Choosing a tabletop miniature game

While traveling for work, I found myself at an unfamiliar game store (hat tip to Zombie Planet of Colonie, New York, near Albany) talking various tabletop miniature games with a new player. I thought it would be useful to have written down a quick description of the advantages and disadvantages of the various games. This is an attempt to create such a thing.

Games by Games Workshop

Warhammer 40k: Without question the most famous, and one of the longest-lived, games in the space. Takes place in a very distant future (that 40,000 is the year 40,000!), and it's a very depressing future.

Why play 40k? Models are very detailed, and predominantly made of plastic, which is the easiest to work with. The best-developed "fluff" (backstory and background), including lots of novels, role-playing games, and a few board and card games.

Why avoid 40k? Definitely the most expensive out there. Startup costs are at least $300-400, and an individual model kit can run over $100! Poor game balance between factions. Rules are complicated, often nonsensical, and prone to debate.

Warhammer 30k: Largely an expansion of 40k, using many of the same models but slightly different rules. Takes place 10,000 years earlier, when there are fewer factions, fewer units, and a far less depressing feel.

Why play 30k? Most of the advantages of 40k, but a cleaner rule set.

Why avoid 40k? Most of the disadvantages of 40k also, and it's all Space marines: few if any aliens.

Warhammer, Age of Sigmar: The sword and sorcery companion to 40k, made by the same company. Evolved from, and replaced, Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Why play AofS? like 40k, the models are beautiful and plastic. The rules are better and more balanced than 40k. Almost as much expanded fluff as 40k.

Why avoid AofS? Still expensive. Many players don't like Games Workshop, the company that makes it.

Games by Privateer Press

Warmachine / Hordes: An innovative world where respectable metalworking technology and gunpowder integrate with magic. Humans and other mortals live in the shadows of immensely powerful immortal dragons. Models are a mixture of resin and metal. A decent amount of extra fluff like novels and board games, but not as much as with the Games Workshop games.

Why play WarmaHordes? Very clean rule set. decent models. Privateer Press's relationship with the players is one of the best. Rulebooks are free downloads.

Why avoid WarmaHordes? decent, not great, models. Victory requires precision in movement and measuring.

Games by Fantasy Flight Games

Star Wars X-Wing: As you might expect, dogfights between X wings, TIE fighters, and many similar craft. Uses custom 8-sided dice with symbols rather than numbers. Models are prepainted, which is unusual in this space.

Why play X-Wing? Simple movement, using cardboard templates. "Blind" movement, where both sides choose maneuvers without seeing what the other is doing. Lots of customization with upgrades, pilots, and ship variants.

Why avoid X-Wing? The least detailed models. Sometimes have to buy a model for the pilots that come with it, rather than the model.

Star Wars Armada: Basically the same system, but with the larger ships: star destroyers, Calamari cruisers, and entire squadrons of X wings and TIE Fighters. Ships are less maneuverable, but have other resources to manage.

Star Fleet Battles: Basically, the same thing but with Star Trek craft. Several versions of the Enterprise, Romulan warbirds, Klingon birds of prey, and the occasional Cardassian and Ferengi. Actually, this one might be out of print, as I can't find a website for it.

Games by Spartan Games

Firestorm Armada: Another distant, war-torn future, but not nearly as grim and dark as Warhammer 40k. Miniatures of gigantic spaceships are almost entirely resin, and very detailed. Squadrons alternate activating units rather than armies.

Why play Firestorm Armada? Nicely detailed models, if not quite as impressive as Games Workshop. Alternating by units prevents long periods of inactivity. Among the cheapest to get into, with startup costs under $100. Rulebooks and stats are free downloads. Six major and twelve or so minor factions to choose from, and good balance between them.

Why avoid Firestorm Armada? Movement is rather fiddly. Large ships can have quite a few damage markers to keep track of. Less background story than other games.

Firestorm Planetfall: The ground combat companion to Firestorm Armada. Includes infantry, several sizes of ground vehicles, and flying units. Similar, but more streamlined, system and stats to Armada.

Why play Planetfall? All the advantages of Armada, but movement and record-keeping is much simpler.

Why avoid Planetfall? Not as cheap to start as Armada, although still better than most. Young game has some minor balance issues.

Dystopian Wars: Similar mechanics to Planetfall, but a different world. Victorian steampunk with land, air, and sea units, and some that can function in more than one environment. Some are impressively outlandish, like buildings on caterpillar treads, zeppelin aircraft carriers, and giant robots.

Why play Dystopian Wars? Most of the advantages of Planetfall and Armada, but in a Victorian steampunk setting.

Why avoid Dystopian Wars? As an older version of the mechanic (currently, anyway), it's not as streamlined as Planetfall.

Halo Fleet Battles: Space combat in the Halo universe. Quicker startup, but less detailed miniatures, than Firestorm Armada. Only two factions so far: Covenant and UNSC.

Halo Ground Command: Ground combat in the Halo universe. Very new, so I haven't seen the miniatures themselves, but from pictures they look exactly like they did in the video games.

Spartan has a few other games as well. Uncharted Seas is a sword and sorcery naval battles game, but it's old and minimally supported. There is also a newer, smaller scale version of Firestorm Armada called Firestorm Task Force, but the rulebook is not downloadable. Dystopian Legions is special forces or slightly larger scale combat in the Dystopian Wars world, but it also never caught on as far as I know.

Dust Tactics: Another future combat game, using mostly tanks, and some powersuited infantry and helicopters. Models are cast plastic in several colors, but can still be painted. Measurement is done by counting tiles rather than a tape measure.

Why play Dust? Rules are simple, as is measurement.

Why avoid Dust? Well... see above.

Games I don't know as much about

Infinity: Small numbers of models at a time in a science fiction setting. Uses 20-sided dice, and usually an automatic reaction fire when one model attacks another.

Malifaux: Supernatural horror combat with various mythical beasts. Apparently a solid game system.

Flames of War: Tank battles in World War II, with variants for early, middle, and late periods of the war.

Bolt Action: All I know about this one is that it exists.

Another thing to consider when starting from scratch is the amount and type of dice required for each action. Warhammer 40k, at one end of the spectrum, has at least three rolls for most attacks. Calculate the number of dice to roll (which can be over 30 in some cases), then roll to hit, take the successful hits and roll them to wound, then take the successful wound dice and roll "saves", which prevent the wounds, and the remaining dice are the numbers of wounds the unit takes. Get all that??? To make it even worse (in my opinion), a fairly common rule allows rerolling of the unsuccessful dice in one or more of the sets, and other rules allow an extra roll to negate most wounds, and yet another can redirect the wound to a different model!

Warmachine and Hordes use a slightly simpler mechanic of rolling to hit then rolling to wound, but not rolling a third time and rarely rerolling. It also rarely rolls more than four dice at a time.

The Spartan Games system makes a single attack roll of up to 20ish dice, and sometimes a shield or cover save roll of 6 or fewer. This might seem like the most streamlined, and it is, but there is another wrinkle. Most of the time, whenever a six is rolled you get to roll another die, and you can keep rolling more dice as long as you keep rolling sixes!

Fantasy Flight’s X-Wing system uses eight-sided dice, but they have symbols rather than numbers on them, and some of the faces are blank. The attacking player rolls the attack (red) dice, looking for “hit” and “critical hit” symbols, then the defending player rolls the defense (green) dice, looking for “evade” or “shield” symbols, depending on the ship. The dice also have “focus” symbols, which in some conditions can be turned into successes.  

While this isn’t actually a miniatures game in the usual sense, and otherwise not mentioned here, Catalyst’s board game, Leviathans, uses an even stranger system! All the dice are the same shape (12-sided, I think, but it’s been a while), but they are not standard ones. Different colored dice have different collections of numbers. The “strongest “ die color might have the standard 1-12, while the “weakest” might have two copies each of 1, 2, and 3, with a maximum of 9. The attacking ship will add dice to the attack based on what weapons are being fired and at what range, while the defending ship will add dice based on what area of the ship is exposed to the attack (flank, rear, front, etc), to represent how easy the ship is to hit from that angle and how well armored that aspect is. Then you total up the results of the dice and compare it to some statistic that represents how tough the target is. It’s a fairly quick system to play once you get used to it, but miserably difficult to get any feel for the probabilities, which hampers decisions on what to target with what (which is kind of important)!

Another thing to consider is that most games are resolved by unit, where an entire unit of models attacks another unit, and casualties are removed from that unit either by owner choice or by which models are closest to the attacker. The notable exception to this is Warmahordes, where each model in a unit must decide which model in an opposing unit it is targeting, and the casualties are resolved separately. If the first model in a unit firing at a target model kills it, any other shots taken at that model are wasted.

Finally, games vary a bit on exactly how you “take turns.” The most common system is where you take turns by army. One player will resolve the actions of all his pieces, then the other will do the same, then there is usually some end-of-turn record-keeping. Warhammer 40k mostly uses this system, but there are several situations where the non-active player will resolve actions during the other player’s turn: panic-fire at a unit that is charging into melee, for example. Infinity takes the concept further, where the unit that is the target of weapons fire almost always gets some return fire of its own, albeit with fewer dice to throw. The Spartan games take a different approach and take turns by unit. Rather than resolving all the actions on one side, a player will choose one unit and activate it, then the other player gets a turn to do the same, alternating until both sides have activated all their units. X Wing’s approach is the most novel, where activation order is determined by pilot skill. The most skilled (and therefore most expensive) pilots will always fire before the less skilled ones.