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Gaming Articles, On The Table

In Theory: Making Warhammer 40k Better

When I sat down to write my last article—an update on my renewed relationship with Warhammer 40K since it came back into my gaming rotation last year—I found myself reflecting on the challenges I’ve had with the game. I started wondering: Could I fix some of these issues myself? Maybe through house rules, borrowed mechanics from other systems, or even a fresh approach to gameplay?

That question led me down a rabbit hole of research, where I started noticing patterns between my own table habits and the frustrations they created. But what really surprised me was the solution. It didn’t require complex rule tweaks, homebrew mechanics, or drastic changes. With just a few small shifts—nothing outside the official rules—I suddenly found myself realizing that having a much smoother, more enjoyable Warhammer 40K experience was a matter of setup rather than rules changes.

It was a lightbulb moment, and naturally, it led to another 40K article. So today, let’s dig into the question: How can we make our 40K experience better?

The Issues With Warhammer 40k

Now, let me be clear—I’m not claiming these are the issues with Warhammer 40K, just my issues with the game. That’s an important distinction. I can only speak from my own experience, though I suspect plenty of players might relate.

For me, the challenges boil down to three key areas—each interconnected and deeply tied to the game’s history and Games Workshop’s business practices. These are: Battle Size, Gotcha Rules, and Terrain Count.

Let’s break them down.

The Battle Size Problem

My first major issue with Warhammer 40K today is the battlefield itself—specifically, how claustrophobic battles feel and how terrain and distances lack real strategic impact.

Marketing shots like this are great because they show off the amazing miniatures from the Warhammer 40k universe, we love it, but if your actual games looks like this, it’s going to be a very boring “shoot out” with no strategy, tactics or relevant gameplay. It just becomes a dice-chucking roll-off where the best dice odds are most likely to win. That’s not a miniature game, that’s Yahtzee!

There are three key reasons for this, and to understand why it feels so different to me compared to how it’s supposed to, you have to consider how much the game has changed since the last time I played seriously (back in 6th Edition) compared to today (10th Edition).

The Battlefield Has Shrunk

First, the battlefield has physically gotten smaller. The standard play area used to be 6×4 feet. Today, the recommended size is 44” x 60”—a reduction of 4 inches on the short side and a full foot on the long side.

The adoption of a 44×60 table has become this presumption about what is standard going so far as people creating guides on how to convert your 6×4 table into a 44×66 table. The obvious decision to shrink the minimum table size is a marketing ploy so that GW can tell you “hey – you can play 40k on a kitchen table”, but the reality is that this is the absolute most minimum space you can play on and a minimum sized table create a minimum sized experience. 6×4 is still the standard table size for 40k, don’t let anyone tell you differently!

Now, here’s something I didn’t even realize until I saw it in a YouTube video pointing it out: 44” x 60” is not the standard table size—it’s the minimum table size. There’s no official rule stating that this is the “proper” or “official” battlefield size, only that it’s the absolute smallest table you’re allowed to play on. You can, and arguably should, play on a larger surface.

But the battlefield itself isn’t the only reason for the cramped feeling.

Army Sizes Have Increased

The second issue is army size. Over the years, the cost of fielding a Warhammer 40K army (in terms of points, not money) has steadily decreased. The changes from edition to edition may have been subtle, but when you compare 6th Edition to 10th Edition, the difference is staggering.

Take Hormagaunts, a staple of any Tyranid army. Back in 6th Edition, each model cost 10 points, meaning a unit of 10 was 100 points, and 20 would set you back 200 points. Today? A unit of 10 Hormagaunts costs just 65 points—nearly a 35% reduction.

And it’s not just direct cost but indirect cost as well. Consider Zoanthropes—back in the day, a single Zoanthrope cost 34 points, so a squad of three was 102 points. That might sound close to today’s cost (100 points for three), but in 6th Edition, you also had to pay an additional 25 points per model if you wanted to equip them with Warp Blast, effectively doubling their cost. Now? That ability is free.

This a modern Tyranid at roughly 1,000 points. It’s a pretty big army and is going to take several hours to resolve a battle with this many units.

This kind of points compression is consistent across every faction and every unit. If you add it all up, a typical 2,000-point army from 6th Edition is roughly equivalent to a 1,000-point army in today’s game. In other words, players are fielding twice as many models as they used to—and on a smaller battlefield to boot, adding to the claustrophobic feeling of the battlefield.

And here’s another thing: Back in 6th Edition, 2,000 points wasn’t even the standard game size, there was no standard size or even recommendation—point size was presumed to be between 500-2,000 points, and 2,000 points was considered a large, long game. In fact most missions published were well below the 2,000-point mark. Looking at tournaments and other events from the era as well, most games were played at between 1,000-1,500 points, with 2,000 points being seen as “a major event”. If you adjust for today’s point scaling, that would mean a 750-850-point game would provide a similar amount of miniatures on the table.

Army Construction Rules Are Looser

The final factor is the way armies are built. In older editions, list-building was more restrictive—you had to follow a structure with minimums and maximums for different unit types:

  • HQ (Leaders)
  • Troops (Core units)
  • Elites (Special forces)
  • Fast Attack (Speedy units)
  • Heavy Support (Big guns)

You couldn’t just spam your strongest units or cheese the system with hyper-optimized lists. You had to build a more balanced force. Today, those restrictions have been loosened significantly, allowing for much more extreme list-building strategies.

So why did all of this happen?

Spoiler alert: It’s because Games Workshop wants to sell more models. I get it—it’s a business. But when you look at how these changes impact the game, and more importantly, if you simply acknowledge that this is happening, the solution is surprisingly simple.

I get it, Games Workshop is in the business of selling miniatures, but the thing is that even if you can afford a huge army, most of us are looking for a game that can be played in a reasonable amount of time. More models, mean longer games. With the constant increase in model count and army size, Warhammer 40k is quickly reaching the 5-6 hour mark to complete a game that is about 2-3 hours too long and there is a marked reduction in the quality of the games rather than an improvement.

How to Fix It

Fixing this issue—and getting a much better gaming experience—is surprisingly simple. After making a few adjustments, I was shocked at how much more enjoyable my Warhammer 40K games became. Here’s what worked for me:

Play on a 6×4 table (or larger).
A bigger battlefield changes everything. With more room to maneuver, units are spread out properly, and movement becomes a real tactical factor rather than an afterthought. It makes the game feel more strategic and immersive—as it should be!

Play at 1,000-1,200 points.
Lowering the point cap drastically improves the game in three key ways:

  1. Less to track – With fewer models and abilities in play, it’s easier for both you and your opponent to understand what each army can do. No more “gotcha” moments because you forgot a rule buried in a sea of datasheets.
  2. Faster games – Cutting back on unit bloat speeds up turns, making for a smoother and more dynamic experience.
  3. Better use of terrain and maneuvering – With fewer models and a larger table, movement actually matters. Cover becomes important, flanking is viable, and armies don’t feel crammed together from turn one.

Limit non-Battleline units to one copy max.
This was the hardest change to implement—but also one of the most effective. Limiting non-Battleline units (i.e., elites, vehicles, monsters, and specialist units) to one per army prevents spamming, one of the most common balance-breaking issues in the game.

  • Want a Rhino? You get one.
  • A unit of Zoanthropes? Just one squad.
  • No doubling (or tripling) up on power units for maximum efficiency.

This forces players to diversify their lists, leading to more balanced, engaging, and fair battles. It also eliminates “cheese lists” that rely on stacking the same overpowered unit, making games more tactical and less about who can break the system better.

Making these small adjustments completely changed my 40K experience—for the better. If you’re feeling the same frustration I was, give them a shot. You might be surprised at just how much of a difference they make.

The “Gotcha!” Problem – A Paywall on Knowledge

One of the most frustrating aspects of Warhammer 40K today isn’t the game itself—it’s Games Workshop’s business model. Specifically, the way they lock critical game knowledge behind an expensive paywall.

If you want to fully understand how the game works, you need to know what every army can do. But legally, the only way to access that information is by buying every single codex—a ridiculous and financially unrealistic expectation for most players.

Sure, buying the codex for your own army makes sense. But unless you’re willing to spend a small fortune on all the other codexes, you’ll always be flying blind against other factions. And that lack of information leads to one of Warhammer 40K’s biggest gameplay issues:

The “Gotcha!” Problem

Picture this: You make a strategic move, thinking you’re about to pull off a clever play—only for your opponent to drop a totally unexpected army rule, stratagem, or unit ability that completely shuts you down.

You wouldn’t have made that move if you had all the information. But because key mechanics are locked behind expensive rulebooks, you’re left playing a guessing game—one that your opponent already knows the answers to.

Now, some might argue, “Well, you should know the rules to the game.” And they’d be right—if the rules were actually available. But Games Workshop intentionally hides them behind a massive paywall, forcing players to buy their way into understanding the game.

The Impact on Gameplay and Community

This leads to a terrible gameplay experience and fosters a toxic play environment where veteran players can easily take advantage of newer or casual players. The result?

  • Unfair, one-sided games
  • Frustration for new or casual players
  • A shrinking player base as people give up on the game

In fact, I know plenty of people who refuse to play Warhammer 40K solely because of this issue. And the worst part? The game itself isn’t the problem—it’s Games Workshop’s sketchy business practice that creates this artificial barrier to entry.

The sad thing about 40k 10th edition is that it was a considerably better game before the Codexes dropped because at the start you had much better visibility of the rules of the game thanks to the release of digital indexes for all the armies. As codexes were released, the indexes were removed, slowly resulting in more and more hidden information. Today, players are flying blind!

The reality of Games Workshop rules for Warhammer 40k is that to get a complete set of rules today for competitive play it will cost you around 600 dollars and that covers you for approximately 3 years. That is neither a reasonable nor honest service level.

How to Fix It

The options here are quite limited and I’m just going to answer this question with a simple quote and leave it at that.

Piracy is the act of honest people solving a problem in response to dishonest people. Provide a reasonably priced service and you will discover that most people are honest, fail to do so and you will discover that there is no such thing as an honest person.

Do with that what you will.

The final issue—and one of the easiest to fix—is terrain count.

Warhammer 40K doesn’t provide particularly strong guidance on how much terrain a battlefield should have, nor does it offer clear recommendations for placement. The game defines different terrain types, and there’s an example battlefield in the rulebook, but when it comes time to set up for an actual game, most players are left guessing.

The Problem: Too Little, Too Symmetrical

In my experience, the most common issue is not enough terrain. And even when terrain is placed, players tend to mirror the layout in an attempt to be fair. While this seems reasonable, the result is often a static, predictable battlefield where terrain has limited impact on gameplay.

Terrain is a big barrier to entry, another major paywall to miniature games and Games Workshop makes the most expensive terrain by a margin so big you can expect to pay 3-4 times as much for official terrain. Thanks to 3d printing however and plenty of companies out their making quality pre-painted terrain, it’s getting cheaper every day to field sufficient terrain for Warhammer 40k.

The worst-case scenario? A game that feels like a shooting gallery, where units just line up and fire at each other with nothing breaking sightlines or forcing tactical movement. This kills the strategic depth that terrain is supposed to bring to the game.

How to Fix

After experimenting with different setups, I’ve learned a few simple terrain fixes that dramatically improve gameplay. The key is making sure you have enough terrain and placing it properly.

Use More Terrain – A well-designed battlefield should be at least 25-30% covered in terrain, meaning that you roughly need 20-25 pieces. This ensures that movement, positioning, and cover actually matter.

Ditch Symmetry – Real battlefields aren’t symmetrical. Instead of mirroring terrain, create natural-looking battlefields with varied sightlines and areas of strategic importance.

Mix Terrain Types – Include a variety of line-of-sight blocking structures, dense cover, and elevated positions to make movement and positioning just as important as firepower. Be sure to use all the different types of terrain, there should be a strong mixture and it’s often better to have more pieces rather than large blockers. You need some of those two, but you want to make sure that the benefits of cover shots are far more common than clear shots. In fact I would argue unless 80%-90% of shots are with the benefit of cover, you don’t have enough terrain.

Invest in Terrain – If you don’t have enough terrain, it’s worth investing in some—or better yet, making your own. Terrain can be kitbashed from other games or built cheaply using household materials. More is always better.

Conclusion

Let’s be clear—miniature wargames are inherently imperfect. No amount of tweaking will guarantee a perfect experience every time. There will always be anticlimactic moments, disappointing dice rolls, and the occasional frustrating matchup. But at its core, Warhammer 40K is a fun, cinematic, and immersive game, and with the right approach, you can make sure the good games far outweigh the bad.

One of the biggest keys to improving your experience in my opinion is separating game design from business decisions. Warhammer 40K isn’t just a game—it’s a product, and Games Workshop makes choices that prioritize sales over gameplay, for which I do not fault them. Still, many of the issues that make the game feel frustrating—cramped battlefields, bloated army sizes, and gotcha mechanics—aren’t necessarily the result of bad game design, but rather business-driven design. Recognizing this distinction empowers you to take control of your own gaming experience and fix the experience. You don’t have to go down the shallow road of listening to Games Workshop advertisement-based decisions about how the game should be played. They want to sell you as much crap as possible, but you don’t have to be a fool and buy into it. Beneath the exterior is a very good game and simply taking the reigns of control is sufficient to have a vastly improved gaming experience.

At the end of the day, Warhammer 40K is your game, your table, and your experience. Fewer units on the battlefield, a larger play area, smarter terrain placement, and limiting army spam may not align with Games Workshop’s profit goals, but they absolutely make the game better. The goal isn’t to feed a corporation’s bottom line—it’s to create fun, balanced, and rewarding battles for you and your friends.

I hope you found this guide helpful – Happy wargaming!

Gaming Articles, On The Table

First Night With: Masters of the Universe – Battleground

If I had to sum up my entire childhood in one word, it would be… HE-MAN! Nostalgia is a powerful thing, but let’s be honest—trying to recapture the magic of our youth often leads to crushing disappointment. I’ve walked this road before, diving into old franchises through games, and while a few hits (looking at you, Star Trek: Fleet Captains) have blown me away, most experiences remind me that some things are best left as cherished memories.

The Masters of the Universe toys were more than just my childhood, they were very much my introduction into the world of fantasy that would culminate with Dungeons and Dragons. In a way, it paved the way for my love for fantasy and science fiction.

Enter Masters of the Universe: Battleground. I approached it with cautious optimism—expecting “meh,” hoping for “fun,” but what I got was an absolute knockout of awesomeness. Holy crap, this game surpassed my wildest expectations!

Now, let me be clear—this is just my gut reaction after a single playthrough, specifically the “learning” starter game. I didn’t think I’d have much of an opinion after such a brief introduction, but Masters of the Universe: Battleground is bursting with nostalgic goodness and mechanical brilliance.

The miniature replication here is fantastic, with clear tributes by fans for fans. Every character in the starter kit was instantly recognizable and it was clear that the point of the game is to tap into the 80’s kid still living inside you.

First off, the game looks fantastic on the table. The miniatures are high-quality, the plastic terrain—while basic—is functional, and the grid board sets the perfect stage for battle. It’s not the kind of visual feast that will blow your mind, but it’s more than enough to put a smile on this old He-Man fan’s face. However, where this game really shines is in its gameplay.

What I expected to be a simple, nostalgia-driven experience turned out to be a streamlined, deeply tactical, and combo-heavy battle of wits. Tough decisions, nuanced moves, and strategic planning take center stage. The mechanics clicked effortlessly from the get-go, offering a multitude of options and interactions that scream replayability. It all comes together to deliver an authentic, action-packed He-Man cartoon showdown.

Between the exploding dice, card-driven play, and clever dice manipulation using mana and special powers, every moment felt like a thrilling push-your-luck gamble. There are no guarantees, but the game gives you plenty of tools to tip the odds in your favor. The heroes feel powerful, but far from invincible—you need to position them carefully and make the most of their unique abilities.

The starter set is chock-full of content, it’s quite astonishing what they squeezed into a miniature game under a 100 dollars. There is no question that this is the best bang for your buck I have ever seen in a published game. I don’t know how they did it, but ordinarily, with a kick-starter like this, I would expect to pay in excess of 200 dollars for a set like this.

Precision is key in Battleground, and while we were a bit sloppy in our first game, by the final round, my gaming partner and I were already buzzing with excitement over the possibilities. We couldn’t stop talking about what we should have done, what we could do next time, and the sheer potential of the list-building system.

While playing the base starter game was fun, this is a game that is all about list building. The structure here is super clear and straightforward, but there is a ton of combos not only in the interaction between various equipment and powers but also between the different heroes. I love the fact that it’s crystal clear what everything is for, it’s one of those miniature games that doesn’t obscure the advantages and disadvantages in the minutia of the rules, it’s all very plain to the eye.

The real kicker? I wanted to play again. Immediately. And that’s always a good sign. In fact, I found myself eagerly browsing expansions the moment I got home. What I expected to be a one-and-done experience turned into something I suspect will see a lot of table time in the near future.

So, if you’re a fellow child of the ’80s—or just someone looking for a solid tactical game—Masters of the Universe: Battleground might just surprise you. It certainly did for me.

Gaming Articles, Hidden Gems, On The Table

Hidden Gems: Warcrow Adventures

Miniature gaming, role-playing games, and board games are becoming more and more difficult to neatly categorize these days as we see more and more cross-over hybrids. Warcrow Adventures, the latest take on the adventure game genre from Corvus Belli has been my gaming group’s latest obsession, and for good reason as this hybrid adventure game has a lot to offer.

Warcrow Adventures is based on the new miniature war game of the same name (Warcrow), using the same setting background and actual miniatures for the miniature game. An app-assisted story-driven dungeon crawler, players take on the roles of adventures using the classic Dungeons and Dragons formula in which they follow along a branching storyline, make decisions, fight monsters, find treasure, and level up!

Corvus Belli, has an outstanding reputation for producing fantastic miniatures and Warcrow is no exception. Dynamic poses, highly detailed, and a good chunky size all contribute to the wonderful quality of these mini’s.

This game borrows from quite a few different gaming genres, but the attraction is the D&D DNA-inspired treadmill. It boasts a lot of very streamlined mechanics that are deceptively simple yet impactful. Every choice you make in the game, every task you complete, and every interaction you have unveils part of a unique story while creating hurdles for you to jump through in a pretty challenging risk vs. reward structure.

I will be doing a full review of Warcrow Adventures once my group completes the adventure, but beware that this is very much a legacy-style adventure game that will take many sessions to complete.

App-assisted games are becoming more and more common and the production values of these apps are improving with each new generation. Warcrow Adventures app delivers fantastic voice-overs, a simpler interface, and a very organized structure that makes it easy to use at the table.

Already now however I can tell you that if you are a fan of adventure games, if you love Dungeons and Dragons, this is an outstanding platform for bringing that classic dungeon crawl feeling to the table.

The hybrid nature of the game, being part miniature game also offers the opportunity for everyone to do some hobby painting. Know that these are not “board game pieces”, these are actual, fully detailed miniatures, and well worth your time to paint. In fact, every miniature in Warcrow Adventures is getting a full profile and will be used in the Warcrow miniatures war game so if you are already collecting and playing Warcrow the miniature game, the adventure game has the side benefit of giving you new units for that game as well.

The Warcrow miniature game on which Warcrow Adventures is based has also indoctrinated itself into my gaming club largely based on the already well-established reputation of our beloved Infinity (the other Corvus Belli miniature game we play). We just can’t help it, one look at these amazing miniatures and you know you just need to own some!

My group immediately got to work painting these mini’s and not only has it built up the excitement to play Warcrow Adventures, but it’s got us all buzzing about Warcrow the miniature game as well the setting itself. If there was ever a setting that deserved to be an RPG, this is it!

In either case, whether you do or don’t get into the miniature game, Warcrow Adventures as a stand-alone product is already proving to be a great time, Corvus Belli has done a fantastic job building an atmosphere with its amazing setting and building a story I think any role-player would enjoy sinking their teeth into.

I’m no master miniature painter, but great minis inspire great paint jobs and I have to say, I’m pretty proud of this one!

Look for a full review shortly, but for now, if you are on the fence about Warcrow Adventures, I can tell you here and now, it’s a fantastic package!

Best of List, Gaming Articles, On The Table, What Makes It Tick

Miniature Game Theory: Picking The Right Game For You

It happened by accident—at least, that’s what I tell myself—but the truth is, I own a lot of miniature games. I’ve painted and played so many that it’s a little scary! I don’t even want to think about how much time and money I’ve sunk into this hobby, especially not around my wife! In today’s article, I’ll take all that hard-earned experience and try to put it to good use by offering some advice on finding the perfect miniature game for you, with a few recommendations sprinkled in.

Let’s dive right in!

The Three Categories Of Miniature Gaming

Most miniature games can be sorted into three broad categories—though many games blur the lines between them. These categories are: hobby-focused games (sometimes called lore-heavy games), mechanics-focused games (often competitive in nature), and narratively focused games (driven by storytelling and immersion).

Now, every game publisher will tell you their game does everything, and technically, they’re not wrong—but the reality is, most games lean heavily into one category more than the others, often to an extreme. Knowing what kind of game you’re getting into and understanding how the community that plays that game sees it is a big part of the key to picking the right game for yourself.

Categorization is key because all miniature games are marketed in a visually exciting way because they ARE visually exciting. If you pick a game like Star Wars: Shatterpoint, you likely have certain expectations and imagery about what the experience might be like (player expectations), but Shatterpoint is a highly mechanized game designed for competitive play, about playing King of the Hill on generic objectives. It’s closer to being a board game than being a miniature game, falling heavily into the Mechanic-Focused category.

Let’s break down these categories for clarity.

Hobby-focused games

Hobby-focused games are all about the experience—stunning miniatures, immersive lore, and endless collection opportunities. Here, the gameplay often takes a backseat to the joy of building, painting, and diving deep into the game’s rich world.

These games are usually supported by expansive novels, army books, special terrain, and a constant stream of new releases. They demand a serious investment—not just in time, but in cold hard cash. Hobby-focused games are easily the most expensive, often costing two to four times more than other types.

A prime example? Warhammer 40k by Games Workshop. To even get started, you’ll need at least a 1,000-point army (2,000 points being standard), translating to anywhere from 50 to 100 models. Before you can even think about playing, you’re looking at hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars spent on miniatures, terrain, rulebooks, and accessories.

While most miniature games can be classified as a hobby to some degree as you will often be assembling and painting miniatures, there is a distinct difference between miniature games being a hobby and a game being hobby-focused. Warhammer: Underworld for example aims to get you playing the game right away with easy-to-assemble miniatures that have colored plastic with a game that is played on a hex board with all the accessories (cards, tokens etc..) included in the box. You can play a full game like Underworld a few hours after you open the box, it is not a hobby-focused game even though you will get the opportunity to paint some miniatures and experience the miniature gaming hobby element inherent in all miniature games.

When all is said and done, you’ll likely spend over $500 and 100+ hours before experiencing the full game of Warhammer 40k as it is intended to be played. No ad will tell you this, and hardcore fans might argue otherwise, but trust me—after 35+ years in the hobby, I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s done it for less.

Warhammer 40k is a hobby-focused game, you will spend just shy of 100 dollars to get into the starter set and after assembling and painting these miniatures you will discover that what you have purchased is not even close to the full game. You are still hundreds of dollars and hours away from experiencing Warhammer 40k from this point. In fact, the starter set doesn’t even teach you the real game, it gives you a sort of “sub-game” of the real thing. Warhammer 40k assumes a lot about what you will spend in terms of dollars and hours preparing to play a full game.

The trick is that this is exactly what Hobby-Focused games are designed to be and it’s what fans of such games want. If it was easy and fast, it would not have the same appeal. To hobby-focused gamers, this long road is seen as an opportunity, not a drawback.

But here’s the thing—fans of hobby games love this level of commitment. The journey of collecting and painting is the whole point. You’re never done, and that’s exactly the appeal. To fans of these hobby-focused games, the journey is the juice.

Mechanics-Focused Games

If hobby games are about immersion, mechanics-focused games are about playing—and playing now. These games prioritize tight, balanced rules over deep lore or hobby elements, often designed for competitive tournament play.

Many of these games require little to no hobby work at all. most come with pre-painted miniatures, easy-to-assemble miniatures and/or low model counts, making them much more accessible for casual or competitive players.

Examples? Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: Armada, with streamlined mechanics and pre-painted minis that let you jump straight into the action. Even hybrid games like Star Wars: Shatterpoint leans into this category, focusing on accessible, tactical gameplay with minimal prep.

Most mechanic-focused games are going to try very hard to make the hobby parts of miniature gaming as painless as possible, even going so far as offering pre-constructed, pre-painted miniatures. The goal of a mechanic-focused game is not only to get you playing right away but more specifically to get you competing right away. Star Wars: X-Wing is a prime example of a game that took this to the furthest extreme. You need roughly 3-6 models, everything is pre-painted and assembled, and essentially you are ready to sign up for tournaments after the unboxing.

Side Note: Star Wars X-Wing has been discontinued by the publisher, but don’t fret, miniature games never truly die and X-Wing is no exception. Communities keep these games alive and there were so many products produced for X-Wing that there are more miniatures available for purchase today than there ever was when the game was still being published.

Mechanics-focused games often feel closer to board games than traditional miniature games, with precise, clearly defined rules that leave no room for “eyeballing it.” These games are generally much cheaper to get to the table while getting the intended full gaming experience.

Narratively Focused Games

Narratively focused games sit on the opposite end of the spectrum from mechanics-driven ones. These games aim to capture a feeling—bringing iconic franchises, historical moments, or unique settings to life in a cinematic way.

Balance and precision take a back seat to storytelling and thematic immersion. Instead of symmetrical matchups, expect scenario-driven play that tries to replicate key moments—whether they’re historical battles or epic fantasy showdowns.

Bolt Action is a fantastic example of a narratively driven game that hybrids a bit into the hobby-focused element. The point of Bolt Action is to create (or use) scenarios that depict historical battles, but the game is not about simulation or exacting rules, it’s about creating the atmosphere of a great action-war movie. It’s about the sensation at the table, the atmosphere of the setting, and quick execution. The extra effort to put together a nicely painted army and building nice terrain is to quench that creative appetite, though I would still argue it leans far more into the narratively driven games rather than the hobby-focused games.

Two great examples of Narrative-focused games are The Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game and Bolt Action. MESBG tries to replicate the lord of the Rings movies, while Bolt Action tries to replicate a movie version of historical World War II battles. In both cases, the games exaggerate the cinematic fantasy to bring the feel and style of their chosen setting to the table.

Understanding Your Interest In Miniature Games

Now that we’ve established a way to categorize games, the next step is figuring out how to use this information to guide your decision and ultimately select the right game for you.

You might already have a gut feeling based on the categories we’ve outlined, leaning more towards one over the others. Preferences are often instinctive and valid, but it’s important to remember that while most games lean toward a particular focus, they usually incorporate elements from all three categories. Even games with a clear identity—like Warhammer 40k being hobby-focused—venture into narrative and mechanics to some extent.

Choosing the right game is about balancing your interests with realistic expectations. To help narrow down your options, consider these three key factors:

Time & Money?

It’s easy to be drawn to what excites you most, but miniature games require a significant investment of both time and money.

Games generally fall into three price categories:

  • Cheap: Around $60-$100, comparable to the cost of a typical board game.
  • Standard: Ranging from $150-$250 for a full experience.
  • Expensive (a.k.a. “Go F* Yourself”)**: $500+ for the complete experience.
The BattleTech Alpha Strike box set is an outstanding value for a game, coming in on the “cheap” category, this box set costs about 90 dollars US and quite literally comes with more than what you need to play a full game. You can buy this box set, never buy any more stuff for Battletech, and play the game forever. This kind of value is rare in the miniature market, but if you love giant robot battles, you can’t do better than this.

Price is not the only consideration however, Battletech can take upwards of 6+ hours to play a single game, so you have to ask yourself that question too. Will you ever have time to play a 6+ hour game?

It’s worth noting that you can spend more or less on any game. For example, you could grab an intro set for Warhammer 40k at $50, but that won’t give you the full experience Games Workshop intends. On the flip side, a core set for Battletech at $90 can offer a well-rounded experience, though diving deeper could cost thousands.

Time commitment follows a similar pattern. You might grab an X-Wing starter set and be playing within minutes, while something like Warhammer Old World could demand 60+ hours of assembly and painting before your first match.

Infinity is a fantastic example of a game that respects your wallet and your time but still offers a very robust gaming experience with extreme collection and expansion opportunities. They do this through masterful design, ensuring that the game is every bit as exciting and fun on a smaller scale with simplified rules as it is with large scale and nearly bottomless rules expansion. A small game from a basic starter kit can cost less than 50 bucks to get into and offer a game session as short as 45 minutes, to larger scale and elaborate battles with deep rules that can cost hundreds of dollars to collect and create play times exceeding 5+ hours.

Some gamers (this one included) love games that have varying scales like this, it makes collection (acquisition) easier and you get to play as you collect, build, and expand. In my eyes, Infinity is one of the best miniature games out there, especially when it comes to respecting your time and money!

Many games market “quick start” options, but the reality is that each game has a clear overhead. Take the time to research what’s truly required to enjoy the full experience and compare it with your available resources.

Miniature Games are a group activity

No matter what game you choose, remember that miniature games are fundamentally social. While they can be enjoyed as a solo hobby (through collecting and painting), the core experience revolves around playing with others. Most games require at least two players, but the best experiences often come from being part of an active community.

Don’t have any friends to play miniature games with but you still want to get into it? Don’t worry, Warcrow Adventures has your back! Ok, I’m going to say this up front, games like Warcrow Adventures (just like any game) are always more fun when you have friends to share them with. But if you want to get into miniature games and you are living in isolation or simply don’t have anyone around to play with, Warcrow Adventures offers a fantastic game that can be played completely solo. It offers fantastic miniatures for you to paint and enjoy the hobby part of miniature gaming with expansion opportunity and because the game’s miniatures are directly connected to Warcrow the miniatures game, you could potentially in the future expand your collection to that game as well.

That said, I still think the best option is to find some friends to play games with, community is just a huge part of this hobby and often it almost doesn’t matter what miniature game you play, as long as you have people to play it with.

Before diving in, make sure your chosen game has a local presence. There’s nothing worse than investing time and money into a game you never get to play because no one else in your area is into it. Online communities can help bridge gaps, but nothing beats in-person matches and events. After all, if you’re going to invest time and money into building an army for a game, playing some digitized version of it is going to be very anticlimactic, don’t expect that sort of thing to fill any voids.

Competative or Casual

Some games are designed with competition in mind, while others lean into a more relaxed, narrative-driven approach. While this often aligns with a game’s core category, community culture can shift things in unexpected ways.

Take Warhammer 40k, for example—designed as a hobby-focused game, yet many local communities treat it as a highly competitive experience. Conversely, Star Wars: X-Wing, built for competition, has embraced the mantra “Fly Casual,” encouraging players to focus on enjoying the thematic experience rather than strict competitive play despite its clear design goals.

These community-driven shifts can be confusing for new players, so it’s crucial to research how a game is actually played in your area rather than relying solely on its marketing or official design.

The concept of the current state of the game as seen through the eyes of the community should be an important consideration when selecting your game. Marketing is one thing, game state is an altogether different thing. Take Warmachine for example. A few years back I would have recommended this game without hesitation, it was once, a fantastic game. Today I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Privateer Press has done a very poor job taking care of this game and it’s in terrible shape right now, unlikely to survive going forward. It’s a real mess!

It’s also worth noting that any game has a “current state” defined by the opinions of the community which defines the mood of the community. This is an important pulse to have your finger on, because the rules and governance of a game by it’s publisher can have a tremendous amount of impact on the game and the gaming community. It’s important to know that being negative gets more clicks, so look for positive feedback on any game you’re considering, but beware that every game has a “this game sucks” anti-fan club on social media.

The Miniature Games – Overviews!

I have already offered a bit of insight on a few games in the article, but I will do a few more here just to give you some ideas and inspiration for your own research, that said, here comes the golden advice.

DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!
This is so critical to the process, before you whip out that credit card you should know everything there is to know about a game. Don’t go into miniature games likely, even the most basic game is going to demand a lot more from you than a typical board game, so miniature games should never be an impulse buy!

Star Wars Legion

It’s truly a rare gamer that I run into that doesn’t love Star Wars on some level and it’s natural for gamers to gravitate towards familiar franchises. As such, Star Wars Legion always comes up in conversations about miniature games because it is, in a nutshell, Star Wars on a grand scale.

In Star Wars Legion you are going to have mass battles on large battlefields with Jedi’s, AT-AT walkers and the countless troops each with their own personality from the Star Wars universe. Visually, it’s every kid’s dream to play Star Wars on this scale.

That said you have to be weary here. This hybrid game, has a heavy hobby element requirement, it’s quite expensive to get a full game on the table and the game state right now is a bit confusing.

It’s a great game, but be sure to check on the status of this game thoroughly and do some calculations. Once it’s all said and done you will spend a solid 300-400 dollars to get a complete army with many hours of hobby time to pull it all together. It requires a commitment!

Marvel Crisis Protocal

Like Star Wars Legion, the Marvel Universe has been popularized in recent years by the never-ending influx of Marvel movies, so gravitating towards a miniature game with all of your favorite superheroes is perfectly natural.

What you have to know about Marvel Crisis Protocol is that it’s a very structured mechanic-focused game with a very stern competitive style and objective-oriented game. This is not a narrative-focused game at all, it plays more like a board game than a miniature game. The scenarios in the game are just “adjective” driven excuses for what amounts to a game about holding objectives (positions) on the board.

It’s a fun and fantastic game, but be sure you match your expectations with the actual gameplay.

Wings of Glory

Speaking of managing expectations, let’s talk about Wings of Glory. As an avid historical war gamer, I love a good heavy war simulation, so one look at Wings of Glory and it is easy to get excited.

The important thing to know about Wings of Glory is that it’s not a simulation at all, in fact, this is the UNO of miniature games, one that can be taught to children. It does not take itself seriously, there is no hobby element (everything is pre-painted) and it’s not designed for narrative-focused play.

This is a very simple dog-fighting game, with board game-like mechanics. It’s light, fast and super fun, but this is not the historical simulator you might hope it would be.

Ok that’s it for today guys, I hope you found the article useful, good luck out there!

Board Game Reviews, Gaming Articles, On The Table

Big Board Gaming Weekend 2024

Every year like clockwork, my crew and I get together for a 4 day super weekend of nothing but BBQ, beer, and board gaming. We call it the “Hassela Weekend”, named after the sleepy little Swedish town where the event takes place. It is always the gaming highlight of every year and this, our 8th year of the event was no different.

Today we talk about all the games that were played, how they landed with everyone, and what I think. Enjoy the article!

Bang The Dice Game

Bang The Dice Game has been a Hassela tradition since 2019 when it was first introduced and has become a group favorite filler, usually played before or after dinner. This year the weekend kicked off with it and as always the game was played several times with the usual chaotic antics and gaming group chemistry that comes naturally for us.

It’s about the most basic hidden identity game around, you have effectively three factions (The Sherrif and his deputies, The Outlaws, and The Renegade(s). The makeup of who’s who depends on how many players you have, but this is a game where the more merrier. It’s more or less a simple guessing game where everyone wants to appear to be whatever they think will keep them safe, long enough to figure out who everyone else actually is. You roll some dice and shoot people and hope you kill the right person who is not on your team.

It’s fun, quick, and quite perfect as an entertaining way to spend a half hour while you nurse a beer. It’s not something you want to take seriously and I would argue it’s only barely a hidden identity game as the revelations/discovery is pretty quick. For more robust hidden identity games that focus more on the hidden identity theme and mechanics, I would probably recommend Coup or One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Still Bang The Dice Game lands well mainly because you don’t have to go through any weird opening phases like you do in One Night Ultimate Werewolf which can suck up a lot of time nor do you need to fully grasp the powers of the hidden identities like you do in Coup. Here hidden identities are clearly just teams and the discovery is mostly just about trying to figure out who is actually on your team. If you get it wrong you are likely to shoot the wrong person and that is the punchline of the hidden joke within the game.

It’s silly and very basic fun, it’s universally loved in our group.

Jabba’s Palace – Love Letter

Love Letter is a staple filler for any gaming collection and has been for a couple of years for us. It’s got a bit more strategy and “umpf” in my opinion than most fillers. This is one you’re going to really want to win as it’s very satisfying when you do. I’m not at all surprised that Love Letter makes so many “favorites” lists out there.

For all intents and purposes, Jabba’s Palace is a standard Love Letter with Star Wars art, a basic game of trying to keep track of what cards are played and using the special abilities of the card you play on your turn and the strength of the card you keep each round to ensure you are as protected as you can manage to outlast all of your opponents.

There is quite a bit of luck involved in successfully navigating any round of play, but over the course of several hands that make up a full game, usually, the most clever player will win, so it’s definitely not just luck of the draw here, there is a reasonable level of skill and strategy involved.

Love Letter is a perfect filler game, find a theme you like and there is a Love Letter version out there just for you. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like the game, it’s one of those card games that works with everyone, gamers and non-gamers alike.

Game of Thrones: The Board Game

Game of Thrones – The Board Game is another Hassela tradition in my gaming group going back all the way to the early years of the event. In fact, I would say for most of us the term “Hassela Weekend” is synonymous with a round of Game of Thrones The Board Game.

It’s a brutally tough game to win with a lot of strategy and politics at its core. It handles the Game of Thrones theme with perfection, with all of the amazing feints and double-crossing you would expect. There are so many trick plays, subtle chess moves with big pushes, and usually big finishes. In particular, if everyone at the table has a firm grasp of the game’s many subtleties. Our game this weekend was no different, it was a struggle all the way to the bitter end with huge ups and downs, massive upsets and ultimately being decided in a single final battle in the last round of the game. It’s exactly how you hope a Game of Thrones game will go down.

The game does have a few lumps that can be both frustrating and can at times spoil the fun. For one, this is a 6 player game, practically unplayable in my opinion with any other player count. I say that with my group having tried and tried on my occasions, it just doesn’t work. It’s 6 players or bust.

It’s also an absurdly long game, your mileage will vary but you can count on a roughly 5-6 hour game like money in the bank, and if you go the full 10 rounds, you may very well exceed 6+ hours.

It also has some very obvious “balancing” flaws that are very difficult to massage out. For one, Lannister’s position on the board, their starting conditions, and early game options are extremely poor and limited. I would say if you can win as the Lannisters in Game of Thrones the Board Game, you are either a freakish master of strategy or playing against incompetence because they stand very little of doing much more than being a fly to swat at worse to kingmakers at best.

You also have some issues like the Grey Joys which opposite to the Lannisters just have outstanding options and starting conditions as well as a stupidly strong character deck. They are beatable so I wouldn’t call them broken as I definitely would the Lannisters, but it’s going to be a group effort to keep them under control. Starks are also very strong and the Baratheons can quite literally win the game in two rounds if people aren’t very attentive and actively invading them from all sides from the very start. They are like a time clock that tests your knowledge of the game, if you don’t know what to do, THEY WILL win.

Some of these things are just nuances of the game and are part of the charm and challenge. I might make a few changes, via some house rules to help out the Lannisters, but warts and all this is a fantastic strategy game even though it’s very tough to get to the table and is definitely a “once in a long while” type of game at best. I would not want to play this game with any regularity but it’s always welcome at Hassela (as long as we have 6!)

Game of Thrones Trivia

When it comes to judging or even speaking about trivia games, my feeling is that they are basically all the same. It’s a game of questions and you try to answer them, you either like that sort of thing or you don’t. Trivia games with a theme like Game of Thrones, challenge your knowledge in a specific area, so if you are into a show, book, movie or whatever and you can find a trivia game on that topic it can be fun.

I’m a bit indifferent to this sort of thing, I mean, I like trivia well enough so I have no issue sitting around a table and trying to test my knowledge for a bit in particular on a subject I enjoy, but I don’t think this sort of thing falls into the realm of “boardgame” in the same sense of the word in which I normally would use it.

Still, this particular trivia game has an area control mechanic, the questions had multiple choice answers, and the difficulty, at least for my gaming crew who are all Game of Thrones fans was relatively easy. I think about 80% of the questions asked were answered correctly so the game played quickly, it was fun to reminisce about the show, and as a group of fans, it went over pretty well.

I don’t know that I have much more to say about it, trivia games are trivia games. They neither surprise nor disappoint, they just do what they do and you either like that sort of thing or you don’t, the specific version or topic of a trivia game isn’t going to change your mind.

Eclipse: Second Dawn For The Galaxy

Eclipse was number 6 on my all-time favorite games list from this year and I was excited to bring it to Hassela for a big 4x game event, showdown. This epic level 4x game is a cross-over game between classic Ameri-Trash war games and modern Euro’s which might seem like a strange combination but is actually the norm for most 4x games in general. Twilight Imperium of course immediately comes to mind which also had classic Euro game mechanics like role-selection and token-based action economy mixed in with rolling handfuls of dice.

Eclipse I always felt should be great at bringing a Twilight Imperium experience to the table in a much more reasonable amount of time with a lot less nuance, but more “core gameplay”. The mechanics of Eclipse are very efficient and streamlined, there is a very quick progression toward conflict and the hope is that you end up with games filled with big battles and tight final moments as players try to squeeze out as many points as they can out of every aspect of the 4x civilization building experience.

Unfortunately, our experience this weekend was considerably less exciting than that in my opinion, in fact I would say it brushed up against being boring.

I think part of the problem with Eclipse is that many of the games mechanics don’t play out like you hope or imagine they should. The game is about controlling space with spaceships, expanding your civilization, building technologies and upgrading your ships and it tries to encourage conflicts between players through generous victory point rewards for fighting. All the mechanics and the play loops are there to encourage exciting games, but typically what ends up happening is just a lot of turtling and build-up to a very anti-climatic end.

There is just no push and pull on the territory control part of the game and because your economy controls your action economy, very often once you have built some ships, did some research and some upgrades, you are out of steam. Since the game is a race to build up and there is a lot of pressure to “keep up”, you end up getting the build-up without the release.

There are 8 rounds in the game and with a 5-6 player game, it can and does still take 5-6 hours to complete, so in the end the main sales pitch “Twilight Imperium – Light” really is very marginal at best. You shave off a couple of hours, but I’m not sure the investment of time is well spent. I think I would much rather play a 7-8 hour game of Twilight Imperium than a 5-6 hour game of Eclipse and after this weekend’s play, I’m seriously questioning Eclipse’s position on my best-of list.

I think it’s a game with a lot of potential, but this last playthrough was disappointing, there just wasn’t any fire, and no memorable moments. It played like a stale and very uninspired cube pusher. It was a bit of a bummer because this was the game I think I was most excited to get to the table this year and ended up being the biggest disappointment of the weekend for me.

Red Rising

Red Rising was introduced to the crew at the event for the first time. It’s a relatively simple game of hand management and building combinations of cards to create a victory-scoring bonus at the end.

This was a tricky game because, in addition to the scoring points on the cards and the combo bonuses, you also had some secondary resources and tracks to manage which also scored points and were key to triggering the end game. It kind of made the game a race to build up your hand, but you had to keep up on the tracks because your hand was not going to be sufficient to win on its own.

One of the key features of the game is of course the setting and having read the first book (Red Rising), I had a connection to the game that not all the players shared, but as a whole, it was a very abstract card game that really focused on mechanics more then bringing the setting to the forefront. If you are looking to play a game in this Dystopian future, know that besides some familiar names and setting concepts like Hellium and The Institute, the representation here is pretty light.

There is a lot of timing and manipulation in the game that determines your decisions but the moves boil down to play a card and pick up a card from four different tracks. The “player choices” are fairly slim as is the impact of any single play. I would put this into the “light” game category, even though it takes about 45-60 minutes to play, it sort of felt like a fun little filler that went on a bit longer than most fillers would.

I thought it was a competent game mechanic but there really was no twist to the game, it kind of had limited energy that was mostly spent after the first play. I can’t see myself getting excited to have repeat plays of this one, though I would not object to either. It was a fine, middle-of-the-road card game. I will say, I thought the art style was great, it was very easy to learn and there was something very intuitive about how it played. It didn’t require anyone to explain the strategy of the game to me, it unfolded in front of you very quickly and obviously. There are many different routes to victory and I’m not sure I uncovered anything specifically that I could point to and say “do that and you can win”, but it was very clear which cards went with which cards and how you could combo them. The issue wasn’t understanding what cards you wanted into your hand, but manipulating the game to ensure that you got what you wanted.

Tapestry

Tapestry is one of those games that is difficult to define, you just know you like it and you want to play. In our gaming group, this one has shown up in the Hassela weekend lineup several times over the years and is one of the very few games that ever see’s repeat plays at the same event. We ended up playing it twice this year again.

I think if push comes to shove, the only thing I can say about it is, play it at least 3 times before you decide if you like it or not. It may seem strange but this is a game of subtlety and nuance, there is so much genius built into this very simple mechanic of moving cubes up a track. It’s absolutely fascinating to see the kind of growth and expansion you can create from such humble beginnings as the starting conditions of this game. 4 resources turn into a massive, sprawling empire!

There are no “big moves” in this game (usually). It’s a slow and methodical manipulation of resources to squeeze every last ounce of juice out of them. It’s a game about optimization of your actions and efficiency.

Frankly, it’s addictive, I play this game a lot on BoardGameArena and even though I have probably played it more than 30 times just this year, I still feel drawn to it.

To play it in person has its own charm because this is also one of the most beautiful games you could ever put on the table, the production quality is extreme. It’s Kickstarter magic and we are lucky that a member of our group is a super fan and has purchased all of the expansions.

If there is any drawback to the game is that experience = points. When you play with people who have taken the time to unravel the puzzle that is Tapestry, you can have very tight and competitive games, but new players, no matter how competent they are as gamers are going to struggle for quite a few games before they hit those 300-400 point scores that are pretty standard finishes for experienced players. I recall the first game I ever played of Tapestry I barely managed to score 60 points, these days I consider any score under 250 a complete failure. The road to experience is filled with brain-busting analysis and acquisition of micro experiences which for a gamer is basically “the juice” that keeps them coming back.

I love this game, I think it’s one of the finest examples of original and modern game design.

Dumber Than A Box Of Rocks

It’s a silly trivia game, we play it, we like it, and no one knows why. It’s the board game equivalent of a youtube video of a guy taking a golf ball to the balls, I don’t care who you are, that shit is funny and so is competing in a trivia game in which a literal rock can outsmart you.

Valor and Villany: Minions of Mordak

When we played this one, I was ready right then and there to call this “The Best of Hassela 2024”. It was so good.

When it comes to these “you get a character, let’s fight monsters” games, I’m usually not a fan and I have played a lot of them. The main logic is almost always the same for me…. Why are we playing this? Why not just play a role-playing game like D&D?

Valor & Villainy separates itself from the pack of “adventures fighting monsters” games in so many ways. I think its charm above all else is that it doesn’t take itself seriously, in fact, the game is, itself from the instruction book, to the spells, to the monsters, just a series of fantasy genre-driven gags that fit neatly into a well-executed combat mechanic. This is a game where you draw a loot card, read it and laugh, because whoever created that card, has clearly played a lot of D&D. They know the inside jokes and the silliness of the fantasy genre and just leans right into it.

Valor & Villainy is about as close as you can get to watching a comedy cartoon as a board game. Beyond silliness, however, you have very smooth mechanics with a ton of strategy and challenge. It doesn’t punish you for failure as so many of these games often do and so the game never pumps the breaks, it’s always full-force action sequences.

The combat mechanics in this game are perfectly tuned to the theme, the flow of the game is quick and the results are always fun. Right now if you asked me what the best fantasy adventure board game I have ever played was, even after a single play I would instantly point you to Valor and Villainy. It was just perfect.

The core premise of the game is simple, one player is the main villain and for the first 5-6 rounds, they are spreading “evil” in the land in the form of monsters and curses that the player characters, aka, the heroes have to deal with. The main purpose of these early encounters is the same for both the villains and the heroes. For the villain, it’s to try to kill the adventurers so the villain can gain power in preparation for the big fight and for the players it’s to kill monsters and find loot, for the same reason.

After a few rounds, the villain arrives on the battlefield and you have a big fight for the win. There are exploration mechanics, spell mechanics, and several distinctively different characters to choose from. Everything you want out of a fantasy adventure game.

So why is it not “The Best Game of Hassela 2024”? Well, the competition was pretty stiff, more on that later.

Suffice it to say if you love fantasy adventure board games, whip out the credit card, this one is worth every penny!

Condottiere

This 1995 classic filler shows up to the big Hassela weekend event every year like clockwork and this year was no different.

This trick-taking game with an area control element is all about trying to get the most out of your hand so that you can either win the battle, or exit it with sufficient strength to win the next one. You stretch your hand but you have to be careful about overcommitting because you might find yourself winning one hand, but then not even able to functionally participate in the next.

The decisions about which fights are important are driven by the area control mechanic which defines the lands you fight over and you need to pick your battles carefully. It’s not about winning every trick you can, it’s about winning the trick that matters.

It’s a straight shooter kind of a trick-taking game, no big bells and whistles, just play your cards right and know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em and know when to run.

Fun game, I think it’s a staple game that belongs in everyone’s collection.

Factory Funner

I’m a bit hesitant on this one, which is not to say I didn’t like it, in fact, I liked it quite a bit but…. there was something off about the sequence of the play that spoiled it a bit.

In Factory Funner you get some tiles that represent machines that produce things, requiring a couple of inputs of “fluid” of different colors and producing some kind of “fluid” output of different colors. As you lay out tiles and build connections between machines you score points for your efficiency. The fewer pipes and connectors you put down the more points you earn. It is effectively a puzzle game you have to solve on the fly without knowing what all of the pieces you will need to put down will be.

It’s a bit strange, but the factory building part and the stress of trying to make things fit and figuring out the puzzle was fantastic, I loved it right out of the gate. However, the method of how you get the tiles you are actually using has this live-action “grab it quickly or miss out” part, which sort of lacked fluidity and ended up kind of roughing up an otherwise good game.

I can see what they are going for here. You have to build a factory from a limited selection of tiles and you have to decide which tile you are going to take quickly to add extra stress to that key decision. I think that is fine, I actually like it, it reminds me a bit of Galaxy Truckers. I just don’t think they got the sequence of play right.

I would have preferred a drafting mechanic, or some sort of draw 3 tiles, you have 5 seconds to pick one, or some sort of turn-based thing. Anything but the “how fast can you grab the stuff you want before the other players do” thing which works fine in Galaxy Trucker but it’s because you have tons of tiles to pick from in Galaxy Trucker. Here you have as many tiles as there are players and you end up picking your own tiles most of the time just because you at least have some semblance of control that way.

I don’t know, for me the whole “grab a tile quickly” thing spoiled a pretty fascinating puzzle game of building factories. With this mechanic, I put it in the “ok” category without it, meaning the puzzly bit alone, I thought it was very good.

Hunt For The Ring

A hidden movement game based on the classic Lord Of The Rings story where Frodo (one of the players) and his companions make their way from The Shire to Rivendell while trying to avoid the pursuit of Nazgul represented by the rest of the players.

There are not very many hidden movement games out there and even fewer good ones. I’m reminded of another game on my shelf collecting dust with a similar premise called Fury of Dracula which I used to favor but have found over the years is just a bit overcooked in certain places.

Hunt For The Ring succeeds where Fury of Dracula fails in that they really focus on the “searching for them” part of the game and don’t try to overcomplicate the “finding them part”. In Fury of Dracula when you finally locate Dracula you have to fight him using one of the most convoluted combat mechanics I have ever seen put into a game. The result is this weird anti-climatic ending to this great first part of the game where you play hide and go seek with a pointlessly complex combat mechanic to resolve the winner of the game.

Hunt For The Ring keeps that “we found him” part of the game simple using a familiar corruption mechanic from War of The Ring (a game made by the same designer). The result is very satisfying and Hunt For The Ring ended up being one of the highlights of the Hassela weekend as a result for me.

They nailed the hide-and-go-seek part of the game, they did a great job keeping the rules simple and interruption shinanigans to a minimum. It’s a straightforward game of trying to find and trap the fellowship.

I like this one, I would happily play it again. The great thing about hidden movement games like Hunt For The Ring is that they are generally very simple, Hunt For The Ring did have some complexity to it but most of it was there to serve the hide-and-go-seek game which is exactly where the focus should be in a game like this.

A+ from me on this one.

Hegemony

Last but certainly not least is Hegemony, the game I would put as the firm winner of the 4-day weekend and even a contender for my pick for game of the year.

Holy shit my mind was blown by this one. I don’t even know exactly how to put it into words, but this was without question one of the most unique games I have played in a long time. It’s fair to say the game is pretty complex, in fact, I know we did several important things incorrectly on our first playthrough, but even with that, it was abundantly clear that this game was going to be hitting the table in the future. There is a lot of juice to explore here and right now, I’m completely fascinated by the possibilities.

Essentially the game is about navigating the very real feeling issues of social economics from the perspective of one of the four asymmetrical classes (factions in the game) of society (Working Class, Middle Class, Capitalists, and The State). A concept so thematically executed in these mechanics, that it’s almost uncomfortable.

In the game each player has to navigate their social class to success by scoring victory points related to the class’s core function in society. The catch is that the requirements for success aren’t always crystal clear in the sense that there are many combined causes and effects that are not always in your control or fully predictable. The game has a lot of complex interactions in which you are trying to adjust society to serve you, while making sure your competitors are also served, because they are ultimately responsible for serving you in many regards as well (their success is often your success), even though by serving you they are also screwing you most of the time. I don’t know if that makes sense, it shouldn’t, but it’s how it works and the weirdest thing about it is that you end up feeling both the connection to the real world and a sense of compassion for the class you’re representing whether you agree with the abstracted political implications or not.

There is a kind of rhythm to the game that feels very personal in a way. You are hitched up to a mode of thinking depending on your faction and there are basic instincts and an almost belligerent-like execution of actions sometimes where you forget that you’re playing a game and your brain gets wrapped up in the abstracted politics of the fictitious world your playing in. Emotions can run quite high.

For example, the tax rate, a critical policy in the game has a wide sweeping impact on everyone, but there are both benefits and consequences for having a high or a low tax rate for everyone. Meaning it’s never exclusively good or bad. Make the tax rate too high and suddenly businesses start shutting down and creating unemployment, make the tax rate too low and the state might fail resulting in massive penalties for everyone including wage reductions, tax hikes, and potentially mass unemployment.

There are various policies like this each with their own very global impact, but managing these isn’t the only social issue to contend with. The economics of an always-growing population create all manner of issues for everyone and the working class in particular has a core reliance on everyone else’s ability to manage their faction. More to the point, if players fail to manage the society well enough the working class can create stiff consequences which include strikes and demonstrations that can cost everyone both production, money, and victory points.

As such there is a need to cooperate to a certain degree even between the most obvious competitors like the working class and the capitalists, but how do you cooperate with someone who wants the exact opposite thing as you do and neither side can win the game if the other gets what they want.

The whole game falls firmly into the “impossible to resolve” category and so the trick to the whole thing becomes one of maneuvering and clever and well-timed strategic moves in an attempt to simply out-pace everyone else on the victory point track as society is catapulted towards inevitable disaster. Failure in a word is imminent, but from the ashes, one of these classes will emerge to claim victory.

A big part of the game that sort of “breaks the rules” is in the action cards each player has, which are also asymmetrical decks unique for each class. These cards allow you to do things the basic actions don’t and it’s in the smart use of these cards that most players will find their victory. As a general rule, each time you are forced to take a basic action instead of leveraging the effects of a card, it is a step towards defeat as it’s only through the use of these cards you can get ahead. Basic actions are a recovery or corrective measure, not a plan. Playing these cards however, is tricky because you have to create just the right conditions in most cases to really get the most out of them. If you are constantly forced to take corrective measures by discarding cards for basic actions rather than focusing on the execution of a plan that involves the effects of your cards, your chances of success dwindle in the very esoteric and hard-to-see math behind how victory point acquisition works.

There is a natural rhythm to the game that creates inevitable hostility. Basically in a status-quo environment in which everyone cooperates and the game simply plays out at a “medium” give and take, the state is the automatic winner, this is by design as the state essentially wants to keep everyone at an even keel. No one can keep up on points with the state if they are simply collecting medium salaries, paying medium prices for goods, at a medium tax rate with the population growing at a medium level. For each class, there has to be some major advantage in the policies in their favor for them to get an edge in the victory point acrobatics.

Each class has its Achilles heel sort of speak, a single policy that when it’s in their favor to an extreme will guarantee that they will continually outscore everyone else during the scoring round. Manipulating circumstances to get that in place is difficult, usually unlikely as long as all the players are aware of the impact, but inevitably there are short-term gains to be had sometimes by siding with someone to give them what they want.

For example, having a low tax rate can help the working class to expand a little quicker and have some reserve cash so that they can react a little better to a constantly changing game state, but low tax causes problems for the state and the reserves of affordable resources dries up opening an opportunity for the capitalist to capitalize on a starving market. The result is a working class that goes plus-minus, a failed state while the capitalist and middle class score obscene amounts of points.

Often you have to make unfavorable decisions to keep a particular class from failing outright because each class has a failsafe response that screws everyone when they are pushed too hard. The working class can demonstrate and protest shutting down production, the state can fail and do a hard reset causing high taxation and the capitalists and middle class can sell off companies and cut deeply into everyone’s bottom line sending them to the unemployment line. The results are always pretty devastating to everyone when any class fails to remain stable and most often the person least affected is the person’s faction that failed, which is key to the balance of the game. It forces others to worry about your success to some extent. You don’t want to be too helpful, but you also don’t want to outright crush anyone either.

There is so much more to say about this game and its many nuances if you can imagine that all the above is from a single play of the game.

If there is a negative to Hegemony, it’s that the rules are quite intricate and it’s very easy to get them wrong and when you do, even if it’s just a small rule, it has a huge impact. For example in our first play-through, we did the check IMF test after paying taxes, but you actually do the IMF check first and the taxes second. This completely changes the game, yet there is only one line in the entire rulebook that mentions it despite it being a very critical rule. The rulebook however is well written and the cheat sheets that come with the game are very helpful, so once you learn to play the game properly, that initial difficulty of the game which coincidently adds a lot to the length, goes away. Our first game took the better part of 7 hours, but I’m 100% certain we will cut that time in half quite easily for our next playthrough.

Hands one of the best games I have played this year!

Conclusion

All I can ever say about our Hassela weekends each year is that it’s the gaming highlight of the year for me. A fantastic weekend of pure and uninterrupted fun time in the company of the best group of guys I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. It is pure bliss!

Every year I hope that when I return from the weekend I have made a new discovery and most years that ends up being true. This year Hegemony blew the doors off, but I think a big nod of approval has to go out to both Hunt For The Ring and Valor and Villany, two absolute gems.

Can’t wait for next year!