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Once again I’m a trendsetter.
How are these games played? I kinda, sorta get how the card games work, trying to lay down spells, or weapons, or characters that can trump the cards already played, but how does this work?
God level Goku straight up murders Superman, and every reasonable person knows this.
Good question, and I skirted around that part mostly because the answer generally is: depends on the system.
Warhammer, for example, required I have a brick of six-sided dice for various rolls. Much like a pen-and-paper role-playing game, your units have stats like strength or melee attack and weapons that factored in a various number of quick arithmetical calculations and comparisons or sometimes on a chart which determines success or failure. Most games use the dependable and universal six-sided die. Few use the other various polyhedrals, most often for simplicity. The miniatures you use are generally represented within those stat-blocks.
Mini-wargames have similarities with war board games like Axis and Allies or even at the basest of comparison: Risk. The primary differences are the complexities in each individual unit or soldier. Of course the differences are always in complexitiesL a Risk “I” has nothing but a single die roll, an Axis and Allies Soldier has different “stats” than a mobile armor piece and one rolls against those, and a War Game mini will have several stats and attributes to roll against or add or subtract to a roll.
This is one reason why Warhammer has a big spendy rulebook: greater complexity.
All that dropping old units is why you should stick to Napoleonics. It’s not as if the 84e Régiment d’Infanterie de ligne is going anywhere.
I agree Superman would crush The Hulk, but Darth Vader would own Superman.
The impossibility of selling new and exciting Napoleonics is what keeps companies out.
That because they have no imagination. I would go with the surprise arrival of a large contingent of Plains Indians. Talk about painting.
Medieval gets a bit interesting in that sort of regard. You can have Japanese Samurai taking on Polish cavalry if you stretch your imagination hard enough. A lot of these games have enough leeway like that so you can play “impossible” battles just for the kicks.
Now that I think of it I played a game called Battlelore where the French got dwarves and the English got elves.
Thinking to myself: “That’s a lot of heavy cavalry on my side. And he sure has a lot of archers…”
Me: “Is this Agincourt? IS THIS AGINCOURT?!”
Yup, it was Agincourt.
Hah! Have you assembled the full order of battle for the Battle of Raszyn yet?
Comanches vs. Cossacks for the title belt!
An interesting note:
Nowadays most miniatures come in plastic or resin. Some use a soft white metal of some sort. In the 70’s and 80’s, however, lead was the metal of choice. It was cheap, plentiful, soft and easy to detail and alter. However, around the late 80’s and early 90’s, the US government was worried about lead poisoning and so tried to get the metal banned from hobbies like miniature wargaming. The industry fought back in court, and eventually won the day.
However, they knew that this would only be the first conflict, and more were sure to come. After that, lead began to be phased out and has been replaced by the above materials. The downside with plastic is that unlike lead, you can’t really shape or alter it as well of course. Politics intrudes even on the nerds!
Which Cossack host?
The replacement metal was usually pewter.
The only way to ingest the lead would have been to chew on the figurines. I have seen gamers have to eat their boasts, but never eat their army. Once again the G swoops in to protect the public from a nonexistent danger.
The argument was: “Well what if a child got and ate one!” Which assumed nerds readily breed and if they did, they allowed their kids any where near their miniatures. (Mine are hidden in the utility room, top shelf at present.) Like you said, protecting from a nonexistent danger.
I used to roll my eyes at the miniature gamers as ultra nerds. Then I got in to X-Wing, and now Flames of War (just a toe in the water at this point). Now I am one of you, to some degree.
I enjoyed Flames of War when I played, but I exclusively borrowed minis. My friends were glad for me to play because again, they adore converts and because I tended to play Germans and they usually wanted to play Allies.
I’ve not played X-Wing mostly because first I realized my misuse of income had limits, and now because I am now ostensibly a responsible adult who can’t spend that much on minis. Right now.
Bah. Call me when you start making your own rule sets.
Germans are always the way to go in a WWII game. That’s where the action is.
They were also eager to keep me going because I was interested in playing Russia. Everyone I knew had Allies or German units, but no one played Russia. Fortunately for my wallet, at the time my friends playing were in the Northwest, and I was living in California at the time. It limited their bad influence.
So how’s it work in Flames of War, is it just Germans and Allies, or can you play other countries?
Why wouldn’t you want to play Russia? In the standard five-power breakdown of WWII games, I think I’d go:
Although I admit I’m mostly extrapolating from Axis & Allies.
Flames of War adds some complexity as you play one country, and you play in a time period (Early, Mid-, and Late World War II period). The time limits what countries and units are available.
You can play the primary combatants: Japan, Germany, UK, USSR and US (though US doesn’t feature in the Early War period of course). But also you can run Italy, France, and other countries as well. There’s actually quite a bit to choose from.
I like X-Wing because there’s no assembly of miniatures required. Version 2 will include “The Force” for players that can use it. That should be interesting…
And there’s several games like that and it’s a definite draw. Again, there’s less customizing and uniqueness, but if you don’t care about that, having it all prepared for you is a boon to the game.
The game I really want to get in to is Team Yankee, based on a book written in ’86, when I was a tanker in Europe. It’s based on the idea that the Cold Ware progressed in to World War III. I’m waiting until I can use two hands…
I’m in a Facebook group for that. Mostly because I was in their Flames of War group and they just added me to the Team Yankee group because I was there. I’ll admit it looks cool and its rules are similar to Flames of War.
“If I find little Algernon sitting in the middle of the basement chewing on Daddy’s Scots Greys, there will be incipient brain damage alright, but not from lead poisoning.”
I’m in that group, too! Well I assume it is the same group.