Recently, I've been doing my best to cut back on the amount of miniatures I've been buying. For the first time in about five years I skipped the "Call to Arms" show in Theale, on the grounds that I would just bring back more stuff that I didn't have time to assemble or paint. Of course, I blew it slightly by taking a trip into London and buying two more models for Bushido instead.
Bushido has acted as something of an exception to my "no new models" rule, largely because I want to keep up to date with the Temple of Ro-kan faction. But the fact that I have allowed this exception, says something about the effectiveness of GCT's marketing.
Games Workshop games are all but armies for me. I pick an army and buy models until it feels big enough. And then GW try to encourage me to start a new army. I don't expect to collect every model or unit available for the army and I may even restrict my choices to make it more thematic. While I wouldn't describe any of my armies as "finished" exactly, they are all of a size were I don't feel any great pressure to add any more models to any of them.
Oddly, Games Workshop's release pattern helps reinforces this behaviour. Every five years or so they release a new army book, I buy it and maybe one or two units or characters and that's it. My army is up to date. I don't feel the need to replace my existing models. Take the new dwarf book, I will probably grab it, King Duregar and a Gyrobomber and leave it at that. I won't replace my carefully painted metal hammerers with the new plastics any more than I replace my beloved metal miners when the plastic miners came along.
Bushido is different. For some reason, Bushido doesn't feel bounded in the same way as my Warhammer armies, so every time a new release comes along for the Temple of Ro-Kan, I buy it. Due to a combination of the small number of models required to play the game and the relatively low cost of each, I have started thinking of my Bushido models as a "collection" and not an army. Which means I need to buy the lot. Because new models are released every two months or so, there is never a natural pause and so I keep buying.
Bushido isn't the only game to do this. Warmachine/Hordes, Infinity, Malifaux, Helldorado, even Anima Tactics if it was more organised, all depend on a model of steady and constant releases, which keeps you army/gang/warband/crew in a permanently incomplete state.
It reminds me of when I was seriously into Magic the Gathering. Every time a new expansion appeared I had to buy a few boosters or feel like the game was leaving me behind. Consequently, the collection was never complete only constantly expanding. This is great for the company, as they get a steady income. The drawback is that players have to be pretty devoted to the game to keep up. Part of the reason I never really got into Warmachine was because I couldn't get the old models assembled painted and on the table before the next expansion came out, not when there was so many other games out there. As a marketing strategy, it encourages the fanatic at the expense of the casual gamer.
Of course much of the pressure is self-imposed. I have more than enough Bushido models to game with and I really don't need any more. And yet the pull is still there and, for the moment at least, I can keep up with the new releases without it totally monopolising my time.
In the last few months I have found myself drawn back to games that have effectively "died." Games Workshop's Epic and Mordheim and Confrontation. It's the lack of new releases that is the draw in these cases. With no more support coming, the games are "finite" and I can concentrate on painting and gaming with the models I have without feeling a compulsion to buy any more. Except, of course, for those last one or two Mordheim models I might get from Ebay...
Showing posts with label Infinity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Infinity. Show all posts
Friday, 28 February 2014
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Too much rules makes my brain hurt!
When getting used to a new set of rules, the first few games tend to be a pretty uneven affair, characterised by a lot of flicking back and forth through rulebooks and checking stats. I'll admit that these early games are not always a lot of fun to play; I'm far too busy trying to keep track of the rules to think about tactics and victory or defeat all to often depends on whether you got the rules right.
It's for this reason I find myself gravitating back to Warhammer so often. It's not that I think it's the best set of rules, it isn't, but for most of the 1990s it was, for me, literally the only game in town. I have played it so much over the years that the fundamentals are second nature and when new editions come along, I just have to be on the look out for the changes.
This is why I think Mantic have been very smart with Warpath and Kings of War. Here we have two examples of a set of rules that are designed to be easy to learn and play at the exclusion of all else. This can lead to some odd quirks. Nevertheless, I am more willing to play these two than a number of games I have previously played more, simply because I know I am not going to have to look very much up and I can concentrate on the business of actually playing.
The trend in Fantasy and Sci-Fi gaming in recent years has been towards smaller scale skirmish games. This has the advantage that I can build a usable force more quickly and cheaply, even when individual models cost more than Games Workshop (at least until the advent of Finecast). If you I need five to ten models a side, you're much less likely to baulk at paying £10 a model. And you can focus more time and effort painting individual models and still get them painted more quickly. I have a larger proportion of my Anima Tactics models painted than I ever have with Games Workshop.
The drawback is it does tend to split my collection across lots of different games. Money and time I would have spent building up one army, ends up diffused across multiple gangs, crews or factions. And this means more rules to learn. Unsurprisingly, I find myself gravitating towards the systems where the rules are easiest to learn.
I have all but abandoned Malifaux, largely because it combines an unusual random mechanism, based around playing cards, with a large number of special rules for most models and a complicated abbreviation system for keeping track of them. Then there's Bushido, a game I like and really want to play more, but which, unfortunately, has one mechanism for activation (two short or one long action per turn), one for special abilities (points that are accumulated turn by turn, but which can be stored across multiple turns) and another for combat (a pool of combat dice that have to be divided between attack and defence and which can be sacrificed to produce additional effects).
One of the things I have always liked about Anima Tactics is that it has very few mechanisms to control things. Activation is based on action points that are renewed at the start of the turn, special abilities are mostly special actions that work in the same way and most effects are resolved by rolling a d10 adding a stat and modifiers and comparing it to a target number or the opposing players roll. Dreadball, and soon Deadzone, use a similar mechanism of rolling multiple dice, trying to equal or exceed a target number and counting the number of successful rolls. Even the badly presented Infinity rules, have the advantage of a single dice mechanism which covers most situations.
I wonder how often 'ease of learning' is factored into rules design? I know Jake Thornton has said he favours rules that are quick to learn but with plenty of tactical depth. But with some designers it feels like depth is being confused with complexity. I also wonder if my experience with Warhammer tells us anything. When your playing the same game day after day it becomes second nature and it's all to easy to forget how baffling it can appear to outsiders.
It's for this reason I find myself gravitating back to Warhammer so often. It's not that I think it's the best set of rules, it isn't, but for most of the 1990s it was, for me, literally the only game in town. I have played it so much over the years that the fundamentals are second nature and when new editions come along, I just have to be on the look out for the changes.
This is why I think Mantic have been very smart with Warpath and Kings of War. Here we have two examples of a set of rules that are designed to be easy to learn and play at the exclusion of all else. This can lead to some odd quirks. Nevertheless, I am more willing to play these two than a number of games I have previously played more, simply because I know I am not going to have to look very much up and I can concentrate on the business of actually playing.
The trend in Fantasy and Sci-Fi gaming in recent years has been towards smaller scale skirmish games. This has the advantage that I can build a usable force more quickly and cheaply, even when individual models cost more than Games Workshop (at least until the advent of Finecast). If you I need five to ten models a side, you're much less likely to baulk at paying £10 a model. And you can focus more time and effort painting individual models and still get them painted more quickly. I have a larger proportion of my Anima Tactics models painted than I ever have with Games Workshop.
The drawback is it does tend to split my collection across lots of different games. Money and time I would have spent building up one army, ends up diffused across multiple gangs, crews or factions. And this means more rules to learn. Unsurprisingly, I find myself gravitating towards the systems where the rules are easiest to learn.
I have all but abandoned Malifaux, largely because it combines an unusual random mechanism, based around playing cards, with a large number of special rules for most models and a complicated abbreviation system for keeping track of them. Then there's Bushido, a game I like and really want to play more, but which, unfortunately, has one mechanism for activation (two short or one long action per turn), one for special abilities (points that are accumulated turn by turn, but which can be stored across multiple turns) and another for combat (a pool of combat dice that have to be divided between attack and defence and which can be sacrificed to produce additional effects).
One of the things I have always liked about Anima Tactics is that it has very few mechanisms to control things. Activation is based on action points that are renewed at the start of the turn, special abilities are mostly special actions that work in the same way and most effects are resolved by rolling a d10 adding a stat and modifiers and comparing it to a target number or the opposing players roll. Dreadball, and soon Deadzone, use a similar mechanism of rolling multiple dice, trying to equal or exceed a target number and counting the number of successful rolls. Even the badly presented Infinity rules, have the advantage of a single dice mechanism which covers most situations.
I wonder how often 'ease of learning' is factored into rules design? I know Jake Thornton has said he favours rules that are quick to learn but with plenty of tactical depth. But with some designers it feels like depth is being confused with complexity. I also wonder if my experience with Warhammer tells us anything. When your playing the same game day after day it becomes second nature and it's all to easy to forget how baffling it can appear to outsiders.
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
The Joy of Simplicity
Last weekend MLB and I had plans to get in a game of Warhammer 8th edition. We wanted a rematch of the game between my Greenskins and his Ogres that we played at Christmas. Him to test out his 16th birthday present, the Blood Sail pirates, me to erase the stain on my honour caused by my previous ignominious defeat. In the end we found ourselves with less time than we had expected and the game was put on hold until Easter. Ultimately we ended up playing Dwarf King's Hold in front of the TV.
DKH is by no means as straightforward as Warpath and Kings of War, it has a few quirky features that take some getting used to, but it is in keeping with Mantic's preference for straightforward fuss-free game play.
There's no getting around the fact that we have a hobby with a complicated infrastructure. After the assembling, painting and scenery building there is the simple practical concern of setting up and putting away. I am one of the fortunate who can maintain a hobby room with a permanent gaming table. In my younger days getting in a game meant squeezing onto the dining room table, or clearing a substantial patch of floor. When you combine this with a less that straightforward set of rules, the game can start to feel more like work than fun.
This is why I question Games Workshop's choice to push bigger and bigger armies. It makes sense as a marketing strategy to get your players to buy as much as possible, but if the net effect is to make playing the game increasingly a chore, it can only be counter-productive in the long run.
Of course Mantic have also pushed the big army concept, but are at least attempting to marry it to a simpler, quicker, more straight-forward set of rules. But, as I wrote in my last post, one of the most refreshing things about Warpath was how quick it was to get through a game with the models in the box. MLB and I took no more than an hour. Double or triple the number of models and we are still talking about a game we can get through comfortably in an afternoon, even with setup and pack up time.
Rules complexity isn't solely about length. I wrote at length about the poor presentation of the Infinity rules, but once you get your head around the unusual turn structure it actually isn't that difficult to play. Though I would recommend producing a summary sheet with your models profiles for quick reference. What slows down Warhammer is the sheer number of special rules and exceptions of which you have to keep track.
I suspect part of the problem is trying to scale up a game that works better with smaller numbers. Warhammer 3rd edition has proven ideal for skirmish games between Chaos Warbands, but I expect it would be horribly cumbersome at the 3,000 point level recommended by Warhammer armies.
All of the above is really a round about way of saying that in my old age I increasingly appreciate simple and stream-lined rules. If nothing else, Mantic is good at providing a wargame experience with a minimum of fuss.
DKH is by no means as straightforward as Warpath and Kings of War, it has a few quirky features that take some getting used to, but it is in keeping with Mantic's preference for straightforward fuss-free game play.
There's no getting around the fact that we have a hobby with a complicated infrastructure. After the assembling, painting and scenery building there is the simple practical concern of setting up and putting away. I am one of the fortunate who can maintain a hobby room with a permanent gaming table. In my younger days getting in a game meant squeezing onto the dining room table, or clearing a substantial patch of floor. When you combine this with a less that straightforward set of rules, the game can start to feel more like work than fun.
This is why I question Games Workshop's choice to push bigger and bigger armies. It makes sense as a marketing strategy to get your players to buy as much as possible, but if the net effect is to make playing the game increasingly a chore, it can only be counter-productive in the long run.
Of course Mantic have also pushed the big army concept, but are at least attempting to marry it to a simpler, quicker, more straight-forward set of rules. But, as I wrote in my last post, one of the most refreshing things about Warpath was how quick it was to get through a game with the models in the box. MLB and I took no more than an hour. Double or triple the number of models and we are still talking about a game we can get through comfortably in an afternoon, even with setup and pack up time.
Rules complexity isn't solely about length. I wrote at length about the poor presentation of the Infinity rules, but once you get your head around the unusual turn structure it actually isn't that difficult to play. Though I would recommend producing a summary sheet with your models profiles for quick reference. What slows down Warhammer is the sheer number of special rules and exceptions of which you have to keep track.
I suspect part of the problem is trying to scale up a game that works better with smaller numbers. Warhammer 3rd edition has proven ideal for skirmish games between Chaos Warbands, but I expect it would be horribly cumbersome at the 3,000 point level recommended by Warhammer armies.
All of the above is really a round about way of saying that in my old age I increasingly appreciate simple and stream-lined rules. If nothing else, Mantic is good at providing a wargame experience with a minimum of fuss.
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Presentation Problems
With so many more of my Infinity models painted I have been turning my attention the actual game. Despite having had the miniatures for over a year I have only managed one game so far, with My Little Brother, and we got a lot of the rules wrong. I have in mind to try a practice game against myself in order to get my head fully around the rules and so I have been re-reading the rule book.
Infinity: the Game has attracted considerable praise from some quarters and it certainly has a number of distinctive features that particularly suit it's small scale approach to future warfare. That said, it also has a significant flaw. It's not that the rules are poor, but they are extremely hard to follow.
This sort of criticism inevitably attaches to games that have been translated from their native language. The wargames industry being far enough from the mainstream that they have to communicate by email, it can't always afford the highest quality localisation. That said, in my experience, a translated rule book, though often featuring a few linguistic quirks, can, on occasion, be even better explained than rule books in their native language if only because of the need to be precise. Confrontation 3rd edition and Anima Tactics have both struck me as rule books that do an excellent job of presenting the rules in a clear fashion.
Despite their success with Confrontation, Rackham also managed to produce one of the worst written rule books I have ever seen, for their skirmish board game Hybrid. To give an example of how poor this book was each miniature in the game had a single 'Natural value' that was used to determine most of their actions. Although it was possible to make an educated guess, it took an errata in the games expansion to spell out where to find this number on the miniatures stat cards. For anyone with a copy who actually wants to play Hybrid I would recommend exploring Board Game Geek to find example of the rules re-written by fans into something passing for coherent.
However, Hybrid's faults are not a problem of translation but of presentation. The book simply fails to clearly spell out how they work, relying on players to fill in gaps the writers have neglected to explain. This is a problem for all rule books, not simply translated ones.
Turning our attention to rules written in English, not simply translated into it, I have written before about the tendency of modern Games Workshop to gloss over crucial rules questions that need answering in an attempt to shorten the text. In contrast, the DBA/DBM/HOTT school of thought relies on hyper-precise sentences that, while covering absolutely every possible circumstance, practically require a degree in Logic to unpick. For example:
Warhammer 8th edition gives whole, clearly differentiated, chapters with massive page headings to the different phases of a turn. In contrast, the only think separating shooting from close combat in the Infinity rule book is a one line header in capitals, not even in bold. And this is one of the better labelled sections. Trying to find the rules for a specific key word listed by a model's profile is all but impossible (though when you find the right section it is at least ordered alphabetically) and made worse by the fact that certain common words, the difference between Impetuous and Non-Impetuous models, is somewhere else entirely. A somewhere else that doesn't appear to be in a section, orphaned and free floating by itself.
The above page spread is taken from the free PDF version available online, the colours are different and the book says "Rules" and not "Reglas", but the layout is the same. We have Damage as a heading and a sub-heading, though the heading is hardly clearly labelled. Bold is used for first emphasis and these lines often stand out better than the titles. Then we have the apparently random use of bullet points in the second column and the paragraph first line indentations that serve no useful purpose at all.
What this says to me is that a good, even great, rules set can be seriously harmed by being conveyed poorly. This can be because of bad writing, bad translation or simply poor presentation. Reading the Infinity rules end to end is not so bad, but as reference work to be used in the game it is hopeless. When trying to play you want to minimise time spent rummaging through rules and the worst possible outcome is not being able to find a rule at all.
In the case of Infinity is could have been fixed so easily. Use bigger and bolder headings, make better use of bold and bullet points, make text larger and clearer and include an index, if only for the rules section. The contents page is, at least, better laid out and does help, but only if what your looking for has its own heading.
I will persevere with Infinity, the rules, setting and models are too strong a draw, but Corvus Belli have done themselves no favours with the way they have presented them.
Infinity: the Game has attracted considerable praise from some quarters and it certainly has a number of distinctive features that particularly suit it's small scale approach to future warfare. That said, it also has a significant flaw. It's not that the rules are poor, but they are extremely hard to follow.
This sort of criticism inevitably attaches to games that have been translated from their native language. The wargames industry being far enough from the mainstream that they have to communicate by email, it can't always afford the highest quality localisation. That said, in my experience, a translated rule book, though often featuring a few linguistic quirks, can, on occasion, be even better explained than rule books in their native language if only because of the need to be precise. Confrontation 3rd edition and Anima Tactics have both struck me as rule books that do an excellent job of presenting the rules in a clear fashion.
Despite their success with Confrontation, Rackham also managed to produce one of the worst written rule books I have ever seen, for their skirmish board game Hybrid. To give an example of how poor this book was each miniature in the game had a single 'Natural value' that was used to determine most of their actions. Although it was possible to make an educated guess, it took an errata in the games expansion to spell out where to find this number on the miniatures stat cards. For anyone with a copy who actually wants to play Hybrid I would recommend exploring Board Game Geek to find example of the rules re-written by fans into something passing for coherent.
However, Hybrid's faults are not a problem of translation but of presentation. The book simply fails to clearly spell out how they work, relying on players to fill in gaps the writers have neglected to explain. This is a problem for all rule books, not simply translated ones.
Turning our attention to rules written in English, not simply translated into it, I have written before about the tendency of modern Games Workshop to gloss over crucial rules questions that need answering in an attempt to shorten the text. In contrast, the DBA/DBM/HOTT school of thought relies on hyper-precise sentences that, while covering absolutely every possible circumstance, practically require a degree in Logic to unpick. For example:
An element in front combat with an enemy flank or rear edge, or aiding an attack on a stronghold, disregards the outcome listed below, but recoils if a friendly element in contact with the enemy's front recoils, flees or is destroyed or enscorcelled.Infinity's problem is somewhat unusual. It is all about layout. A very strange problem as throughout the extensive background sections the various sections and sub sections are clearly labelled and divided. But when it comes to the rules, tiny text is seperated by less than explicit headings. One section blurs into the next and figuring out where to find the actual rule you are looking for is extremely difficult. When reading the rules through from start to finish this is not so much of a problem, though small text can cause eye strain and some sentences require a couple of read throughs to sink in. But when trying to find what you're looking for in the middle of a game you are lost, stuck in a rules Antarctica with no compass, no map and no frame of reference.
Warhammer 8th edition gives whole, clearly differentiated, chapters with massive page headings to the different phases of a turn. In contrast, the only think separating shooting from close combat in the Infinity rule book is a one line header in capitals, not even in bold. And this is one of the better labelled sections. Trying to find the rules for a specific key word listed by a model's profile is all but impossible (though when you find the right section it is at least ordered alphabetically) and made worse by the fact that certain common words, the difference between Impetuous and Non-Impetuous models, is somewhere else entirely. A somewhere else that doesn't appear to be in a section, orphaned and free floating by itself.
What this says to me is that a good, even great, rules set can be seriously harmed by being conveyed poorly. This can be because of bad writing, bad translation or simply poor presentation. Reading the Infinity rules end to end is not so bad, but as reference work to be used in the game it is hopeless. When trying to play you want to minimise time spent rummaging through rules and the worst possible outcome is not being able to find a rule at all.
In the case of Infinity is could have been fixed so easily. Use bigger and bolder headings, make better use of bold and bullet points, make text larger and clearer and include an index, if only for the rules section. The contents page is, at least, better laid out and does help, but only if what your looking for has its own heading.
I will persevere with Infinity, the rules, setting and models are too strong a draw, but Corvus Belli have done themselves no favours with the way they have presented them.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
From my painting table
I have had two major painting projects on the go since just before Christmas, both of which will be revealed in due course. But for today I wanted to talk about Infinity.
Infinity's Anime/Manga aesthetic and hi-tech Sci-Fi look have appealed for some time. I have actually have two decent-sized forces, one for the Nomads and one for Yu Jing, but I haven't really know how to go about painting them and they have been sitting around neglected. In December of 2011, I finally figured out how to proceed and here are the results: 5/6 of the Japanese Sectorial Army starter box.
The aesthetics of Infinity is quite different from that of most other games I have played. Just about everything is armoured, but not in the huge bulky style of GW Space Marines. They are very intricate designs with a lot overlapping areas and narrow gaps between armour plates. My general painting style has been to paint each large area in a different colour, but that doesn't really work when there are no large areas.
I am used to painting areas of cloth, which need multiple levels of highlighting to pick out the changes in colour over raised and recessed areas. But here we have a lot of essentially flat, smooth areas sitting next to one another. Limited opportunity for highlighting, but I needed a way to pick out the differences in areas.
Still, painting a new style of model encouraged me to try some new techniques. I ended up limiting my highlights, and using a lot of ink washes. I have used them before, but sparingly, usually on faces or rusty armour. I have never been able to get them to work well, often making models look dirty or disappearing entirely after a few highlights.
Here, though, they worked perfectly, picking out the details on the armour and differentiating the different areas nicely.
My second painting experiment was to try Games Workshop foundation paints. I had decided on a yellow colour scheme for my Kempetai and Keisotsu Butai. I was inspired by a video game, see if you can guess which. I have always struggled to paint yellow before. It doesn't paint over black undercoats at all and, when used over white, often seems to come out very glossy and unreal. But the GW foundation worked perfectly over my black undercoat and I am very pleased with the results.
Infinity's Anime/Manga aesthetic and hi-tech Sci-Fi look have appealed for some time. I have actually have two decent-sized forces, one for the Nomads and one for Yu Jing, but I haven't really know how to go about painting them and they have been sitting around neglected. In December of 2011, I finally figured out how to proceed and here are the results: 5/6 of the Japanese Sectorial Army starter box.
The aesthetics of Infinity is quite different from that of most other games I have played. Just about everything is armoured, but not in the huge bulky style of GW Space Marines. They are very intricate designs with a lot overlapping areas and narrow gaps between armour plates. My general painting style has been to paint each large area in a different colour, but that doesn't really work when there are no large areas.
I am used to painting areas of cloth, which need multiple levels of highlighting to pick out the changes in colour over raised and recessed areas. But here we have a lot of essentially flat, smooth areas sitting next to one another. Limited opportunity for highlighting, but I needed a way to pick out the differences in areas.
Still, painting a new style of model encouraged me to try some new techniques. I ended up limiting my highlights, and using a lot of ink washes. I have used them before, but sparingly, usually on faces or rusty armour. I have never been able to get them to work well, often making models look dirty or disappearing entirely after a few highlights.
Here, though, they worked perfectly, picking out the details on the armour and differentiating the different areas nicely.
My second painting experiment was to try Games Workshop foundation paints. I had decided on a yellow colour scheme for my Kempetai and Keisotsu Butai. I was inspired by a video game, see if you can guess which. I have always struggled to paint yellow before. It doesn't paint over black undercoats at all and, when used over white, often seems to come out very glossy and unreal. But the GW foundation worked perfectly over my black undercoat and I am very pleased with the results.
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