Tea and Biscuits with Lauby and Frontline Gamer: Starting the Hobby, part 3

Here we are with part three of the conversation Frontline Gamer and I are having while we sub in for the delightfully bearded Von.  Last week we ended things up on a discussion of the the perfect gateway product - the trashy novel!  But you can read all of that here.

FG: I think we’ve pretty much covered the whole gateway product haven’t we? I think we agree that it’s certainly not just the product itself, but more that the industry needs to do more in general to engage with potential new customers. Is that about where we are at? The idea that perhaps simply preaching to the converted isn’t going to rope that many new people in. It seems to this observer that many games companies are willing to leave it to Serendipity when it comes to recruitment. That’s no way to run a business in my mind, but they’ve relied for so long on the goodwill of us gamers to do the hard work for them, well I say we need help because the player base for a lot of these games remains fragile and underdeveloped in many regions around the globe. I mean you’ve said to me that you’re basically living in a gaming wilderness, what’s that like?

Pictured: a typical gaming wilderness

Lauby: In a word, shitty. Connecting to a game is pretty hard when you walk into a game store and the owner can’t even tell you what day the regulars game on. And I’m talking about the established games here - Warhammer and HoMachine (which is all anyone carries that I’ve seen). What makes all this crazy is the fact that I live in one of the most populated stretches of land in America!

I fully admit that I may just be out of the loop in regards to southern Connecticut gaming (someone please correct me if I am!), but the fact that the stores only carry GW and Privateer Press is very clear indication of what people are actually playing. And it makes perfect sense that it would be those two companies as the constants. You can invest in those games and be pretty confident that you can find someone to game with. And, just as importantly, you can be pretty confident that those companies won’t disappear altogether.

No matter what game you’ve got your little heart set on, you gotta have someone to play with in the first place. You know, a player base. Unfortunately, these things can be incredibly fragile- even for the established systems. Now, obviously there are some key differences between a group of you and your buds versus the dudes at the gaming store, but the principle remains - all it takes is a few IRL changes to a get into some solid dwindling. Never a good thing. Especially for a gaming group focused on a more niche product. Now, as a veteran you kinda know the drill so you can bounce back. But for someone who just found out that you can buy a whole mess of little metal soldiers, it’s an entirely different story.

Pictured: a mess of little metal soldiers

FG: That sounds like fun! I often forget that living in the Midlands here in the UK is like living in wargames Mecca. I could happily find a game of Warhammer Fantasy, 40k, HoMachine or Flames of War if I wanted too. there’s even some pretty stable communities for MoFaux and the various Spartan Games products. It’s also fair to say that Infinity has started to gain in popularity around here. I mean within a 20 mile radius of my home there are something like 10 Games Workshops and at least 3 independent stores too. I’m not too sure how many gaming clubs there are but just off of the top of my head I could name about seven and all of them play things outside of Games Workshops bubble. I guess I’ve been spoiled a little bit by where I live and the gamers I know. But this plethora of games that are played locally doesn’t actually make the choice for a newcomer any easier I guess. Sure there’s plenty of places to play 40k, but the fact that you could say the same about flames of War and others does mean it opens up different issues round here.

We have a problem with games migration in some parts of the West Midlands. People play so many games that they’ll often switch to playing something different at a drop of a hat. So they might have played MoFaux intensely for 3 months and then suddenly just decide to start playing Dystopian Wars. that’s a different kind of fragility I guess, it’s more about uncertainty of player base than there being no player base at all. But that’s still a problem for a newcomer to the hobby. The newer breed of skirmish games have possibly opened up a whole new can of worms for people as much as they’ve liberated people.

Pictured: a libertine

Lauby: I completely agree.  All that choice is about the best thing for us old farts, but sometimes having that much choice is kinda scary too.  I was just taking a look at your Salute to-do list, for instance.  In a perfect world where you could find a gaming group for any game on that long list, how the holy hell would you even begin to choose!?  There's so much out there right now!  And as we both know, simply picking a game based on what look cool isn't always the best strategy.

Especially since the rules themselves are a big part of this.  One gets the sense from GW - both its actions as a company and the various statements by the employees - that it views the models as the most important part of what it does.  That's true to an extent, but how's 8th edition fantasy going so far, guys?  Rules are important is what I'm saying.  You can have the most amazing horse-drawn laser cannon in the world, but people are gonna regret buying it if doesn't perform. You've got to have an actual game behind all that stage dressing.

Which brings us right back to the rules issue I brought up last week with HoMachine.  To be fair to PP, they aren't the only company out there with a complicated ruleset.  The two up and comers - Malifaux and Infinity  - aren't exactly the easiest things to learn - especially with someone new to the hobby.  Which I actually have a great deal of experience with.  Special Lady Friend and I chose Malifaux as a game we could play together and while it's a great deal of fun, it was not the ideal choice for a 'my first game' scenario.

Now, you've had a great deal more experience with Infinity than I have, FG.  My sense is that the reactive turn stuff and the slightly off translation of the rules could confuse things - just to name a few concerns.  How does it rate as a first game?

And Since Frontline Gamer is off to Salute, we'll pick it up next week.  See you then.

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Tea and Biscuits with Lauby and Frontline Gamer: Starting the Hobby, part 2

Frontline Gamer and I are still subbing in for Von while he's on walkabout.  Last Saturday we kicked off a conversation about starting the hobby in this day and age.  Our intention was to wrap things up in one post and move onto other important questions like "do red ones really go faster?" or "what's the deal with airline food?".    Once we were past the first paragraph, it was quickly apparent this was gonna be a multi-parter.  So begins part 2 right were we left off last week.

Lauby: Ah good, we’re moving on to a game company that’s worthy of my scorn! Actually, I can’t afford to be quite that flippant. Starting over: I think there are a lot of flaws with Privateer Press on the whole. Obviously, none of them seem to be crippling the game but they’re there. Now, as much fun as it would be rake HoMachine over the coals, it could quickly take over the conversation.

Get it! hahaha.

Suffice it to say that there is certainly a lot of traction to your argument and I think Privateer Press is absolutely preaching to the converted. And always has been. During the old days of Mk I, the game’s biggest selling point was that it wasn’t 40k. Hell, all that page 5 nonsense was and still is a clear dig at GW. Even once you get past that, there’s still more. PP consistently has a sustained arms race thing going on and a rule set that is much more complex than makes sense for the size of the games they push for. Add in what many people call a steep learning curve and the single most unforgiving win condition I’ve ever seen and you really do have to stop and say: how could HoMachine be for anyone BUT die-hards. Which means that a great deal of the perceived cheapness of HoMachine doesn’t provide such a clear cut advantage.

FG: Yeah that’s sort of my take on Privateer Press’ games to an extent, certainly on cost you end up wanting a lot of ‘kit’ in your toolbox for whichever faction you play. Plus the scale seems to be getting bigger by the minute. I’ve often argued that HoMachine is pure game as opposed to wargame, and I’m not going to go over that right now. What I will say though is that the game is very complex on the board, and extremely unforgiving to newcomers. By complex on the board I mean the level of synergy between troops, combo’s etc. none of it is difficult to grasp in terms of individual rules really, BUT in terms of tactics on the board I do think it’s aimed at experienced gamers. I happen to like the game as it goes, but I can see its faults and certainly wouldn’t shy away from mentioning them.

see below

In the first article Fiendil mentioned Grind, Bodgers and the Warmachine starter box in the comments. Bodgers is a card game, and as fun as the first editions was (not played the second edition) I’m not so sure it’s a gateway product. Maybe a Trojan horse product in terms of being less scary than miniatures but containing lots of advertising material for them. The Warmachine starter box doesn’t convince me as a gateway product. It’s still the full game as it were, but without the full options and range, it’s a snare product not a gateway product, in the same way Assault on Black Reach and The Island of Blood are.

However, I have taken a step back and looked again at Grind. It could be a gateway product. Simple to learn and a far less daunting amount of miniatures to construct and paint. But, I do feel these an even better Gateway product produced by Privateer Press, Monsterapocalypse. Pre-painted mini’s, easy to learn rules and in comes with a pre-made battlefield and scenery, great product. However, it’s been sold via normal retail channels, and that’s the hobby’s problem we’re facing now isn’t it? What about selling these sorts of self-contained at comic book stores, or supermarkets?

Lauby: I’m not so sure that things are so simple. Existing in the first place and being profitable aren’t even necessarily relevant to this idea of a gateway we’re bouncing around. Assuming that we’re even talking about the same thing... lots of room for local differences to be a factor in our conceptualizations.

Anyways, I took some time to dig out what was left of my Heroquest game and you know what? I couldn’t find a GW logo anywhere on it except the back page of the rulebook. Where’s the path to GW proper there? Moving beyond a specific company and out into the ‘hobby at large’, the connection between a self contained boardgame and the world of the actual wargaming hobby is tenuous at best. It’s a completely different mindset is what I’m saying. We can also certainly lump the related video games in here as well.

And there’s always the problem of making the leap from the gateway to the actual, hard to find specialty shop stuff. At least in the US, the weird store with the strange name is the only, physical, place to get some of this stuff - even the kind of gateway thing that I think you’re on about. You can’t just go into Toys R Us and say “one Super Dungeon Explore, my good man - and make it snappy”.

Not available at fine toy stores everywhere.

FG: Ah yes defining what a gateway product is. I guess for me it’s something that exposes someone to the wider hobby in some way. For me it doesn’t necessarily have to be a game or require the painting of miniatures. The THQ computer games for example could be gateway products that introduce people to the 40k universe. If that’s handled correctly by GW I guess that works fine.



The same is true of any board game too I suppose. I think of the hobby as having 3 aspects to it that makes it fun I guess, the games themselves, the collecting and painting of miniatures and the fluff. The Holy trinity if you will. So realistically any product that gets out there and brings new people into contact with one of these three aspects is a major boon. But they’ve got to be out there and be discovered.

You’re absolutely right when you say it’s no good having a great product if that product is still delivered to the same old gamers via the same old channels. So I guess distribution of these product is also of paramount importance. So gateway products, whatever they are, need to be seen in different outlets. They need to be seen in toy stores, supermarkets and anywhere else we wouldn’t normally see them.

On that note I think I’ve just had a slight epiphany... I think GW do have an exceedingly good number of gateway products that maybe I originally overlooked. I often see Black Library books on sale at train stations, bookstores and other more mainstream outlets. I also know of people who have been roped into the hobby via them too. Perhaps GW had a master plan all along?

Lauby: I think you're on to something with the book idea.  While were on the subjects of tie in novels and table top games, I have to say that this is exactly how I got into the hobby in the first place.  It was actually a Battletech novel that sucked me into this whole thing in the first place.  This book, in fact:

I had just finished it, and was super pumped for giant ass robots.  There, in the back pages, was an add for the actual game.  Before too long, I had my first copy of Battletech in my hot little hands.  BUT - I was able to get that first game in the same bookstore that I got the novel.  But beyond that past convenience, I wholeheartedly agree that a Black Library novel is a fantastic gateway.  It's cheap, it's interesting, it's available and it has the adds in it!  Heck, Prospero Burns was even a New York Times best seller back in 2011.  How crazy and how awesome is that for what we're talking about?

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Tea and Biscuits with Lauby and Frontline Gamer: Starting the Hobby, part 1

With Von is taking a short HoP sabbatical, there was an obvious hole in the posting schedule that needed to be filled.  Unfortunately, we can't just keep making SinSynn write about Flames of War indefinitely.  And believe me, we tried.  Luckily, Von has many IRL friends who were willing to help out in his stead.  Frontline Gamer, in particular, jumped at the chance and even had some rather complete thoughts on what we could write about.  

Still not entirely convinced that Frontline Gamer isn't a hyper intelligent cat.

What follows is the first part of a conversation we're having about the nature of our hobby.  The idea being that will we discuss a topic in a semi guided fashion until we reach some kind of conclusion... or Von returns.  Whichever happens first.


Lauby: Waaaaaay back in the dimly remembered days of last october, Frontline Gamer conducted an interview with me as part of the wildly successful HoP Idol contest. A lot of great topics came up and new pals were made. Sadly, far, far too much of what either one of us had to say about anything ended up not written down or on the cutting room floor due to time and space constraints. After having gone back and read through the post to mine it for ideas, I found this question:

Thinking about why you started and when you started, I had a bit of a worrying piece of introspection two weeks ago or so when talking to a friend about starting the hobby right now. If you were looking at the hobby today would you get into it? Because I’m not so sure I would, mainly to do with the upfront cost and time investment required now. Should we be worried about this?

Truly an interesting subject, but we didn’t even get close to exhausting this as a topic of discussion. Let's call that the short answer version. So this is where we start the series at:  the pursuit of the long answer.

FG: Indeed, when I was interviewing you for the HoP Idol contest I was all too aware of the time constraints we were both under to get the article done. I really don’t think we fully explored this question at all. I guess where I was coming from with this question was seeing my own young nephews try and start out in the hobby. In some respects it’s far more accessible now than it has ever been. With the Internet and certainly here in the UK Games Workshops large high street presence it’s easier to come into contact with the hobby. However, where as I can remember spending my pocket money on a few Dark Futures cars one month and being able to play a game, I watched my nephews tire of having to wait month after month to get an army together. So I’m personally confused about the issues this question churns out, what would you say it’s like across the pond where you live?

Lauby: I’d say it’s fairly similar. I have distinct memories of trying to cobble together a space marine army for 3rd edition and a Warriors of Chaos army for Fantasy that very much parallel your nephew’s experience. Not much has changed... at least as far as GW’s version of our hobby is concerned. They have always been a bit of a grind to get into. Here I am as a full grown man (in body if not spirit) and I still have to do a fair bit of waiting and scraping. There just isn’t a point of entry into their two biggest games that doesn’t bring the term “huge capital outlay” to mind.

FG: I suppose there’s an element of truth to what you say. However, I distinctly remember 4th Edition Fantasy armies being smaller than they are nowadays. I also remember that the justification and implementation of plastic miniatures was very different to what we have now. Back then we had once piece plastic moulded spearmen and archers, the idea was that they were deliberately cheap wound counters. The idea being to reduce the cost of armies by not having to by lots of expensive metal rank and file miniatures. Somewhere along the way that principle has been forgotten back at Lenton Lane. While I have no doubts that the current plastic kits produced by Games Workshop are a significant step up from their original offerings in terms of quality, it just seems that they’ve gone back to the same problems they had with expense that surrounded building large units of metal rank and file mini’s. Cost. I think it’s fair to say that Ronnie Renton and Mantic are probably closer to the original ethos behind Games Workshops own switch to plastics now.

Lauby: Looks like we have a clear case of that “the more things change the more they stay the same” malarkey as far as G-Dubs goes. Shifting gears to Kings of War and whatever Kings of War in Space is really called, I feel you on the in terms of cost and model conceptualization, but here’s a question for you:

Who the hell plays Kings of War?

Let’s expand that so I’m not picking on anyone specific and say - who the hell plays any game? It’s an important question to ask. Even of the GW powerhouses.

Does anyone even play the game you’re interested in? How often does that happen? Do you even want any contact with a certain player base if one exists? These are all part of that simple question.

It’s not enough for us to simply look at a price point and go from there. We have to look at being able to get into the hobby from a lot of angles.

FG: No I totally agree, I’ve often said myself that the two to tango thing is what cripples many smaller games. I’m known as Games Pimp in these parts because I swear I could pimp any game to anyone successfully! lol. But the truth is that sometimes it’s hard to build a community up for certain games.

That’s where Games Workshop does have a massive advantage though, no matter where I go pretty much in the UK I know I’ll be able to play 40k. That’s very appealing for many. You could say they’re ubiquitous I guess. But that brings with it a double edged sword because in many case we come right back round to the cost thing again don’t we?

Their games are expensive to start up, there’s no real easy entry point and it can take months and months to have saved up enough stuff to play the game ‘properly’. Their three main games aren’t massively scalable and I feel they’re missing an entry point for new gamers in their range.

They used to have their specialist games like Necromunda, Mordheim etc. Games that were far more reasonable on the purse strings, and were still well supported and full on games in their own right. They presented an easier ‘in’ to the hobby didn’t they?

Lauby: Yeah, there are a lot of old fans of Mordheim, Necromunda and Bloodbowl out there who would really like to see those games come back. The common sense argument is that the old skirmish games could act as an effective and cheap entry point into the wider world of the GW universe. But as I’m thinking about it now, even if GW jumped straight back into those games with all the zest and verve they could muster - would they be good entry points? I’m not convinced anymore. I think the the two main systems have grown so far in scale that even in the there just aren’t enough dudes in your warbands to make a real dent in the start up cost. Nevermind the fact that the vast majority of your gangers, Bloodbowl team etc just aren’t usable in those bigger games. In effect, the skirmish game becomes an additional cost.

That being said, I think the self contained stand alone games like Space Hulk, and some of the others you mentioned are a much better option for a gateway drug. I’m also going to include Heroquest and Space Crusade in that pile as well (actually, ESPECIALLY those two). There’s still that issue of ‘an additional cost’, but it’s a one shot deal with a reasonable scale and a distinct lack of collecting. Space Hulk in particular proved that you can make some amazing game pieces AND have them be useful to one of the larger systems.

FG: I think that’s the point though isn’t it? I don’t think they necessarily have to be precursor products do they? They just have to be an introduction to the hobby. You know - see if you like it and want to progress onto the bigger games. I just think they’re missing a trick, because I was snared partly by my father, but mainly by Talisman, Blood Bowl and dark Futures. Warhammer would never have followed if it hadn’t been for those 3 games. For my friends I used Hero Quest and Space Hulk to draw them in. Yeah, that’s right even as a child I was a games pimp! Without those games and then Blood Bowl I’d never have convinced my friends Warhammer Fantasy was worth getting involved with. It was the smaller games that got them hooked. I just think Games Workshops product line right now possibly turns away potential hobbyists by not presenting them with an appropriate option, and no Assault on Black Reach isn’t an appropriate option! Thing is though, are any other games companies out there really doing any better? Are Privateer Press producting ‘gateway’ products? Or are they preaching to the already converted, you know diehard gamers like us who are already in?

All right folks, that wall of text is high enough for the day.  We'll pick this back up next week right were we left off.  

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