I almost died today!!!

No but seriously the post women turned up with a package in her hand, nothing unusual in that. What was slightly more unusual was that it wasn't a package of nail varnish or shoes for the missus. So what could this strange rulebook shaped package be I thought. Surely not? It can't be! It is!!! Yep I've got the lesser spotted incredibly rare English Edition Hell Dorado rulebook from Cipher Studios. The shock to my heart nearly did for me. To say its been a long wait is an understatement of the highest order, I've been waiting for it since 2008 when the game was Asmodee's responsibility. While it felt good to finally have it in hand, there was a huge kick in the teeth waiting for me when I tried to open the damn thing.

Although it might not look like it here, the book is actually seriously quite badly damaged. You see there have been rumours flying around the interweb that there was a flood at a warehouse in Chicago where the Hell Dorado books and indeed the latest copy of Privateer Presses No Quarter magazine were being held. Some people poo pooed the idea, but I thought it sounded infinitely plausible. Turns out my Hell Dorado rulebook is just yet more proof of that very fact. You see the pages in the book were stuck together and while carefully trying to tweeze them apart a few tore and well, its a mess. This book should never have left that warehouse, the UK distributor should never have pushed it onto the shops and the shop in question probably shouldn't have sent it onto me!!!

Can any game system ever truly be balanced? Part 4

The mission objective

Ah yes the objective!!! We've all seen war films with maps and arrows and large 'X's' on them to denote what the various objectives and targets the protagonists have to achieve. You see in war its never just a simple case of obliterate your opponent and you win. Nope its normally go here, claim this, or storm that. We too as gamers like to see this sort of 'mission' in our wargames to provide a tactical element to proceedings and also add a bit of story and narrative to spice things up and an element of entertainment to our games. As I've said before we're a demanding bunch of consumers us wargamers.

I have played so many games and different game systems that to be brutally honest I've lost count and I've more than likely forgotten a fair few games systems along the way. Not all have had missions or objectives as part of their core, or indeed as part of the entire range of rules. While others have had the mission objectives as a core feature of their systems and right at the heart of what happens on the board. I'm not going to say there is a right or wrong approach to missions in wargames because like many of the different elements that go up to make wargames its a case of finding the right fit for each individual game.

Can any game system ever truly be balanced? Part 3

The battlefield

You see many of us rarely have to think about it, I'm sure a lot of you will turn up to your local gaming store or club to play your 1 or 2 wargames a week, and be limited to the scenery they have out for display purposes or to hand. In short you're highly likely to be playing on pretty much the same sort of battlefield every time if you do this. However scenery or terrain, and there is a difference as a really good little article by Quirkworthy (Jake Thornton) points out, is vitally important to the playing of any game, if it wasn't why have rules for it and why place it on the board in the first place?

This picture contains 15 Way Watchers, 5 Oniwabans and a goat!!!

Most people just chuck the old scenery down onto the table and have done with it. There might be some discussion about the rotation of a building or the precise placement of some woods, but mostly people don't care and just want to put their toy soldiers down and roll some dice. However scenery is a HUGE part of any game you'll ever play. I remember a discussion I had when I was about 13 with a store manager of a Games Workshop and a friend of mine about Man O War. We'd come to the conclusion you see that High Elves were far too powerful, well they would be, I was the one commanding them and I'm awesome.

 Commander Obvious was 'concerned' there was only one bridge

Thing is this manager couldn't understand it, he'd genuinely had no problems with High Elves and neither had a few regulars. We got down to list building and nope that wasn't the issue. Were we playing the rules right? Yes turned out we'd got them spot on. So are we both equally good gamers? Although my huge ego would say no I'm just simply awesome, the fact is in other game systems we were quite evenly matched. Then another staff member said 'how big is the board you're playing on and how much scenery do you use?' well I'd never really considered it until then... but the reality was we were using way too much scenery because my faster and more maneuverable ships were at a huge advantage amongst the myriad of islands we were using. In short the scenery and 'terrain of play' had loaded the games in my favour.

Can any game system ever truly be balanced? Part 2

Choice and the points systems

Ah yes choice, freedom, liberty. All good things yes? Well yes of course they are but for a games designer, choice becomes a necessary evil. You see choice of what force, faction or even side you take actually can sometimes be used as a tool to try and mitigate those natural imbalances that occur in rule systems... and they also add a further imbalance to be controlled. As I commented in the first part of this article into the theory of game balance we want our wargames to be an abstract representation of war with all its imbalances and brutal imperfections in a fair and controlled manor... and we'd like to pick sides. Not too demanding are we?

Lets be honest would anyone play the wargame where all sides are the same? It might be OK for chess or checkers or their ilk, but in a wargame we don't all want to be Dark Elves, Daemons or Vampire Counts do we? Oh right yeah, bad examples, what I'm trying to hint at is that people want an army that suits them. Some will want a defensive shooty army others a highly aggressive horde army and some might like small elite armies full of specialist troops designed to deal death in specific ways. So how do pretty much all wargames deal with our demanding and unreasonable ways? Points systems!

It is not perfect by any means but it is the best tool and system available to games designers for attempting to maintain balance and for that reason it is also extensively used. However again its far from perfect. Take Warmachine and Hordes as a prime example. In the first edition of both games units were pointed and costed in the 'hundreds', this allows for a greater degree of subtle variance than things pointed in the 'tens' which is what the second editon of both games uses. For instance in the old system Warjack A might have cost 132 points and Warjack B 145. In the new system Warjack A might now cost 13 points while Warjack B might cost 15 points. The disparity between the two units as a proportion has gone up but the relative effectiveness hasn't changed. Obviously the later disparity might be a fairer representation of each units true ability. However where do you stop? Should things be pointed in the millions or billions even? As ever its a judgement call and like all judgement calls its not going to be perfect.

Can any game system ever truly be balanced? Part 1

Maintaining balance can be difficult!!!

This is a philosophical debate that I have had many times over the years with many friends, passers by and random strangers you meet gaming. Sure it's not as high brow as maybe the 'meaning of life' or some of the more fundamental debates that have taxed and entertained some of the greatest minds humanity has produced... but it's just as perplexing. However before I start rambling nonsense I think it's best if I first define the debate so as not to confuse or leave myself open to wandering off all over the place.

By 'game system' I mean the core rule set that governs the mechanics of any given game and the various choices or factions you have within that rule set. So for something like Warmachine I'd say the game system is the core rulebook, the individual faction books and now Wrath. For now I'll leave out Hordes and or the factions contained within that rule set. By balance I mean that the core rules don't favour one certain type of tactic or gamer and treat all stratagems as equally valid and that the choices between armies are balanced and that certain missions etc. don't favour one side over another.

For now I will leave out the individual choices that can be taken within factions as that would just blow this topic wide open, and I fear it might be too big to tackle within my lifetime already. I want to be clear though that this isn't going to talk specifically about certain games and whether or not they are or aren't balanced, it's more an abstract piece so I'm not out to make any individual points about any given system although I might use examples from systems to illustrate a point, if you get my meaning.

Hmmm the force is strong with this one!

Yep one of the worst kept secrets in gaming was finally let slip out of the bag yesterday by Fantasy Flight Games. Yep they've got the Star Wars license and I bet we're about to see a veritable smörgåsbord of juicy Star Wars gaming goodness from the chaps and chapesses over at Fantasy Flight Games. You can read how totally 'pumped' and 'psyched' and many other American-English adjectives they are right here FFG Star Wars announcement. Pretty cool hey? I mean I'm what I like to call a 'Broad Spectrum Geek' (its a thing, or it soon will be if you all start using it!!!), and that means I geek out on everything from computer games, to toy soldiers and from comic books to Star Wars and anything in between.

So you see when two of my geeky worlds collide normally I'm instantly overwhelmed with geeky joy at the possibilities of two of my geeky loves coming together in an awesome combination of total awesomeness... and then a 'nerdgasm' ensues. After the nerdgasm though comes the doubt, you see HeroClix should totally tick my nerd / geek boxes. I should be 'all up in their junk' as our transatlantic cousins are want to say. Yet I think they're fucking dire lumps of turd covered in shitty paint jobs. Then there are those comic book hero films and lets be clear about this, for every Dark Knight there are 10 Dare Devil's, Electra's or Green Lanterns (fuck you Ryan Reynolds, fuck you!!!). I'd fucking punch Ryan Reynolds in his stupid fucking face, the prick even managed to screw his relationship with Scarlett Johansson up, what a total douche!

So the pitfalls are many and varied in such unions. Yet Fantasy Flight Games seem willing to brave such risky unions, perhaps because they love the excitement and danger of it all, or perhaps its because no matter what, they'll make oodles of cash anyway!!! However they do seem more capable than most at not screwing such unions up! Their Game of Thrones products are of the very highest quality and have not pissed fans off at all, ditto their Arkham Horror products and H.P. Lovecraft fans. I also think their Battlestar Galactica board game is a must for fans of the TV show and they've actually managed to make engaging and fun games out of the licenses for both JRR Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, unlike some company I could mention. Talking of which, they're also able to make lots of cash and great games out of Games Workshops very own IP, something the Games Workshop themselves struggle with at times. Their Warhammer Fantasy and 40k RPGs are getting ever more popular as are their board games like Chaos in the Old World, Horus Heresy and their Games Workshop based card games, like Blood Bowl Team Manager are also successful...

Confessions of a faction whore!!!

Those of you who read the Infinity forums (I'm SirAngry on those forums and most others) will know I have a rather terrible secret... I'm a down right dirty little faction whore!!! For those of you not in the know I'll explain further. I'm a magpie when it comes to... well almost everything. If its new or different I have to have it, its so bad at times I've seriously considered the possibility that I have a mental illness. Thing is its the same illness that appears to affect geeks and nerds of all ages. If it wasn't manga or comic books it was toy soldiers, if it wasn't toy soldiers its limited edition computer games... so on and so forth. I blame evolution and my innate urges to hoard useless crap!!!

However my terrible affliction does tend to manifest itself worst in my love of toy soldiers. As evidence though that I am not alone please take a look at this thread I started on the Infinity forum:

evidence for the defence

So are you a faction whore? Its pretty clear that yes I am a faction whore, I am indeed it would seem, far too much gamer for just the one faction!!! I can't help myself, I've always struggled to decide which factions to take in pretty much every wargame I've ever played and I think it'll be like this forever more with me.