The Economics of Wargaming

On one level, game designers seem to have an ideal job; they get to spend every work day effectively doing what for the rest of us is a hobby. Of course, the operative word there is "seem." To be and remain successful in what has become a highly competitive business game companies need to have a steady revenue stream. This revenue stream pays the workers and designers, and if the latest product or version of an established game flops companies can quickly find themselves in very dire straights.

Buy a new car or buy a new army???

The key challenge that any company must overcome is that hobbies are expensive. There, I said it. It's the "uncomfortable truth." It's the elephant in the room. Hobbies require both disposable income and the time to actually pursue them, and therefore as long as there have been miniatures and games, people have been looking for more economical ways to procure and enjoy them. In wargaming various money-saving techniques include patronizing deep discount retailers, using alternate miniature sources, casting one's own miniatures, and even turning to new technologies like 3D printing. 

So how expensive are wargaming and miniatures hobbies in general? The answer is "it depends greatly." On a one for one basis, miniatures in the smaller scales (15mm, 12mm, 10mm and 6mm) are going to be progressively cheaper than larger ones (28mm, 54mm, etc). The number of models and miniatures required to play a typical game is also going to factor heavily into its overall cost with skirmish-style games generally requiring fewer miniatures than platoon or company level games. The media used to actually produce the miniatures is another variable. Miniature wargaming started out with "lead figures" - which has evolved into white metal (a pewter which may or may not be lead free), resin, and even injection molded plastic. Then there is the cost of the rule books themselves, though the miniature cost often outweighs the rules cost, sometimes by a fairly hefty multiplier.

So let's look at a few real world examples. For all of these I will use quoted retail prices in U.S. dollars. In cases where currency conversions must be made, they will be accurate as of the writing of this article (October 2016).

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Warhammer Quest - Silver Tower

I recently picked up Game's Workshops newest board game - Warhammer Quest Silver Tower. This is a remake of their earlier classic, Warhammer Quest, although the mechanics are pretty different. I won't talk too much about how the game works, as they have a pretty good gameplay overview on their website.

The game comes with around 50 miniatures, with several of them being duplicate sculpts. These are GW style wargaming figures, not the cheapo plastic board game figures most dungeon crawlers come with. The figures require assembly, with clippers, glue, and all, and if you're adventurous, paint.

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Assassinorum: Execution Force Review - Part 1

As astute readers know, I'm an unabashed fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. So when I saw that GW would be releasing a board game based on the legendary assassin temples, it definitely got my attention. Last week, I caved to the hype and ordered the game.

In Part 1 of this review, we'll be discussing the box's contents, from the models to the instruction manual! I promise lots of pretty pictures!



First things first: the production value. I know this game is expensive, but everything in the box is very high-quality. Say what you want about GW, but they know how to make fantastic models, and you get a lot of them in the box. As a matter of fact, you get a lot of everything:

That's a butt-load of material. Let's try and break it down a little.

The Chaos sprues: the game comes with 15 cultists, 3 Chaos Space Marines, and 1 Chaos Terminator Lord. The Cultists and the Terminator Lord sprues are the same ones that GW sells for the standard Warhammer 40,000 game. This segues into an important point about Execution Force--you're not getting "figures" in this box, you're getting high quality models. You will have to assemble and, possibly, paint a number of these models in order to get the most out of this game. For a lot of us that's a plus, but I can imagine for some people that would be a negative. Whoever you are, you should at least be aware of this.

Great detail on the models.

Lousy photo, but I only have an iPhone. These are the assassin sprues.

The assembled models are truly stunning. These have the dynamic poses that are becoming a staple of GW's independent characters. (You may notice what looks like a miscast on the sniper - that's just some putty I have holding the arm in place for the picture because I need to paint that model in pieces.)

For a more appealing picture of the detail on these models, check out the pro-painted Eversor Assassin below:

I've been waiting until now to mention what is probably the biggest negative about this game: the cost. GW is selling this on their website for $128 *ducks to avoid thrown objects* However! The total cost of buying the models separately from the game would exceed that amount, given GW's current pricing (this article is not meant to spark a debate on that, so don't even think about it!).

Onto the rest of the unboxing!

Full-color, glossy rulebook that includes about 10 pages of fluff and background at the end. Also, there is a list of campaign-style achievements for you to aim for -

A number of punch-outs and tokens that you'll need for the game

A very helpful and well-produced instruction manual.

The four game-board sections that the game is played on, and my size 13 foot for scale. These pieces are extremely sturdy and fairly water-proof, as I found out thanks to my dog!

"It's my apartment and I'll do what I want"

Finally, because I ordered from GW's website, they sent me these cool pins:

So, this is what you physically get for $128. There's a ton of stuff in this box, and it's all high-quality. You will need to figure out some sort of storage arrangements for the models, because these are not the type of game pieces that you just throw back into the box. 

Again, the models are the same that GW would sell to 40k players. There has been no lapse in quality because this game isn't part of their mainstream production. These cultists are going straight into my 40k Chaos army, along with the Terminator Lord (as for the regular Chaos Marines, I have too many already). 

In Part 2, we'll talk about the actual gameplay, but I'll give a spoiler for those of you who stuck it out until the end: the game is awesome!

Thanks for reading! For more gaming goodness you can follow me on Twitter at the truly outdated name @PIflamesofwar 

Want to join the conversation? Please sound off in the comments below, or let us know on our forum!

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Review: Mighty Empires Campaign System

Let's take a look a gem hidden in Games Workshop's past - the Mighty Empires campaign system.

The set comes with 48 hard plastic interlocking tiles, most of which (all except the mountain tiles) are double sided. I recently painted these up and I think they came out quite awesome.

There are a variety of plains, woods, farms, wetlands, and mountain tiles. The tiles lock together pretty solidly, creating a fairly study 3D map that can be customized to your tastes.

Also included is a booklet outlining campaign rules for the system. Although the booklet is a good size, it's only actually five pages long and repeats the rules in six different languages.

Throughout the campaign, you conquer tiles. The campaign is split up into campaign turns. You take the average scores of all the games you played in the campaign turn (example, one week), and get a set amount of "Empire Points" based on how well you did. You can spend the Empire Points to conquer other tiles. Empty tiles cost more than occupied tiles, obviously. In order to take an occupied tile from another player, you must have beaten them in a game that campaign turn.

The included rules also have options for upgrading tiles with both castles, cities, and mines. You build upgrades by spending varying amounts of Empire Points.

The castle upgrade simply makes it harder for that tile to be conquered (the opposing player must spend more Empire Points to do so)

The city upgrade is an upgraded version of a castle and requires a castle before you can upgrade it. Think hotels vs houses in Monopoly. It provides the castle anti-conquering benefit and also makes the tile count as double when counting who has the largest empire.

Mines can only be placed on river riles and allow the tile to generate gold. Gold can then be used to purchase additional army points in a game you play. For example, if you're playing 2500 pt Warhammer Fantasy games in your campaign, you could spend a set amount of gold for an additional 250 points.

As you can see, the upgrades fit on the tiles and also have spots for the claiming parties flags.

While I don't play enough Warhammer Fantasy these days to warrant using this system for it, I do intend to adept it for an upcoming By Fire and Sword campaign. I've yet to iron out the details - one of the key points of the system for WFB is allowing you to take additional "points" in your army, but BFAS is designed to allow you play different points anyway! Watch this space for details once I finalize the BFAS campaign rules, and if you have any suggestions, feel free to toss them our way!

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