Reply To: Is it time for some more critical analysis of rule sets

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I think this blog post by Joe McCullough (writer of Frostgrave is very insightful).

https://therenaissancetroll.blogspot.com/2018/02/is-wargaming-getting-too-easy.html

Now Joe did write a set of rules with no “official range” of minis at the start (although NorthStar did end up making some excellent minis for it). But perhaps we are too used to just buying everything in a “convenient” package with rules, minis, terrain all in one easy package. So any reviews are about that package as a whole (rather than focusing on just the rules themselves). Now 20-30 years ago things were a bit different in that you would buy the rules, THEN select the minis you liked (and scale), so rules had to cover all scales of minis from 6mm up to 28mm. But these days the package dictates the scale of the minis you’ll be using and the rules reflect that (or they aren’t as open source as they used to be). Most rules were sold by companies that didn’t produce minis, so they were sold purely on the strength of the ruleset themselves.

But now everything is in a starter set, can you review this package based on just the rules themselves (as people are also buying the minis at the same time). I would agree that most reviews do tend to stick with the minis side of things (as it’s not as time intensive to prep for a video compared to actually playing the rules (usually the reviewer has just the amount of time for a quick flip through of the rules to get the gist of the thing).

I do think that most rule systems that are sold separately from a miniatures manufacturer tend to be stronger (because they have to be, as the focus is purely on the ruleset), whereas the rules in a starter set from a mini manufacturer tend to be a lot weaker (as the focus is about the package as a whole. However games the Beyond the Gates of Antares stand out as a very good set of rules (indeed some Bolt Action players are trying to convert the rules over to playing WW2 games), so it’s not fair to give a blanket statement on things as a whole.

But the Let’s Play videos for Chain of command with Rich do focus on the rules, because that’s what they sell. The videos for games like SPQR tend to be about the minis s much as the rules because they are selling the whole package.

So perhaps we need to see reviews/let’s play videos from rules manufacturers (rather than these package affairs) as the review is going to be purely focused on the ruleset (and so can be more indepth)?

I imagine Gerry could do a fantastic review of Saga after playing many games, and as the system is sold purely as a set of rules would be extremely informative to anyone considering doing Dark Age Skirmish (although skirmish/warband historical games aren’t my thing as they are at their core 1 figure equals 1 man and the differences due to the era being reflected can’t be established in the rules for any skirmish level games).