My experience with the KS stuff has been mostly good (although I’ve only backed about 5) in longevity. Dreadball is still played (and we much prefer it to Bloodbowl), Deadzone was a bit of a flash in the pan with interest at the club.

But many KS schemes launch with renders of the minis all done, but rules not developed enough so that you COULD make an informed choice on if you might like the game or not (so you have to go with the bling). The Let’s Play for Core Space here on BoW (along with the ones for Dreadball and Legends of Fabled Realms) lead me to purchase, as I felt the rules were laid down and at least play tested. But many rules these days are designed around a quirky mechanic as the “hook” to make you purchase, but these rules usually are a bit generic in flavour and don’t reflect the period they are trying to represent very well (although with Skirmish level games they are always going to be that way such as SPQR).

The fact that such glaring errors appear in the rules these days just points towards the fact they haven’t been play tested extensively (or no-one gave a load of wargamers who had never played the game the rules and we’re told to play the game and give feedback). I DO think that saying a company is a miniatures manufacturer as for them the rules isn’t their focus isn’t a defence. Back in the day before the manufacturers all decided to have rule systems “in house”, many rules were published (even self published) on very restrictive budgets. And although these didn’t have the flashy photography and art work, they did the job that they were meant to do. (do we actually need the “professional” look to our rules, I’ve got the new Necromunda rules, and I can hardly make out the text as they have artwork over every page in the background of the page, yet these still have glaring errors to the point where weapon stats aren’t the same in the SAME book).

Perhaps we need a “Grognard” corner, where we can see rules reviewed WITHOUT reference to miniatures. The Chain of Command Let’s Plays were very informative, because they are only selling the rules (so their focus is purely on the rules them selves).

On the time aspect at BoW central, have they spread themselves too thin by moving from miniature wargames to covering board and card games as well? I know that some staff were taken on to cover this aspect of the site (so wonder why they weren’t doing the Unboxing video for Hunger Games as they would have had the extertise to liken the game to other Boardgames already out there). The thing is if a company takes the time (and expense) to send in a review copy they expect the review to be in depth to an extent. I remember when Colin sent Core Space over to the Dice Tower for a review, and the people there were disinterested, critical comment made about things they clearly hadn’t even done any research about (like some of the card components being “shiny” and they poo poo’d them not realising they were treated for use with dry wipe markers). If I’d have been Colin I would never send them anything to review again. And the same stand true for any review site, if you are critical of a product…then you go on a blacklist and soon have nothing to review.

But I do feel that the Unboxings (particularly for Boardgames) are past their prime these days. Boardgamers aren’t interested in the components more so in the game itself. With miniatures, perhaps they have more relevance as gamers might want to know what options they have to build within the box. So unboxings for things like Bolt Action squad boxes are of interest (to me), but for a boardgame not so much because they need a longer review to explain about the game (or a Lets Play video).

But all in all rules these days are not that good and rely on “hook” unique mechanics, but is that because wargamers have become lazy and don’t want to do the math anymore?