was an end to months of building and photos being taken and then the first time I had a chance to start posting.
Congratulations to the other button winners as well!
Good one guy’s.
Great show, glad you’re all on the mend!
Happy Sunday.
Three really nice golden button winning projects there, congratulations.
Happy Sunday – VR is at the beginning – imagine to be a meeple (or a toysoldier or a space marine) in a game you play with friends – thats what i am looking for…not to roll a dice with avatar and move a figure at the screen …..
I was interested to hear your perspectives on UKGE. I’m sure it is a great show and I enjoyed the interviews and coverage. I always got the sense that it was primarily a boardgaming convention with RPGs second and miniature wargames a very distant third in representation and importance. Having just been through the traders it seems there were slightly over a dozen dedicated wargaming show regulars. A good range were there; smaller concerns like Crooked Dice and Bad Squiddo alongside the biggest companies Warlord, GW, Mantic, Troll Trader and a couple of the bigger retailers (Element Games, Wayland) and then some others with crossover product ranges Osprey, Modiphius, PSC. Salute this year had 134 traders, the vast majority of whom didn’t do both. UKGE isn’t going to be much more than primarily boardgames focussed if these guys don’t or won’t attend. Perhaps this is why @warzan didn’t find the wargaming focus or interest he was after. Until UKGE becomes a must attend date for wargamers in the way Salute is you’ll not likely find much that’s new and exciting that didn’t already debut at Salute. But maybe that isn’t what it is here for. Boardgaming is a much bigger hobby than wargaming and it has lacked the focus UKGE provides and maybe this should be their time in the sun, wargaming has other highlights in the year already.
Happy Sunday,
May the day be filled with Glory and the Greatest movie ever made.
I could do with some large, very cheap shields for Dwarf bulwark conversions, so I will have a keen interest in next week’s button show and tell. I’m thinking a front rank of large Greek style shields rather than rectangular palisades.
@warzan,@avernos you could maybe try this show either this or next year https://www.bhgs.org.uk/britcon.html
Or maybe the Oldhammer show
Glad you like it @avernos have to tell us how it plays
Happy Sunday.
Enjoy the gifts of Papa Nurgle.
I’m back to bed soon. No notes taken by me tonight. After all it’s 8pm already
54:00 @lloyd you want to look into the “WOWSTICK: The Metal One-Piece Mini Electric Hand Drill” A nice little drill that came via Kickstarter. It’s available on Amazon for 50€.
looks at phone, sees selfie with Gerry, sees selfie with Ben, sees photo with…er no that’s it…
I enjoyed ukge, I would agree there was no big thing that amazed me. I did do what any normal wargamer would do in the situation and bought a load of minis and rule book for a game in a completely different scale than the one I’m currently working on. 2d6 6mm ww2. I did stop several times at the on tabletop stage, but you were very busy, even when Ben wasn’t being attached by a dalek.
Fine show as always. Pretty sure if it’s a VR game, I’m just going to go play a video game. No need to take away from a boardgame or tabletop wargame by making it into a digital interaction experience. Just go play Panzer General or something similar.
Only just catching up on show at lunch whilst at work, and funny thing is Kevin and myself had very much the same impression as Warren on UKGE, good day out but nothing really grabbed me, to be fair Kevin is more a boardgamer….but even he felt the same….so much so that the 2nd day visit planned for the Sunday never materialized and we went down pub instead.
The only thing I brought was some Pirates and Marines from Black Scorpion , which I wanted anyway after picking up B&P raise the Black starter on previous weekend ( I nearly brought another , but didnt fancy lugging it around hall all day) , Only other temptation was Twilight 2000 starter RPG…. and that was because I played it alot in the day , and nearly brought the ship of the line of Sarrisma ( you may see a theme here)
Did feel the wargames company’s were a lot quieter than the meeples ones,it that carried on over weekend, wonder how many will bother next year.
Strange things we noticed, the expensive chip shop by the Vikings wasnt there.
I love the philosophy of I want it, but do I have time for it. I’ve been wanting to get in to Verwood, and Burrows and Badgers recently. Both look like great games but I know deep down I will never play them.
For the discussion about wargames by computer. I remember there used to be a few Warhammer games on the PC that copyed the tabletop format back in the 90s. Shadows of the Horned Rat and Dark Omen, both played very similar to the tabletop game. I enjoyed playing both.
P.S. There was epic 40k as well but I can’t remember it’s name.
@lloyd
I really like your button shields, and if you turned them by 90°, I think they might even look cooler, evil eye style.