Blabbering: Some Retrospective Wargaming Thoughts

Recently, I recommended another neat youtube channel I had been enjoying, with a gaming angle instead of a hobbying one. Watching Turin's videos over the summer and while writing the post though, I thought entered my head, and that thought was that the Total War iteration of Warhammer came across as a better version of Warhammer Fantasy than the tabletop game.

A lot of the video vs tabletop comparison in my head can be distilled down to a typical digital vs analogue debate, and are pretty bland observations (the video game is designed centrally (and not updated in static physical books), leading to better inter and intra-army balance and the ability to easily make balance changes to the game; combat math is all done by the computer, etc). I think many wargamers like their games due to the physicality of them; I know I find painting minis therapeutic to a degree. So I don't think these ideas in particular are all that interesting in exploring. There more "typical" thoughts did lead to some other thoughts I thought would be worth exploring a bit, and those are legendary lords, matchmaking, and builds, when it comes to wargaming

Legendary Lords

Warhammer Fantasy was full of named lords. The world's story continued on, edition after edition, and most generic lords (what what I saw in my armies, though I only played two) had at least one exemplary, or legendary version. With the exception of a massive End Times special scenario, I never fielded named lords. And I think that was to my detriment.

My Empire army hailed from Ostermark, a poor, agrarian province on the edge of the Empire. I liked that idea, and ran with it, choosing to field more units over flashy characters every time. When I switched to Warriors of Chaos, my Daemon Prince or various champion was always generic. The game had a big story, but I wanted to carve out my own narrative, and was jarred a bit when every Elven army, no matter the size of the army, had Teclis at the head, so I tried to balance that out in the lists I brought to the shop.

In Total War, most leaders end up being the named characters. Thinking on it, I think I missed the boat, and utilizing the named and legendary leaders was how Warhammer 8th may have been intended to be played too. Not running any, that may be a reason (I was still a pretty bad general) my Empire continually fell short against all those Teclis-led armies.

I picked up a Lady Ilona model, and was embracing legendary units and formations near the end of 2nd Edition. Kings of War continues to be different, and is balanced far better, but actually using unique, legendary units should be something I should be more open to I think.

Matchmaking

In Total War, for setup, you match with an opponent online, then select your faction, and build your army quick. Then you play the game. The digital setup runs contrary to typical physical wargaming, where you pick your faction and build your army/list, and then find an opponent, say at League Night at your Friendly Local Gaming Shop.

This "backwards" approach leads to match-up dependent choices and you are highly encouraged to field different lists for different games. (Generalizing some examples: spears are great against monsters and cavalry, so hey, maybe don't bring them against dwarves; handgunners pack a punch, but are outranged by bows, so don't bring them against elves...) Sure the matchups trend to optimal choices too, but that is for just that match-up; you the player are encouraged to try out new choices as you encounter different opponents and different armies. Coming from tabletop wargaming, that's a wild approach.

One of the replays I saw from Turin early on was Bretonnia vs the Empire. There wasn't a local Bret player back in the day, but I knew they were cavalry-based, and in the replay, the Bret player ditched the knights; deciding to "go wide" against the Empire, doubling and tripling down on masses of usually undesirable peasant infantry and archers to fight the swarming State Troops. I don't remember who won, but that "meta-dependent" decision led to a sprawling slugfest and was intriguing.

I don't think the "backwards" approach is sustainable for games at the FLGS, as people still need to bring collections around. But it is making me rethink the idea of list tailoring. In a game like Kings of War, where the intra-army balance is way better than Warhammer Fantasy, more tailored lists could produce some neat games I think.

Builds

I most often think of "builds" when I think of real time strategy games; how to navigate the precious opening minutes of a game. But a build can be more general, and thought of as "how do I best allocate limited resources?" The resources could be real time, in-game resources, or points. Points efficiency would definitely apply to wargaming, though usually comes up on a unit-by-unit basis (this unit is better than that unit, for the points paid), and not how a list fits together as a whole (am I allocating enough points to anvils over hammer units, etc).

Builds are likely not news to most experienced wargamers, but this thought did catch me off guard. I am not a competitive player, and even when I was getting regular, weekly games in during Eighth Edition, I was mostly learning (my units, enemy lists, various scenarios...) and was never making big strategic decisions with my lists. While I felt I grasped the mechanical basics of Kings of War better, I feel like I was still always just experimenting and running what I wanted to run, rather than any deep strategic insight.

For Total War, the various builds generally flow from the lord choice. Is the leader mounted? Flying? Can they cast spells? Are they a decent fighter? Can they heal? Whatever you pick, some things are omitted, and your future choices start stemming from that lord choice. If your lord is fighty and mobile, you need defensive infantry to hold so the lord can hammer away; if the lord can't heal, you better take a life wizard; and so-on and so-on. This was not how I built my Warhammer armies... but again, maybe it should have been.

Build consideration is also not how I've built for Kings of War... The balance is better here, but you can go pretty "all-in" with lords riding dragons, or gunlines or cavalry. I got into some list-centric thoughts before, and will probably return to them again at some point. I know nothing about the scenarios nor the metas for 3rd Edition to pontificate much on this, and as always, am not a competitive player, so my musings aren't terribly worthwhile to any serious wargamer, but build-thinking was a bit of a paradigm shift for me; crystalizing an approach to list building that had not really happened before.



I don't think any of these are terribly original ideas, but things did *click* for me on the above in a way I was not expecting, so figured they would be worth highlighting here in a post. More hobbying to come soon, I swear!