Early this year, through what can only be described as pure cosmic luck, I stumbled across a strange little gem called Syncanite Foundation. It did not take long before it crashed headfirst onto my list of the 20 Best Games, and honestly, it earned that spot in all the right ways.
What grabbed me immediately was just how different the game felt. Syncanite Foundation is packed with unusual mechanics, a stunning visual identity, and production values that practically scream passion project. Every system in the game feels soaked in lore and atmosphere, creating an experience where thematic gameplay and player interaction sit front and center. This is not a game where everyone quietly builds their own little engine in a corner. The table talk, tension, alliances, and betrayals are part of the experience.
I previously wrote a full review of the game and, spoiler alert, I absolutely loved it. That said, I did point out a few production issues at the time. Most of them were cosmetic rather than game-breaking, but there was clearly room for improvement.
Apparently, the creators agreed.
Since my review, the team behind Syncanite Foundation has been quietly working away behind the scenes, polishing and refining the experience piece by piece. All of that effort has now culminated in a brand new Gamefound campaign that has just gone live.
For existing fans, this is genuinely exciting stuff. For newcomers, though, I can already imagine the reaction. Looking at the mountain of information, updates, expansions, and extras attached to this project can feel a little like trying to decode alien technology. So, I figured I would put together a short article sharing my thoughts on the campaign, what stands out, and whether this strange and fascinating game deserves your attention.
Who is Syncanite Foundation For?
Before you even think about reaching for your wallet, I think it is important to talk about what Syncanite Foundation actually is and, more importantly, who it is for. Board games come in all shapes and sizes, and despite what marketing departments would love you to believe, not every game is meant for every table.
Syncanite Foundation is a big and elaborate experience; its mechanics are verbose and evolutionary, but above all else, confrontational. This is a take that game in it’s purest form.
In my opinion, Syncanite Foundation feels like an old school game wearing modern clothes. Beneath the slick mechanics and gorgeous presentation lurks something far meaner than your average cozy game night experience. This is not the sort of game that gently pats you on the back while everyone quietly builds an efficient engine and celebrates participation trophies.
No, this thing feels like an underground cage fight from an eighties action movie where somebody gets punched simply because they made eye contact at the wrong moment.
At its core, Syncanite Foundation is a deeply confrontational game. In fact, betrayal is not just part of the experience; it is practically the main course. Winning often feels less about building yourself up and more about dragging everyone else down into the mud before they can do the same to you. Alliances are temporary, trust is dangerous, and mercy is usually a tactical error.
Personally, that is exactly my kind of nonsense.
My gaming group consists of the sort of loud, whisky-swirling maniacs who treat social manipulation as a competitive sport, and Syncanite Foundation delivers that experience beautifully. It is an absolutely glorious asshole simulator, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.
That said, I can absolutely see this bouncing off groups who prefer quieter Euro-style games where players peacefully push cubes around a board while calculating victory points in quiet contemplation, then shaking the victor’s hand in respectful admiration. No, after you’re done playing Syncanite Foundation, there are going to be some f-bombs.
Most people who regularly buy board games already know what kind of players they are and what kind of group they play with, so you probably already know whether this sounds amazing or horrifying.
If you enjoy games like A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium, or classic Dune, then there is a very good chance Syncanite Foundation will click with you. Not because these games necessarily share mechanics or themes, but because they all thrive on tension, negotiation, manipulation, betrayals, desperate deals, and devastating double crosses.
Syncanite Foundation embraces all of that with absolute passionate enthusiasm, and that full commitment is exactly why you would buy this game.
What’s In The Box?
I usually prefer simple and elegant game design. Tight systems. Clean execution. Efficient components. My general philosophy is very much “keep it simple.”
There is, however, one major exception to that rule.
If I truly love a game, then all restraint immediately leaves my body. At that point, I want the deluxe version of everything. I want oversized components, absurd table presence, thematic nonsense, and enough accessories to make it look like a minor royal family financed the production. If possible, I would also like a live tiger sitting beside the table so I can pet it while making diplomatic threats in character.
Thankfully, the people behind Syncanite Foundation seem to understand this very specific form of board game insanity.
The funny thing is that even the core package already feels excessive in the best possible way. If you are completely new to the game and unsure whether you are about to become obsessed with it, the base version alone still delivers a ridiculously premium experience. Yes, it is a little expensive, but honestly, it costs about the same as one decent night out, and you are no doubt going to get far more entertainment out of this box than overpriced cocktails and regret.
The production quality is excellent, the presentation is gorgeous, and overall, the value feels genuinely strong.
Now, if you do decide to fully embrace the madness, there are a couple of add-ons I can easily recommend.
The Great Council Box is probably the standout. The premium game mat alone is a nice upgrade, but the real attraction is the expanded player count. It allows two additional players to join the chaos, which is absolutely worth it if you have a larger gaming group. Few things are more painful than gathering everyone together only to realize somebody has to either sit out because the table is full or you have to choose another game. Thankfully, Syncanite Foundation scales surprisingly well with more players, which only amplifies the tension, paranoia, and inevitable betrayals.
Then there are the Dignitary Packs, which add special character cards that give each player a little extra personality and flavor. These might sound minor on paper, but they add a surprising amount to the overall experience for a relatively small investment. It is the kind of addition that makes the game feel closer to the lore and just a little more personal and memorable.
The big talking point, however, is the new Crimson Protocol expansion.
This is the headline addition for the current Gamefound campaign, and while I have not had hands-on experience with it yet, I do find the direction extremely interesting.
Crimson Protocol is mainly focused on reigning in some of the chaos of the base game. From interviews with the designer, it’s clear that many compromises were made for playability in the core game, and the Crimson Protocol expansion is like a director’s cut.
One criticism sometimes aimed at Syncanite Foundation is that the game can occasionally feel a little wild and unpredictable. Certain random systems can create moments where everything spirals into glorious chaos, which is sometimes hilarious and sometimes feels like the universe personally decided to ruin your evening. House rules are not uncommon among experienced groups looking to tighten things up a bit.
Crimson Protocol appears to directly address that issue by introducing additional control over some of the game’s more chaotic elements. That sounds very appealing to me and I suspect many existing fans will feel the same way.
That said, there is probably a tradeoff here.
Syncanite Foundation is already a fairly dense and demanding game, and I would not be surprised if Crimson Protocol increases the complexity even further. If you are brand new to the game, I am not necessarily saying you should avoid it, especially since crowdfunding campaigns have a nasty habit of creating fear of missing out, but there is also something to be said for learning the core game first before diving into the deep end of the madness pool.
As for the rest of the extras, there is definitely some fun nonsense in there. The vinyl soundtrack is honestly kind of awesome purely on vibes alone, and the novel could be genuinely interesting if you enjoy digging into the lore. Beyond that, though, most of the remaining add-ons feel more like flavor than necessity.
Still, if you are already falling in love with the game, flavor is exactly the kind of irrational luxury purchase board gamers live for.
When Dewan first landed on my table, my eyes didn’t go to the rulebook, the components, or even the promise of gameplay. They went straight to that absolutely mesmerizing cover art by Arthus Pilorget. It’s surreal, vibrant, and just the right kind of strange, like a dream you can’t quite explain but don’t want to wake up from. There’s an immediate sense of identity here, a bold, artistic swagger that practically demands your attention. And yeah… I love it.
Beneath that dazzling, slightly offbeat exterior lies something far more restrained: a deeply abstract puzzle game. There’s nothing wrong with that, far from it, but when the art sets the stage this dramatically, part of you can’t help but expect something equally theatrical underneath. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe that’s just the spell the artwork casts. Either way, I always like to capture my raw, first impression, the unfiltered “wow” before the mechanics settle in. So yes, let the record show: very cool art.
Anyway, enough gawking, consider me thoroughly impressed, and let’s dive in.
I feel compelled to put this piece on my blog; it really defines the term, artwork! Anyone who says that A.I. will replace artists is kidding themselves, a machine can copy it, but nothing like this will ever originate from a machine, no matter how much we invest in them.
Dewan sits comfortably in that delicious design space of deceptively simple mechanics wrapped around a surprisingly deep strategic core. At first glance, it feels approachable, almost gentle… but give it a few plays, and suddenly you’re in deep waters, wrestling with decisions that feel sharper, tighter, and far more consequential than expected. It’s a slow burn in the best way, subtle at first, then steadily revealing layers of tension, bite, and competitive edge. And make no mistake, this game can get spicy once players find their footing. It’s a lot more confrontational than it appears or the rules suggest; there is strong, in-your-face interaction here.
What really elevates Dewan, though, is its ever-shifting landscape. The game is map-based, and crucially, you build that map yourself at the start of each session. The result is that no two games feel remotely alike. Forget rehearsed openings or safe, go-to strategies; this is a game that thrives on adaptability. You’ll need to think on your feet, pivot constantly, and embrace the chaos of a board that refuses to play by familiar rules. I really liked that a great deal; it speaks to replayability and longevity, so we are off to a great start.
I find it interesting how wildly different I saw this map during the first 3 plays of this game and how I see it now. The learning curve is not steep, but there is understanding and meaningful knowledge, a transition that takes a few plays to appear.
I also struggled to pin down a clean comparison, and that’s a fantastic thing. In a hobby full of echoes and iterations, Dewan feels refreshingly, confidently unique.
So right out of the gate, we have a strong opening and a lot of great potential. The question is, does Dewan deliver on the promise? Let’s find out!
Overview
Final Score: (4.05 out 5) Outstanding Game!
If you really want to get a grip on Dewan, the cleanest way to unpack it is to think in three interlocking layers: the razor-thin scoring system, the slick card-driven action engine, and the ever-present, quietly cutthroat area control on the map. The game demands that a player be efficient, which, coincidentally, is how I would describe the way the game was designed.
Let’s start with the path to victory, because this one is tight. Points are scarce, precious, and just a little bit elusive. You’re not racking up big numbers here; instead, most of your scoring trickles in through the completion of story cards (think elegant little objective puzzles). These ask you to control specific terrain types, mountains, forests, and deserts, and convert that control into a sort of resource checkbox. There are a few bonus avenues for points, plus a shared scenario card that sweetens the pot for everyone, but the real magic lies in efficiency, not overwhelming acquisition.
The trick is to chain your story cards together so they overlap in clever, satisfying ways, squeezing maximum value out of minimal effort on the board. It’s less about doing more and more about doing just enough, brilliantly. If that sounds like a hobbit riddle, well, the game kind of is that.
The Story cards tell you what resources you must collect, but you unlock these as you go, and there is no telling what cards will be available when it’s your turn to pick one. This might be the only time a bit of luck can help you. Finding a way to make use of the same resource in more than one story is key to a successful run.
Actions are governed by the card system, the pulsing, strategic heartbeat of the game. Each round, you’re faced with an illusively tense choice: play cards to move across the board and establish settlements (your claim to territory), or pause to draft new cards from a constantly shifting market. It’s simple on paper, but in practice every decision feels like a tiny, meaningful gamble. Efficiency, again, is everything. Waste a move, and you’ll feel it, and while you may have a plan, opportunities difficult to pass up come up all the time, and knowing when to take them and when to pass is kind of the key to the game.
At the start of the game, the board feels wide open, brimming with possibility. Resources seem plentiful, and on the dynamically built map, opportunities are abundant. You might even think, “Hey, this isn’t so hard.” The game will correct that perception rather quickly.
Because Dewan hides a beautifully designed rule at its core: connected territories of the same type only count as one terrain type. I would imagine when the designer came up with that, the rest of the game laid out for him like a solved puzzle.
You might think that having 5 deserts so close together is a lucky break; it will make checkboxing deserts quick and easy, but the reality is that you are looking at one big desert, which is catastrophically bad. It not only forces you across it, meaning you need to collect desert cards to move through them, but settling more than one of these deserts is useless.
Those four cozy mountain tiles clustered near your starting position look like a goldmine… but mechanically, they’re just a single, lonely mountain. Suddenly, the board shifts from inviting to demanding. That one rule, simple, elegant, slightly cruel, completely reshapes how you approach the game. You can’t just carve out a neat little slice of the map and call it a day. You’ll need to spread out, stretch your reach, and compete across the entire board, and you can be certain your opponents will be doing the same.
And here’s the kicker: moving across that board costs cards. Every step, every expansion, every ambitious grab for territory eats into your limited hand. So once again, the game whispers its central mantra, do more with less. The game could have been called “Optimization,” and that would have been on point.
There’s a lot more bubbling beneath the surface, layers of nuance, timing, and tactical brinkmanship, but even at a high level, you can feel it: Dewan is one of those games where the rules are deceptively simple, but the decisions are gloriously, brain-meltingly complex.
And that’s fascinating. Genuinely.
But also very abstract, and if I’m being honest, just a little outside my personal taste. I can absolutely appreciate what it’s doing; there’s a deep, rewarding well here for players who want to dive in, explore, and master its many subtleties. This is a game that could easily sustain dozens, maybe hundreds, of plays for the right audience. It’s well designed, well balanced, everything you could want as a general board game fan, but general is not my sweet spot.
Three times during the game, you will be allowed to slip a card under your board, which gives you both the terrain and resource on that card. This requires good timing and preparation, but is quite important for scoring purposes.
For me, Dewan lands squarely in that familiar category of: “This is excellent… just not entirely my thing,” which simply means I’m happy to play it, but it won’t necessarily find its way into my permanent collection.
It’s not so much a judgment as it is a preference, but I will say that games like Dewan sometimes win me over, over time. I’m not in a rush to cull it. I recognize that while I have my preferences, sometimes these sorts of puzzly games win me over, and Dewan certainly has the potential to do just that.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Outstanding quality through and through, the art is just a cherry on top!
Cons: I would have liked to see a rules reference for this one.
The component quality, judged across my three core pillars: physical durability, artistic execution, and clarity, puts Dewan on a clear path toward a perfect score.
Frankly, there’s very little to criticize here. The components are crafted from thick, resilient stock that feels built for countless plays. Visually, the game leans fully into its charming, whimsical art style, maintaining a cohesive and inviting aesthetic across every piece. The iconography does present a slight learning curve at first, but once it clicks, it reveals itself to be clean, intuitive, and thoughtfully placed; everything communicates exactly what it needs to, exactly where you expect it. And the box insert is exceptionally well-designed, snug, practical, and oddly satisfying in its precision.
The rulebook, however, is where things get a bit more nuanced. My initial instinct was to criticize it. It adopts a “teach-as-you-play” approach rather than functioning as a structured reference guide. While this makes onboarding smooth and approachable, it becomes less convenient when you need to answer a specific question mid-game. Instead of quickly locating a rule, you may find yourself digging through the flow of the gameplay explanation to uncover it.
The vivid and colorful art make this game a pleasure to look at, but I have to say it again, art this good belongs on something less abstract; this artist should be working on RPG’s!
This is a hill I will happily die on: every game should include a dedicated rules reference for quick lookups, especially for edge cases and commonly misunderstood elements.
In Dewan, those questions will most often revolve around iconography and scenario cards, which can feel slightly opaque during your first few plays. That said, this is far from a dealbreaker. The game itself is elegantly simple, and once those early uncertainties are resolved, you’re unlikely to revisit the rulebook at all. The rules are streamlined, logical, and easy to internalize.
Overall, this is a beautifully produced, impressively polished game, one that doesn’t just meet modern board game production standards but confidently exceeds them.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: If we were judging the theme on art alone, this would be 5 stars!
Cons: The theme is mostly irrelevant to the game, but as an abstract game, it doesn’t really need a theme.
The theme isn’t exactly the beating heart of Dewan, in fact, it barely registers as a pulse. Outside of its enchanting, fairy tale-inspired art style, there’s very little here to anchor the experience in a meaningful narrative, leaving me with surprisingly little to dig into.
Beyond a scattering of light flavor text in the rulebook, the game offers only the faintest hint of context. You’re… expanding a village, exploring, for reasons that remain charmingly vague and conveniently unexplained. It all feels more like a decorative backdrop than a driving force, pleasant to look at, but ultimately insubstantial. It’s an abstract game, plain and simple.
What this game lacks in theme, it makes up for in great gameplay and, more importantly, amazing style. The vivid use of light here is amazing!
I’m not even sure what else can be said. This is precisely where my tilting system earns its keep. While Dewan’s theme is undeniably thin, almost ethereal in its absence, it also doesn’t detract from the experience in any meaningful way. The game isn’t trying to tell a story, and it doesn’t need to.
So yes, the theme may be wispy, but crucially, it’s also harmless, an aesthetic flourish rather than a foundational pillar in an otherwise abstract puzzle game beautifully executed.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Fantastic design, I foresee this game winning some awards.
Cons: Can be quite unforgiving, takes a few plays before it clicks.
While the theme in Dewan barely leaves an impression, the gameplay is the undeniable centerpiece, the beating heart and razor-sharp mind of the experience.
For a game with such elegantly simple rules, Dewan hides a remarkable amount of depth beneath its surface. It’s one of those deceptively “light” designs that quickly reveals a dense, cerebral core the moment you start making meaningful decisions.
If I had to distill what makes Dewan stand out, it’s that it belongs to a lineage of games rooted in mathematical integrity. This is a design built on balance, probability, and precision rather than flashy mechanics or familiar systems. It feels engineered in the best possible way, echoing the philosophies of designers like Reiner Knizia, Vlaada Chvátil, and Alexander Pfister. In that sense, Johannes Goupy and Yoann Levet have crafted something that feels refreshingly deliberate and structurally sound, without the usual copy/pasting that makes it easily definable as “just like X game”.
Where many modern games lean on familiar frameworks, worker placement, deck building, and action selection, Dewan confidently carves its own path. It doesn’t rely on genre shorthand. Instead, it builds tension and decision-making from first principles, and the result is something that feels both fresh and intellectually satisfying.
From the very start, variability defines the experience. Randomized terrain, shifting board layouts, and scenario (or “story”) cards ensure that no two games unfold the same way. Yet impressively, this randomness never undermines balance. The scenario cards feel meticulously tuned, difficult to achieve regardless of your starting position. You won’t luck into an easy 8-point score just because the board happened to favor you. That level of consistency in a dynamic setup is no small feat; it’s careful, disciplined design. Anyone who has ever tried to design a game knows just how painful balancing dynamic mechanics can be. It’s clear this game went through rigorous testing to achieve this result.
The pacing is another standout strength. Every village placed tightens the board, increasing both spatial pressure and urgency. The game subtly transforms into a race, not just to score efficiently, but to act before opportunities disappear. You want to craft perfect, optimized turns… but the game rarely affords you that luxury.
This is a pretty fast-paced game, you’re going to take maybe 12-15 actions before the game ends, and you know you’re doing well if you are the one putting the pressure on other players to keep up. There is definitely a race here; faster is in fact, better. The result is that in a typical game night, you are probably going to play this more than once.
This creates a fun and sometimes frustrating tension. Dewan is a puzzle under pressure, a game where careful planning collides with the constant need to adapt and race to the finish. Mistakes are not easily forgiven; there just aren’t enough turns for you to course correct a mistake.
Player interaction is also more pronounced than it first appears. This isn’t a solitary optimization exercise; it’s a shared, contested space. You need to track opponents closely, anticipating their moves, disrupting their plans, and adjusting your own strategy accordingly. Blocking becomes just as important as building, and though this skill takes time to develop, it is more often than not the key to a tight victory.
One particularly elegant design choice is the terrain drafting system. When selecting terrain cards, you must take two adjacent cards rather than freely choosing any combination. It’s a small rule with enormous implications. Even when the exact pieces you need are visible, they’re often just out of reach. This forces compromise, sacrifice, and creative problem-solving, adding another layer of often painful decisions to the puzzle.
Drafting cards in Dewan is really very key. I’m not even exaggerating that one bad decision, especially when playing with experienced players, can make the difference between winning and losing. It’s very unforgiving, which I actually liked quite a bit.
And that’s really the magic of Dewan. With only two types of actions per turn available, the game manages to feel surprisingly weighty, filled with difficult choices. Every choice ripples outward, interacting with the board state, your objectives, and your opponents’ plans. It’s tight, demanding, and deeply engaging.
That said, this style of design comes with its trade-offs. There’s no real catch-up mechanism. Strong, optimized play is rewarded, and mistakes can be costly. In fact, the game is so tight that even a single bad call can and often will cost you the game. It is a puzzle game that demands perfection. In many games, you may find yourself identifying the likely winner well before the final turn. Fortunately, Dewan keeps things brisk, typically wrapping up in 30–45 minutes, so even a losing position never overstays its welcome. You won’t have to wallow in your defeat for long.
At its core, the gameplay loop is beautifully simple: control space, match terrain to objectives, and position your camps to maximize scoring opportunities. But the path to doing so is filled with clever constraints and constantly shifting decisions that keep every turn engaging.
Dewan succeeds because it embraces one of the purest goals of game design: when you lose, you know exactly why, and you immediately want to try again with a better plan.
That’s not just good design. That’s great design.
Replay-ability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Dynamic starting setup and unique scenarios make this game very replayable. Works with all player counts equally well.
Cons: Playing with new players can be a little unfair; it’s not that much fun until it clicks for everyone.
The first couple of plays of Dewan, I have to be honest, felt a little… samey. Not bad, not boring, just oddly flat. The competitive edge hadn’t quite surfaced yet, and I struggled to see where the long-term excitement or replayability was supposed to come from. It all felt a bit too neat, a bit too contained, like a clever puzzle that might not have much more to say after a few rounds.
And then, somewhere around the third or fourth play, it clicked for me and I’m glad I stuck around to see it.
That’s when it hit me: everything I thought I had learned was not nearly as useful as I expected. The game’s dynamic, randomized setup completely reshuffles the puzzle every single time. What worked before doesn’t necessarily work again. There’s no “perfect opening,” no reliable flowchart to follow, no cozy strategy to fall back on. Dewan quietly pulls the rug out from under you and says, “Figure it out… again.”
And that’s where it comes alive.
Each session feels like a brand-new puzzle with familiar rules but a wildly different personality. The structure stays consistent, but the execution constantly shifts. The game is constantly demanding adaptation. It’s like solving a new riddle using the same language, recognizable, yet endlessly surprising.
Now, sitting here after about a dozen plays, I feel pretty confident saying this: the replayability here is, for all practical purposes, limitless. You might eventually step away from it, but it won’t be because you’ve “solved” it or fallen into repetitive patterns. This game doesn’t let you do that.
You’re not going to score a lot of points in this game, and most end-of-game scoring is going to be very tight. Every point matters in this game; you have to squeeze it for everything you can get out of it, there is no room for sub-optimal play.
If you have a soft spot for light, puzzly Euro games, the kind that reward clever thinking, efficient play, and a willingness to adapt on the fly, then Dewan is going to feel right at home on your table. It’s a sharp, thoughtful design with a wonderfully dynamic core, and that ever-changing setup does a ton of heavy lifting when it comes to keeping things fresh.
A great design, a tight balance, and endlessly shifting starting conditions, together, give Dewan a replayability that feels not just strong, but effortlessly alive.
Conclusion
I always find games like Dewan uniquely difficult to review, and not because they’re flawed, but because they’re so clearly, so quietly excellent. After decades of playing board games with near-obsessive enthusiasm, and more than ten years of dissecting and reviewing them, you develop an instinct for design, an ability to recognize when something is finely tuned, meticulously balanced, and thoughtfully constructed.
And make no mistake: Dewan is exactly that. It is subtly, almost deceptively, brilliant.
But the beauty of a conclusion is that the analysis is done. The score is set. The critical lens can finally be set aside, and I can just speak as a player.
And as a player, I can say Dewan is a game I deeply respect more than I personally love. It’s excellent, I’m just not its target audience.
It’s an elegantly engineered experience that will absolutely resonate with the right audience. For me, though, it sits just outside my usual preferences. That said, I have no doubt it will continue to hit the table. Its quality all but guarantees it, people will discover it, appreciate it, and want to play it again and again. And importantly, I never found it frustrating or grating in the way more abstract, puzzle-heavy games sometimes can be. It’s thoughtful without being exhausting, challenging without being punishing.
In the end, Dewan is a game I would confidently recommend to players who appreciate clever, finely crafted systems and enjoy abstract, brain-burning puzzles wrapped in a clean, distinctive design.
It may not be my perfect game, but it is, without question, a remarkably well-designed one that will make it someone’s top 10 list.
I do enjoy a good civilization game. In fact, if one were to casually browse my gaming shelves (an expedition not unlike cataloguing a particularly nerdy wing of the British Museum), one would find no shortage of grand historical ambitions neatly packed into cardboard. Titles such as Through the Ages, Western Empires, and Nations just to name a few sit there rather smugly, silently judging lesser boxes. One might even say, though only after a modest pause for dramatic effect, that I am something of a connoisseur.
I know, more or less, what I want from a civilization game, but I do delight in being surprised by games in this genre, providing something unexpected. This is precisely where Epoch: Course of Cultures emerges, like a well-dressed time traveller stepping out of a slightly unreliable machine. It presents a civilization-building experience that feels comfortingly familiar, yet curiously novel, an impressive feat that would likely earn a small, approving nod from Sid Meier himself. I would even argue this game has done more for the genre itself than the latest PC disappointment, Civilisation 7, though that is not as extraordinary feat as you might imagine it to be. A topic perhaps for another day.
Overview
Final Score: (3.6 out 5 Stars)
Epoch: Course of Cultures is, at its heart, an action selection civilization builder, which is a wonderfully polite way of saying, “you will spend a great deal of time making big key decisions and then immediately wondering if they were terrible ones.” Beneath the surface, it carries many of the familiar mechanical bones of the genre, but with just enough curious mutations and original ideas to keep things feeling fresh, competitive, and pleasantly tense in that “I may have just doomed my people” sort of way.
Now, civilization games do have a reputation for being… Chronologically challenged. In that context, Epoch sits comfortably in the middle ground. When compared to titans like Through the Ages or Western Empires, a four-hour playtime feels almost refreshingly restrained, like a historical epic that politely ends before your snacks run out. That said, it’s quite the affair compared to your standard board game play time, especially at the preferred 4 player count.
One of the central concepts behind a good civilization game in my opinion, is that it should feel massive, epic.. sprawling even. That approach however, usually comes with several drawbacks, the time needed to play often being one of the primary reasons you rarely get to play them. I love my Western Empires, but getting 5+ players together for a 12+ hour game is exceedingly rare, so it becomes a beloved dust collector instead.
What Epoch does rather cleverly is take a seemingly simple action structure and quietly turn it into something far more devious. On your turn, you’ll do something wonderfully straightforward: play a card representing a development in your civilization, and then choose an action, settling new lands, advancing culture, investing in science, and so on. All very reasonable, yet that play of a card leads to all the actions that include all the core ideas of civilisation building. Production, technology, construction, trade, etc.. All very civilised. And yet, beneath this calm exterior lurks a deeply strategic, wonderfully thinky puzzle that will have you staring at the board as though it has personally offended you.
And there is quite a lot of board to stare at. The game comes with an impressive collection of pieces, icons, tracks, and other paraphernalia that suggest great complexity. But in truth, mechanically speaking, especially by civilization game standards, Epoch is surprisingly approachable. It’s less “arcane ritual” and more “well-organised chaos.”
There is so much built into your action selection card play in Epoch that it feels wonderfully intuitive and powerful each time you pick something. It’s a decision that will pay out over the course of the entire game, making each action central to a larger, grand strategy.
What truly elevates the experience, however, is how tight it feels and how interactive it is in a way modern games in general have been gradually pulling away from. Every action matters. Every decision nudges your civilization forward in a way that feels tangible and earned, with an impact on the other players directly. This subtle but blatant interaction makes you constantly aware of your opponents, because unlike many modern civ builders, Epoch is not afraid to let you go to war. In fact, escalation towards war is one of the core features of the game. Each player’s choices ripple into yours, shaping your next move, whether you like it or not, it’s really only a matter of time before you clash. This is a refreshing change from many civilization games, which can sometimes feel like a group of people politely playing solo games in the same room, with occasional brushes like “oh no, you took the card I wanted”. Here, the interaction is real, the tension is present, and the consequences are just inconvenient enough to be delightful.
Civilization: A New Dawn shares a lot of similarities as a design with Epoch, both games feature an explorable terrain board and an action selection system that drives the game forward, but unlike Epoch, A New Dawn landed rather flat with me and it was the shortage of meaningful interaction between players that I would blame as the root cause for it.
In its own way, Epoch will challenge classics like Through The Ages, though the question remains, where does it rank in the great scheme of this very robust genre? I don’t think you can get away with making a Civilization builder without comparisons, so we will be doing a bit of that in this review.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Very flashy and usable. Things are easy to find the iconography is exceptional.
Cons: There are a lot of pieces to this game, and you’re going to need a larger-than-standard table to play it, especially 4 players.
I consider component quality to be important in a civilization game only because these games are, at their core, sprawling puzzles masquerading as historical progress. You are expected to maintain a bird’s-eye view of everything at all times, an impressive feat, given that your brain is already busy calculating the long-term consequences of a decision you made fifteen minutes ago involving what seemed, at the time, to be a perfectly innocent grain surplus.
Analysis Paralysis is not just a possibility here, it’s more of a lifestyle choice. When a single action can ripple five to ten turns into the future, you need clarity. You need visibility. You need iconography that doesn’t require a degree in interpretive archaeology to understand. In short, you need the game to communicate with you clearly, ideally without muttering cryptic symbols like an ancient alien artefact.
Traditionally, this clarity comes from strong, simple rules, but equally important is how the components themselves convey information. After all, if the board looks like a tax form designed by chaos theorists, no amount of good rules will save you and this tends to be the case in many civilisation-building games.
Fortunately, this is where Epoch positively beams with competence. From the cards to the player aids, from the iconography to the general visual presentation, everything is crisp, readable, and, dare one say, rather attractive. It carries a certain aesthetic familiarity that fans of Sid Meier’s work will recognise immediately, as if the game itself quietly aspires to be invited over for tea with Civilization and not embarrass itself.
And it succeeds. This is a production that balances beauty with functionality in a way that feels almost suspiciously well thought out. You will, after all, be staring at this game for several hours, possibly long enough to begin assigning personalities to your resource tokens, so it’s rather important that the experience is visually pleasant. (There are, one suspects, entire galaxies that have been abandoned for less.)
There is no question that Epoch is a sprawling game with tons of “things” on the board, which can be quite intimidating for the average board gamer. This is rather misleading because, despite the very busy board, Epoch is a pretty straightforward game you might compare to your average Euro in terms of complexity.
Like most civilization games, Epoch isn’t something you’ll casually throw onto the table on a whim. It demands time, attention, and a willingness to explain rules to your friends that may, at some point, sound like you are describing the tax policies of a small but determined nation. However, thanks to excellent organisation and intuitive design, the learning curve is far gentler than it could have been. The same game with lesser components would have been far more complex.
In fact, during my very first play, I already felt surprisingly in control, an unsettling sensation in a genre that usually delights in making you feel like a confused ruler shouting at maps. By the second play, it was all strategy, all the time. And much of that ease comes down to components that are not just well-designed, but designed for use.
Well done indeed. Top marks here, no need to consult the Guide on this one.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: It nails civilization building with class while including things that are often omitted in other Civilisation-building games.
Cons: It’s missing historical figures, with technological progress being a heavily abstracted concept that has little impact on the game beyond resource collection.
I suspect this section can be handled with the sort of efficiency normally reserved for highly competent civil servants and improbably well-organised galaxies.
The theme of Epoch: Course of Cultures is civilization-building and history, and I’m pleased to report that it achieves this with very little fuss and a reassuring amount of success. It looks like a civilization game, it plays like a civilization game, and, most importantly, it feels like a civilization game while you’re sitting at the table making questionable long-term decisions. In short: it does exactly what it says on the tin, which is more than can be said for a surprising number of things in the universe.
That said, there is a small crack in the otherwise polished marble.
One of the great joys of the genre is the sense that each civilization has its own identity. That playing Persia should feel meaningfully different from playing Egypt, beyond simply having a different colour and a slightly more exotic name to mispronounce.
Epoch gestures in this direction, offering each nation a minor, slightly quirky advantage you can develop over time. It’s a nice touch, pleasant, even, but its impact on the actual gameplay is… modest. So modest, in fact, that you may find yourself forgetting who is playing what entirely, which is rarely a good sign in a game about civilizations and their supposedly rich identities.
These differences don’t meaningfully steer your strategy, nor do they create distinct playstyles. You won’t find yourself passionately debating the merits of one civilization over another, or dramatically declaring, “Ah, but you see, this is exactly what the Persians would do.” Instead, everyone is essentially playing the same game with very slightly different accents.
There is also a noticeable absence of historical figures. No great leaders, no visionary scientists, no wildly overconfident generals making bold claims about invading Russia in winter. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but these human elements often provide a strong sense of connection to history, anchors that make the experience feel less abstract and more alive.
I think Through The Ages is the king of themes when it comes to Civilization builders, mainly because it’s so all-inclusive of the tropes that you hope to find in a Civilization building game. From the people, wonders, techs and buildings, everything has that Sid Meier feel to it, and this is despite the fact that the game doesn’t feature a map at all.
Here, the world of Epoch is curiously… people-less. Civilizations rise, expand, and occasionally go to war, but they do so without the guiding presence of anyone you might recognise from a textbook, or indeed, from a particularly enthusiastic documentary narrator.
It’s not a dealbreaker by any means. The theme works. It lands. But it never quite reaches that smile-inducing moment where everything clicks and you feel like you’re part of a grand historical tapestry. It doesn’t have that “role-playing” aspect of running a personality.
It’s more… a very well-organised spreadsheet of history. Perfectly functional. Just missing a few memorable personalities and faces.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Solid, streamlined framework that makes the game easy to teach and learn, making it a far more approachable civ builder than the vast majority of its competition.
Cons: It doesn’t really compete with the classics, it’s a fun alternative, but it’s not going to replace anything.
A proper civilization game, in my view, must achieve three things, rather like a good cup of tea, except vastly more complicated and with a higher likelihood of military conflict.
First, it must deliver a genuine sense of growth and expansion. Not just numbers going up (though we do love a good number), but a feeling that your civilization is becoming something distinct. Your choices should matter. Your path should diverge. You should feel, at least in some small but satisfying way, that you are carving your own slightly questionable decisions into the annals of history.
Second, it ought to feel grounded in history, or at least in something that politely waves in history’s general direction. Playing as different civilizations should feel different. Whether you lean into military dominance, technological supremacy, or industrial might, there should be a strategic identity to your choices, and ideally a way to feel quite smug about them when they work.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, it needs to hold up over repeated plays. A civilization game that can be “solved” is about as useful as a guidebook that confidently tells you the restaurant is at the end of the universe but forgets to mention it’s closed on Tuesdays. There must be room for variation, for adaptation, for strategies that evolve based on circumstances rather than habit. There has to be a way for a local meta to form, and the game must have built-in ways to challenge and reforge that meta without expansions. That is the only way to get replayability long-term with a Civilization game.
Now, achieving all of this in a single board game is, frankly, a bit unreasonable. But that is the burden of the genre. When you are competing with giants like Through the Ages and Western Empires, the inevitable closing line of any review tends to be, “It was very good… but X or Y Civ Builder does it better.”
So, where does Epoch land? Well, rather respectably, actually.
It doesn’t kick down the doors of the genre and declare itself emperor, but it does bring enough interesting ideas to justify its place at the table. One of the most notable things it does is reintroduce something many modern civilization games have quietly abandoned: the map.
Not having a map as part of a Civilization building game was a trend created by Through The Ages, and for a time it caught on, which included games like Nations and Age of Innovation, for example. A map brings a much higher level of design complexity, eliminating it is a clean way to avoid some of those traps. It works for some games, but it does feel like something is missing from the experience, even when it works.
It is not just a decoration here. This is, gloriously, a game about actual presence, about being somewhere, owning territory, and occasionally sending small, determined groups of people to stand on it and argue with other groups of people. Much like Western Empires, there is very much a “dudes on a map” experience.
This is important because somewhere along the way, designers occasionally forget that Sid Meier’s Civilization, the grand inspiration for much of the genre, is, in many ways, also a war game. Position matters. Resources matter. Territory matters. And, crucially, these things can be taken away from you by someone who has decided your empire looks a bit too comfortable.
Epoch understands this, it embraces it.
War is present, impactful, and, importantly, expensive. Starting a conflict is not something you do lightly, unless you are either (a) winning and feeling confident, or (b) losing and feeling vindictive. Both are valid historical precedents.
Dudes on a map are handled quite simply with cubes in Epoch, as the actual military strength elements are driven by cards you can purchase. This makes the execution of war simple, but the strategy behind it, when you should do it, how you should do it etc.., that is an entirely different question. Even after several plays, it was not clear to me where war falls in Epoch so far as strategy goes.
There are two main approaches: a more measured declaration that gives your opponent time to prepare, or a full “I have made a terrible decision and will now commit to it immediately” war-monger stance that lets you attack anyone at once. Both options carry consequences, both reshape the board, and both inject the game with a delicious sense of tension.
Now, a brief warning: Epoch has what might be described as an “old-school personality.” Player interaction can feel… direct. Occasionally pointed. At times, even a bit mean. If you are accustomed to modern board games where conflict is more of a polite disagreement than a full-blown geopolitical incident, this may come as a shock. Personally, I think it’s wonderful. But consider yourself warned, this is less pillow fight, more street brawl conducted with spreadsheets.
Perhaps the most elegant part of the design, however, is how it condenses the entire 4X experience, explore, expand, exploit, exterminate, into a single, streamlined core game loop.
You play a card. You take an action. That’s it.
And yet, that one action encapsulates everything: production, development, technology, expansion, trade, governance, and the general sense that you are somehow both in control and one poor decision away from ruin. Each move feels significant. Each turn alters the board in a meaningful way. You are not idly passing time; you are doing things, and they matter.
I especially liked the handling of government in Epoch. Each government type comes with unique benefits ot the exclusion of other possible selections. It’s a tough choice and needs to be made in cohesion with the rest of your general strategy. There is no going back and making a mistake here can be quite costly.
It’s immensely satisfying.
More importantly, it’s intuitive. Unlike some of its more illustrious cousins, Epoch doesn’t require a lengthy lecture on “how to actually play well” after you’ve learned the rules. You understand what you want to do almost immediately. By your second game, you’re strategising with confidence rather than fumbling through historical guesswork.
This is, frankly, one of its greatest strengths as it is often a key weakness in even the best of the civilisation-building genre games. I love my Western Empires, but unless you have played it a dozen times, I’m going to crush you so badly you’re going to think the game is broken, and there is no shortcut to that education but repeat plays. Epoch is clever enough to avoid that problem.
Randomness, another traditional troublemaker in the genre, is handled with a commendable degree of restraint. Yes, the map can favour some players over others (as maps, and indeed life, tend to do), but the advantages are never so overwhelming that you can predict the winner from the opening placement. The game provides enough tools for clever play to overcome a less-than-ideal start, which is exactly how it should be.
That said, no civilization game escapes compromise, and Epoch is no exception.
The most noticeable absence is the tech tree, that beloved web of dependencies where one discovery unlocks another in a satisfying chain of progress. Here, technology is far more abstract. You invest in it, you gain benefits, but you’re not building toward specific unlock paths in the traditional sense. There’s no “research pottery to unlock granaries” moment. It’s more fluid, less structured, and for some players, that will feel like something is missing.
While I was not a huge fan of Fantasy Flight Games, Sid Meiers Civilization, it did include the tech tree in a hierarchy, and that felt quite right to me. You got a strong sense of progress, and “tech advantage” was a concept built into the game.
Wonders, too, lack a certain… well, wonder. Rather than grand, multi-turn projects that define your civilization, they are more transactional, appearing, being purchased, and providing benefits without much ceremony. There is no standing atop your cardboard empire declaring yourself a golden god of architecture. It’s all a bit more… efficient.
War, while excellent in concept, also carries an interesting limitation: it is often too expensive to be used as a precise strategic tool. Instead, it tends to emerge at the extremes, either from a dominant player pressing their advantage, or from a struggling one lashing out in desperation. The nuanced, tactical “check your opponent” war is less common, simply because your resources are usually better spent elsewhere as this is still a game about victory points.
And yet, despite all of this, it works.
The game remains deeply strategic, richly interactive, and thoroughly engaging. Resource management is meaningful, positioning matters, and the sense of building something over time is both tangible and rewarding. It ticks a remarkable number of boxes for a 4X civilization game, even if it approaches some of them from unusual angles.
There is certainly room for expansion, perhaps a bit more depth in certain systems, a touch of refinement here and there, but what’s already here is compelling.
In short: it’s a civilization worth building again.
Replayability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Plenty of reasons to play it several times, lots to explore.
Cons: There is a cap somewhere, some limit before you shelv it and never come back to it, this is not an instant repeatable classic.
It may not be entirely fair, but civilization games carry with them a certain grandeur. They are not simply games; they are events. And when you reach for one on the shelf, you are not just picking something to play, you are making a decision of mild historical importance.
That decision, in my experience, is governed by two variables: How much time do you have, and how many players are involved?
Tell me those two things, and I will tell you which civilization game to play with the quiet confidence of someone who has spent far too long thinking about this.
Many of these “slots” are already occupied by titans. Large group, plenty of time? Western Empires, no hesitation. Small group, plenty of time? Through the Ages, a masterpiece. Large group, limited time? Nations will do the job admirably.
The awkward gap, the one that has always been a bit of a problem, is small player count with limited time. This is the Bermuda Triangle of civilization games, where ambition goes in and slightly disappointing “filler” experiences come out. Sadly, Epoch doesn’t quite solve this particular cosmic mystery either.
Instead, it settles into the 3–4 players, ample time category, which places it in direct, and rather bold, comparison with Through the Ages and Nations, just to name a couple.
Now, this might sound like a dangerous place to be, but here’s the interesting part: Epoch holds its ground surprisingly well.
In fact, it has a distinct advantage. Games like Through the Ages, as brilliant as they are, can be notoriously unforgiving to new players. Your first few games often feel less like building a civilization and more like being politely but firmly dismantled by someone who understands the system better. Nations can suffer from a similar issue.
Epoch, on the other hand, is refreshingly approachable. It’s intuitive. New players can sit down, grasp the flow, and feel competitive far more quickly. With a bit of light strategic guidance, you can have a genuinely good experience right out of the gate, which is, frankly, a rare and valuable trait in this genre.
It also tends to run a bit shorter than both Through the Ages and Nations, making it a strong candidate when you want something substantial, but not life-schedulingly so. And compared to other games attempting to fill this niche, such as various adaptations of Sid Meier’s board game, it stands out as the more compelling option.
Epoch is a very busy game with a lot of levers, it certainly falls into the “heavy” category by most people’s standards, but I would argue for how involved the game looks, it’s considerably simpler than that. If you’re accustomed to playing Heavy Euro’s, you’re not going to find this game complicated at all. It’s actually pretty straightforward.
So yes, there is absolutely a place for Epoch on the shelf.
The more difficult question is: how long does it stay there?
After three plays, I found myself in an interesting position. I hadn’t exhausted the strategic possibilities, nor had I identified any clearly dominant paths to victory. The game is dynamic enough to keep things engaging, but at the same time, the overall experience didn’t vary as dramatically from session to session as one might hope.
The map provides the most noticeable variation, but not to the extent that it fundamentally reshapes your approach. You adapt, certainly, but you don’t reinvent.
My instinct, always a slightly unreliable but occasionally insightful companion, suggests that after perhaps six to ten plays, the game may begin to lose a bit of its novelty.
Now, to be fair, that is not a damning criticism. Most games do not survive more than a handful of table appearances. In fact, if a game sees five plays, it is already outperforming a significant portion of the hobby.
But civilization games are not most games.
This is a genre where longevity is king. Where titles like Through the Ages can be played a hundred times over a decade, and Western Empires, despite requiring what feels like a small lifetime to complete, still returns to the table again and again because of that glorious grandeur.
By that standard, Epoch may fall just short of true immortality.
It is absolutely replayable. It is enjoyable. It earns its place. But whether it will still be called upon ten years from now, with the same enthusiasm reserved for the genre’s greatest legends, I find unlikely. It lacked that true… umpf! A terrible description, but fans of Civ games know what I’m talking about here.
Conclusion
Epoch: Course of Cultures is, without question, a very good game. If what you’re after is an engaging, strategic experience wrapped in a historical civilization-building theme, and you don’t necessarily feel the need to compare everything to the sacred texts of the genre, then this is an easy recommendation. Particularly for Euro game fans, it delivers exactly the sort of tight decision-making, meaningful trade-offs, and competitive race for victory points that keeps the brain pleasantly occupied and occasionally mildly distressed.
It is thoughtful. It is strategic. It is, in all the right ways, a game that asks you to care about what you’re doing.
However, and this is where we gently adjust our monocle, if you are a full-fledged civilization-building enthusiast, the sort who speaks reverently of Through the Ages and Western Empires as though they were ancient and slightly temperamental deities, then Epoch may feel like it falls just short of true greatness.
Not because it does anything wrong, but because it doesn’t quite ascend to that rarefied level of “instant classic.” It is not, at least not yet, a card-carrying member of what can only be described as the Civilization Building Illuminati, a shadowy group of games that have achieved long-term dominance over gaming tables everywhere, and possibly influence global events (though this is difficult to verify).
That said, there is something important to note: I still very much want to play it again.
Epoch is a very engaging puzzle; there are plenty of moving parts that create depth in the strategy to keep you invested. I think its a good civilization game. It does not, however, dethrone any of the classics in my opinion. It’s kind of doomed to be an alternative to other Civ games I would rather play, given an allotted amount of time. No objections to playing Epoch, but if you ask me “What Civ Game do you WANT to play”, by default answer is not going to be Epoch.
After multiple plays, it hasn’t worn out its welcome. It hasn’t been solved, shelved, or quietly judged. It remains engaging, inviting, and, perhaps most importantly, fun. And in a genre that can occasionally take itself a bit too seriously, that counts for a great deal.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that Epoch feels almost tailor-made for digital play. A platform like Board Game Arena would suit it perfectly. Its streamlined action system, relatively low mechanical overhead, and clean structure would likely translate into a smooth online experience, one where a full game might be completed in about an hour, rather than requiring the careful scheduling of one’s social calendar and possibly a packed lunch.
And really, any civilization that can be built in an evening, or a very long lunch break, is doing something right.
So no, Epoch may not rewrite the history books of the genre. But it absolutely earns its place among them, and for many players, that will be more than enough.
I’m often accused of being “weird”, when speaking about my taste in miniature games; the word… chaotic is frequently used. It’s true my preferences tend to be a bit of a wild mix of systems, styles, and scales that don’t appear to follow any clear pattern.
But that only holds true until you understand one core principle I care deeply about, which we are going to talk about today!
The creeping gamification of tabletop miniature games, and how it quietly chips away at what makes this hobby special in the first place. My opinion, of course.
Understanding the Underlying Principle of Miniature Game Assumption
To really understand this “theory”, we need to take a small step back, just a quick glance into the history of miniature games and where they actually come from, how they got their start. In a word, my foundation in the hobby.
It’s not some hidden or complicated truth. In fact, it’s quite simple and surface-level. It’s just something many modern players may not even notice, nor is it usually relevant to modern gaming because it’s a piece of history.
The gist of it is that at their core, miniature games began as pure simulations. It’s a foundational construct of miniature war games, originally, that they all had an internal logic based on trying to simulate the battlefield.
Back even in the early days of the modern hobby as we know it today, think the 70s and 80s, the goal of a miniature game wasn’t just to “win” in a mechanical sense. The goal was to recreate, as faithfully as possible, the feeling and logic of a battlefield, a concept that heralded an even earlier variant of the game, historical war game simulation. Whether that battlefield was historical, fantastical, or somewhere in between, the idea was the same: what would this actually look like if it played out? What do expected results look like, and how does the game surprise you, and most importantly, is that consistent with the internal logic of the setting or piece of history? All mechanics were designed toward that goal.
That’s the foundation.
Historical Table Top War Games have one core and fundamental feature, which is critical to understanding how it’s played. It simulates via mechanics the reality in the field; it’s a simulation, abstracted as it may be, it strives to re-create the real conditions, decisions, strategy, and attributes of what made these battles tick.
Historically, this came from simulation-heavy war games, systems designed to recreate real battles, real tactics, and real consequences. But that philosophy didn’t disappear when fantasy and sci-fi entered the scene. It simply adapted.
Because simulation doesn’t mean “realistic”, it means internally logical.
Take early Warhammer Fantasy as an example. You had dragons, wizards, and undead legions, hardly realistic. But the game still tried to simulate how those things would behave within their own world. We derived that from the setting, much in the way you would derive a historical period battle from history books.
A dragon breathes fire? That’s terrifying, but what is the impact on the battlefield? How would that work if you wanted to simulate the effect?
Morale is a perfect example of a mechanic with internal logic. A unit of soldiers faces overwhelming odds? They might break and run. It exists in many games because, in real battles, soldiers don’t fight to the last man, they panic, retreat, and survive. So morale became a core mechanic when simulating tabletop battles. But then you apply fantasy logic: skeletons and mummies don’t feel fear, because they are dead, so they might ignore morale rules, for example.
So even within a fantasy, there is internal logic.
It all tracks. It all makes sense, within the simulation.
And that’s the key idea.
Even the most fantastical elements, magic spells, immortal beings, dragonfire, were governed by rules that felt like they belonged in a living, breathing battlefield as part of a simulation.
So when I talk about the gamification of miniature games, this is what I’m contrasting it against.
I’m talking about rulesets that move away from this idea of simulating a battle, and instead lean into abstract mechanics that exist purely for the sake of the game, rather than the world it’s trying to simulate.
Example of Gamification
The easiest way to understand the difference between simulation and gamification is through a concrete example.
So let’s talk about A Song of Ice and Fire: The Miniatures Game, because if we’re looking for a clear case study, this one puts it front and center.
On the surface, the game does a lot right in terms of simulation.
You’ve got two armies clashing on the battlefield. Units have speed, strength, defenses, morale, all the things you’d expect if the goal is to simulate combat in the Game of Thrones universe. You maneuver, you fight, you hold objectives, you try to outplay your opponent using positioning, timing, various advantages different unit types have, tough, fast, or ranged, perhaps. You use the terrain to your advantage, so on and so forth.
So far, so good. This is the simulation part working exactly as intended, even so far as the fantastical elements go, like Dragons.
But then… we step sideways.
Enter the NCU board.
This is where characters from the setting, Cersei, Joffrey, and Tyrion for example, operate completely outside the battlefield itself. They occupy abstract “zones” that trigger powerful effects on the game. And this is where the shift happens.
As interesting a mechanic as it was, the NCU board was a layered mechanic completely disconnected from the battlefield, yet it had an immense impact on it. The result was this sort of “extra” side game that could and often did unravel the rest of the core mechanics of the game. It was this heavy abstraction that could make your battlefield tactics and strategy irrelevant to the resolution of the battle. It worked fine, but it could be gamed.
Suddenly, you have a character like Joffery who can activate an ability on the NCU board that forces a morale check on a unit across the battlefield. Fail that check, and suddenly soldiers start dropping.
Now, pause for a moment.
Why are troops, possibly hundreds of miles away from Joffrey, losing men because Joffrey sat in a chair somewhere and did something political? Why would a dragon care? Why does this have an effect on a battlefield action?
The answer is simple:
It’s not part of the simulation; it’s not designed into the game to make sense or have any internal logic. It’s a game mechanic. This is gamification, not simulation.
It’s an abstract system layered on top of the battlefield, one that exists to create interesting decisions and strategic depth, but not necessarily to represent anything that logically plays out in the battle itself. It’s not part of a simulation of the battle; it’s part of a game.
And to be clear, this isn’t inherently bad, but for me personally, this creates a dilemma and breaks the immersion of what the game is trying to represent. It’s a bit like adding a knock-knock joke in the middle of a Star Wars lightsaber duel between two Jedi; it might be hilarious, but it’s out of place, out of context.
Is Gamification Bad?
Gamification can be incredibly fun. It adds layers of decision-making, clever interactions, and those satisfying “gotcha” moments that make games memorable. But it does change the nature of the experience, and that’s where things, at least for me, start to disconnect.
Because at its core, this comes down to a simple distinction: Are you playing a game… or are you simulating a battle?
The true definition of a simulation and game, and really the tell that you are dealing with a simulation game, is that battlefield conditions will typically be quite robust. Rules for cover, for example, are often key to the game, they are core rules, and you want to avoid abstract external consequences on this unless said effect is something visible on the table, like a unit that has a weapon that circumvents cover, for example. You don’t want a card play or some hidden mechanic altering it, because if that is possible, cover then becomes less relevant as an element of strategy, as it can be circumvented by “hidden things”.
Now, that might sound like splitting hairs, but it really isn’t.
“Playing a game” leans toward board game logic, optimizing mechanics, managing resources, triggering abilities, and outmaneuvering your opponent within a defined system of rules. Victory comes from mastering those systems. It’s not a game about trying to understand the concept of “battles” and using inherent internal logic to make decisions; it’s about the manipulation and execution of mechanics, creating synergy, and trying to “win” in a game.
“Simulating a battle” is a bit different; it is about applying battlefield logic and seeing what happens. It’s an external experience; you are as much the controller as the audience. It’s almost a kind of experiment. What would happen under X, Y, Z conditions within the construct of this setting/universe, or historical period, or historical battle? How can I change the results with my decisions? Can I do it better than the history or the expected outcome? Simulation is a kind of discovery in the form of entertainment. It’s a spectacle more than a game.
Positioning, timing, morale, flanking, and decisions that feel grounded in how a conflict might actually unfold are the key to creating a simulation. The dice step in to represent chaos, uncertainty, and the unpredictable nature of war. Most importantly, in a battle simulation, most of the information, in particular when it comes to consequences, risk vs. reward, and the general understanding of what can happen in any given situation, is open information. The only “gotcha” moments in a simulation are derived from someone using a strategy you didn’t expect or an unexpected or unusual dice outcome.
Both approaches are valid. But they create very different experiences.
Gamification tends to introduce what I like to call… shenanigans.
These are mechanics that pull your focus away from the battlefield itself and toward the system behind it. Instead of asking, “What would Jon Snow do in this situation?” you start asking, “What combination of abilities or effects can combo with the cards in my hand that I can trigger right now to let Jon Snow do something my opponent does not expect or can’t counter?” In a way, you can say it’s about breaking your opponent’s strategy by altering the rules of the game that are visible and can be anticipated.
In a simulation-driven game, when two armies clash, the outcome is shaped by their inherent strengths and weaknesses. Maybe one side has better morale. Maybe the other gains an advantage through positioning, flanking, terrain, or timing. And ultimately, the dice decide how that moment resolves. It’s a combination of strategy and fate, but both players can see what is happening in the field. It’s not the result of a gamist mechanic; it’s a result of the resolution of core mechanics that both players understand and can see. In a sense, seeing what happens is the result of watching the simulation execute. It doesn’t mean the results can be predicted, but the odds can be calculated.
It feels organic. Grounded. Earned. You make decisions about movement and position by accessing these factors, and while the results may still surprise, the surprise isn’t going to be your opponent playing a hidden card in their hand that lets them do some internal logic-breaking thing. It’s going to be a statistical anomaly in the randomization used in the game, typically dice. There is an expected outcome from the clash, but fate might intervene with unusual dice results. A miss that should have been a hit. In a simulation, you “do stuff” and then “see what happens” within the scope of predictable factors, statistics, strengths, and weaknesses. There are no shenanigans that are going to alter the outcome.
In a more heavily gamified system, that same clash can be dramatically altered by effects that have little to do with the units or situation themselves. A card is played. A hidden ability is triggered. Suddenly, the outcome hinges less on the clashing units and the battle… and more on the mechanics layered on top of it. What hidden shinaningans does each player have that they can execute?
And again, that’s not wrong in any sort of “mechanical” or “design” sense. I want to be clear about this, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s a different kind of gaming experience.
One sort of important, albeit mostly overlooked element of simulation games is that they are grand spectacles of storytelling. The goal isn’t to win or lose so much as it is to have a great experience you can go back to and say stuff like “you remember that one time I….”. That tends to happen a lot less when the thing that happened was that you drew a card and played it. It doesn’t have the same story feel. A story is the bridge between short-term fun and long-term love affair.
The reality is that most miniature games sit somewhere on a spectrum. Very few are purely simulation-driven, and very few are entirely abstract. The issue isn’t the presence of gamification, it’s the degree of it. There is a tipping point in a miniature game where too much gamification kind of erases the need for internal logic and simulation consistency; it becomes abstract enough that you are no longer seeing it as a simulated battle, and it’s just a tactical/strategic game., closer to a board game or a card game It becomes a game about the shenanigans instead of the simulation.
The more abstract, disconnected, and prominent these mechanics become, the further the game drifts away from simulating a battle, and the more it becomes about executing systems within a game engine.
At some point, you’re no longer commanding an army. You’re solving a mechanical puzzle.
And whether that’s a good thing or not… depends entirely on what you came to the table for, but at this point, I think my personal taste and bias start to kick in.
Why I Think Simulation Is Better
At the heart of it, my preference for simulation comes down to one thing: Clarity and longevity, and though I think there are some added minor issues that conflate my problem with gamist systems on top of those two things.
In a simulation-driven game, you can see the battlefield, not just a game construct, but as an imagined real thing that works as close to “reality” as game mechanics can get it, even when abstracted. You understand the state of play. You can evaluate risks, predict outcomes, and make informed decisions based on what’s actually in front of you. You can also create scenarios that present unique challenges (circumstances) that are overcome by unique tactics using the same internal logic of the simulation that inherently exists in such games. Unique game states that require unique solutions within the confines of the same base rules structure that replicates that reality, which again is driven by recognizable internal logic and a visible game state.
That kind of visibility, combined with a solid grasp of probabilities, beats surprise-driven gamist “gotcha” mechanics every time, at least for me.
Because once you lose that clarity, the experience starts to shift.
The Balance Problem
One of the biggest issues with heavily gamified systems is balance. Or more accurately… the lack of it.
In my experience, the more a game leans into abstract mechanics, cards, hidden triggered abilities, off-board effects, or mechanics that circumvent internal logic, the harder it becomes to keep things fair. And things are usually not just slightly off, but noticeably off.
Take A Song of Ice and Fire again as an example. Many of its most glaring balance issues don’t come from the core unit design; they come from the layers on top of it. The cards. The NCU board. The external effects that interfere with the battlefield. Even when a unit is designed in a reasonable way, the various cards and NCU board effects can make that unit bizarrely stronger in one army than another. These aren’t equivocal in the same way, there is a difference between a Targaryan cavalry and a Lannister cavalry, not because their stats are different, but because of the way the game can be manipulated by the gamist mechanics like NCU boards and hidden cards the players have access to. A cavalry unit is not just a cavalry unit in a Songs of Ice and Fire
These mechanics often override the very things that are supposed to define units and the internal logic of the battlefield simulation.
A slow unit suddenly isn’t slow anymore. An already-activated unit acts again. A weak unit spikes damage out of nowhere or makes a surprise move. The base information isn’t fixed, the gamist mechanics can alter without much warning the functionality of units and the execution of the core mechanic.
A Song of Ice and Fire Rankings are a tell about how this game does with balance. The distance between the best faction and the worst faction is extremely wide. That isn’t all, however; a couple of card changes or a new NCU can alter an army from one that never loses a game to one that never wins a game. Case in point, Nights Watch was once at +90,000 faction, now it’s a -28,000. The rules haven’t changed for the game, the units’ attributes have not been changed, but the abstract shinnaningan mechanics were altered, and some of the armies’ core shinannigans” no longer work. Without them, the strength of the army on the field is irrelevant. The strongest factions are those with the best cards and NCU’s, the armies really don’t matter much in this game. It’s the typical outcome of a gamist system.
At that point, the carefully constructed strengths and weaknesses of the army start to lose meaning, as does the simulation itself, as it does not function reliably.
And when that happens, player decisions also lose their purpose and meaning.
You might make the perfect tactical move based on everything you can see and control, only for it to be undone by something you couldn’t see or control. Not because you misplayed or miscalculated, but because the system allowed your opponent to circumvent the rules themselves through the execution of gamist mechanics.
That’s where simulation starts to crack. Because now, the game on the table and the game you’re actually playing aren’t quite the same thing. There’s an invisible layer sitting on top, constantly threatening to rewrite the outcome.
The “Feel Bad” Problem
Then there’s the emotional side of it, the infamous feel-bad moment. In a simulation-driven game, the potential for failure is part of the deal.
You miss a charge. You fail a morale check. You whiff an attack roll. It stings, but it makes sense. You knew the odds going in. You chose to take the risk. The dice decided the outcome. It’s a kind of controlled chaos.
It’s frustrating to fail, sure, but it’s fair. It lives within the logic of the system, within the expected range of outcomes in a simulation.
And honestly, that tension, the chance of failure, is a big part of why we play.
Gamified systems create a very different kind of failure potential and feel-bad moments.
Instead of failing because of risk and probability, you fail, for example, because someone played a card that says, essentially, “No, what you just tried to do within the rules doesn’t work after all.” Or worse, “I do something that is normally against the rules of the game and could not be predicted”.
You made a sound decision. You understood the odds. And then… none of it mattered. That kind of moment doesn’t feel like a failed gamble or the result of poor decision; it feels like the rug got pulled out from under you in an unfair game.
Not outplayed. Not outmaneuvered. Just… overridden by rule-altering mechanics, the goal post was moved dynamically. And that’s where frustration starts to creep in. That’s when a mechanic that seems interesting and clever at first, because of a balance problem and frustration that sucks the fun out of the game on repeated plays.
One of the issues with Warhammer 40k, even though it is primarily a simulation-focused game and does not rely on “gotcha mechanics,” is that the core rules of the armies are still hidden behind pay walls. The end result is that even though all of the information at any given battle are on the table, there are so many units and so many different armies and you can only see the attributes of the armies for which you have a codex, your usually flying blind anyway and it ends up having the same “gotcha” effect as a hidden set of cards. I personally have no idea how most armies work, or what units do for armies I don’t collect, paint, and use and there is no legal way short of buying every codex to get that information.
Because there was no meaningful decision that led to that outcome. No visible risk. No way to prepare for it. Just an abstract mechanic firing at the perfect (or worst possible) moment. It’s not clever to execute an effect that says “Sorry, I’m changing the rules”, it feels more like a cheap shot.
The whole game can quickly start to feel less like a game of strategy… and more like playing against a system that occasionally cheats, legally.
The Immersion Problem
Perhaps one of the biggest impacts on me, is that gamification breaks immersion, which leads to stagnation and boredom.
In a simulation-driven game, you’re in it. You’re thinking like a commander. You’re reading the battlefield, planning maneuvers, anticipating outcomes, and experiencing the battle almost like an observer. Your focus is entirely on the clash unfolding in front of you. Each battle functions under the same internal logic, while the circumstances are different every time. It’s exciting, it’s something you can build experience at and become better at navigating. There is a route to becoming a better commander, but Lady Luck will always play her hand, and even the most brilliant of plans can fail, and that becomes a kind of story that can be told in the same way you might describe a historical battle, but it’s a piece of history you wrote at the table together with an opponent. The game is about finding out what happens when all those factors come together.
But when heavy gamified elements enter the picture, that focus shifts.
Now you’re thinking about cards in hand. Triggers. Combos. Hidden interactions. Not just what’s happening on the battlefield, but what might happen outside of it. Your card draw can define whether you will win or lose a scenario. Did you get the right combo of effects you’ll be able to nail your opponent with? Did your opponent draw the counters he will need to circumvent your cards? The story becomes about how many points you scored and how X card or Y hidden effect resulted in you winning the game. There is a kind of cheapness to that story, told not through the eyes of commanders but through the eyes of players, playing a game of abstraction.
And that changes the feel of the game and the experience dramatically.
Warcrow is a really cool tactical game, but personally, I don’t see it as a “battle simulation”, and I don’t think it intends to be that. It’s very much a skirmish game about special characters with special powers. It’s really more like a miniature-based board game, similar to the Masters of the Universe tactical game. It’s in a very different category, and while I love the concept, it doesn’t really fill the miniature war game itch for me. It’s fun, but something in a different category.
What should be a decisive cavalry charge into an exposed flank suddenly becomes a question of, “What mechanic is about to interrupt this?” The tension isn’t about tactics anymore, or dice outcomes, it’s about the timing of hidden effects and abilities, the gamist elements that are the true drivers of the game.
Some gamist and abstracted elements can be fine. Even enjoyable in moderation.
But when those mechanics become powerful enough to completely unravel battlefield strategy, the illusion breaks. The battle stops feeling like a battle and starts feeling like a system being manipulated.
You’re no longer commanding an army. You’re managing interactions.
From Intrigue to Exhaustion
The final thing here is the irony that these gamified systems are often very appealing at first. They feel modern and clever, even. I find myself attracted to such systems, but it never lasts. There is a kind of exhaustion that kicks in because you’re analyzing the game, not the battles.
Gamist systems often feel clever. Dynamic. Full of surprising moments and interesting interactions. There’s a lot to explore, and that initial discovery phase can be genuinely exciting.
But over time, those same mechanics can start to feel repetitive and oppressive; they become the source of the frustration rather than the source of the fun.
Players learn these tricks. The combos. The optimal plays. And what begins as variety slowly turns into a cycle of shenanigans and counter-shenanigans. Army building becomes a matter of trying to build the synergies with these gamified mechanics, and usually, very clear winners rise to the top. Games become predictable, and spice turns into boredom.
For me, that’s where the interest starts to fade. Because what I’m looking for isn’t just a game to play. It’s a battle to experience. It’s the act of sitting at a table with a friend, with two forces on the table where the battle will be decided by movement, positioning, tactics, and the chaotic results of the dice within the setting of the world we are playing in.
I got really burned out on Songs of Ice and Fire, even though I really enjoyed my time with it. The main reason is that the game was about the cards, the NCU’s, and the shinnaningans you could pull with them. It was less a battle simulation and more a game about shinannigans, which was fine, but the alterations to the game, how the game was played, what your army could do, and how the game was balanced over time were through these card effects, and that was kind of exhausting to keep up with. Just getting the game to the table meant printing out and cutting out decks of cards, sleeving them, and getting re-familiarized with how every single element of your army changed since the last time you played. It’s just too much effort to play a game.
If all of that is undone by hidden mechanics and abilities, the game’s shelf life is going to be limited to how long these gamist mechanics remain interesting, before the game becomes played out and boring.
I’ve seen this pattern repeat over and over again, and I have a shelf full of miniature games I don’t play to prove it.
Long-Term Success vs. Flash In The Pan
If you really want to see this principle in action, you don’t have to look any further than the history of miniature gaming itself.
Because over time, patterns emerge.
The games that endure, the ones that stick around for decades, build loyal communities and continue to evolve, tend to lean heavily toward simulation. They create a foundation that players can understand, trust, and invest in long-term.
They feel consistent. Predictable in the right ways. Deep with just the right amount of chaos. These aren’t even necessarily always “better games” or even “modern designs”, but the stability over time and the variability of the simulation versus the shinanigan mechanics tends to win long term.
And that matters more than you might think.
Because miniature games aren’t just games, they’re hobbies. They demand time, money, effort. You build armies, paint models, learn rules, and invest in systems. Players want to feel like that investment has stability and longevity.
Simulation-driven systems provide that.
They offer a kind of rules “gravity.” Even as editions change and mechanics evolve, the core logic of the game remains intact. Movement matters. Positioning matters. Morale matters. The battlefield still behaves like a battlefield. The core is a core architecture upon which the game sits.
Constant rule changes, I think, are only good for games that are broken and need to be fixed. At some point, however, you should be able to find the balance, and the game should require fewer and fewer changes until, at some point, you perfect the game. That rarely ever happens, usually changes are introduced for changing’s sake, and I don’t think that is a healthy way to handle a product. Constant changes are annoying, and many games, even good simulation games, do too much of this.
You can leave the game for a year or five, and come back without feeling like everything you knew has been flipped upside down, and perhaps more importantly, the game will still be in print, which is rarely the case for gamist systems. The hotness today is gone tomorrow.
Gamified systems often struggle with that kind of longevity.
Because when a game leans heavily on layered mechanics, cards, combos, triggered effects, and abstract interactions, it becomes much harder to maintain balance and clarity over time. Each new addition risks compounding complexity, introducing new edge cases, and shifting the meta in unpredictable ways. Perhaps more importantly, the game starts to crack under its own weight, and demands from the player base for balance and fairness are muted by the fact that gamist systems see balance and fairness as an adjustment to the gamist mechanics, not as a core construct of the simulation.
What starts as exciting… can quickly become unstable. And when that instability builds, players drift away.
Not always immediately. Sometimes these games explode onto the scene with energy and enthusiasm. They feel fresh, dynamic, full of possibility.
But that energy can and very often does fade.
That’s where you see the “flash in the pan” effect. A strong launch. A burst of popularity. And then… a slow decline.
Now, to be fair, this isn’t a universal rule. There are exceptions on both sides. Some gamified systems find ways to stabilize, and some simulation-heavy games stumble for entirely different reasons.
But as a general trend, I think this tends to be true. The more a game roots itself in simulation, clear logic, visible systems, grounded interactions, the better its chances of standing the test of time.
Because at the end of the day, players aren’t just looking for something new. They’re looking for something that lasts.
Battletech
If you want a textbook example of longevity in miniature gaming, look no further than Battletech.
Launched in the mid-80s, this is a game built on pure simulation principles, and it shows. Its core rules have remained remarkably consistent for over 40 years. It has never truly disappeared, never fallen out of print, and today it stands as one of the highest-grossing miniature games on the market.
That kind of staying power doesn’t happen by accident.
And I think the reason is simple: Battletech doesn’t need gimmicks to stay interesting.
I think the biggest part of Battletech’s success comes from the fact that they kept fixing the rules until they got them right, and then they stopped. Now, new rule books are just “updated printings with better editing”. This stability is very good for the game.
You can play the exact same scenario, same mechs, same map, same players a hundred times, and you’ll get a hundred completely different outcomes. A hundred different stories. There is no puzzle to solve in Battletech; there is no meta, it really is simulation purity.
There are no hidden cards. No off-board mechanics. No surprise systems waiting to override what’s happening on the table. Everything is visible. Everything is grounded in the simulation. The dice are the only surprise factor.
It’s just you, your opponent, and a battlefield full of giant war machines where every decision carries weight.
That’s it.
And it’s more than enough.
Star Wars: X-Wing
Star Wars: X-Wing is perhaps the most fascinating example of both sides of this argument, and prime proof that there is something to this theory. It showed how powerful a good simulation can be… and how fragile it becomes when that foundation is compromised.
When X-Wing first launched, it was beautifully clean. At its core was a simple but brilliant idea: movement is everything.
Players secretly selected maneuvers using dials, revealing them simultaneously to simulate the uncertainty and tension of a dogfight. Ships had firing arcs, usually in the front, so getting a clean shot was all about positioning, which required different levels of risk and prediction. It was quite perfect as a simulation; everything that made the game tick.
Beyond that, the system was open. Transparent. Logical. No “gotchas.” No hidden layers. Just ships, movement, dice, and decisions.
And it exploded in popularity as a game.
For the first time in decades, a miniature game seriously challenged, and according to some reports, even surpassed, Warhammer 40k in popularity. It wasn’t just a hit, it was a phenomenon.
Now, to be fair, it had other advantages. It was Star Wars. It had pre-painted miniatures. It was accessible and relatively affordable.
But none of that works without a solid game underneath it. And X-Wing had that.
Until it didn’t.
Over time, the designers began introducing more and more gamified elements, mechanics that layered on top of the core system that undermined rather than reinforced them.
The most infamous example was the Twin Laser Turrets.
It wasn’t just that Twin Laser Turret ruined X-Wing, one card doesn’t do that. It was that it introduced the idea that equipment cards can and will circumvent the core mechanic of the game. It was the beginning of the end for X-Wing. It went from a simulation to a gamist system about shenanigans after this card, until it no longer mattered what anyone did on the battlefield; it was all about the effects of equipment and the synergies and combos.
This upgrade fundamentally bypassed one of the game’s core pillars: positioning and firing arcs. Suddenly, careful maneuvering, arc-dodging, and spatial awareness didn’t matter. With a single change to the game, the simulation of a dogfight, of outmaneuvering your opponent, was undermined by a mechanic that simply… ignored it.
And once that door opened, more followed. Abilities that bent the rules. Interactions that overrode core mechanics got to such an extreme that the act of rolling dice was a formality; everything could be manipulated. Systems that prioritized clever combos over battlefield decisions. The game became about list-building synergies that resulted in players being able to compare lists and declare a winner; playing the game to determine a winner was also mostly a formality by the end of the game’s run.
The result was a very rapid and steady erosion of what made the game special. The simulation faded. The “shenanigans” took over. And the decline was just as dramatic as the rise.
A second edition failed to recapture the magic, arguably leaning even further into these layered mechanics. The game lost momentum, lost players, and eventually was passed between publishers before quietly fading out altogether.
There were, of course, multiple factors behind X-Wing’s fall. But for me, the turning point is clear:
The moment the game stopped being a simulation… was the moment it started dying.
Warhammer 40k & Age of Sigmar
Even Warhammer 40k tells a similar story, just with a different ending.
Over its long history, 40k has swung back and forth between simulation and gamification. There were periods where the game leaned heavily into abstract mechanics and bloated systems, to the point where it nearly collapsed under its own weight, dragging the company down with it.
But then GW course corrected, thanks to the company not being afraid to make big changes, and thank god they did.
Modern 40k, particularly in its latest editions, has moved back toward a more grounded approach. It still carries a fair share of gamified elements, stratagems, mission structures, and layered interactions, but much of it is at least open and visible, trackable, and something players can plan around. There is too much of it, which is a bit of an issue, making it highly complex and very involved, so it can still sometimes feel like the game has a lot of gotchas, but with game mastery its something you can overcome.
There’s a lot going on. A lot to process. And mechanics like widespread re-rolls can sometimes dilute the tension that makes simulation-based systems feel so compelling.
It’s better, but it’s still walking that line, and also still improving with each iteration of the game, and there is a lot of hope for 11th edition coming out this summer.
Age of Sigmar, GW’s other big game, interestingly, might be the cleaner of the two.
While it had a rocky start, it has steadily refined itself over time. It trims away many of the excess layers, fewer re-rolls, fewer disruptive mechanics, and focuses more on flow, clarity, and battlefield interaction.
It’s not a pure simulation by any means, but it leans in that direction more confidently.
And I think that’s a big part of why it continues to grow.
Because as long as it stays grounded, focused on the battle rather than the systems around it, it has a very strong foundation to build on.
Conclusion
I don’t think most players consciously think about this when they pick up a game, but the patterns emerge just the same. And one of the most consistent patterns I’ve seen is this:
Simulation-driven games last. Gamist systems… don’t.
Gamist games tend to explode onto the scene. They’re praised for their innovation, their “modern design,” their clever mechanics. And to be fair, they are clever. They’re exciting. They’re fresh.
At first. But over time, those mechanics start to settle. The community figures them out. The puzzle gets solved.
And once that happens, something important is lost.
Because at their core, many gamified systems are puzzles. And puzzles, once solved, don’t have the same pull the second, or tenth, time around.
They become repetitive. Predictable in the wrong way.
Simulation systems, on the other hand, thrive on unpredictability. They aren’t puzzles, they’re systems of controlled chaos.
You can play the same battle, under the same conditions, with the same armies, making the same decisions, and still get wildly different outcomes. Not because of hidden mechanics, but because of the inherent uncertainty of the simulation itself.
That’s where the longevity comes from. That’s where the stories come from. And ultimately, that’s what keeps people coming back.
When I look at the games I’ve loved over the years, vs. games I have played and more importantly, the ones I still have interest in today, the list is surprisingly small.
Battletech. Warhammer 40k The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. X-Wing (but only the early edition stuff)
These are the games that stuck.
That doesn’t mean the others weren’t great. I’ve had fantastic experiences with plenty of gamified systems. Some of them were incredibly fun, creative, and memorable. They review well.
But the issue is that they didn’t last. I don’t play Songs of Ice and Fire anymore. I loved Warcrow, but ultimately, I’m not driven to get it to the table. I love my Runewars miniatures, but I know I will never play that game again. They burned bright and then faded into obscurity. There is a graveyard of games on my shelves.
And for me, that difference comes down to one thing:
Whether the game was asking me to solve a system…
Or to command an army. That is, in the end, the crux of the whole thing.
The rumors are over, 11th edition of Warhammer 40,000 is coming. This is no longer speculation, hopeful guessing, or wild internet theorycrafting. It’s confirmed. It’s real. A new edition of the grim darkness of the far future is on its way.
And when a new edition looms on the horizon, it’s only natural to start looking back at the one we’re currently playing. I’ve spent a lot of time with 10th edition, and like every version of 40k before it, it’s been a mixed bag of brilliant ideas, strange design choices, and the occasional rules interaction that makes you wonder if the Emperor himself wrote it during a particularly confusing warp storm.
So with 11th edition approaching, it feels like the perfect moment to reflect a bit on my experience with 10th, what worked, what didn’t, and the things that made me raise an eyebrow across the gaming table. More importantly, it’s a chance to share my own personal wish list for what I hope the next edition might bring.
The 10th edition core set that launched with the game is, without question, one of the best starter sets we ever got, it was the main push for me to get back into the game.
Because at the end of the day, I love this game. I played a lot of 10th edition, and the prospect of a brand new version of Warhammer 40k is always exciting.
So let’s talk about it.
Overview – 10th Edition & Miniature Gaming
10th edition of Warhammer 40,000 was actually my return to the game after a long break. The last time I had played seriously before that was back in 6th edition. But my absence wasn’t really about being fed up with 40k. Instead, it was because the wider world of miniature gaming absolutely exploded around 2012-2014.
Suddenly, there were incredible alternatives everywhere. Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game took the tabletop by storm, followed by exceptional Star Wars: Armada and later Star Wars: Legion. Privateer Press was dominating the competitive scene with Warmachine, and a wave of new titles kept arriving. Games like the outstanding A Song of Ice and Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game filled the gap that 40k once occupied for me.
For a while, those games completely replaced my need to collect, paint, and play Warhammer 40k.
But as the years passed and the dust settled, something funny happened: I started to miss it. The familiar universe, the armies, the ridiculous over-the-top lore. When 10th edition launched, I noticed that my beloved Tyranids were front and center in the starter set, and that was all the excuse I needed. I picked up an army and dove back in.
And almost immediately, I had a realization: for all its flaws, Warhammer 40k is still the most fun I have ever had pushing miniatures around a table.
Now let’s be honest here. 40k is a flawed game, and Games Workshop is a flawed company. That’s hardly a controversial statement. But the game has something that many of its competitors struggled to maintain: staying power and a steady fan base. It’s been around for decades, and here we are in 2026 with a pretty clear scoreboard.
Many of the games that once “replaced” Warhammer for me are simply gone. X-Wing and Armada are effectively dead. Warmachine and A Song of Ice and Fire both ran into design issues that pushed them into awkward corners. Even games like Legion never quite stuck with me long term and are floundering, trying to reinvent themselves.
Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars X-Wing miniature game was the first game in miniature gaming history that outsold Warhammer 40k. Many believe it is what prompted Games Workshop to rethink their long-term strategy and start modernizing 40k a bit more seriously. It may very well be responsible for the much improved condition 40k is in today, a kick in the ass the GW really needed.
Meanwhile, 40k is still here. It’s the game I still paint for. It’s the one I still want to play. My miniatures are still valid in the game.
And credit where it’s due, 10th edition was a genuine step forward. In fact, it might be the first edition of Warhammer 40k where I found myself thinking, this is actually a fairly well-designed game. Not perfect, and certainly not cutting-edge compared to modern tabletop design (say, compared to Warcrow, for example), but by 40k standards, it was probably the best version of the system we’ve ever had.
It works. It’s fun. And it addressed a lot of long-standing problems that had plagued the game for years.
That said… There are still a few things that kind of suck. Enough for a wish list!
And with 11th edition on the horizon, it feels like the perfect time to talk about them. So today I’m putting together said wish list, ten things I’d love to see improved, fixed, or completely rethought in the next edition of Warhammer 40k.
In no particular order… let’s get into it.
1. Strategems and Command Points
I hate them. There, I said it.
Stratagems and Command Points might be one of the most controversial mechanics in modern Warhammer 40,000 for me; they represent one of the biggest design missteps in the current game, in my humble opinion.
Now I understand why they exist. There’s a huge competitive scene around 40k, and there’s clearly a push to make the game feel more like a modern tactical system. The idea is that stratagems create deeper decision-making, more reactive play, and more strategic layers.
Strategems don’t just add a lot of rules and complexity, slowing down the game, but many of them give inherently unequal advantages to certain factions, creating balance issues.
In theory, that sounds great.
In practice… it just doesn’t work for what 40k actually is.
At its core, Warhammer 40k is still a dice-chucking spectacle. It’s a game of eyeballing distances, rolling handfuls of dice, and watching ridiculous things happen on the table. That’s not a flaw, that’s part of its identity, and 40k should be leaning into that. It’s supposed to be fast and explosive, but strategems act as the complete opposite to that concept, slowing the game down dramatically and adding a lot of complexity to the resolutions of actions.
So when you bolt on this extra layer of “gotcha” mechanics with stratagems and Command Points, the result isn’t deeper strategy, it’s a slower, clunkier game.
Every turn becomes a minefield of “Wait, do you have a stratagem for that?” moments. Games grind to a halt while players scan cards or phone apps. Someone forgets to use half their abilities. Someone else drops a perfectly timed stratagem that feels less like clever play and more like a rules ambush that results in the inevitable “I didn’t know you could do that”. For obvious reasons, few of us have so much time that we can learn every nuance of every army in the game. There is just no way any reasonable person can track all this stuff, and strategems add a whole other layer to an already sprawling amount of faction rules.
Instead of adding meaningful depth, the system mostly creates feel-bad and gotcha moments and a thousand new ways for the game to become wildly unbalanced.
Personally, I’d love to see stratagems massively trimmed down, or preferably removed entirely.
Let the unit cards, army rules, and faction-specific enhancements carry the core gameplay. Those elements are easier to remember, easier to balance, and far more in line with the flow of a traditional 40k battle. The current stratagem system feels like an awkward layer of card-play that never really belonged in the game to begin with. Why are we playing Magic: The Gathering in the middle of our Warhammer 40k game? “What the fuck do you mean you counterspell!?”
To me, stratagems mostly do two things. They add a mountain of rules that nobody remembers, and they introduce a destabilizing factor where there are very obvious winners and losers.
And if you’ve played enough games of 40k, you’ve heard the same conversations after the match:
“Oh man… I forgot to use half my stratagems.” or “That stratagem is so unbelievably OP.”
It happens all the time.
Now, if stratagems absolutely must stay in the game, I’d love to see them treated as optional advanced rules. Let players choose whether they want that extra layer of complexity or not. Sometimes you want the full tournament experience. Other times, you just want to throw some dice, move some cool miniatures, and finish a game in a couple of hours without flipping through a deck of tactical tricks. But make those official, established optional rules so that it’s clear to players that “these are extra, not default”.
2. Simpler but More Impactful Terrain Rules
Terrain in Warhammer 40,000 is one of those things that looks incredibly important on the table… but often ends up feeling strangely irrelevant once the dice start rolling.
And that’s a problem.
Right now, the terrain rules are oddly caught between two worlds. On one hand, there are a lot of rules to remember, keywords, cover conditions, line-of-sight quirks, and special terrain interactions. On the other hand, the actual impact on the game is surprisingly small. In many cases, terrain barely changes the outcome of a firefight at all.
In fact, if you played a game of 40k with no terrain whatsoever, the difference in gameplay would often be… minimal, as there are so few units in the game at this point that garner any positive or negative effects from cover.
That’s not great.
The current system ends up feeling like a stack of rules you have to keep in your head that ultimately don’t matter very much. It’s complex to explain, awkward to apply, and yet somehow still underwhelming in terms of gameplay impact. I once wrote a 5,000-word essay just explaining the benefits of cover, which probably tells you everything you need to know about how intuitive the current system is.
What I’d love to see in the next edition is terrain that is both simpler and more meaningful.
The rules should be easy to apply at a glance and based on logic we can quickly eyeball across the table. No complicated chains of conditions, no digging through terrain keywords, and no debates over whether a model’s left kneecap is technically within a ruin footprint.
Just simple questions.
Are you in cover? Yes or no.
If the answer is yes, you get a clear and meaningful benefit, something like +1 to your save, full stop. No exceptions, no extra layers of logic, no obscure edge cases.
Terrain should be something that players actively care about during the game. It should shape movement, influence positioning, and create meaningful tactical decisions. Right now it often feels like decorative scenery with a rules appendix attached.
Even this simple benefit of cover rule, ends up being quite complicated because note that it refers to the model, not the unit. Not only that, but the end result, because most units in 40k have a 3+ save is that cover doesn’t do anything.
This one feels like a no-brainer to me. Terrain rules should be simple to apply and powerful enough that terrain genuinely matters on the battlefield.
After all, if we’re going to fill our tables with beautiful ruins, forests, and industrial complexes… they should probably do something.
3. Eliminate Dice Re-Rolls
I’m going to say something here that might sound extreme, but I genuinely believe it:
There should be no dice re-rolls in Warhammer 40,000. None. Ever.
Re-rolls are one of the most common mechanics in modern 40k, and in my opinion, they are also one of the weakest pieces of game design in the entire system. When designers lean heavily on re-roll mechanics, it usually means they’ve run out of better ways to represent abilities or create meaningful gameplay differences.
In other words, it’s a design crutch.
And in 10th edition, that crutch is everywhere.
Let’s start with the first problem: it slows the game down. Warhammer 40k is already a long game, and re-rolls add a massive amount of extra time to every battle. Roll to hit. Check which dice failed. Pick them up. Roll them again. Then do the same thing for wounds, saves, and sometimes even damage rolls.
For my army, I’d estimate that 40–60% of the dice I roll can be re-rolled in some way. That’s absurd. At that point, you’re not really rolling once, you’re rolling twice for half the game. I’m convinced the mechanic alone adds close to an hour to many matches.
The second issue is that re-rolls kill the drama of dice rolling.
Rolling dice should be exciting. You throw them across the table, everyone leans in, and for a moment, the fate of the battlefield hangs in the balance.
But with re-rolls, that moment gets completely deflated.
You roll the dice.
“Oh man, I missed.”
Pause.
“Wait… I get re-rolls.”
Pick them up. Roll again.
“Never mind, I hit.”
That entire moment of tension just evaporates. The first roll didn’t matter because we were going to do it again anyway. Nothing kills the momentum of a game faster than realizing the dice result you just saw isn’t actually the real result yet.
And then there’s the third issue, which in my view is the biggest one: re-rolls destroy statistical balance.
From a game design perspective, they undermine the entire math behind the system.
Every unit in 40k is built around probability, weapon skill, armor saves, and wound rolls. These numbers are carefully tuned to create expected outcomes. But the moment you introduce widespread re-rolls, those probabilities stop meaning what they’re supposed to mean.
A 3+ save isn’t really a 3+ save anymore if it can be re-rolled. The actual statistical survival rate changes dramatically. The same goes for hit rolls, wound rolls, and everything else. Add re-rolls to a resolution of more than one of these statistics and the numbers are all over the place.
And once you start stacking re-roll mechanics across an army, balancing the game becomes exponentially harder. The baseline math that designers rely on stops being reliable.
When I say re-rolls are bad design, that’s not just personal frustration talking; it’s a fundamental game theory problem. If you take even a basic game design course, one of the early lessons is that mechanics that constantly override probability curves make balancing systems far more difficult. Do it enough and unbalance is a foregone conclusion and cannot be repaired through other mechanical finagling.
Yet 40k leans on them everywhere.
Instead of destabilizing the entire statistical foundation of the game, I’d much rather see abilities expressed through clear modifiers, unique effects, or meaningful unit rules. Those are far easier to understand, easier to balance, and far faster to play.
Because at the end of the day, when the dice hit the table in Warhammer 40k…
That roll should matter.
4. Data Slates – Rules Updates & Faction Books
For this one, I’m going to say something unusual.
Don’t change a thing.
Credit where it’s due, Games Workshop has actually done a really good job supporting Warhammer 40,000 in 10th edition. Balance dataslates, frequent points updates, and quick reactions to what’s happening in the community have been a massive improvement compared to older editions. The game feels actively maintained, and that’s exactly how a modern tabletop system should work.
Do they always nail the changes? No, they don’t, but the effort counts, and I think it beats the hell out of radio silence.
So from that perspective, the current update cadence is excellent. Keep doing it.
However, there is a side effect to this approach that players have been frustrated about for years: codex books becoming outdated almost immediately.
We’ve all seen it happen. A faction book releases, players buy it, and before the ink dries, some dataslate, FAQ, or balance update changes multiple rules inside it. Suddenly, the book you just paid for no longer reflects how the army actually works.
It’s not a new problem, but with the current pace of changes, I think it’s time to rethink what faction books are supposed to be.
Instead of acting as the primary source of army rules, codexes should lean much more heavily into lore, art, strategy, narrative content, missions, and thematic mechanics that capture the identity of the faction. That’s the part of the book people actually enjoy owning.
I love the codexes, I have bought the codex for every edition of Tyranids, even when I wasn’t playing Warhammer 40k. These are awesome books full of art and lore, it’s a piece of the game and you’re going to want to own the one for your favorite faction. There is no reason to make it a requirement to own for the faction rules, people would buy these books anyway.
Because here’s one of the strangest things about playing Warhammer 40k: if you face an opponent whose faction you don’t collect, you often have no idea what their army can do unless you’ve also bought their codex.
Imagine playing a sport where you only know half the rules and your opponent knows the other half. It’s bizarre when you think about it.
Army rules should be freely available online for everyone. That way, players can understand how every faction functions, what the threats are, and how the game actually works across the full range of armies.
The reason to buy faction books shouldn’t be access to the rules, it should be because the book itself is awesome.
The art. The lore. The narrative campaigns. The unique missions and faction flavor.
Players will buy those books regardless. I know I will. I love my Tyranids, if a new codex drops, I’m buying it. But I’m fully aware that the rules printed inside it will probably be outdated before it reaches my house. That’s not why I want the book.
I want it for the atmosphere of the faction and the joy of flipping through a beautiful hardcover full of alien monstrosities.
If it were up to me, I’d go even further: include the full core rulebook inside every faction book.
That way, players only need a single book for their army that contains the lore, the faction content, and the core rules for the game. Charge $60 for it, I honestly wouldn’t mind. Having one complete, self-contained book for my army would be far more useful than juggling multiple rule sources.
Meanwhile, the actual army rules and points values live online, where they can be updated quickly without invalidating the book on your shelf.
To me, that’s the best of both worlds.
5. Crusade Rules Should Use Legacy Architecture
One of my absolute favorite ways to play Warhammer 40,000 is with the Crusade rules. The idea of narrative campaigns, evolving armies, and story-driven battles fits perfectly with what 40k is supposed to be about.
But while I love the idea of Crusade, the actual campaign system leaves a lot to be desired.
The biggest issue is that it tends to follow a classic “winners win more” design. If you win a game, you gain advantages that help you win the next one. Those wins stack, the gap between players grows, and before long, the campaign starts to feel less like a tense war story and more like a slow-motion steamroll.
Tyrannic War is one of my favorite Warhammer 40k supplements ever made, this is exactly the sort of lore books I want to see for Warhammer 40k. I just wish the Crusade rules were a bit better thought out. As they are they are pretty … meh.
That kind of design can quickly drain the drama out of a campaign. Once momentum swings too far in one direction, the narrative becomes predictable, and that’s the last thing you want in a game built on epic storytelling.
But beyond that, Crusade feels like a massive missed opportunity.
If there’s one place where Warhammer 40k could really push the boundaries of tabletop design, it’s here. And honestly, I think the inspiration should come from modern legacy-style board games.
Imagine buying a Crusade campaign book that comes with a box of sealed, unlockable cards or envelopes. As battles unfold in your campaign, certain outcomes trigger hidden content. You rip open a new mission at the table and suddenly discover new lore, special battlefield conditions, or unexpected story developments. Maybe special characters are introduced, new weapons, and more. There is so much sci-fi goodness built into the 40k universe; the options here are quite limitless, and you could tie these concepts into novels, new product releases, and online content.
One battle might unlock a desperate evacuation mission. Another might reveal a secret objective tied to an ancient alien artifact. A devastating defeat might trigger a revenge scenario two games later.
Each mission pushes the story forward and branches into new paths depending on the results of the previous battle.
Over time, players would experience a living campaign that evolves as they play. Every season, a new expansion pack could add fresh missions, new story arcs, and new unlockables that keep the narrative moving forward.
The crazy thing is that this idea is just one of about a billion ways the Crusade system could evolve. The design space here is enormous, and it feels like something Games Workshop has barely scratched the surface of.
My point is simple: Crusade should be a major pillar of the game.
Lean into the narrative side of Warhammer. Expand the campaign systems. Give players something deep, dynamic, and story-driven to sink their teeth into.
Because if any universe deserves truly epic campaign play… It’s the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.
6. Bring Back Organizational Charts/Requirements
Alright, this one might be a bit controversial.
I know a lot of players love the current “take whatever you want” style of army building in Warhammer 40,000, but I think removing organizational structures from armies has created several problems.
The first issue is lore.
Warhammer 40k isn’t just a game system; it’s a universe. The factions, the military structures, the way armies are organized in the lore… that’s a huge part of the appeal. And honestly, if the lore and atmosphere aren’t important to you, why play Warhammer 40k in the first place?
Let’s be real for a second: the game itself isn’t some cutting-edge masterpiece of modern design. It’s fragile, swingy, and still carries a lot of DNA from older tabletop systems. What makes 40k special is the setting, the factions, the scale, and the spectacle of it all.
Back when organizational charts existed, armies actually looked like armies. When you built a strike force, you expected a core of basic troops, a few vehicles, a couple of command units, exactly the way military forces are described in the lore. The structure gave armies a sense of authenticity.
I really like the idea of organizational charts being based on something. Be it a mission, a campaign or faction detachment based. I don’t want it to be a static thing that becomes part of a meta, its something you should have to decide for each match, and it should change often. The game needs to be shaken up.
Your force on the tabletop resembled something that could plausibly exist in the 41st millennium. That era is gone. I haven’t seen anything that resembles a 40k lore army during the entire 10th edition run; it’s all about optimization of unit selection.
The second issue is game balance.
Right now, one of the biggest reasons games can feel wild and swingy is because players are free to build armies purely around points optimization. The result is a lot of strange, hyper-efficient lists packed with the same units repeated over and over, while the vast majority of the catalogue doesn’t see any play at all.
Three Terminator squads. Three Devastator squads. Three of whatever unit happens to be mathematically optimal this month.
Players build armies to maximize efficiency, which makes perfect sense in competitive play, but it often runs completely against the spirit of the game.
This isn’t Magic: The Gathering Arena where you’re crafting the perfect competitive deck. Warhammer 40k is supposed to be a narrative war game about massive armies clashing on the battlefield.
When every list becomes a spreadsheet exercise in optimization, something gets lost.
And that leads to the third issue: collecting armies used to have a purpose.
Organizational charts encouraged players to build complete forces. Even if a particular unit wasn’t the most optimal choice, you still had a reason to include it because it was part of the structure of your army you had to fill.
You might field a unit of Tyranid Warriors not because they were mathematically perfect, but because they belonged in the force you were building.
And the best part? Your opponent was dealing with the same constraints, forcing an equalization.
Those slightly sub-optimal armies often created far more interesting games than the current environment, where every list tries to cram in the most efficient units possible.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying we should go all the way back to the exact force organization charts of older editions.
What I’d really like to see is an organizational structure tied to detachments.
When you choose a detachment, it should influence what units you bring or can bring. Your army should naturally evolve around that theme. Collecting and painting would feel like building toward something specific instead of just optimizing a list.
Your Tyranid army and my Tyranid army could both be powerful, but in completely different ways.
Maybe your detachment encourages units A, B, and C. Mine encourages D, E, and F. You can have x4 of A unit, but I can’t have any at all!
Now our armies look different. They play differently. They feel like distinct forces instead of slight variations of the same optimized list.
Right now, detachments rarely influence what units you actually bring. Instead, players build the most optimized army possible and then simply choose whichever detachment works best with that list.
Everything else becomes “sub-optimal,” and because everyone else is optimizing too, bringing anything less efficient often means getting crushed by turn one or two.
At that point, the system is forcing players toward the same narrow set of choices just to stay competitive.
And that’s exactly the kind of problem organizational structures used to solve.
Bring back some form of structured army building, and I think you’ll see more thematic armies, more diverse lists, and far more interesting games on the table.
7. Make Internal Balance The Priority
Organizational charts can help encourage a wider spread of units in an army, but they only work if the units themselves are actually worth taking.
And that brings us to one of the biggest long-standing issues in Warhammer 40,000: internal balance.
If the internal balance of a faction is off, then any kind of structural army requirement just forces players into an awkward situation. Instead of encouraging variety, it simply makes people field units they don’t enjoy because they have to, even when those units are clearly underpowered.
And that’s not fun for anyone.
One of the most frustrating things in 40k is looking at your shelf full of beautifully painted miniatures and realizing that half of them just aren’t viable on the table. There are so many fantastic models in this game that players would love to use, but the reality is that many of them are so inefficient compared to other units at the same point cost that they simply never get fielded.
Unless, of course, you’re intentionally running a sub-optimal army.
That’s always a bad feeling.
Take my Tyrannocyte, for example. It’s a really cool model. I love the concept, the look, and the idea of it smashing onto the battlefield like a giant alien drop pod.
But at 105 points, it’s barely worth half that in actual game value. So it sits on the shelf.
And that’s a shame.
Owning models that you love but suck in the game is a real shame. Your options are to use them anyway and probably lose matches as a result, or not use them and be pissed about that. Internal balance is a crucial element to a game’s design, and GW really needs to get it right. I think there is a lot that can be done to make this happen.
This is why internal balance should be a major focus of 11th edition. Every unit in a faction should feel like a legitimate option. Not necessarily the best choice, but at least something you could reasonably include without feeling like you’re handicapping yourself.
At the same time, the game needs to avoid units that become automatic “take three” choices in every list. When one or two units dominate the efficiency curve, the entire faction’s army design collapses into a predictable formula.
And suddenly everyone’s running the exact same army, which is exactly what you saw in 10th edition. Tons of options, but everyone is running variations of the same small selection of lists. Most of the catalogue is just not seeing any play.
Internal balance might sound like a basic concept, but it’s absolutely critical to the health of the game. If every unit has a clear role and a fair point value, players can build armies based on theme, creativity, and personal taste instead of just chasing the most efficient spreadsheet entries.
And that’s the kind of Warhammer 40k most people actually want to play.
8. Improved Mission Design
I touched on this earlier when talking about Crusade, but this issue goes deeper than narrative play. It’s really about the structure of missions and how victories are determined in Warhammer 40k.
Right now, 10th edition often feels less like a battle and more like a Euro-style worker placement board game wearing a Warhammer costume.
You’re not always fighting a war, you’re playing a strange sub-game where units run around the table doing random administrative tasks in order to score points. Scan this objective. Perform that action. Score five points here, two points there.
The result is a bizarre level of victory point granularity that constantly pulls players away from the actual battle happening on the table.
Instead of focusing on the clash of armies, you end up sending units off to perform strategically questionable or thematically nonsensical actions simply because that’s how you score points.
And it feels… weird.
I understand what GW was going for here, and I don’t even think its nescessarily bad design, but it slows the game down, and the result is a kind of disconnect from the main focus of the game, which is the battlefield. Missions need to be a lot simpler, make the game about the fight, not some weird side game about point scoring.
A lot of the current objectives feel forced, as if someone decided the game needed a certain amount of scoring complexity and then a design team had to invent a hundred different ways to make that happen. The design process feels backwards, a chicken before the egg; the points system came first, and the mission ideas were built afterward just to justify it.
Mechanically, the game suffers because of it.
At its core, Warhammer 40k is about two armies colliding on a battlefield. The missions should reinforce that idea, not distract from it. Objectives should be simple, clear, and grounded in the logic of the setting.
Things like: Take that hill and hold it, destroy the shield generator, or secure the landing zone.
You can still build interesting missions around those ideas. You could even introduce phased objectives, capture the objective, plant the explosives, destroy the structure, and escape before reinforcements arrive. Missions like that feel connected to the world of the game and create natural storytelling moments during play.
I especially dislike “surprise” scoring opportunities. Drawing a card and hoping that it gives you a chance to make an easy score somewhere is not a strategy; it’s luck, and neither player can do anything to predict its coming.
Players should always have a clear understanding of how to win the game.
And right now, that’s often not the case.
The current mission system is so packed with scoring mechanics that half the time, a winner is decided because someone forgot about a particular mission card or missed a scoring opportunity buried in the rules, or just got lucky with the card draws.
I’ve played a lot of 10th edition games, and I can honestly say I’ve never sat down after a match and had someone confidently explain every way points could have been scored in that game. There are just too many objectives, too many scoring triggers, and too many little systems layered on top of each other.
So players tend to fall into one of two traps. They either ignore the battle and focus purely on farming points, which is dull. Or they focus on the battle, wipe out the enemy army… and still lose because of the scoring system.
Few things feel stranger than getting tabled and still winning the game.
At that point, the mission system isn’t supporting the battle; it’s supporting a gaming system, and that feels off to me in the backdrop of a Warhammer 40k battle.
What I’d love to see in 11th edition is a complete rethink of the mission design philosophy. Objectives should be intuitive, thematic, and clearly tied to what’s happening on the battlefield, and it would be icing on the cake if they were tied to thematic event-driven stories in the game world.
Because at the end of the day, Warhammer 40k should feel like what it is supposed to be: A massive science-fiction battle in the 40k universe.
Better Vehicle and Aircraft Rules
At this point, I feel like I’m just pointing out problems that every Warhammer 40k player already knows exist.
And nothing illustrates that better than the vehicle and aircraft rules in Warhammer 40k.
I honestly doubt you could find a player anywhere on God’s green earth who thinks the current system works particularly well. Vehicles and aircraft have been a design headache for years, and they’re still one of the most awkward parts of the game.
The core problem is that these units almost always land in one of two extremes.
Either they are absurdly durable, borderline unkillable unless you’re packing the heaviest anti-tank weapons in the game, or they’re so fragile that they barely function as vehicles at all.
There rarely seems to be a middle ground.
The rules themselves, especially for aircraft, are often strange, overly complicated, and sometimes downright nonsensical. Movement restrictions, special targeting rules, weird interactions with terrain… the whole system often feels like it’s fighting against the rest of the game.
In fact, aircraft have been so problematic over the years that many tournaments and organized play events have simply banned them outright because the rules create too many headaches.
That’s not a great sign.
These are cool models, and I love them, but if Aircraft are going to be in the game they need much better rules than what we have right now, and I think GW knows it.
What vehicles and aircraft really need are simple, cinematic rules that fit the spectacle of Warhammer 40k. These units should feel powerful and exciting on the battlefield without turning into some kind of obscure combo card that breaks the game.
They should be big, dramatic pieces of the battlefield, tanks rumbling forward under heavy fire, gunships screaming across the sky, not strange mechanical puzzles that nobody wants to deal with.
And the funny thing is, if you look around the community, there are hundreds of house rules people have come up with to fix these problems.
At this point, many of those community solutions are honestly better than what Games Workshop has implemented over the years.
So if 11th edition is looking for a place to start cleaning things up, this is an easy win.
Vehicles and aircraft don’t need complicated rules. They just need good ones. I don’t have a suggestion, I’m not a game designer, that’s GW’s job, I just know when something sucks and vehicle and aircraft rules, certainly do suck!
Faster Gameplay
Warhammer 40k has always had a lot of rules, but honestly, I don’t think the rules themselves are the main reason the game feels so slow today.
The real problem is everything else we’ve already talked about on this wish list.
Stratagems and Command Points slow the game down. Overcomplicated terrain rules slow the game down. Dice re-rolls slow the game down a lot (like, literally adds at least 1 hour + to the game).
But even beyond those issues, there’s another major factor that rarely gets discussed enough: the game just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
With each edition of Warhammer 40k, the “standard” game size has crept upward. Today, the default expectation is a 2,000-point game, which seems normal, but 2,000 points today is not really 2,000 points.
The problem is that at the same time, unit costs have steadily decreased over each edition. The result is that a modern 2,000-point army contains far more models and units than it used to. In practical terms, a 2,000-point army today feels closer to what a 3,000-point army looked like two editions ago.
That’s a massive increase in size, and that equals a massive increase in time needed to finish a game.
Large, slow games are really bad for the tournament scene as well. People have to rush through games, and it’s common during tournaments that games are “called” rather than finished. The game needs a major improvement in speed, a match should be playable within 2-3 hours maximum without having to speed through it, and it feeling like there is insane time pressure on the players.
There are so many units on the table now that, in some missions, it’s literally not possible to deploy everything because there isn’t enough physical space on the board. And to make matters worse, the boards themselves have actually gotten smaller over time.
So what you end up with is essentially a knife fight in a phone booth, packed with units, abilities, rolls, re-rolls, and re-rolls of re-rolls.
It’s chaos.
Personally, I believe the time it takes to play a game of 40k could be reduced by as much as 75% without sacrificing any of the fun, if the rules were streamlined and the core structure of the game was designed around gameplay rather than simply encouraging players to buy more models.
Now, realistically, I don’t expect Games Workshop to change that philosophy anytime soon. But as a community, it might be time to start questioning the assumption that 2,000 points is the “standard” game size.
Because at today’s unit costs, it really isn’t.
In fact, it’s kind of absurd.
A modern 2,000-point game often feels less like a tactical wargame and more like Yahtzee with miniatures, a chaotic avalanche of dice rolls where the sheer volume of units overwhelms any meaningful strategy.
And the worst part is how long it takes.
At this point, finishing a full game of 40k in a single evening is becoming increasingly difficult. In my experience, about half of our games don’t even finish. Eventually, someone looks at the clock, realizes it’s getting late, and we just call it.
A typical game can easily run four to six hours, and if players aren’t moving quickly, it can stretch to eight hours or more. Happens all the time for me.
That’s just not reasonable.
If there’s one big wish I have for 11th edition, it’s that the designers take a serious look at reducing army sizes and tightening the overall structure of the game. Combine that with improvements to the other issues on this list, and the result could be a faster, smoother, and far more enjoyable experience.
Because at the end of the day, Warhammer 40k should be something you can play and finish in an evening, not an endurance test.
Conclusion
For an article that started out by praising 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000, I sure did spend a lot of time complaining.
But the truth is, I really do think it’s been a great edition. It’s had a strong run and introduced some genuinely good ideas. The problem isn’t that 10th edition is bad, it’s that it’s starting to feel a little rusty.
And the reality is that Warhammer 40k is no longer competing against its own previous editions. The tabletop gaming world has evolved. There are plenty of modern games now proving that with clean mechanics and thoughtful design, you can have a fast, snappy, and highly enjoyable experience at the table. Sure, most of these games don’t have the staying power, but they do illustrate what can be done with good game design.
I’d love to see Warhammer 40k embrace some of that design philosophy.
At the same time, I completely understand that 40k is its own kind of game. It should be bigger, heavier, and more dramatic than most tabletop systems. That’s part of its identity. But I also think it already achieves that depth through its factions, units, and battlefield interactions, even without the extra layers that have accumulated over the years.
Stratagem bloat, overly complex mission scoring, endless re-roll mechanics, none of those things are necessary for the game to feel deep or meaningful. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a sweet spot, and I think Warhammer 40k could absolutely reach it.
I’m not asking for a massive overhaul of the system. What I’d really like to see is optimization and efficiency, small but meaningful improvements that smooth out the rough edges.
More than anything, I want Warhammer 40k to feel less like an ordeal at the table.
Collecting and painting miniatures should absolutely remain a big part of the hobby. That investment of time, creativity, and effort is one of the things that makes Warhammer special, and I would never want to see that aspect simplified or diminished.
But once the models are painted and you’re ready to set up a game, that experience should be lighthearted and fun.
It should feel exciting, not confusing. Enjoyable, not frustrating. And above all, it should be fast, smooth, and satisfying to play.
