OnTableTop – Home of Beasts of War

Reply To: A miniature game has to be a wargame?

July 25, 2018 at 7:22 pm #1239901

Participant

1687xp

Interesting question. There are survival board games out there that could be transferred to a miniatures game and many board games today have really nice miniatures to paint and play with. It is a thin line between a miniatures war game and a board game today, it all depends on your definition of a Miniatures war game.

Take Mansions of madness from Fantasy flight games as a good example of a board game that could be transferred to a miniatures game. Here you have the places to go and puzzles to solve without it being a straight up war game.

I think the problem lies in the board. It is quite a challenge to be able to create a new board every time and still have the other elements. I think the board game hybrids like Mansions are the best of both worlds.

Could the definition “miniatures war game” be the problem maybe? I think different people bring with them different definitions of what they think is part of this genre. DUST is a miniatures war game but still you move in squares on a board, the same with Mantics Deadzone. So the freedom of movement is not always a prerequisite. The history of the genre is armed conflict so I think the heart of it lies here. No matter where you place is the fight mechanic is at its core. If you remove the war game out of it it becomes one of the many great board games we have now.

That was a long thought 🙂