Five Wargaming MYTHS

As a current Battletech player, I will say that Catalyst has done a great job of making the game more accessible to new players. Over the last few years, they have introduced 3 starter boxes that have super slimmed down rule books that allow you to grasp the majority of the game. It focuses on what most of us want out of a game of big stompy robots- the Mechs. They have also taken all of the Mech combat information from the Total Warfare and the two Tactical Operations manuals and dropped it into a single slimmer compendium; the Battlemech Manual. They also created an even simpler, less crunchy version of the game in Alpha Strike. They really allow you to decide on your own level of crunchiness these days and have products meant to appeal to every type of player. Me, I'm about the mechs and rarely play with any infantry or vehicles, because I like to keep it simpler, and I follow the fiction, but I don't need an in-depth recitation of the history of every mech variant as found the the TRO. Give me some record sheets, some models and let me get on the battlefield!

One page rules games are a very good, easy and cheap way to get into wargaming.

During deployments we drew our own miniatures for D&D. We got a ruler and made our own grid. One of my favorite campaigns to date.

I inherited my father's FASA battletech library years ago, and wasn't until recently I had the ability to get models. Now that I have made time to paint these models, my friends (dnd and 40k nerds) are suddenly interested. Sometimes a little push makes things fall together.

My personal experience to get a cheap entry into wargames was to just buy Hate boardgame and run frostgrave. It's pretty fun.

As I've grown older, I've come more to the conclusion that having complex rules is overrated. Having a lot of sub-systems or additional layers of complexity is not, in and of itself, good. It may be to a person's taste, but taste is subjective. There's no rule saying a game must be more complicated in order to be good. It's why I prefer Grimdark Future from One Page Rules far more than 40K.

As a side note, being deployed and when we had time to uwhine, we played many wargames with what ever we had to be the miniatures. So the excuse or myth that you need miniatures or certain things to play is crazy and you don't as long as all are having fun.

Remember too that, if you play a GW game, the only time you 'have to' use GW miniatures is in an 'official' game i.e. in-store, tournament, etc. For home or local club games, there are plenty of 'proxy' miniatures out there for a LOT less money.

I'm impressed that Uncle Atom didn't take the obvious opportunity to promote an accessible, inexpensive and fun game - Reign In Hell !

I did the paper proxies when I first started playing 40k back in the day and then tested various factions I might have wanted then once I made a choice I then bought the minis

I knew that staying up way too late would pay off! Thanks for the new content!

I got into One Page Rules recently. I don't think I'll play Warhammer again in any foreseeable future.

Slight correction, Battletech is owned by Topps, and licensed by Catalyst Games. Also, Harmony Gold can still go to hell.

I would also HIGHLY recommend One Page Rules to anyone, new or old players. The rules are pretty light but still convey nuance, cover different scales of game, from skirmish to enormous armies, are miniature agnostic, and are totally FREE. I I have long maintained that a company who manufactures rules AND models is always going to sacrifice rules balance and integrity in favour of making new model releases more powerful, which defeats the object of a tactical game entirely on my opinion. That's why OPR is such a good alternative for me. Since discovering OPR, it has been the only ruleset I have used.

I think I would probably be more into non-GW stuff if anyone at all played it in my area. GW was our only hobby store (other than comic shops that could bring stuff in on order) until recently.

Great video! I think it'd be interesting to see a video on, say, your top 10 or 20 mini agonistic "buy this one book and play" wargames/skirmish games from as many directions as possible. That could shine a light on a ton of more obscure games, I think!

Luckily I grew up when GW was far more customer and kid friendly regarding £$. Fit set I got was Necromunda for £40. Come with 2 gangs, full set of awesome buildings and really in depth rule and source books which included everything for all the gangs (when released). Absolute bargain. £12 for a metal gang and you had enough for unlimited games. If like me you was lucky enough to have a best friend who also played you got one set each and had enough terrain to fill a 4x4 board comfortably. Awesome times never to be repeated with how much GW is now. Even Necro needs cards and gang codex.

I'm lucky enough to have a wargaming club on my doorstep that meets every Sunday. However, even then I find it hard to get a game of Kill Team, Warcry or even Underworlds as they're just not games most club members are interested in. To be fair, they've got a great historical scene which has slowly been turning my head.

I recommend this book , “Wargaming on a Budget” by Iain Dickie. It shows how to build and play a lot hours with simple materials.

It's true about turning someone that has no interest in the hobby, into someone that absolutely loves the hobby. Because it happened to me 👍 one of my friends wanted someone to play with so taught me AOS and the lore and now I love it. Its fantastic 👏