I recently set out to play more war machine, build up to a
tournament footing, and attend a couple local events. I listened to podcasts, read a ton of
material, and played a couple starter games to get my toes wet. My goals were modest and, I thought,
obtainable. Sadly, I’ve concluded that war
machine in its current form just isn’t for me.
That is hard to admit—I’ve been playing in one form or another for 15
years now—but I think I’m done.
There are a lot of reasons for this decision.
1.
Let’s start with me. In the halcyon days of MKI, the game wasn’t
exactly blind friendly but it was workable.
Games were small enough and casual enough that my friends could mark my
cards—even my tournament opponents were happy to assist. MKIII is a bigger more technical game than
the version I cut my teeth on. The app
is not accessible to those who depend on text to speech. You can’t buy cards any more—you can print
them out yourself but it’s not ideal. I
have to touch models—mine and my opponent’s—to understand the board-state. With the current focus on precise placement
it is borderline cheating if I bump a model—especially if it’s one of my opponent’s. The game has become so technical that I have
to get handy to understand the board state.
That necessity means I am constantly nudging models, terrain, zones, and
objectives. For someone who wants to
play in local steamroller events that’s not good.
2.
I’m not happy with my faction. Khador is in a great place. I think it is genuinely competitive and has plenty
of unexplored depth. It also doesn’t
play like I want it to. Part of this is
the fact that many of the things that used to be uniquely Khador’s have been
appropriated by other factions—medium based infantry, the cold North, crazy
berserkers…etc. This isn’t specific to
big red but given how much of the faction’s design is based on the things it
cannot have, it is frustrating to see other factions doing the things that used
to be uniquely part of my shtick—often better than I can. I freely admit to a bad case of faction envy. I want the faction to be in a different place
especially with the lack of spell channeling and slow low defense jacks. Someone said recently that the MOW CID was
what every CID should be—a measured balanced exploration of the theme. I agree.
The problem being that some factions get a reasonable approach and some
get entirely new toolboxes and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as
to which is which. I wanted something
out of left field. Something to take the
faction in a hither-to unexplored direction…that…didn’t happen. It just feels like PP has a different vision
of Khador’s faction identity, design space, and viability than I do. There are a lot of issues from my lowly
perspective but the biggest is the fact that Khador’s raw stats (in particular
boxes and armor) seem to rank higher in PP’s estimation than in my experience—especially
when my jacks’ run range is less than the length of a zone and the base
charging threat of other factions’ heavies.
3.
Themes. I
hate themes. People say you don’t have
to play themes if you don’t want. In
reality steamroller is the only format being played. The current SR packet requires solos, units,
and jacks/beasts to score scenario elements.
In most cases you’re going to have to sacrifice models to contest. You know what makes that easier? Free
units! Free solos! The points really aren’t important. The extra scoring and contesting models are
huge though—especially in a faction that values quality over quantity. Themes force me into an arbitrary game of
rock paper scissors. If I don’t buy in,
I’m giving up free scoring elements. If
I do buy in, I’m seriously limiting myself as to model selection—often to
minimal benefit just so I can keep scoring parity.
4.
Competitive play. This is ironic since one of my goals was/is
to play competitively. The more I’ve
read, played, and tried to prep for local steamrollers though the more dissatisfied
I’ve become. It started with a podcast
discussing a certain elite tournament in which a player made a mistake, a judge
was called, and both players got a warning—one for making the mistake and the
other for not catching it when it happened.
We’ve become a community so obsessed with perfect play that it is
driving the game to absurdly frustrating extremes. I’ve spent the following months watching technical
tournament play dominate the hobby and drive public play in uncomfortable
directions. This covers a gambit of
problems but some of the big items are the move to 2D terrain which makes me
feel like I’m playing a board game, the decline in the hobby side (painting,
conversions…etc.), the focus on the game as less narrative and more about flags
and zones, and a rise in an unhealthy MTG-like focus on “getting good.”
5.
CID. I
love the idea of CID. I hate the reality. I love the fact that defined faction elements
get a universal overhaul. I hate the
down time between cycles—something on the order of 14 months or more if they
keep adding mini factions. I hate the way
the cycle tunes one theme up to 11 while leaving others to suffer in obscurity. There are just too many parts of too many
factions that need fixing—and waiting 14 months or more to have only one of
several pain points addressed grinds my gears.
There are single units like assault commandos and sword knights that deserve
their own themes. We’ve waited years
already and we’ll be waiting more years at this rate. Commandos don’t even count for points in
their current theme even if they were playable.
It’s…maddening.
6.
The loss of heart. In the dark days of MKI, PP had a certain
style. It wasn’t just page 5, though that
was a part. They built their legend on all-metal—all-the
time. It was literally full-metal-fantasy. When hordes was previewed, Matt Wilson got
down in the weeds and did the online release in the forums himself. The early books were magnificent combinations
of fiction, art, and marketing. I still
love some of those old stories to this day.
The RPG, the miniatures, the fiction, all melded as a unified artistic
gaming endeavor. Each book was an
exploration into a new aspect of a fascinating universe. Most of that magic is gone for me. There are no more books really. Models are produced with no eye to a bigger
story. It isn’t all-metal any more and
page 5 is gone. I don’t feel like the
game is tied to a unified story being told at many levels…it’s just a company
running a tournament miniatures game—one I enjoy but lacking the magic of old.
7.
Production quality. I used to cut PP as a young miniatures
company, some slack. I cannot do it anymore. I’ve had to send in for recast parts or mispacked
components in a third of my recent purchases.
I’m talking stuff like 2 left halves of a horse or a gun arm that is a plastic
blob at one end. I’ve been doing mini crate
and they sent me 2 of the promotional models for signing up for 6 months and
completely forgot the actual monthly model.
Sure, they will fix these issues at no cost to me without
complaint. It just feels like they don’t
care anymore. Mini gaming is a labor of money
and time. I feel like they’ve lost focus
on the simplest part of being a miniatures company—to produce useable miniatures.
I’m going to sell off my Khador in the next month or 2. I’ll keep my pigs for the novelty and since I
have almost all of the faction. Who knows,
maybe I’ll want to give it another try in a couple years but for now, I’m just
done.
