Warhammer 40K For Kids

I set about thinking of how to describe a unit, its stats, its weapons and any special rules it might have.

Where possible I try to use words and phrases from the Official Warhammer 40K game to tie in with it and ‘keep the vibe’ – I’ll discover in a couple of years time if that helps them or confuses them!

Unit Console Cards

Above you will see a rough Unit Card that we will work from to see what each unit can do and what it’s stats are.

A unit is described by the following stats

Name (and Number of Lives): The name of the Model in the Unit and if it has more than one life it has little red squares that we tick off as it gets wounded.

Actions: The number of actions a model in a unit can take (The actions available to that unit are on the back of the card and anything faded out can’t be performed)

Move: The distance moved by a model in the unit. I have opted for metric as my children are or will be learning measurements in metric so I want to support that learning rather than confuse things by introducing the sacred imperial system we wargamers love so much lol I have also opted to increase the amount of movement units can take to speed up the game and give the children more chance to reach parts of the table and sweep around and change their minds. This should unlock a lot more story telling potential.

Target: The poly dice to roll to try and score a hit against another unit.

Physique: The poly dice to roll to see if you manage to avoid being targeted (and used for a couple of other tests)

Armour: The poly dice to roll to see if your armour deflects a wound roll from a weapon.

Courage: The poly Dice to roll when something related to your courage is tested.

Weapons

Currently each model has a primary and secondary weapons slot and they can use either with an action. For each weapon we have the following stats.

Name: The name of the weapon

Wound: The poly dice to roll against another units armour to see if hits become wounds

Damage: The fixed number of points or poly dice to roll to see how many wounds the weapon does to a unit.

Special Rules

Finally we have a little box where we can throw a few flavour rules to spice up a unit to make it do something a little different if we feels it helps the games.

And as always – Its a work in progress…

So while all that hobby was taking place I was pondering over how we could play in the universe of Warhammer 40,000.

The thought of trying to lead young children through the game as written really didn’t appeal to me and honestly I think it would have been boring and cumbersome for them too, as the mechanics are focused on a structured game rather than a narrative experience.

So I decided to take a different path, as my goal was to let them experience the wild and wonderful world as a miniatures game something more akin to a role playing game that was focused on miniatures and armies.

Colour Coded Poly Dice

Some time ago a gaming genius in the Industry, a chap named Alessio Cavatore  used colour coded Poly Dice in one of his games Terminator. It struck me at the time as a beautiful system where we had both shape and colour to denote dice (so if colour blindness was an issue there was an alternative recognition system)

Later when I started to play simple Role Playing Games with my children I ordered a bunch of Poly Dice that were colour coded so i could easily say “ok you roll the red one and this monster will roll the green one” etc.

Its a simple dynamic that’s easy to explain and my kids have found it fast and exciting as they grasped that the bigger the dice the more the opportunity or threat they faced.

It’s not perfectly balanced, its certainly not ‘gamey’ but it is cool for story telling.

So the colour coded Poly Dice were in!

Taking Action

The middle ground for me between a Role Playing Game and a Table Top Wargame is selecting from a set of allowed actions and having units able to perform a number of actions, this gives it the structure of a game, but allows the story telling to unfold as a unit, moves or climbs or swims etc

I set about defining some actions a unit could possibly take and grouping them under headings.

So the main types of actions are at this stage.

Movement, Shooting, Assaults, Specialist, Interact, Defend.

Under each heading are the actual actions a unit could take (and a cost of action points to do it)

I decided to standardise the actions as one set for every unit in the game and just fade out the actions any unit would not be allowed to perform. I feel this structure will make the game a little easier to follow and allow familiarity to build as we play.

Too much granularity and complexity will slow the whole experience down, so at this stage I’m just trying to get a balance between enough for the kids to let their stories unfold in a structured way, but not too much to make the whole experience cumbersome.

It’s a Work In Progress…

I get carried away too, and during a look through the codex with little Max he spotted one of his precious Imperial ‘Power Ranger’ Fists being completely heroic.

This was the coolest thing he had seen and was asking if his Space Marines could ever have a leader like that. I said in time they may well and off he went to bed…

… and as the typical hobby junky that I am … I stayed up.

I set to work on building three proper leaders for their armies using the standard space marine and one of the boxes of bits we have built up over the years.

By the next morning each of them were being introduced to the new hero for their army and their current captains would be his helper!

With the three chapters selected, the two older children forged on ahead and built their armies, each did two 5 man units and a leader so eleven models in total.

I then primed them for them using an Army Painter primer and they set to work painting the bases black – and we will have a go at painting other bits a little step at a time over the coming months – there is no panic at this stage having the base colour down is enough to make these minis ready for battle!

You will notice that both little armies have an extra 3rd unit and what looks like an extra character leading them. The extra unit was as a result of a surprise night for Manny and Savanna here in the Visitors Centre during the 40K weekend, so they got the chance to add a bit to their army, they are primed but the bases still need blacked at this stage.

It was also at this stage that little Max tugged on my heart strings so much that I went ahead and built him a little Imperial Fists force so he could get involved in playing games with us.

With the kids building away and going home very proud of the models they built I thought ok lets take this another step so I ‘presented’ them each with their own space marine codex.

I explained to them that it was full of cool pictures of the armour and colours of the space marines and told stories of their battles.

I gave the one with the least pictures to the oldest as she can now read, the next fewest pictures to the middle one as he is now starting to read and gets Savanna to help him and finally the last (and most recent one) to little Max. (At this stage Max is coming along for the ride as the little man just loves to be involved and tries so hard to keep up with the other two, that where possible I try to give him the opportunity to get stuck in with them)

Picking a Chapter

Ok this can go two ways and there is no right answer it pretty much depends on you and the child. They can pick a chapter from the book to follow or they can make one up of their own. I’ts up to you and them 🙂

Why I steered towards picking rather than creating…

I thought about this a bit before going down this path but I opted to have the kids pick a chapter from the book, to help tie their army and the project they were working on closer to the book and the 40K universe I was about to introduce them to. My thinking was if I say from the outset you can do anything you want that yes it would give them creative freedom, but that really wasn’t the purpose of this time we spend together. Rather I want to immerse them and teach them about a world and how to play within it. My thoughts on this is that there is plenty of time for their own wacky creations (and believe me they will be wacky!) when they have the skills and know how to execute their ideas a little more independently.

So how did they pick?

The same way we all do! They looked at the pictures and looked for a cool colour scheme.

And the results were…

Let me introduce my gaming group.

At the time of writing Savanna (8) Manny (6) and Max (4) are my regular opponents and comrades in the vast world of TableTop Games.

Recently Savanna and Manny have started to build and paint their first models, and have shown an interest in the Space Marines in Warhammer 40,000. So I have set them on a path of building and painting two small space marine armies. Just using the standard single push fit Space Marine.

Why?

Introducing the older two to building simple models was an experiment to see if it would be something they enjoy or have the patience for here is what I learned…

Kids patience is pretty unpredictable and can depend a lot on the surroundings and what is going on. (In our family we also have a bit of ADHD and ASD that we take into account as well)

Tip: I have found that taking one child at a time with me ‘somewhere’ to build a couple of models works best, it gives me a bit of one to one time with them and greatly reduces the distractions helping the child zone in (remember children can only do it for short periods of time so relax and what is done is done – no pressure – remember the activity is the goal not the end result)

Forget about perfectionism, it really has no place at this stage, children do not have the coordination or mental development to be bothered about mould lines or perfectly fitting parts. So don’t let yourself get caught in a trap of pointing out little flaws, it will frustrate you and put off the child. That’s why I go with the same model (which is basically the sample sprue) and before this I used a box of cheap toy soldiers to let them paint on etc Whatever they build at this stage in their lives is not for display its for fun and bonding and tucking into a little memory box to surprise them with later lol

Tip: Do not be tempted to spend ‘real’ money on this, look for the cheapest option you can as really the cost will make absolutely no difference to the experience the child will have.

Tip: I opted to give them the exact same model to work on, (initially as a cost thing as I had access) and I discovered that there was a benefit here in that practice became easier for the child and they gained a little independence in the project quicker than if they had to continuously ask me ‘where do I clip daddy’ and ‘where do I put this part daddy’ – I would like to recommend to my hobby industry colleagues out there to consider introductory packs of minis aimed at children and guardians that have multiples of the same model in them for this purpose.