More free rules, please

 You know what trend in gaming I absolutely love? Free rules.

It's cropping up more and more these days, as more companies embrace this little thing called the internet. And if you ever want a clear sign that free rules pdfs are the way of the future, look no further than the fact that even Games Workshop has gotten in on it. If you had asked me even a couple years back if GW would ever release the rules for their games, let alone 40k, for free I'd have laughed in your face and called you an idiot.

Looks like I'm the idiot now.

But still, this is a great thing for gaming, which is why I want to talk about it. I feel like my last few editorials have been a little more negative, and I don't want to just be a guy who shits all over the industry all day. I really do love gaming and am passionate about it, but those topics needed to be discussed and it feels like nobody ever wants to discuss them for some reason.

So, let's talk about happy things and how free rules is dope.

I'm not entirely sure who the first company was to offer the rules to their game for free online, and it may even go back to the 90's for all I know. But it always struck me as a little odd that as the internet and things like tablets and smart phones all became more accessible and commonplace that companies were still out here trying to sell physical rulebooks that took up actual space in one's home.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do love me a good rulebook. I have a whole box filled with rulebooks, plus the handful that I use for regular gaming. I get the appeal, I do, and if you only play one or two games then it's probably not so bad. If you're someone like me, however, those books very quickly overwhelm you. I had a ton of rulebooks, plus supplementary books and not enough bookshelf space for them all. I had to start selling some off or giving them to friends who were collectors because they took up too much space in my life. 

Digitally, though? Not a problem at all. I can have dozens of books, possibly even pushing upwards of 100, on a single device. Or toss them all onto Google Drive and have access from my phone, tablet and laptop. Digital rulebooks are the way for me 99% of the time these days.

That doesn't cover the cost, though. I did mention free books being a great thing, and I stand by that. I get that some companies maybe can't quite justify giving away their rules for free. Companies like Metal King Studios probably rely on the revenue of rulebook sales just as much as they rely on the actual sales of the models, which is fair given that it's a one man show. But Relic Blade does have a free quick start rules document (at least I think it still does) that lets you get a taste, and the digital copy of the rulebook is usually dirt cheap. 

And that's the thing for me: if you can't give away the full book at least have some sort of quick start or demo document so people can get a taste. As a former critic being able to hop onto sites and download entire books for free is a godsend. I can check out a game, read the basics and get the gist of a game and decide if I want to then invest. This is what it means to be consumer focused. Hook us with free rules, give us a little taste, and then reel us in with the models. 

Because the models are the real sellers, and where you're making the majority of your money from. A lot of games I stumbled upon by seeing a model, going "that looks fucking sweet" and then finding out more. Now, by offering the rules for free, you can really get people looking. Because a free pdf costs them nothing but a little time to read, and if the person goes "oh, maybe this isn't for me" they can just delete the pdf. For people who love to try new games (i.e. me) and spread the good word of smaller games (again, hi) this is a great selling point. 

For example: I fucking love Heavy Gear Blitz. It's one of my favorite games on the market right now, and I don't just say that because they were my last writing client, but I also know it's not a hugely popular game. I managed to get my hands on enough stuff to run some demos and get some friends to try it out. One of the big selling points I used was that the rules were free, so people could check out the full rules and the armies without spending a dime. Being able to dive deeper into the rules if they wanted to, and also look at not just the models but get an idea of how they actually play and function was a big draw. It's a game changer. People could both buy the faction they liked the look of most and also get an idea of what things did and the roles they filled without needing to buy books that could end up out of date.

Living rulebooks are the way of the future, and I'm so happy to see more games getting into it. Heavy Gear, Carnevale, Dropzone/fleet Commander, Bot War, Bushido, Malifaux, A Song of Ice and Fire (although I believe you need to download their War Council app to get the rules, but that's also free), Warcry, Batman and obviously stuff like One Page Rules.

And here's the thing: you don't need to give away the whole farm. One Page Rules is a great example of this. You can get the core rules totally free for their games, giving you what you need to play (plus their army builder is free and dope) and get a feel for the game. Then, should you wish, you can become a patron of their Patreon for $5 and get the expanded rules with all sorts of optional stuff that just enhances the games (or got the $10 route and get the STLs and such as well if you so choose). But none of that extra stuff is necessary, so you can still enjoy the game without spending a dime on rules.

Another example is Bushido. The basics of the rules, and all the stat cards, are right there for free on their website. The only things missing from the rules document are scenario rules. So to try the game you don't even need to buy anything if you have models on the right sized bases, and if you want to get into the thick of it then you can buy the rulebook and get the scenario stuff along with lore and whatnot. And even that might not be totally needed, as the Bushido Companion app has all the scenario stuff right there (insofar as I can tell). 

This gives people a chance to see your game, read the rules and get a feel for how it might work before the invest. And then you still offer physical books if that's what someone wants. My buddy Gavin loves him a good physical rulebook, and all the games I've mentioned still offer that, as far as I can tell, should you want it. 

I would love to see this trend continue, especially with bigger companies that we know can afford to do so. If you're going to try and sell me a single $200 model then you can damn well offer me the rules to use it free of charge. Like I said: I know some companies probably can't pull this off fully, but a sampler will give people a chance to see your game. People are hesitant to drop $30-60 on a rulebook for a game they may not even end up liking, so offering the basic rules as a freebie with the extras and special stuff locked behind the full rulebook is totally valid for smaller companies like Metal King and Oathsworn (who make the fantastic Burrows & Badgers skirmish game).

So at the risk of sounding like an entitled prick: more free rules, please.

Are licensed games getting out of hand?

 I can't be the only person in this hobby who struggles with licensed games, right?

Okay, let's back up a second. I'm not saying games that are using licensed IPs are bad, although some are. But it's not the fact they're licensed that makes them bad, is what I'm trying to get at here. I think there are several that are pretty solid, actually.

But holy shit are there just a ton of them, or am I imagining things?

Star Wars: X-Wing
Star Wars: Armada
Star Wars: Legion
Star Wars: Shatterpoint
Marvel Crisis Protocol
Judge Dredd
A Song of Ice and Fire
Star Trek Federation Commander
Doctor Who
The Walking Dead
Batman
Harry Potter
DC Universe
Heroclix
Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game

And those are just the ones I can come with off the top of my head that are still in production. That doesn't include shit like the Marvel Universe Miniatures Game, Star Trek Attack Wing (which I'm fairly certain is no longer being produced?), the Star Wars miniatures game from either the early 90's or the one produced by Wizards of the Coast in the early 2000's, Mars Attacks and so on. Nor does that list include upcoming stuff, like the new Star Trek: Into the Unknown. I also didn't include stuff I don't know the status of Like the various Alien miniatures properties because that's just a clusterfuck of absurd proportions.

So it's not just me, yeah? Also, those first five games I listed are all made by the same company. And this is just miniatures games! The list would go on almost until the end of time if I included card games and board games.

I've played my fair share of these: X-Wing, Batman, Crisis Protocol, Middle Earth, I've played Legion and gotten demos of Armada and I had a good collection of Heroclix stuff back in the day along with stuff for the WotC Star Wars game. I'm not intrinsically opposed to licensed games, but it is starting to feel like they're everywhere these days. Maybe it's just because Star Wars is basically a license to print money and Asmodee hopped on that shit real hard. 

And you'd think I'd be into this, right? I love Star Wars, Star Trek, Batman, Marvel and Middle Earth. And I love miniatures gaming. And I've had a good time playing most of these games. So why don't I love them?

The answer is simple: they don't excite me, and I feel too constrained. I feel like I'm being leashed, creatively, and that really sours the mood for me.

What do I mean by this? I mean that these things exist in the world with specific styles and looks, which means when it comes time to start painting models I feel like the decision has been made for me. I know, on a technical level, that I can paint my shit however I please and nobody can really stop me, and that should be enough to push me on in painting. But all it takes is that one dude, and we know the exact mouth-breathing neckbeard I mean, to give me a hard fucking time because I decided to have some fucking fun with my miniatures that I paid for to immediately put me off the whole damned thing. That may sound petty, and it probably is, but I don't want to have to deal with that. 

And often times I find myself just not liking the official colors, or wanting to deal with obnoxious colors. For example: Galactic Republic in Star Wars: Legion. Clones wear white armor. Why? Because George Lucas really wanted to hammer home the lazy ass imagery and make sure nobody missed his brilliant foreshadowing. But white is a massive pain in the ass to paint, even doing it the quick way of just using some white color primer it's still annoying to deal with if you have to touch stuff up.

Marvel Crisis Protocol is the same way. I feel caged. Iron Man is red and gold, no exceptions. And again, I could paint him green, but I don't want to get a lecture from some turbo-nerd about "not respecting the source material" or some nonsense.

Compare this to something like Battletech. That games gives you basically all the freedom you could ever want. I can paint my mercenaries any color I like, and nobody can say a damn thing about it not being "lore accurate." Hell, I can even paint canonical units in various color schemes and just say it's camo for a certain environment and people would go "yeah, that tracks." Even the biggest Battletech nerds won't bat an eye at my Free Worlds League (PURPA BIRB!) being painted in arctic camo while being part of the 3rd Free Worlds Guard. It just doesn't happen.

That's the crux of the problem for me: I like to think of myself as a creative person. I want to create my own stuff (within reason, obviously) and games like Battletech, Heavy Gear, Relic Blade, MERCS, Grimdark Future and so forth give me that freedom. Even heavily character centric games like Bushido don't really try and pen you in. There's the "official" studio paint schemes, but nobody in that community gives a shit if you want your Prefecture of Ryu guys to be wearing green because it's your favorite color.

I just don't feel like you get that in licensed games. At least not if you don't want to be accosted at some point. And while yes it is easy to tell said turbo-nerds to fuck right off, or say things like "if the company wants them to be a certain color they can sell them pre-painted" and go about your day, it just isn't worth the fight for me.

I also feel like the companies making the games are sort of locked into a corner. They can't just create new shit, generally speaking, because it sounds dope. I don't know if every unit in A Song of Ice and Fire appears in the books (I only read the first one, and hated it), but I do know that Disney has a pretty tight yoke on Star Wars and Marvel and thus the poor folks at Atomic Mass Games have to have everything they propose quintuple approval and verified by Disney because it can go into production. And sometimes, like with Middle Earth, they can bring in stuff that was in the books but not the films (hence why that game has so many characters that never appear in any of the movies). But overall, it ends up feeling like all creativity is being dictated somewhere else.

Maybe I'll get over it and just go wild. Legion is a solid game, I've found myself looking at A Song of Ice and Fire (based on books I hated and a 28mm mass battle rank n' flank game with model removal?!) and Middle Earth constantly calls to me because there is some freedom there with the lesser seen stuff like Harad, Far Harad, Corsairs and even something as major as the Dwarves of Khazad Dum since we never see any of them in the movies.

But for me, games that give me that freedom to create and sort of do my own thing will always win out. Letting me spread my wings just a little bit more will endear me to a game far more than name recognition ever well.

First Impressions: Relic Balde

 Look at me doing something other than complaining!

Yes indeed, I got together with my good friend Troy to try out a game I've been super interested in for a while now: Relic Blade. All the models here are Troy's, so admire his paint work if you so choose.

Relic Blade comes to us from the mind of one Sean Sutter and his company Metal King Studios. It's a 28mm fantasy skimish game in the truest sense of the term, and it simply slaps.

This game is basically everything I want in a miniatures game these days. It's easy to learn, there's plenty of tactical options, the rules aren't a muddled nightmare, it understands basic 21st century game design and has a stupid amount of charm. It's so clearly a labor of love for Mr. Sutter, and because of that the game oozes with character and love like few others I've seen.

Anyway, Troy and I did a normal 100 point game. When building a warband you pick which faction you'll be playing: Advocate or Advesary. Yeah, there are only two factions in the game. But don't let that fool you, each one has sub factions, sort of. Really they're just themed boxes you can buy to get you on your way towards playing, as anything from each faction can run together. Thus it's entirely possible to have a warband with a dragonman cleric, a wood elf archer, a gnome riding a magic carpet and a Persain themed goblin. Yes, those are all real things in this game.

Characters have their stats: action dice, movement value and armor. They also have a series of actions they can do, which tell you how many dice you need to do said action along with target number, damage modifier and any special rules. All of this plus more is brilliantly conveyed via the stat cards which feature the game's beautiful, almost comic-book styled, art from Mr. Sutter.

Sheer beauty.

When a character activates they get a number of action dice (in the example above the Cleric of Justice gets four) to do what they want to do. Moving, attacking, special abilites and objective actions all require the use of AD. This is a brilliantly simple system that doesn't get bogged down in pointless complexity for the sake of complexity. There's no bullshit for the sake of artificial depth, just solid and fluid mechanics.

The forces move towards the objective.

The game, rightly, uses alternating activations, so player involvment is constant and you can try to react in something more akin to real time. And since the average game will feature somewhere between four and six models a side things go by at a good clip. Relic Blade is also played on a 2x2 table, so it doesn't take up a ton of space or take long for the carnage to begin. This also leads to games not lasting all damn day, so being able to squeeze in several games in two hours is a real possibility here.

Once models engage in combat with each other they can start using attack actions. These will show how many AD they take to preform, and the faces shown on the dice on the card are the target number. If you manage to roll the exact faces shown you get a critical hit. Crits come in three flavors based on number of dice being rolled: one, two of three. Each increases the damage potential. Characters can use a focus action to add an extra die to an attempt, which is the only way to reach three dice since nothing has an inherent attack that rolls three dice.

The Battle Pigs swarm the objective, and promptly forget it exists.

If you hit you roll a d6 and add the attack's damage value to the roll. Now, if you score a two die crit you get +1d6 to the damage roll, and if you manage a three die crit you get +2d6 on the damage roll. So it's entirely possible to roll three dice for damage, adding it all together plus the damage stat of the attack. The defender also rolls a d6 (or 2d6 if they used an action of gain a dodge token) and add their armor to the result. Whatever the difference is is how much damage is done to the defender. The game can be brutally savage, and it's not uncommon to see guys getting one shotted. My Thief and Cleric of Justice got dropped in a single attack from a very angry swine.

The scrum that quickly ensued.

I really like this level of brutality, it reminds me of Dark Age which was probably one of the most punishing miniatures games I ever experienced because even your super high cost awesome dude coule get dropped in one shot from a scrub with a bit of broken pipe. It rewards smart gameplay, and I love that.

Another thing I really appreciate in Relic Blade is how many abilities require die rolls. It gives a real sense of characters actually having to concentrate and try to do stuff. There are some innate abilities that don't need die rolls, but the ones with the bigger impact do. For example, my Wild Elf Druid could turn into a bear. Yeah, she could just turn into a giant fuck off bear and start mauling people. This still required her to try to do it, and the first time I attempted it I failed and burned two my her four AD that turn which put her in a tough spot when the pigs came gunning for her. But when it does succeed there's a real sense of joy, but maybe that's just because she became a fucking bear with which to initiate the aforementioned maulings.

Hibernation time is over!

Relic Blade also features a campaign system, but we didn't play with any of that so I can't really say how well it works. Troy assures me it works quite well, and with the short length of games he says a group can, given a day, play an entire campaign in five to six hours.

There are also rules for wild creatures based on the type of terrain you're playing on, allowing fey spirits, giant lizard monsters and skeletal pricks to show up and start attacking both warbands. On top of that there are optional rules for playing on grid maps, which I think is brilliant if you, like me, want to play at home but don't have terrain. It gives you choices, and that's always greatly appreciated.

The models are also beautiful. They have a nice old school charm to them, and the parts counts are kept to sane levels (that's a post for the future, trust me) with many being single piece. And if you don't like the official models, for whatever insane reason, you can just buy PDFs of the various stat cards and use whatever models you want. So, if you already have a good sized collection of fantasy stuff that could easily slot into the roles of some of these characters and you don't want to add more models to your horde then you can still play without needing to buy more minis.

Now, I always like to bang on about how no game is perfect, every game has it's flaws. I got to tell you, though, that Relic Blade is damn near perfect.

The flaws it does have, in my opinion, are that the critical rules can be a bit wonky to understand at first, especially for three die crits. They aren't terrible, but the first few read throughs I found myself going "wait, what?" a few more times than expected. It works in practice, but it is just a little weird. 

By also only having two factions it can sometimes feel like warbands are a bit of a hodge podge, and it would maybe be nice if there was some sort of bonus for running thematic warbands to encourage a sense of uniformity. Not a deal breaker, and the flexibility is great, but if you're the tpye of person who needs stuff to feel unified then the small selectiion for some of the subfactions may leave you wanting.

My last "complaint" is that some of the upgrades feel either crazy situational, or really limited. For example, my Cleric of Justice had a piece of equipment that gave him extra armor if he was critically wounded (the little box on the damage track with the shattered bone), but he got dropped in a single blow so that simply ended up never applying and being a total waste of points. I'm sure in cases where your cleric character doesn't get bitch slapped with a halberd it can be useful, but it does feel a bit too easy to circumvent. And other cards just don't seem vesatile. That same card can only be used by clerics if I recall, and as far as I can tell that is the only cleric model in the whole game so far. Another example is the Wild Elf Geomancer from the Wilderkin box set. The box comes with a handful of cards that can be used by wizards, but they require a rock spires, and only the Geomancer can summon rock spires thus far so the cards might as well just say "Geomancer Only" on them.

But, these are also incredibly minor and petty nitpicks that in no way detract from the overall awesomeness of the game. And with the range ever expanding (and a new Kickstarter project on the way to help with that) my complaints about the cards may be undone. Hell, I'm only nitpicking because I feel like it's my job to do so. 

This game is still the closest to perfection I've ever seen in all my many years of gaming and reviewing. It does just about everything right, from the rules to the atmosphere to the art style. It's a stellar game dripping with charm and clearly maxed out its charisma, and it is simply pure. The amount of passion Mr. Sutter has for his game, his world, is totally invigorating and a breath of fresh air in an industry where the big dogs all feel like the same thing with a slightly different hoodie on. 

This is why I got into gaming, games like this are why I got in so deep and why I eventually became a journalist. It's people like Sean Sutter, with that heart and soul, that give me hope for this niche little hobby. It's games like this that remind me why I try to spread their gospel across the land. Because they're good, and they deserve all the attention because the person making them cares.

So yeah, I suspect there will be more Relic Blade in my future, so you may well see some unboxings of various models here. Until then, I encourage you to be not afriad when wading into the waters of miniatures gaming: expand your horizions and check out more of the games my small studios. Be like bear...

BEAR FEARS NOTHING!

Let's talk about scale

 I feel like this shouldn't be such a difficult conversation to have with gamers, but apparently it is. The discussion of proper use of scale in miniatures games.

As a gamer I live by a pretty simple creed: the bigger the battle; the smaller the miniatures. I'm sure I'm not the only persomn who feels this way, but I will admit that I, what with my limited space for stuff in my apartment, may fall on the more extreme end of the scale. To me, the moment a game demands I have more than a dozen or so dudes I start asking about the scale of the models being used. Now this isn't always the case, as I do play Grimdark Future at 28mm. generally speaking, though, I don't want to need a ton of 28mm+ dudes to play a game that could probably work just as well at 15mm.

And this isn't to say that 28-32mm is bad. It's just that that scale works best, in my opinion, for skirmish games with small numbers of models. Look at stuff like Relic Blade, MERCS and Bushido: these are all skirmish games with low model counts of usually between four and six models per side. Relic Blade and Bushido both play a 2x2 table, while MERCS caps you at five models and plays on a 3x3. And it works there. 

Where that scale stops working so well is when you want to do big battles. Games like Warhammer 40k being the most egregious offenders with not only large numbers of models on the table, but then needing large models as well. Again, I play Grimdark Future (the suprior alternative to 40k's drivil) at 28mm and yes I'm aware of that making me something of a hypocrite. But I stand by the fact that anyone who bought Apocalypse sized shit for 40k pissed their money away. 28mm scaled titans? Yeah, nothing about that sounds smart to me.

To continue on the Games Workshop bashing for a second, remember Warhammer Fantasy? Remember how in 8th edition it was giant units of 50 models and then single units of giant models? That was fucking idiotic, and just plain bad game design. Tables were sparsely decorated with terrain because you had units with front facings of 400mm in some cases. 

And yet we know GW can do games at the proper scale, as both 40k and Fantasy had properly scaled games in Epic and Warmaster respectively. By being 6mm and 10mm they could capture those epicly huge armies without it being a clusterfuck needing massive tables and an entire weekend to play three turns. And those games got shitcanned, and instead GW kept pushing bigger and bigger models into their core games because people kept buying them because...actually I don't know why. I guess because big = cool to some people?

And what kills me is that companies are still not understanding proper scale!

Lets take a gander at Conquest: Last Argument of Kings from Para Bellum Games.

This is considered a starting point

It's a mass battle, rank n' flank miniatures game. Now, they did mkae the right call in the newest edition to do away with the stupidity that is individual model removal, but there's something that doesn't quite come across in the picture which is the biggest flaw in the game. Those regular infantry models? 38mm. Yep, they made a game at 38mm scale. Not only is this bullshit because nobody else uses this scale (and this is something I meant to bring up in my previous post about proprietary nonsense), but it's jsut a nonsensical scale. And then you want a mass battle game out of it? 

Who thought this was a good plan?

But people love their giant models, I guess. Probably why I still see people asking when they're getting a fucking AT-AT in Star Wars: Legion.

Wait, what? You want this in Legion?

No, this couldn't possibly be a problem

let's do some math here, if you don't mind. According to Wikipedia, an AT-AT is 22.5 meters in height. Now, Legion is 35mm scale (god dammit, is anything in this game normal?). If we use a base 1.8 meters for the average height of a human male, that means that an AT-AT, to be in scale, would be the same height as roughly 12.5 dudes. That's 437.5mm if I'm doing my calculations right, which would convert to 17.22 inches. That's damn near 17 1/4 inches in height. That's insanely impractical as a gaming piece, not to mention it'd be closer to 18 inches in length. Even on a standard 6x4 table it would be nearly half as long as the table itself. 

And people think this is a good idea? If you want a cool AT-AT model just buy a model AT-AT that's not going to be bigger than some dogs. 

And if you think I'm being unrealistic with my math, consider this. In Empire Strikes Back we see an AT-AT step on a snow speeder. Now, we have a model of said speeder in legion already, so we can get a pretty decent account of the size we're looking at here.

And this may be slightly smaller than the game's scale

That model is on a 100mm base, and it takes up basically the whole thing. Now, here's a still from Empire of one being stepped on.

Crunch

So each foot of the AT-AT would be, roughly, the size of that speeder. And it has four of the fucking things.

"Just scale it down to fit the table better" I hear some hypothetical reader say, but then what's the fucking point? You'd have to scale it down so much that it basically stops being an AT-AT at that point and might as well be some original creation that just happens to resemble an AT-AT. 

And it's not just Legion that this comes up in, I've seen people say that they'd consider playing Battletech if it were 28mm instead of 6mm.

Now, Battletech is one of my all time favorite games, and aprt of what makes it work so well is that scale. At 6mm the game functions correctly, allowing big stompy robots on reasonable sized tables with tanks and jet fighters to boot (and infantry to step on like above picture).

So let's do some more math, using this official poster from Catalyst Game Labs to give us an idea of size. It's worth noting that Battletech has been crazy detailed about all sorts of things with the mechs, but one thign that never seems to be consistent is how big they should be. It actually bugs me a bit becasue you can tell me exactly how many rounds of autocannon ammo a mech can hold, but not how tall it should be? So this is the closest we have to anyhting officially giving heights of various mechs.

At least it's something?

According to this, and apologies if it's hard to read, the Atlas, canonically the tallest, non super-heavy, mech as far as I'm aware, comes in at 14.85 meters in height. So using our 1.8 tall meter human as a standard this thing would be about 8 1/4 people tall, which when converted to 28mm would be 231mm in height. That comes to just over nine inches tall. Again, not even sort of practical as a gaming piece.

But maybe I'm being a dick using the biggest mech, so let's look at the smallest mech on that sheet: the Commando. It's about 12 meters tall, and is the lightest classification of mech in the game. How big would that be in 28mm scale? About as tall one of these.

28-32mm pilot for scale (seriously, what scale is 40k these days?)

Knights are, from what I can find, between 9-12 meters tall, so a light mech would be roughly the size of a 40k Knight model at 28mm, and that fucker is on a 170mm base.

Being 6mm allows the game to have some breathing room, while letting the mechs be the focal point without getting into stupid huge territory.

This is one of those game design 101 things: scale matters. it's why By Fire & Sword works, because it's 15mm it allows for big armies and units without sacrificing the gameplay. Same with Flames of War. Imagine trying to play a game of Bolt Action that replicated the size of an army in Flames of War. You'd need a tennis court to play it on and still have room to move stuff around with any sense of tactics. Even Warlod Games, notorious for trying to do all history at 28mm, has acknowledged that sometimes you need to use smaller models to accurately portray big battles and started giving us their Epic Battles stuff.

Games insisting on being 28mm+ when it serves little practical purpose just baffles me. Sometimes it may be out of the hands of the designers (such as licensed games like Legion), but when it's an origial thing I just don't get it. Is it jsut because that's what GW does? Stop trying to be like GW, it's not worth it and you'll never likely pull in enough of their brainwashed, sunken cost fallacy spouting sycophants to make it worth it.

Scale matters more than some people seem to understand. Big models can be cool, when done right and used sparingly (see Bot War combiners), but when it comes to making a game the practicality of these items being pieces for a game played on a limited table space needs to be taken into consideration. If shit gets too big, it stops being practical and, also crucial, affordable. If Atomic Mass Games did put in a to scale AT-AT, you think you'd really be buying one? It'd probably be $1,000. Hell, the not to scale Super Star Destroyer in Aramada was $250.

And it's not even like detail of the models is an issue, you can get insane detail on 15mm stuff these days, and the Warmaster community is showing how detailed to can make even 10mm models with 3d sculpting and printing. 

I think that's enough for today, apologies for this being such a long winded rant but I really needed to get this one off my chest. So, my fellow consumers, jsut remember to think practically about games in the future, and how big they really need to be.  

How Much Proprietary Is Too Much?

 So full disclaimer here before anyone decides to come kicking down my door: I am not inherently against the use of proprietary items in games. You may have guess that from every single game I've done unboxings and first impressions of thus far. All of them use something, and I've never thrown a shitfit over it.

That being said, is there a point when it becomes too much?

Now I want to clarify something, when I say proprietary items I don't mean basic stuff like stat cards or upgrade cards or tokens. Those are all pretty essential and not really a deal breaker for anyone as far as I know (although I am firmly in the "offer stat cards for fucks sake" camp). When I talk about needing proprietary items to play a game I mean specialty dice and the likes.

I think that these types of things can be done well, and correctly. In games like Godtear, Oak & Iron or Warhammer Underworlds the special dice and such used don't bother me in the slightest becasue they are, by and large, self contained games. And in all three of those cases, buying a starter set just makes sense (especially for Oak & Iron). Obviously they can be expanded with new champions/ships/warbands respectively, but by being that sort of board/wargame hybrid they feel less...manipulative. This also applies to something like X-Wing, or at least did when I played back after Episode 7 came out. I bought the starter box, but only had three ships I didn't want to worry about. yeah I bought an extra pack of dice because some of the combos got a little crazy, but it was largely self contained.

And that brings us to another Star Wars game, and probably the most egregious offender of too much proprietary in my opinon: Legion. You may recall that I quite enjoyed my game of Legion way back when, and I still maintain that it is a solid enough game. I get why people like it mechanically, although I think it should be 15mm, and if asked if someone who enjoys Star Wars and wargames should look into it I will absolutely tell them yes. But it does go fucking mental with the proprietary stuff. Basically everything in that game is proprietary: the dice, the movement tools, the range rulers for shooting, even the god damned bases aren't standard sized. Yeah, the normal infantry are on 27mm bases. Who does that?

And to make it worse, as I mentioned in my first impression post, if you buy a starter set (over $100 investment, mind you) it doesn't even get you enough dice to actually play the game proper!

This gets you three more of each type of dice

It just baffles me how anyone could think this was the best way. And it brings me to my main issue: what does it add to the game? What does not using inches for measurement add to the game that the special tools do? The only thing I can think of is that it means no conversions in countries that use the metric system. That's not enough to justify it for me. What do the dice add? Nothing to real value in this nerd's opinion. It just lets them have different levels of dice, which could still be accomplished by just using a tiered dice system and letting people use the piles of dice they likely already own.

Again, not a bad game, but it does, to borrow one of my favorite British terms, absolutely take the piss.

It wouldn't be so bad if things were easily converted for those who don't want to spend money on extra stuff (i.e. anyone who maybe wants to start by buying one of the battle force sets that don't come with range tools or dice), but it seems even that doesn't work. The shortest movement tool is roughly 3 inches, for example. Not exactly 3 inches, but roughly around that mark. 

Now this probably all sounds like someone who hates proprietary items in games, and as I established I'm not one of those. So let me talk about two games I find myself quite enamoured with that use proprietary items: Bot War and World of Twilight. 

Bot War uses non-standard dice. Okay, not great because again it would be nice to have to keep track of a separate pile of dice, but whatever. Here's the difference, and where I really draw the line with Legion: one pack gets you enough to play a normal game. 

Five of each dice and some energy cubes

If you don't want to buy the two player starter, this is a whopping $15. Bam, done. Compare that to the Legion dice pack, which retails at $18 and doesn't give you enough dice to roll a small squad's shooting without having to re-roll at least one die. Now, there are the rare few models in Bot War that have stats that will require you to roll more than five dice, but I think there's a total of four in the whole game.

Lord Humongous here being one of the rare ones (and he stands at over 5 inches tall)

So that dice pack is, generally speaking, enough to play the game comfortably. And that's the key thing to me: I want to have to buy as few things as possible to enjoy the game. Obviously with a platoon scaled game you need more models than you do a skirkish game, but I want to keep the extra purchases of non-model items to a minimum.

The other game I mentioned as being a good example of proprietary is World of Twilight. Brief aside: World of Twilight is one of the best games I've ever played. The rules are solid and innovative, they're fun as hell and the game packs so much charm per square inch that it verges on creating some sort of singularity. It's an absolute fucking disgrace that more people don't know about it. Go check it out, for the love of god.

Now in World of Twilight combat is handled in a unique fashion. Each model as a combat score, and when fighting you take a number of combat stones equal to your combat score and choose what you will allocate to attack and what you will allocate to defense (Bushido does a similar method using dice, and is also awesome). The game also uses a random activation system akin to Bolt Action, but there are two activation tokens that denote when combats are fought (outside of special abilities that let you initiate one out of turn). Sounds like you need a ton of stuff to play, but it all comes in one easy to use package.

And for the low price of ten quid (or roughly $12)

But all of these things can be substitued pretty easily if you don't want to make that extra investment (although it's dirt cheap). Combat stones? Use coins, heads are a success and tails a failure. Activation tokens? Use different colored dice, it's not like we gamers are in short supply of a variety of dice. So these extra things aren't actually required to play the game, although for the cost the official stuff is great. 

This brings me to the point I made earlier: these things feel like a new take. Special dice for the sake of special dice? I'm a little iffy on. If the game does other things right then I'm willing to let it slide, for the most part. But in World of Twilight the core mechanics are so unique and different that you can't really replace them with a normal dice roll. I suppose you could do 1-3 is  fail and 4-6 is a success if you wanted, but seeing how you use a d6 to make Tough rolls it could get confusing quickly. But becasue it does something different it doesn't feel like as much of a copout, you know? Why does a game that uses dice need special dice? Does it, really? 

Again, I'm not against these types of things at face value. Legion is a good game, Crisis Protocol is a good game that suffers from the same design philosophy, I'm sure Shatterpoint is fun. But I'm getting to a point where needing tons of extra stuff for a single game just feels like a way to gouge me. If things were cross compatible it'd probably sting a hell of a lot less. 

A game can do proprietary right, and many games do. But the best way, if you ask me, is to keep it to a minimum. And if your core mechanic is going to require something special, make it available in a single purchase. Games like Bot War, World of Twilight, even MERCS show that you can have a gimmick without going overboard. And I think more games that want a gimmick that requires special parts need to keep that in mind.

Less is more sometimes.

Being a game critic may have ruined gaming for me.

 I've played a lot of games. I've read more rulebooks than I can keep track of, tried mechanics and known the workings of way too many different games.

I sat down to think about it the other day and my estimate is that I've played, in one capacity or another, somewhere in the realm of 35+ different miniatures games.

Holy shit.

And then I really thought about it, and thought about the fact that I haven't played anything in six months, and that I haven't wanted to. I started to wonder why that was. At first I was just busy with life, my job required me to work 60+ hour weeks which left barely enough time to breath let alone dedicate hours at a time to tabletop gaming. But now I work a regular 40 hour a week job, and still I find myself just not wanting to.

Okay, that's not entirely fair. I want to play games, but the games I find myself wanting to play nobody else around me plays. And I think that's the real problem here. I want to play stuff nobody else gives a fuck about, and I'm too old and tired to deal with people and their piss-weak excuses to not even try shit these days. I'm talking games like Bushido, MERCS and Endless Fantasy Tactics that keep grabbing my eye. Not to mention stuff coming down the pipeline like By Fire & Sword 2nd edition and Warzone Eternal. 

In fact, it's that last one that sent me into this spiral of not gaming. I wanted to blame it all on Warzone, but it's not fair to do that. I did it to myself. 

You see, Warzone Eternal is almost the perfect game for me. It's skirmish, so low model count required. The models are mostly single piece models which means no fiddly bullshit assembly (yes, Mantic, I'm still fuming about these fucking Forge Fathers and the absurdly dumb method you designed them with). The rules seem solid from the beta document they recently put out. And it's fucking Mutant Chronicles, my first true love of gaming. It should be a home run for me.

But then it hit me: I'd have to build a community for it from the ground up. Fuck that. I've been around gamers long enough to know that starting a new community for a not popular game is going to end in failure nine times out of ten. I got stupid lucky with Heavy Gear, which means my next handful of attempts to get people to expand their horizons beyond some of the worst rulesets on the market are bound to end in disaster. And quite frankly, I just can't do it anymore. I can't handle the depresson that comes with that, the knowledge that people will see a game and go "that looks really fun, but if I don't buy $500 worth of Space Marines every month GW will murder my family" is just too much for me to bear these days. I'm pushing 40, and frankly I just have better shit to do with my life than fret over people being closed minded about their toy soldiers (says the hypocrite bitching about it on the internet).

I thought Warzone was to blame, that it triggered something in me that sent me on some manner of exestential crisis. I realized, though, that it isn't Warzone. It's me. It's the fact I was a games critic. I spent years reading rulebooks, testing mechanics and writing reviews. It was my job, it was my main source of income during my college years. And I loved it. I got to experience so many new games, so many different games all offering their own takes on the hobby. I got to see how different mechanics worked, how games chose to resolve things and get a little glimpse into the heads of the designers. I loved reading the books and testing the games. If not for that job I probably wouoldn't be the gamer I am today, I probably never would have discovered even half the games I've tried and loved. I discovered one of my favorite games (World of Twilight) through that job, and it opened up some doors for me that got me where I am today. 

But it has ruined me as a gamer. I can't shut off my brain now, I can't help but over analyze every game I come into contact with. And that means that I've discovered mechanics that I simply can't stand, that I can't ignore how utterly shit they are. The two big ones being the notoriously outdated and clunk IGOUGO and phase systems. Sadly, these are the mechanics that permiate some of the most popular games, and certainly the most popular games in my local scene: Flames of War, Team Yankee and Warhammer.

I would love to be able to turn my brain off and play those if it could mean getting to play games regularly, but I can't. I can't ignore the glaring issues with the core rules, and I can't have fun with those games. I tried with Flames of War, I really did. I had a sizable Italian army and played the game for years. But for some reason it just never fully clicked with me. Then I realized what it was: I hate the god damn system. I sold my Italians not too long ago, some $500-600 worth of stuff based on my best estimate. I keep thinking maybe I can just suck it up and play Team Yankee, but then I think about the rules and find myself going "never fucking mind, then."

I should be happy that people play any of the games I enjoy around me. I've got a good Battletech community, a handful of people playing Heavy Gear, we've got a healthy group of people playing One Page Rules and even some people playing Warmaster. And I love all those games, I do, but I always find myself wanting more. I've been wanting to do more skirmish gaming since space is a concern in my life, and been looking at stuff like BF&S becasue it's 15mm so a large army takes up the same amount of space as a small army in 28mm games. I keep debating getting in Star Wars Legion and Middle Earth Strategy Battle game because those are both solid games with existing players in my area. But is it worth it?

So you see, the problem is me. I'm an unpleasable prick with a wicked case of gamer ADD who can't shut his stupid brain off to play with plastic tanks. Ultimately, though, it makes me wonder if I want to. It makes me wonder if this is all worth it. I can keep playing the stuff I enjoy, but am I just going to make myself depressed knowing there is so much more out there that I won't get to enjoy because of bullshit reasons? Will I find myself longing for the games I never got to play, and ultimately sullying the whole hobby for me? 

I don't know, but what I do know is that this little pitty party has gone on too long. Thanks for reading.

Unboxing: Oak & Iron Starter Set.

 Hey all! I know I've been away for a bit, been busy working on some secret projects I'm not really at liberty to discuss. Suffice to say, between said projects and everyday life this thing sort of got away from me for a bit. 

I haven't done any in person gaming for a bit (thanks COVID!), and I've been horrid about getting anything painted. I'm working on my PRDF army, I've started working on some of my Godtear models (I managed to snag the limited edition metal models off eBay, so my collection sort of exploded) and I've got a giant bag of unbuilt plastics.

I did, however, manage to pop over to one of my favorite gaming shops (the ever lovely Demolition Games in Salt Lake City) and grab me something that had caught my fancy: Oak & Iron! So I bought me the starter, and I thought today I'd do a quick unboxing and give my two cents (for what two cents is worth in this economy).

Oak & Iron is an age of sail combat game by the good folks at Firelock Games who you may know as the makers of their other age of sail combat game Blood & Plunder. But whereas Blood & Plunder is about the individual soldiers fighting and infantry, Oak & Iron is all about those boats. I'd been looking around for a good age of sail naval game, and while I did take a look into Black Seas from Warlord Games, it didn't really tickle my fancy like Oak & Iron does. Mainly because I wanted pirates, and Black Seas is all about Napoleonic Wars battles (so it also omits the Dutch that this game features). I'm also still a bit mad at Warlord Games, so there's that.

Anyway, this starter box retails at $70 and you get quite a bit of stuff. A rulebook (that's already a tiny bit out of date), a game map, tokens, cards, dice and of course the models. So, let's take a closer look at everything in here, shall we?

We'll start with the rulebook. It's not super long, clocking in just under 30 pages total, but manages to pack a good amount of information.

Oops, just noticed this is upside down...

Like all good games, the book is in glorious full color with plenty of pictures to provide examples of how rules work. I'm not going to really go into the rules here, I'll wait until I can at least play a game (thanks COVID!) before diving into that. Suffice to say, they share some similarities with X-Wing, and I mean that in the best way.

Now I mentioned that the rulebook is already sort of out of date, what do I mean by that? Well Firelock have released a Version 1.01 online, which mainly just adjusts some things and address some clarity issues. It's nothing worth getting worked up about, and newer copies of the box should have the new rules but just be aware. You can download the updated book as a PDF, and honestly the changes are small enough that they take up less than an entire page.

Next we have the map.

This sea map is the playing area, and it folds out to a 3x3 area. It's made of a nice, glossy, material that feels durable which is nice. I would like to, provided I get a chance to play this game a good amount, replace it with a nice neoprene mat in the future, but for the time being it should do the trick. The colors are nice and vibrant, too.

You also get a bunch of tokens on punchboards. You get four in total, with the first three being all terrain features to be used when playing.

Yes I could have taken pictures of each one, yes I'm feeling a bit lazy.

Much like the map these are bright and vibrant, which from what I understand is what the Caribbean looks like (I've never been). They're good thick stock, and once punched out shouldn't take up too much space. My fog banks started popping out the moment I opened the box, but that's not a problem. Just be aware. These are also double sided, so you get plenty of versatility out of them.

The other punchboard you get is full of game tokens.

Still way less than your average game from Fantasy Flight.

This one includes stuff such as the movement tools, range ruler, wind token, nationality tokens, wake and reload markers along with an assortment of other tokens for things like sail setting and boarding and so forth. Again, these are all on fairly thick card so they should hold up to play. Firelock also sells an acrylic set of tools which has the movement tools, range ruler and wind token if you want some added durability in those (again, if I can play enough I totally want a set).

Next we come to the cards.

Not including the ship stat cards or the nation cards outlining their special rules, you get 140 cards in this box set. That's a hefty number if you ask me. All the cards are made of a solid material, and I am happy to report no damage to any of mine that I can see. There are 39 initiative cards in this box, some generic and some faction specific, which should lead to plenty of combinations when playing to help keep things fresh. I wish the set up cards (the ones along the bottom in my picture) came with more options, but maybe that's for a future release?

That's not even all the cards...

Speaking of future releases, Firelock offers a ton of options for cards if you want to expand. You can buy the Expansion Deck which is 50 cards: 11 new upgrades, 19 new generic admirals and then reprints of cards that had errata in the Version 1.01 update. It's not needed to play, as long as you have the errata sheet handy, but I'm debating picking one up. You can also buy digital card packs directly from Firelock's website. They have an admiral pack, an upgrade pack and an initiative pack. Each of these include new cards to add to your collection, but it does seem a bit odd to only do them in PDF. I guess a 37 card pack is too small to justify printing for them? Whatever the case, you have options. The Expansion Deck retails at $25, and the digital packs are $9 a pop.

Lastly, before we get to the ships themselves, you have the dice.

Now, Oak & Iron does use proprietary dice. I know a lot of people will bitch and moan endlessly about this, and while I did have a moment of "really, guys?" I don't mind it too much. You get six dice in the box, and I can't see any print issues with mine. Now six dice is should be plenty for using the models in this box, but if you want to expand to the bigger ships of the line and whatnot you'll want to buy an extra set of these guys. Some of those big boats can get absolutely insane with the number of dice they toss out.

Alright, shall we get to the boats?

I'm on a boat!

You get six ships in this starter: A Light Galleon, a Fluyt (pronounced like flute), a Petite Frigate, a Corvette, a Brigatine and a Sloop. This is a pretty good mix of the smaller ships, with the Light Galleon being the biggest, and the Sloop being the smallest.

The models are cast in a brown plastic for the hulls, and the masts and sails are molded together in a creamy white. Assembly isn't hard, per se, but some of the connections can be tight and I'd be wary of trying to pull them apart too many times. I will admit that the Sloop is a right pain, and I couldn't figure out how to get that sail assembly together. Firelock offers plenty of downloads, but an assembly guide for that thing would be nice. Speaking of downloads, they offer a ship recognition guide which is pretty helpful since a fair number of these can look quite similar.

The Corvette.

The mighty Light Galleon.

Size comparison of the two.

The detail on these is pretty solid. Nothing mind blowing if you're expecting something on par with some Games Workshop models, but crisp enough to feel right. The decks have individual planks, the hulls are lined with cannon ports, and the aftcastle on the bigger ships are nicely detailed.

Damn, lookit dat booty.

You also get six identical, clear, bases. These have markings for wind arcs and also have a handy little slot in the back to put in a token to designate ships if you happen to be running multiples of a single class.

Speaking of getting multiple ships, if you want more of these particular models without buying a second starter box then you'll want to grab either the Gentlemen of Fortune (Sloop, Petite Frigate and Corvette) or the Merchant Men (Light Galleon, Brigatine and Fluyt). These ship expansions will run you $30 a pop, and get you three ships, bases, stat cards and the tokens needed to add them to your fleet.

You also get the stat cards for the six ships in this box, of course.

These cards are bigger than normal, which surprised me when I popped open the box. They're double sided, with the back showing off what the upgrades listed at the bottom of the cards do, but apparently that picture got lost in the void somehow. You do also get some little plastic clips that you can use to track hull and crew damage, but I opted to sleeve them for the sake of not risking damage to the cards. You can use any tarot sized sleeves, but I bought a pack of the ones made by Fantasy Flight Games.

Insert witty condom joke here.

Lastly you get a neat little touch: six sheets of faction specific sticker flags.

These will let you mark your ships as being for a specific faction if you're so inclined, but you totally don't have to if you want to freedom to jump around between factions each game.

All in all this is a fairly solid set. You get a good amount of stuff, everything seems to be good quality and it's all packed in a way to ensure the components are in good shape when you open it up. I will admit that if you want to play you'll want to grab one, even if you already have a friend who has one. It's the only way to get the various cards in it (sans the updated ones in the Expansion Deck), which you're going to want. It's totally worth it, but I am always a little annoyed when a company does that. Still, despite that, this is a great set for what looks like a damn fun game. And if the cross-over rules with Blood & Plunder ever actually come out, that'll just add to the value (although they do have a campaign available).

Hopefully I'll get a chance to sit down and shoot some cannon in the near future, and once I do I'll be sure to give my review/first impressions.

Take care, stay safe, and remember: do what you want because a pirate is free, you are a pirate!