Friday, January 22, 2010

Jumping In

One of my resolutions this year is to learn to play at least one new game, which will be either Warmachine, Hordes, or Flames of War. I've been checking around the internet a little bit over the last few days to get a sense of what I might be interested in concerning these games and how I should go about deciding which to pursue. After trips to two not-so FLGS, I purchased today the Open Fire! intro box-set for Flames of War as well as a Hordes Circle of Orboros Warpack box. I'm excited to begin playing around with them even though this is probably not such a great time considering how much I have to paint over the next two months, but oh well. It's all for fun. Here are my initial thoughts about the three contenders:

Warmachine: Cool miniatures but I'm intimidated by the bulk of the metal kits. I purchased both a Cryx box-set and one for Cygnar when the game first came out but never really went any further with the game even though I thought it had a lot of potential. It looked fun, I just didn't have time for it. New rules and the beginning of plastic releases makes me think this game has a bright future. I plan on buying the new rulebook but will probably wait to see how their plastic range develops before I go too far with this game for now. I'm confident I will eventually want to give the game a full hearted effort. Right now I would go for either Khador or Mercenaries.

Hordes: The monsters and beasties for this game are some of my favorite miniatures currently in production. They just look like they would be a lot of fun to paint, though I'm a little confused about how the game plays. Fortunately a new rulebook is being prepared and should be released in the near future. I'm really excited about this opportunity to get into a game when it's fresh out of the gate. Until the new rules come out I plan on painting whatever dudes catch my fancy and have decided to start with Orboros. After the starter box I'm probably going to do some more guys from that faction as well as some Skorne figures... I love those monsters with the huge tusks! I also think a number of the Minions range for this game look fantastic, especially the Gatorman Posse and the two special Gatorman dudes. No matter what, I want to paint them.

Flames of War: I was very enthusiastic about this game when it first launched. I remember as a kid when I was first getting into historical wargaming wishing that there was a good system for representing the 20th century. With Flames of War it seemed like my dreams had come true... I loved everything about it. I mean, it's historical wargaming with awesome 15mm tanks! I had the start of two armies for fighting out Rommel vs Monty in North Africa, as well as a pretty good stack of books. But I quickly realized that it was way more complicated than DBA and I therefore had little chance of being able to get anyone to play the game with me. I was frustrated and set it aside. The last time I moved, however, I thought I would never have time for this game and threw out everything. It seems like there is now strong support for this game, even in my area. And I love the new Vietnam era figures that are now being released, so I think this might be a good time for me to revisit FoW. I do not however want to repeat my previous attempt and dive in completely. For starters I really have no idea what time period or army I would want to collect, there are just so many interesting possibilities. Thus I feel that I should be content with the Open Fire! box to familiarize myself with the game before I go any further. I am right now however very tempted to get a bunch of Nam dudes and helicopters just for the sheer thrill of painting them. That's something I've wanted to do for a long, long time.

So that's where I am with regards to my first steps into trying out some new games to play. Along with adding variety to my wargaming diet I also appreciate that this increases the diversity of miniatures to paint. And who knows, maybe it will even inspire me to go back and get more done on some old, neglected projects like my DBA armies. I believe good things will come of this.

PS - Farewell, Conan. I look forward to seeing wherever it is you go next. NBC, you can suck it!

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