Weekender: Mass Battle Games Are Dead!
September 22, 2018 by dignity
Welcome to The Weekender where we're going to be confronting the very real possibility that Mass Battle Games Are Dead...well, at least Warhammer 40,000 and Age Of Sigmar.
Weekender Podcast Download
I know, I know...I can see the torches and pitchforks on the horizon already. But, bear with us and let us explain!
Skirmish Games FTW!
When you look at the awesome Kill Team Cat (going to be a thing now) you can clearly see that Kill Team is very much the 'hot' game right now. It has been a big pull for gamers both old AND new, offering up a quick and easy window into the world of Warhammer 40,000.
Warhammer Underworlds: Nightvault is the same, as well as Battle Companies from the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game.
Is it getting to the point where people just don't care about playing out massive battles on the tabletop anymore when they could very easily just pick up a Kill Team and have a cheaper and probably more enjoyable experience?
Let us know what you think!
News
Ben is back with the news this week after his hiatus in Wales.
- Kings Of War Vanguard - New factions and more available to pre-order
- Toon Realms - Check out these great new cartoony miniatures from Lucid Eye
- US & Japanese In Blood Red Skies - Some great new kits on the way from Warlord Games
- Hurricanes & Mosquitos - Check out new British flying aces and more
- Spectre In The Jungle - Get your Ghost Recon on with these new supplements
- Stalingrad In Flames - New ruins from Gale Force Nine for Flames Of War (Lloyd & John's Hobby VLOG)
What caught your eye from the news this week?
Bolt Action Boot Camp; What's Happening?
Oriskany, our Historical Editor, goes through what you have to look forward to at the Bolt Action Boot Camp next week.
We've got lots of awesomeness planned in our Live Blogs as well as for the folks attending and can't wait to learn more about The Desert War...and paint and play some games too with the Warlord Games folk!
Kickstarter
Time to check out a few very different looking Kickstarters this week...
- The Lost Dragons - 3D Printed Dragons well worth your time (3D Printed Tabletop Youtube Channel)
- Lost Minis Kickstarter - Impact! Miniatures save models from the depths of despair!
- Tombed - A different looking dungeon crawler set during the 1940s from Deep Pit Games
What has caught your eye from the Kickstarters today?
Community
We take some time to go through the Community Spotlight looking at some more of the impressive work from you folks in the forums and projects this week.
Competitions
We have the winner to announce from the Warhammer 40,000 Tooth & Claw competition last week. When you hear your name make sure to Claim Your Prize!
We are also going to be giving away TWO copies of Warhammer Underworlds: Nightvault today and all you have to do is comment on this video to be in with a chance of winning.
Have a great weekend!
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First, Happy weekend all 🙂
Win!!
WIN!!!
Not normally up this early but being a good husband/slave I will take her to work. As a painfully slow painter. The skirmish game is for me, lower model count suits me as its more narrative and allows me more time to paint more details. @warzan I would love a full army, grew up with a warhammer fantasy orcs and goblins army (lots of miniatures) just don’t have the time now, but if I can build slowly and still get games in on a skirmish level it would encourage me to add to the army.
Has to be a pretty good skirmish game to be able to hold your attention towards building an army. To be fair, SAGA seems pretty good at that!
I think to an extent mass battle rules have dropped out of favour due to the dominance of 28mm being the favoured scale when companies are launching a new range of minis. Now to an extent for fantasy and Sci-fi, it’s always been 28mm (which was why it was always an expensive buy in). But for historicals we’ve seen things like SAGA become the most popular game over recent years. For historical games, we first began to see games of things like Ancients “scale down” from large armies of 15mm using rules like WRG 7th/DBM to smaller armies (still using… Read more »
@plaidknot sorry but 6mm is not being “grognards” 15mm games. I played 6mm before I ever did 6mm so it was never a replacement for 15mm
To an extent it has in our neck of the woods, granted 6mm is first choice for micro armour and WW2 to moderns era gaming. But a load of us have “gone back” to our earlier wargaming periods and started collecting again to build up for mass battles (partly due to cost and partly…well when was the last time you saw any 15mm Napoleonics available for sale in bare metal at a wargames show (I blame Baccus for this).
A couple of weeks ago at Colours
Well they ain’t coming up North. Nearest I’ve seen are the AB ones at the Col Bills stand (problem is he usually only has one or two of each unit if you start looking at the ever dangerous “impulse” buys 😀 )
Hi guys. as a hobbyist that got into this crazy hobby through mass combat games (MCG) I would like to think that they are still alive and kicking, but perhaps more alive being played in peoples garages and living rooms rather than down the club or stores these days. I was fortunate enough to find a group of guys that still have armies and play WHFB’s here in Japan and we have started our small group to play regularly. And I thought is was maybe an age group related thing with older gamers like myself still playing MCG’s for the… Read more »
Yes and No, it just the cycle
WIN! Also, I’m super excited for all the new warbands coming out for this season of Underworlds.
It’s the Weekend!! Bo!d statement, but, while there maybe truth in the emergence of skirmish games ( even GW have adapted their business model around them) I think that MBG will be with us for a while yet… Tbere’s still a heck of a lot of 40k and WHF/AOS going on down my club, as well as KoW (or is Vanguard taking that to a different place). Although I must admit that, walking around the tables, I’m noticing shorter lists including more big single units (vehicles and monsters). Has the world finally got fed up with chain painting? Probably not… Read more »
Good to see Lloyd back on the panel.
Me too! Integral part of the BOW/OTT chemistry!
Well, Kill Team was the GW game that got me back into their clutches. The hobbyist in me is delighted by it. I might never play Shadespire and, soon, Nightvault as they currently are due to the repugnant deck-building aspect of them but I love the figures and plan to use them for the Kill Team-esque Gangfight system. Vanguard from Mantic will also fit this niche.
I think there is also a space component here. Not space as in Sci Fi, but how much room the models take up. A smaller force is easier to transport, via public transport (train and bus), friends sharing a car ride to a tourney, or people jetting half way around the world for a bootcamp. If the models will fit in a small satchel, rather than a jymungus army bag that has the bad habit of hitting people when getting on or off a bus. The storage space at home will be a factor for some. In a number of… Read more »
I think that the idea of space and transport is very much a key aspect here. I would much rather bring along a handful of models that try and haul an army down to my local gaming store.
Happy Weekend, nope 28mm mass battles are dead (based on the title not watched everything)
Historical 15mm and 6mm mass battles are live and well,
@commodorerob –
show your working out.
6mm Lives. . . . !
Nightvault looks promising
Can´t wait for Nightvault, I´m Shadespire addicted. It ticks all my boxes, CCG, Miniatures, Arena… love it.
Build your BIG ASStral Knights army Warzan, build it and ‘they’ will come…
I just don’t get the 40K universe….
Neither do I ?
Amen, @macadams00 and @commodorerob . A-friggin’-men.
I understand how the 40K universe can appeal to kids. It’s the ongoing obsession among adults that I don’t get
Nostalgia?
Possibly, but I feel like that only explains a small portion of people. It certainly doesn’t explain the fanaticism that some fans have for the universe.
Nostalgia might very well explain it. I mean… I realise that the 40K universe is a bit… Well… A bit stupid, in all honesty. But having grown up during the eighties and early nineties, the mix of eighties vibe, Mad Max, Judge Dread, Star Trek, and all the rest… It was all pretty cool back then. For me, the problem is that Games Workshop seems to have forgotten that 40K isn’t supposed to be taken overly serious. It’s a mix of all kind of seventies and eighties cliches, all mixed up with a healthy dose of British humour… It appealed… Read more »
I used to really enjoy 40K as a game and the universe was always OK, but never particularly exciting to me. Then they killed my favourite version of the game and I drifted away. Now looking at the market share of 40K makes me die a little inside!
Yes, it remind me of some of the bad theatrical metal band that used to be cool as a kid, but as you get older you figure out that they can’t play their instruments.
Some 40k books are incredibly well written, an effective way to keep fans engaged in the universe.
You’re quite possibly right. I’ve only read a couple and they weren’t bad, just the same level of quality as most tie-in works, which isn’t particularly high. My tiny sample is in no way representative of the whole though, I am fully aware of that. I just find the whole universe silly. It’s all “For the Emperor!”/”Arrggghh, Chaos!” teen fantasy stuff though, and its the long-term appeal I don’t get. Normally I’d say “each to their own” and leave it at that, but with 40K, the fanboy-ism is all-pervasive and interferes with the ability to find players for other games… Read more »
40k boils down to…. “Do you like the miniatures?” and if the answer is no… you don’t play.
I like aspects of the universe… Necromunda, Kill Team and Rogue Trader, but the big armies don’t impress me.
Painting armies of the same miniatures bores me, so I like unique figures which you find in the games I mentioned.
Don’t get me wrong I love some of the miniatures and have been to Warhammer world twice but the setting and the lore just leaves me cold. It always seemed one dimensional in the beginning (yes I am that old).
Then it just seemed to turn into a gigantic cash grab.
I missed out on 40K when it launched (yes I am that old too) as I’d taken a break from Warhammer Battles (last purchase until 2018 was Ravening Hordes for 2nd edition)… and GW has always been about the cash grab, whether fantasy or 40k. Necromunda is such a dark and dirty world of street gangs… it reminds me of Blade Runner in a way… Rogue Trader expansion to Kill Team is much more interesting…. it’s an RPG party fighting monsters… and that remind me a bit of Aliens… although that was technically marines… they were a mishmash of personalities,… Read more »
Happy Saturday! For the first time in weeks, I’ve managed to watch the Weekender, sat in bed, with tea and biscuits..happy sigh..
Win. Hope my luck will change to better
Great show and really nice to hear @oriskany s piece on the Desert War. Mass Battle Games are a lot easier to do with Historical games due to the sheer range of scales available from 54mm all the way down to 2mm. I’m currently working on a 28mm Napoleonic French Force for a Mass Battle Game (Napoleon at War) and it’s a big struggle. Keeping up momentum is a huge part of it. I think it’s more the hobby aspect that keeps people from Mass Battle Games rather than the cost aspect. Buying 300 Frenchmen is very easy, painting them… Read more »
Thanks very much, @elessar2590 . Completely agree on your angle toward mass battle games in the historical arena. 😀 While I would never say that mass battle games are dead, I would admit I’ve never done one in 28mm. I just come from a very different background (one that frankly doesn’t use miniatures at all) – but I’ve never understood / connected with the whole GW / 40K / 28mm “godscale” thing. I’ll say this much, guys who build big historical mass armies in 28mm have my MONSTER respect. I spent the summer of 2017 trying to build 400-strong force… Read more »
I should also add this
I don’t consider 40K to be a Mass Battle Game.
Sure you have about 50-100 minis a side but take a look at things like Napoleon at War or Black Powder and it’s 100 minis per brigade (Normally 2-3 Brigades a side) and that’s in 28mm. Never mind 6mm Games like Grande Armee with 80-100 minis per base!
That to me is mass battle.
@elessar2590 – The most pieces I’ve ever had on a map in my memory is PanzerBlitz Prokhorovka “true scale” full scope. Something like 1500-2000 counters. 😮 ! It wasn’t easy.
Extra chance posting!
Happy Weekend all!
@warzan dont worry mate, there are those of us like you out there that love full on 40K. I do like Kill Team cat, but 40k is the Dogs! Lets be honest! Flyers, tanks, heavy weapons, terminators! I’m right with you!
More more more! 😀
ha ha agreed mate!
When you get those Knights sorted I’ll bring a force for you to test them against 🙂
Happy Weekend! Great topic. Long live superior skirmish games!
Recent subscriber but loving you guys. Heres to hopeing for a win
welcome aboard!
Best GW game? Chainsaw Warrior!
lol your a week late mate he he
but amazing choice 🙂
A week and about 30 years 🙂