Golem Arcana A New Gateway Game? Tabletop Minions Finds Out!
August 8, 2014 by brennon
Long running friend of Beasts of War Adam Loper of Tabletop Minions has got his hands on Golem Arcana and after a series of play-throughs has presented his opinion on Golem Arcana that was on Kickstarter not long ago. See what he thinks of the game and whether or not it really is a new gateway game for our hobby in the video above!
The game has taken a bit of a beating online but it's also had it's supporters - it made its funding goal after all - so let's see what opinion a wargaming veteran has on this interesting gap-bridging game. Give it a watch and head over to subscribe to Adam's channel for more ace musings.
What do you think of Golem Arcana?
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Was this th eone that plays on the table-top with the help of an app??
… yes it is!
from the looks of it and when I looked at it in the past I really prefer Ex Illis’ interaction. however both of these games are just stepping stones into what future tabletop gaming could be.
he is true in stating that it is a gateway game though, more so then Ex Illis was as well. Also it coming out now when tablets/smartphones.etc are more prevalent will help it.
I am still massively unconvinced. The big warning was “there is a lot of math and the tablet does it for you”. To me that means the game is a big excel chart and everything is just adding, removing and so forth of percentiles. Which means, to actually understand the game deeper is going to be hard. What I have yet to be shown is the “added value” of using a tablet for a tablet top game. Digital tech should enable gameplay that has previously not been possible on tabletop games – unless you have a gm (see Leaders the… Read more »
This is pretty much an exact copy/paste of the reply you left on YouTube (except here at Beasts of War, you can’t disable replies to your comment like you did on YouTube) and I’ll reply, much as I did on YouTube: this isn’t a replacement to Warhammer, Warmachine, and the like. It’s a gateway game (as I said in the video) that still gives the new-to-miniatures player the social experience of playing a tabletop wargame without the steep learning curve that most minis games drop in front of the new player. Models are already painted (but one can repaint them… Read more »
Only a copy paste for discussion purposes because people will chat here and on the youtube. I had a look at the replies to comments and you should be able to reply so, as I said, not sure what is going on with youtube?
I was able to reply to your recent reply (and did over on YouTube) but I still can’t reply to your initial comments. Must be a glitch, my apologies.
Thanks for the vid, never saw Golem Arcana before.
I can maybe see the appeal of this as a gateway game. I’m not really asking this to be a “hardcore” game though. I want a game/tablet combo that makes sense, that adds something to the tabletop experience you can’t get without a digital tool. So far, nothing about Golem Arcana feels like that to me. The tablet/app/stylus feels more gimmicky than useful, and the UX of the product feels actually more cumbersome than rolling dice and keeping track of things with cards, tokens or record sheets. It reminds me the initial version of War Room from PP. That app… Read more »
Dust Tactics, X-Wing, Super Dungeon Explore, Zombicide, hell even Kingdom Death to an extent, are all games that bridge board game and wargames.
mpopke, if you get a chance, try out a demo. As I said in the video, I was dubious when I first saw it at Gen Con last year. After playing several demos a month ago at my local store with several different players (many of whom had never played minis games before) I was pretty convinced. It just helps to mitigate a lot of the extra bookkeeping that can scare away beginning players, and allows seasoned players to focus more on the strategy and combos, rather than the work. Thanks for watching!
Brilliant game. Try it before bashing it online, the app is an improvement, it is not as complex so you can still calculate everything roughly, it just speeds up all decision making when you need to try few targets by giving you all odds right away. There would be a mess on the board because of tokens if you haven’t got the app try to keep track of all cooldowns, it’s just busy work the app is relieving you from. You would have to check your opponents cards all the time, here you just tap on an enemy golem to… Read more »