Reevaluating Games

[Bison]

There have been a good number of games that just never lived up to my expectations for a whole host of reasons. Poorly written rules, bugs, excessive DLC, sleep-inducing gameplay, etc... However, every now and then, I will go back and give a game a second or third chance just to make sure my dislike was not due to my just not being receptive to the game at the time I originally played it.

Anyway, I recently pulled out a starter box of Warhammer 40K miniatures that had been purchased as a gift over a year ago. It just sat in the pile. My disinterest in the game was do to several factors. Buckets of dice. "+" this and "+" that dialogue I heard on battle reports. The cost of the miniatures. Little familarity with the lore. The point being I just had no real interest in game.

However, the boys saw the box art and thought it looked "epic," so I opened the box and built the miniatures. I figured this would not hold their interest. I was wrong so very, very wrong. The starter box has a nice series of small scenarios to teach the game basics. So after playing though these, they understood the basic rules. Oh we still make stuff up as we go along and stray at times far from the rules. It's all good. They enjoy rolling lots of dice multiple times to determine if they do damage or not. The models "engage the imgination." Seriously, that was the comment. His imagination was engaged. Anyway, it's a lot of fun.

And I have to admit that I abosulutely love working with the games workshop plastic.They really do produce the best plastic sculpts. Clean, clear details and the chuncky size is actually a joy to paint. I am not good at the stylized paint scheme but it's getting better. Now the price is still not good. I am not sure how far down the rabbit hole I will go but we have a couple of small patrol sized armies and I did get a vehicle for each. I mean every space marine force needs a tank and necrons need a large undead robot creature to make the battles more epic.

So yes. My opinion of Warhammer 40K has changed. I like it. It is a fun game that can scale to as much or little complexity of rules as we want to play at the table. And yes, I admit it. I actually like looking at a squad of blue space marines storming the enemy on the table.

Anyone else have a similar experience? 

[BanzaiCat]

Going to necro - raise this thread...

My personal trainer at the gym is big time into WH40K and I'm considering getting a starter set, but have zero idea what to do or who to pick. Like you I have little insight into the lore but have played some of the computer games and know a tiny bit of the lore; not a lot, but some. I know there's tie-ins between WH and Blood Bowl and all that but never explored it too fully.

Which starter box was this, Bison?

[Arctic Blast]

I'm hardly an expert on this, but I've often heard that playing the 'bad guys' is a good way to actually get to play, since everyone chooses Space Marines.

[bob48]

I used to play a fairly substantial Ork army, but I did have pretty big Space Marine army as well :-)

[Undercovergeek]

I'm hardly an expert on this, but I've often heard that playing the 'bad guys' is a good way to actually get to play, since everyone chooses Space Marines.

Some will argue they are the bad guys

[bbmike]

[BanzaiCat]

  nice Time Bandits reference there

I know, it's a rabbit hole, but if I end up going and actually playing it, it might be worth it.

Then again I really don't want a WH40K rabbit hole to go down. He said they wanted to play Blood Bowl and I'd be more keen to do that on the tabletop, honestly.

[bob48]

A number of years ago, me and 3 gaming pals played a 3 conference BB league with 3 teams each that, playing on average once a week, lasted us for almost a year. It got very....intense on occasions and some times there was 2 games going on at the same time if our league schedule allowed it.

We used all the tournament rules from the BB expansion, and we all agreed that is was some of the gest gaming fun that we had ever had.

[Undercovergeek]

Skaven skaven skaven 

My one and only game of BB was a chaotic awesome game as skaven which made me fall in love with the rat baddies for every other warhammer game - it was a dark day that GW didn’t give the skaven power armour and let them be the space marines they should have been

On the flip side it also revealed to me my need for order and strategy on the battlefield - the pure randomness of orks or skaven infighting or going off and doing their own thing mid battle made my blood boil - in all WH games I turn to the elves or eldar for common sense

[bob48]

..................'Confusion, will be my epitaph'...................(King Crimson, and ELP) 

[Undercovergeek]

There have been a good number of games that just never lived up to my expectations for a whole host of reasons. Poorly written rules, bugs, excessive DLC, sleep-inducing gameplay, etc... However, every now and then, I will go back and give a game a second or third chance just to make sure my dislike was not due to my just not being receptive to the game at the time I originally played it.

With nothing on the very near PC games horizon ive decided to go back to my expensive back catalogue of 'classics' that i spent a fortune on and then stopped playing after 20 hours

First on the list is XCOM 2, ive added the Long War 2 mod and in the last maybe 5 weeks have gone from 24 hours to 213 with it now sitting in third place as my most played game. I have loved every minute, maybe not so much now im coming to the end game and the final missions are ridiculously hard, but the basic missions are brilliant - i should be done in about 10 hours but due to the way ive crushed the opposition i can stretch that out and improve my teams some more before finishing the campaign

After that, its back to EU4 that never really got a fair shake

[Arctic Blast]

There have been a good number of games that just never lived up to my expectations for a whole host of reasons. Poorly written rules, bugs, excessive DLC, sleep-inducing gameplay, etc... However, every now and then, I will go back and give a game a second or third chance just to make sure my dislike was not due to my just not being receptive to the game at the time I originally played it.

With nothing on the very near PC games horizon ive decided to go back to my expensive back catalogue of 'classics' that i spent a fortune on and then stopped playing after 20 hours

First on the list is XCOM 2, ive added the Long War 2 mod and in the last maybe 5 weeks have gone from 24 hours to 213 with it now sitting in third place as my most played game. I have loved every minute, maybe not so much now im coming to the end game and the final missions are ridiculously hard, but the basic missions are brilliant - i should be done in about 10 hours but due to the way ive crushed the opposition i can stretch that out and improve my teams some more before finishing the campaign

After that, its back to EU4 that never really got a fair shake

I really need to get back to XCOM 2 at some point. For some reason, I really bounced off of it the first time and never really gave it a fair shake.

[Metaldog]

There have been a good number of games that just never lived up to my expectations for a whole host of reasons. Poorly written rules, bugs, excessive DLC, sleep-inducing gameplay, etc... However, every now and then, I will go back and give a game a second or third chance just to make sure my dislike was not due to my just not being receptive to the game at the time I originally played it.

With nothing on the very near PC games horizon ive decided to go back to my expensive back catalogue of 'classics' that i spent a fortune on and then stopped playing after 20 hours

First on the list is XCOM 2, ive added the Long War 2 mod and in the last maybe 5 weeks have gone from 24 hours to 213 with it now sitting in third place as my most played game. I have loved every minute, maybe not so much now im coming to the end game and the final missions are ridiculously hard, but the basic missions are brilliant - i should be done in about 10 hours but due to the way ive crushed the opposition i can stretch that out and improve my teams some more before finishing the campaign

After that, its back to EU4 that never really got a fair shake

I have about 80 hours into EUIV.  A couple hundred in EUIII.  It's been a hot minute since I played, and that was mostly MP with Kushan, but, if you like Paradox games, you'll like EUIV.  I don't know if it's still this way, but, it turns out that Spain is a pretty good starting country.  It gets you involved with a lot of the core gameplay themes pretty much right away.

[Undercovergeek]

I’m amazed this morning to find out I have 116 hours in EU4 but for the life in me could not tell you what happened or why - maybe a Portugal game with a race to the new world

Holland looks a great fit for me - play tall and create trade nodes and colonies - just have to escape from under those pesky burgundians