Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Hierarchy of Miniature gaming

There are several Miniature games that i do or have played over the years. I'd like to give them some form of Ranking system. The problem is the group is so diverse that its hard to judge them all on 1 scale. So i have 2 different ranking systems Rules Mechaninics, Fun/Desire to Play

Lets meet our Contestants!

Warhammer Fantasy - Dragons and mages do battle in the old world while the forces of chaos wage constant war for control of the world!

Wahammer 40k - Tanks and Aliens do battle in the future while the forces of chaos.... wait....

Warmachine/Hordes - The countries of Immoren vye for independence or control of the world around them, using Guns, Swords, Steam powered Warjacks, and Beasts of many shapes and sizes.

Malifaux - Its the best steam/western/victorian/horror/punk game on the market. While its genre is a mouthful, the world is rich and the characters unique as they battle for control of the precious soul stones.

Firestorm armada - Space battles aplenty as the humans and aliens do battle to control the storm zone.

Blood Bowl - Part Rugby, Part Football, part gladiator arena. The races of warhammer love a good game as much as they love violence and this bad boy combines them.

Necromunda - In the world of 40k hive cities are a common place for gangs to form, in this particular city the only laws are kill or be killed!

Monsterpocalypse - The poor people are earth are caught in the middle of a clash of titans as giant monsters rampage through our streets.

Mage Knight - Something happens, I'm pretty sure its boring... at least thats my experience with this one.

Arcane Legions - Mass Action Miniatures. Do crazy things while making the Egyptians, Romans, and Hans to battle with magic and cool monsters of myth.

Notables Left off the list - LOTR, Mordhiem - played each like once, don't remember them. BFG, Confrontation, and im sure a few others never played them.


So on to the Rankings with a short explanation.

Rules and Mechanics
1 Warmachine/Hordes - The simple mechanics are great. The dice rolling allows for a greater disparity in stats but keeps a good average on the Dice. Instead of a 1-12 chance for any specific numnber you are more likely to roll a 6,7,8 then any other number. The magic is well used and not game breaking, and the movement is very simple.

2. Malifaux - Very similar to Warmachine in many of its rules. Its loses ground with the Deck being too random where as the 2d6 has a nice average to it, the Deck is basically a D13. The Fate Hand does help which is why this one ranks so high.

3. Warhammer 40k - Easy movement. Easy to read ranges etc. It loses ground with the To Hit Table. this has been GW's staple for years so i doubt it will change, but Personally I'm not a fan as Its tough to teach new players.

4. Arcane Legions - Great rule set, the action points allow for a lot of great combos and tricks. its big downside is that Range Attacks are over-powered. The best bows usually win the day. Still very fun game

5. FireStorm armada - Simple enough mechanics. Plays very fluidly, and seems a little cleaner than space combat games of the past. I never played BFG so its a tough one to compare to, but I hear most people say its a little better.

6. Blood Bowl - Has a lot of frustrating aspects. Most notably, I dropped the ball so now its your turn. outside of the lose your turn when you fail a roll, its a lot of fun and allows you to create interesting teams.

7. Necromunda - Plays like 2nd ed 40k, which means everyone has kinda crazy rules and cool wargear. you play with a bunch of ladders and bridges, and use true line of sight. It ranks low not because its bad, but because the games ahead of it are so much cleaner and have had their rules constantly updated. I have not read the current living rule book, no idea if they made this game all badass.

8 Monsterpocalypse - Any system that creates its own dice gets a automatic negative in my book. Also the game basically comes down to who can do some crazy damage combo to the enemy monster first. Or in some cases how long can i ping you and play keep away. Plus the game gets very repetative after a few games.

9 Warhammer Fantasy - The movement section of the game is about 15 pages. thats too much. It ends up detracting from the rest of the game. then the Magic in the game is very powerful and most are won by having superior magic users.

10 Mage Knight - You roll dice and add your stat I do the same, If the attacker wins he hits. Unfortunetly almost every stat is the same or within 1-2 of eachother. end Result stand there rolling dice like crazy until one person rolls well.

Fun/Desire to Play?
1. Malifaux - This is my flavor of the month so that might be influencing me. I love the terrain filled boards, the skirmish games, and the awesome models. Its a total blast to play and really brings me back to my hey-day of gaming.

2. Firestorm Armada - Flavor of the Month part2. Its my first Space battle game so i guess its special to me, but I just love Broad-siding an opposing ship with a mit full of dice and then boarding them with my marines and taking them over.

3. Necromunda - Might just be better in my head then it ever really was, but for the same reasons I love Malifaux I loved Necromunda. Also my Skavies were cool as woah!

4. Warmachine/Hordes - It got too big to really enjoy as much as I used too. Back in the day I knew every stat of every unit, jack, caster, and solo. Now I can't even name them all. Still it has its moments and if I do return to it, I know I will have fun again at least for a while.

5. Warhammer 40k - My big knock on 40k right now is the codex creep. I hate that shit so much. Im angry that my chaos can't compete because GW decided that halfway through an arc of books they wanted to introduce some crazy shit and blow everything up. Now i either have to take a total douched out army that I really don't want to run or wait until they re-release Chaos in 2-3 years. Neither option appeals to me at the moment.

6. Blood Bowl - This game holds its own place in my heart. I love building a team and getting them skills etc. Its really cool. But as the game gets competative which is a situation i've been it this game loses its funness and becomes a chore to play. Going from open league play where you keep track of the team to a tournament or playoff style where you have to play x players over x weeks isn't fun and drives people away from the game.

7. Arcane Legions - Its fun and I enjoy it and all, but I just can't work up the desire to bring them out to play, plus my top 2 games are way more on my mind these days.

8. Wahammer Fantasy - Only If I ever find my beastmen army which I have no idea where it could be. Im a little pissed about that too. Even then, the game has too many broken armies and rules i just don't know anymore to give a crap about playing it.

9. Monsterpocalypse - Im a little surprised it ended up down here, but yeah. I just don't care about it anymore. maybe on a bored day when im malifauxed and FSA'ed out and looking at my gaming closet wondering what to do i'll bust this one out and give it another whirl.

10. mage Knight - What a bottom feeder. this game blows and I spent way too much money on it back in high school. I think I would rather have a blind surgeon with epilepsy operate on my junk then play mage knight.... its close I'd have to see how bad the Doctor's seizures end up.

1 comment:

wrabbit37 said...

Huh - interesting. I think a lot of this can be traced back to "flavor of the month" like you said. A year down the road, I don't think we'd see FSA or Malifaux as high on the list, but they'd be replaced by something else, surely. Who knows. I could be wrong and one or both of those games could show the survivability that WM did. I just don't feel either has quite what it takes. The FSA is releasing ships slow enough that I don't think they'll run into a bloat of choices like WM has, while I worry about how Malifaux will handle their expansions. On the flip side, FSA's rules don't feel quite as crisp to me.

Anywho, I figured I should put some order to my choices too. I dropped WH Fantasy (since I played several editions ago last I played), Blood Bowl, Necromunda and Mage Knight, and I added in Mordhiem since I played that for a short time with my college buddies.

Basic Rule Set:
1. Warmachine/Hordes
2. Warhammer 40k
3. Malifaux
4. Firestorm Armada
5. Monsterpocalypse
6. Mordhiem
7. Arcane Legions (I hate doing this because except for one piece, I like their rules a lot... but that one pieces is massive: archery is overpowered and the way they want to deal with it is create silver bullets rather than deal with the fundimental flaw)

Fun:
1. Malifaux
2. Firestorm Armada
3. Warmachine/Hordes
4. Monsterpocalypse
5. Arcane Legions
6. Mordhiem
7. Warhammer 40k

Maybe I'll post up a bit more on my blog later on. Or maybe I'll just forget.