BoW Awards 2014: Fantasy Game & Accessory
January 2, 2015 by lloyd
Welcome to the next part of the Beasts of War Awards 2014! This time around we're going to be talking about the categories of Fantasy Game and Accessory of this year and what enters the final four for each!
In terms of Fantasy gaming it's great to see a huge resurgence in the support for the likes of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and of course Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition to name just two of the nominations.
The Accessories category is also a great one that we think is a core part of our hobby. Not only terrain but tools for us hobbyists have been chosen by you as the community to deserve praise.
Tune in on the days below at 18:00/6pm GMT to watch each of our nomination shows to find out the finalists and then the results show on Sunday 4th of January 2015...
1st January - Sculpt, Painting & Sci-Fi
2nd January - Fantasy & Accessory
3rd January - Pulp, Punk, Horror Or Weird & Historical
4th January - Finals Night!
Talk about the awesome nominations below!
![Warcradle Studios Reveal TINY New 10mm Festive Marker! [Updated]](https://images.beastsofwar.com/2025/11/christmas-kyle-main-600-338.jpg)
guessed 2 out of the top 4, very good selection, hard to pick one,
I’m really enjoying these award shows.
The accessories side of gaming really has grown. It was something I noticed last year as it made up greater part of my shopping list when attending shows.
Getting more terrain was on my ‘to do’ list for years, but I always spent the money on minis instead. The last year and a bit I’ve probably spent more terrain than minis. I’ve got resin buildings from Tabletop World, MDF from a host of companies (including those lovely Mordanburg buildings), plastics from GW and Mantic, and cardstock from Battle Systems. I’ve also picked up a few gaming mats and an airbrush.
Terrain is becoming so accessible now, and it makes such a difference to your games.
I think it’s a huge part of the market yet to be fully exploited 🙂
I’ve gone from looking out for terrain to use in the games I play, to, in the case of the 4Ground Wild Wesf terrain, looking for games to give me an excuse to buy the terrain lol
Totally makes a game I’d say. It wasn’t that long ago a lot of us were in mourning because GW had stopped selling grass mats this part of the industry has grown considerably in just a few years.
You know, I’m totally not a Fantasy guy, but I have to admit . . . and I’m not just saying this to be funny . . . some of the only Fantasy games I’ve ever played were old D&D 2nd Edition in the late 80s and early 90s, with . . . MASTER OF PUPPETS playing in the background.
Nothing beats entering a dark, creepy, water-dripping dungeon when “Orion” is just getting started.
Ready for the big monster at the end? Put in “The Thing That Should Not Be.”
Taking too much damage? “Disposable Heroes.”
Finally doing well and just kicking a$$? “Damage Incorporated.”
Maybe that can be a new category for next year? Best Gaming Soundtrack?
AND THE NOMINATIONS ARE . . .
Master of Puppets
Ride the Lightning
Kill Em All
Justice for All
Death Magnetic
Hmm . . . I’m picking up a theme here . . .
And if all else fail, break out dancing Christopher Walken. No dungeon-dweller can possibly stand before such untrammelled awesomeness… 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCDIYvFmgW8
Oh no! No dancing Christopher Walken again! 😀 Indeed that probably trumps all.
I recognize the first four as Metallic albums…but who did that last one? Not familiar with it…:)
You know, this is one of those posts I honestly can’t tell if you’re kidding or not. 🙂
If you’re serious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLpRedlLapA
One of Metallica’s more recent albums
If you’re kidding: Well, yeah. Metallica has changed a lot over the years, and some fans might say they’re not the same band. But if you made the same music for 25 years, it’d be a little stale, eh?
Anyway, off topic . . . GREAT JOB these award shows, BoW team, and I can’t wait to see the historical segment!
Kidding. I am one of “those” Metallica fans that don’t really like anything post And Justice for All. There are a few songs on the Black Album I like but after that…eh…
I can appreciate not wanting to become stale, but I haven’t really enjoyed the newer Metallica. Maybe it is because the older stuff is so good.
Fair enough, @deadjesterx . You know, I forgot all about Black. While I agree that the newer Metallica isn’t quite the same as the classic albums of the 80s, for some reason Death Magnetic struck a chord with me. I still agree 100% that the Lightning-Master-Justice “trilogy” remains the gold standard, however.
I’ve saw them live a few times
The death magnetic gig was awesome though 🙂
Saw the Black Tour in South Carolina with GnR . . . 1992 (God, I’m old . . .)
We all know Metallica meet their end on Kill Em All 😉
I do love how you are presenting these things. Really well done.
I can’t tell what will win in either of these, I’m a bit biased on accessories as I’ve been using Vallejo model air for years, so the game air doesn’t seem like such a big deal for me, but any of the other 3 would be worthy winners.
I believe this is perhaps the most understated of the awards so far, I would like to suggest that this is in the future split even further to a couple or more of their own, like paints and brushes and a separate award for scenery. I hate to use this as a for instance but having played on the GW gaming hall large tables some time back it was an addition to the game flavour and enjoyment. A good way that we all need scenery, how many spend a great deal of time basing our figures whatever the game we play, so making a very small piece of scenery on every figure. Then we often base our figures in a given season that we replicate on our table top scenery and ultimately a given board itself.
The cost of these beautiful ready made pieces have fallen to within most pockets ability these days, it was not so long ago that they were the realm of the what would call themselves serious gamers, (what ever animal that actually is, these are becoming a rare and thankfully ever more endangered species).
I started like many with books under a green sheet. Not very practicable. I have gamed for many many years. built my own half decent scenery. I think without scenery the game would have departed long ago. Its hard enough in our hobby to get people to understand the joy of playing with toy soldiers, without then saying and the pencils re a fence and those books are buildings LOL.
Great Nominations guys! I have to say personally I was gutted not to see Myth in the final four of fantasy, as I squealed with glee this November when my Kickstarter finally arrived! It has to be the best thing I have ever bought in miniature gaming, hands down. I totally agree with all the nominations for fantasy, but might of swapped Kings of War for Myth as I am not familiar with the game and never really played it (but I have heard good things). As for accessories, wow wow wow. So many good products this year, and I am glad to see the the Battlesystems stuff getting the nod as it is pure quality. Mantic has raised the bar with their terrain and I can’t wait to see what they push out this year in their kickstarter. And of course 4Ground are amazing, saw their stuff at Salute this year and I fell in love. Good luck to all the nominees, and bring on Sunday!
Surprised battlefoam didn’t get in, their stuff is amazing.
I wished I could have changed my vote on the accessories after I seen that fantasy building on the last weekender. It just looks fantastic I want one even for my sci-fi games 😛
Wow, I was totally off with these two categories. I had picked Pathfinder for fantasy based on my experience at Gencon. It really stuck in my head just how well the 3rd party publishing is thriving under Pathfinder’s banner. Even still the Fantasy category was very competitive this year.
For accessories I actually chose the Targetlock…yeah, I know, not as exciting as awesome terrain but I really appreciate the function it provides. Not surprised that it didn’t make it.
Anyway, on to predictions;
Fantasy – Oof, really tough to call. But I’ll hand it to DnD 5ed. You will have to look long and hard for a negative review of that game.
Accessory – Mantic’s Battlezones. It is pretty much everything us gamers have been looking for in terrain…robust plastic, great detail, and modular.
Really looking forward to the Pulp, Punk, and Weird category tomorrow.
I’ll just say nice choices, then.
Really fun show again!
A presentation about homebrewed, non-corporate RPGs I attended at Dragonmeet this year got me thinking about various things to do with the hobby, and the Accessories category is a good example I think of the professionalisation and diversification and commodification of our hobby.
However, I don’t use these words in a negative sense. Although I do miss the homemade gaming boards and terrain I think it’s fantastic that we as consumers are being offered steadily better and better stuff to make our games more enjoyable and accessible. I too have gone from thinking that any money spent on anything that wasn’t a figure was a waste, to the opinion that a good looking setting for the game is really make or break.
Interesting with the Fantasy category that ‘old stuff redone’ did very well compared with much of the newer stuff.
– It looks to me as thought the Warhammer End Times has injected huge new interest into the WFB game, but not actually much that is new.
– DnD is a game I enjoyed back in the day (3rd ed, I think) but it hasn’t kept my interest as I found new, more modern, more (to me) interesting settings and systems. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to find out what about 5th has been inspiring people?
– Warmachine/Hordes doesn’t particularly appeal to me, although credit where it’s due – they do seem to make a huge effort into giving fans what they want and understanding and respecting them.
– Even Kings of War seems like something old done up as new… Fairly generic (and fairly mixed quality) figures in a game that looks a bit like ‘Warhammer back to its roots’. Although again, fair play to Mantic, they do appear to understand very well what they’re trying to do with the game and the simple, tense, really mass-battle rules do look like a lot of fun.
Really enjoyed the show, especially the ‘accessories’ part.
Actually made me look up a couple of things I’ve missed this year – namely the GW technical paints, and the Ichiban brushes!
Also, keen to give the Vallejo air colour paints a go rather than the Tamiya + thinners I have always used.
As much as I agree that D&D 5th Edition deserves praise, I couldn’t help but feel it was encroaching on “our” miniatures hobby award show. To be fair, RPGs use miniatures (optionally). And maybe that’s how you draw the line for what belongs on the Beasties. Otherwise, what prevents other boardgames and cardgames (like a Magic: The Gathering release or, ahem, The Game of Thrones Card Game?) from spoiling nominee slots for entries for the miniatures-gaming hobby? Personally, I hope to see BoW stay true to the miniatures gaming hobby and not see it diversify too much into the broader tabletop gaming hobby.
Had people nominated Magic and then enough people had voted for it then it could have won. As far as I’m aware the line was never firmly drawn, and it definitely included all tabletop gaming. The site’s focusing on mini-gaming and boardgames which use minis is what keeps most of the nominations in that direction. In the case of D&D, it has gotten a reasonable amount of coverage on the site, there’s even been a few articles on it. That in part explains why it more so than other non-mini games did so well, though at the same time, to give it that much coverage and then say it doesn’t qualify for the award would seem a little odd.
Right, the community voting kept the focus on miniatures-related games, for the most part. And I can see a case being made for RPG’s, since they can use miniatures and terrain. I’m just thinking ahead to the future. I wish for BoW and its fine awards show to remain dedicated to miniatures gaming. It’s the niche hobby within a niche hobby, so it’s wonderful to have a quality show like BoW dedicated to it. I figure the broader hobby has enough shows (Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop) and other awards to give it its due.
So my suggestion to BoW for next year is to add criteria too qualify what can be nominated. For example, “the game must utilize miniatures”.
That criteria gets fuzzy when it comes to boardgames. Maybe they could keep the criteria ambiguous like that and see how it goes, or maybe they could qualify it, so that you can exclude the Monopolies of the world. Not that Monopoly would probably be nominated, but you get my drift, I hope. Let Essen and GenCon decide what the best boardgames are, and let’s continue to build BoW’s credibility for deciding miniatures games exclusively.
I get what you’re saying, but it’s not what BoW have done this time around – and quite deliberately.
I’m not sure where I stand on this. On the one hand, I am interested in a range of games, accessories, etc. And I can probably find card and/or board games that interest me more than some of the miniature wargames covered. I also think it’s good that there is overlap here, just as there is in real life, between the different ways in which we do our hobby. An open ‘qualification’ system also gives us the maximum chance of getting cool stuff in.
All of that said, my main reason for following BoW is miniature wargaming, and rather than be pleased with the variety we’ve got this year, I’d be a bit miffed if it was heavily dominated by CCGs, video games, dice games, etc. For the moment, and as long as we have a sort of self-selecting electorate who have a bias towards an interest in miniature games, I don’t think we need to change anything. But if the focus was shifted away to other types of game, then I might favour a stricter entry criteria.
Even if the approach being taken now is not to the wishes of yourself, it’s certainly a good idea to have the discussion, and for the community to be aware of what’s at stake.
The award show was never meant to be a miniature-exclusive award show…they pretty much stated from the beginning that would include all forms of tabletop games as they felt many of these games could stand on their own. It does make sense as almost no one is just exclusively a miniature gamer…we may be miniature gamers first but there tends to be considerable overlap into board games, RPGs, and card games.
Now with that said I wouldn’t mind there maybe being a couple of smaller, more specific categories in the future. For example, Best RPG and Best Fantasy Miniature Game. However even with these I would still want there to be a Best Fantasy Game that overlaps into all categories. One reason for this is because I think it is appropriate to recognize the most accomplished tabletop game, which miniature games are a sub-genre of.
The other reason is that if we were kept it strictly to miniature games and continued to let it be fan-driven, it would quire frankly get stale after a couple of years. Most miniature games do not get the same rise as Dropzone, they can take years to build up a good following and to get the money they need to unleash exciting entry-level products like two-player starters. So if you were to keep it strictly miniature gaming what you would end up is a very predictable list of finalists year after year as the smaller games would be overshadowed time and again by the more popular games.
16:30 on day 3 and still no show 3??
I am certain it says 18:00 GMT so patience matey
I can honestly say that all those fantasy games deserve to win. My gaming buddies and I do fear that GW may wreck 9th ed WFB but at least we’ll still have 8th.