Warhammer Quest: What if?

What if Warhammer Quest turned out to be the next game GW publishes in its line of "one time release board games"?

What GW Boardgame is next?

So far we have seen the release of Space Hulk...

Thoughts on the State of Gaming, Part 3

I think GW has a workable business model with The Lord of the Rings line, provided they marketed it right.  The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game is a perfectly workable skirmish game--easy enough for a new player to get into with a relative minimum of effort.  Once they become a veteran and want to play games with huge armies, then they can "graduate" into playing War of the Ring, and purchase the additional loads of miniatures.  If The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game was marketed as the "entry-level" game, it might attract new players.  As it is now, it seems to be presented as a sub-game to War of the Ring.


It seems to me that there are three levels of games that could be tapped in a logical progression for each genre.  

1. A fast paced "board" game.  This could consist of interlocking board pieces like Space Hulk or Warhammer Quest, and a few miniatures that act as game pieces.  The game should have simple enough rules to appeal to players who are not gamers (the genre itself should keep the veterans interested).  The game should be something that you could play with your children or disinterested SO.  An example is the Settlers of Catan, which is arguably has some fantasy elements and yet is popular outside of traditional gaming circles.
2. An intermediate level "skirmish" wargame.  This should contain more miniatures than the previous level, while not being huge battles, either.
3. A wargame.  This is the level of the current games of Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, and War of the Ring.

The key to a marketing strategy like this is to ensure that the games should be as compatible as with each other as possible, at least in terms of the miniatures.  That ensures that a new player will "add on" to his army as he progresses up the chain, rather than feel like he has to "start over" each time.  

For each of the three main lines that GW has, I can envision the following tiers:

Warhammer:
    Tier One: Warhammer Quest.  A handful of characters doing a dungeon crawl to accomplish a quest.  
    Tier Two:  Mordheim, or something similar.  Basically warbands fighting each other for whatever reason.
    Tier Three:  Warhammer itself.

Warhammer 40k:
    Tier One:  A Warhammer Quest analogue, perhaps a Rogue Trader or Inquisitorial Retinue on a mission on board a space hulk to accomplish a quest, like retrieve an artifact and then escape.
    Tier Two:  A skirmish game, perhaps more like Necromunda, the original Rogue Trader version of the game, or something along the lines of the Kill Team rules from 6th edition 40k.  A disadvantage of Necromunda itself was that you couldn’t use the miniatures in Warhammer 40k, and, as far as I know, the vice versa.  Suffice it to say, it should a be a squad level game where each player has maybe a dozen miniatures.
    Tier Three:  Warhammer 40k.

The Lord of the Rings
    Tier One:  A game called something like “Escape from Moria”, where the Fellowship (or a small band of other heros), has to escape the mines of Moria before they are captured or killed by its evil denizens.  This is a different concept from the boxed set The Mines of Moria, which is the starter set to The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.  Rather, this game would have the interlocking game pieces like Warhammer Quest or Space Hulk, which creates Moria as the players explore it, searching for an exit.  
    Tier Two:  The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, albeit marketed at the skirmish level like it was originally envisioned.
    Tier Three:  War of the Ring.  

Having a tiered structure like this I think would attract more gamers.  As it is, many new players jump in and get hooked for life, while others start to get involved, build an army, get frustrated at the escalating costs or codex creep or whatever, and then and sell everything on ebay and leave permanently.  Those that are lost are going to tell others about their experiences, and potentially drive others away.  However, with more gaming options available, someone who gets frustrated might instead take a break from the Tier Three game and slide back down to Tier Two or One, and still have fun.  Even if their never go back up to Tier Three, they’re still playing games within the company, and even if they spend way less money than they used to, less is better than none at all.

Thoughts on the State of Gaming, Part 2

Another point of the Specialist Game Rant the I mentioned in Part 1 is that the purpose of the "side games" was to draw in new blood with the side games, in the hopes of hooking them into playing the more expensive flagship games.  What GW supposedly found was that the veteran players were being pulled away by the specialist games rather than new players being hooked into the hobby by them.


On the other hand, I know several people who are gamers but not miniatures gamers, who stay away from GW stuff simply because they don't want to invest the time and money required to buy and paint an army (this is also a primary reason I don't play MMORPGs).  In such a situation, a smaller game like Battlefleet Gothic would be much more palatable to them, as spending less than $100 can get you a decent fleet that won't even take very long to paint--even though many of the miniatures are still expensive metal. 


But it's a maxim of the business industry that it costs ten times more to attract a new customer than to keep a current one.  Every veteran of Warhammer or Warhammer 40k is going to get burned out eventually, and want to play something else, if only for a while.  If the specialist games exist, the veteran will likely go to those.  Even if the veteran never comes back--they're still playing within the company.  If the specialist games aren't available, then the veteran might just leave the company and play another company's game, like Warmachine.  And then they might like that game better...and never come back.


I find myself in that position right now--after not playing Warhammer 40k for a while, I'm looking at Warhammer a little bit, but it'll be a long time before I can build up a workable army, so my motivation is low.  In such a situation, I'd be interested in checking out some of the other games, for example Warhammer Quest, Man O'War, Mordheim, Necromunda, who knows?  But none of them are readily available. 


The main one that is right now, Battlefleet Gothic, is great, and in fact that's the last game I played.  Many of the people who have read my battle reports have said that they've enjoyed that I've incorporated Battlefleet Gothic games into my 40k mini-campaigns.  With GW support of other games, I could potentially do the same thing with them... (for example, a Mordheim or Man O’ War game incorporated with Warhammer.  How can that not be cool?).  GW would do well to have more cross over campaigns and battle reports.  The intermingling of fans of both games can only serve to increase the popularity of both.

Thoughts on the State of Gaming, Part 1

It's been almost three months since I bought anything GW-related. The reasons are many--but boil down to distractions and discipline, pretty much in that order. As can happen with many hobbies, it's become a situation where I want to get back into it, and even feel a little guilty about not being more into it, but I'm not motivated enough to dive in it yet. Possibly this is related to the fact that I haven't even played a game since early June.



My White Dwarf subscription is nearing expiration, and for a while I was seriously considering not renewing (eventually I think I'll crack).  The battle reports in White Dwarf were the original reason I got into doing up my own battle reports, and were by far the most interesting articles to me. Nowadays, even though their battle reports are little more than showcases for their army of the month, I still find them interesting reads, if only to read about the new armies and what has changed.  Sure, I can probably get more news and battle reports than I know what to do with on the internet, but there's still something about having the magazine in hand that is appealing (much in the same way that holding an actual miniature can in ways be more appealing than just looking at a video game character).


Despite the fact that I haven’t played the games all that much recently, nor have a I painted very diligently recently, I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about it, both the games and the hobby.  What I like about it, what I don’t like, and what I think is missing.  The benefit of being out of the loop is...perspective.


I found an interesting link while surfing recently: It's some generic rants about the state of GW games and the company's marketing practices, and even though they are 5-6 years old, much of it still rings true.


One of the rants in particular talks about the demise of the Specialist Games, which I think is a real tragedy. The short of the story is this: Back in the old days GW had its two flagship games, Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000, but also released rules and miniatures for many other games. These other games, while popular with dedicated fanbases, didn't attract quite the same audience as the two main ones. As such, GW has essentially discontinued the specialist games in favor of their "primary" games.


This seems antithetical to the original purpose of Games Workshop. I don't purport to know what GW's original "mission statement" was, if it even had one, but a company that has a name like "Games Workshop" seems to have an implied purpose. Namely, creating games. Creating two games and then sticking with them (albeit with new editions) doesn't fit that title very well. Back in the 90s when there were a dozen games running around, many with their own dedicated miniatures lines, with new games being developed all the time...that when was Games Workshop actually lived up to its name. Even though I'm not interested in playing all of the games available then, I still wish some of them were still around.


One of the major problems I think is maintaining the multiple miniatures lines. With the move to mostly plastic miniatures, I would think that separate miniatures lines would be easier to maintain. I think the market still exists for Epic 40k and Battlefleet Gothic, and probably a smaller market exists on the fantasy side (Warmaster and Man O'War (the latter despite being discontinued)).  The online communities that remain for these games are a testament to this.


The example set by Gorkamorka was a bad move in my opinion.  while the miniatures themselves were cool and usable in 40k, why the switch to different bases? The only reason I can think of to do it is to provide some distance from 40k and emphasize the game’s differences.  But why would you want to do that?  Perhaps the fear was that people would think the game was essentially the same as 40k, and so there was no reason to get it.  But it’s well known that many players buy the various boxed games because they just want the miniatures.  By having a different basing style, it’s an immediate turn off.


The current method of revitalizing The Lord of the Rings line by making The War of the Ring game is a better approach. Yes, The War of the Ring uses additional bases, but you don't have to re-base the existing models you have--you just plop them into the new, large bases. 



Space Hulk is an anomaly--which makes me think it was an experiment to test the waters.  From the beginning GW said it was a one-shot deal-- (although this has generated no end of skepticism by the cynical, who assumed that it was just a marketing ploy, and that it would remain in production indefinitely).  As a one-shot, the fact that most of the miniatures can’t be used in 40k without modification to their bases isn’t as much of a problem.  But still...I’m hoping that Space Hulk was just a “one shot” in that it they won’t support it beyond the initial release, and not that it was the only “old school” game that they ever intend to re-release.

GW Board Games

Like everyone else, I've been drooling over the pictures of Space Hulk, but I'm still torn as to whether to get it. The fact that GW's website has been having problems hasn't helped--in fact, it may prevent me from getting it as its problems may allow me time to come to my senses.

The game looks fantastic, and it undoubtedly it would be fun to play...but when do I have the time to play it? As it is, I barely find the time to play 40k. On the other hand, if I have the game, so long as I take care of it, it'll last a lifetime--and I'm sure to find time to play it someday. Speaking of which...

I still have all the floor tiles from the old Space Hulk game (I wonder if they'd be compatible with the new tiles...hmmm). I also have practically everything from Advanced Space Crusade as well.I've played Advanced Space Crusade all of once--the rules were pretty complex, and it just didn't seem as fun as Space Hulk.

The problem these days is that in my old age I'm married with a 6-month-old daughter. Getting to the FLGS is a 20 minute drive. At best I get together with gaming friends maybe once a month--and when I do, we play 40k. These are not the days of college/grad school where practically every weekend I could play 40k, participate in an regular RPG, try out lots of other games etc. But there are times when I get together with friends for an evening, etc--This is an opportunity for board games. Problem is, for the most part, these people aren't really into games like 40k--or rather, one person might be, but their SO is not. A game like Space Hulk is really geared for sci-fi nerds. While the term "sci-fi nerd" might describe many of my friends, it doesn't necessarily describe their wives.

What is needed is a game that bridges the gap--a game that satisfies the sci-fi/fantasy urges of the geeks while being tolerable to the non-geeks. In order to work for a mixed group, what would such a game need?

• 1. (Painted) Miniatures. A big attraction for people who are normally indifferent to this stuff is the painted miniatures. I can't count the number of times people who I know aren't remotely interested the games nonetheless fawn over the miniatures I've painted, never having seen anything like them before. If the miniatures themselves attract their interest, they may stay interested long enough to play the game.
  
• 2. Simple rules. It must be simple enough that anyone can learn to play very quickly. A downside to games like 40k is its complexity. For the geeks, they are so enthralled by the background that they'll put up with the rules complexities long enough to learn them. Someone not already invested in the background will have a shorter attention span. The sooner they are having fun, the better.
  
• 3. Cooperative gameplay. Competition can be fun, but it can deter new players. Even if the rules are simple, a player who is new to both the game and the genre will probably feel intimidated, assuming that the uber-geeks playing the game will trounce them because they have so much more experience/knowledge of the game and genre.
  
• 4. Quick gameplay. You need to be able to play a complete game in a few hours, even with distractions. It needs to be "light" enough that the game can continue if one person is taken away for a few minutes--getting drinks, using the bathroom, checking on the babysitter, etc.

A game that fulfills many of these requirements is one that I would like to see come back: Warhammer Quest.It had miniatures, simple rules (with potential for more advanced rules), cooperative and quick gameplay. New players even could play the game without realizing that they are (*gasp*) playing an RPG. If described to a skeptical new player that it's a cooperative board game rather than a "dungeon crawl roleplaying game", they may be more amenable to giving it a try. Once they've had fun, then you can break the news of what they were really playing.

Back in the day when Warhammer Quest first came out (1995), I was focused more on 40k and Space Marine (Epic 40k), and less interested in the fantasy side, and board games in general. So I passed on it. But a while back, in looking over some old White Dwarfs of mine, I found myself wishing I had gotten it. With time more at a premium nowadays, I'm wishing it would return. I'm wondering (hoping?) if Space Hulk sells well, that it might spur GW into bringing back some of its other games, if only in limited editions. If Warhammer Quest comes back, I'll be sure to get it this time.