I introduced a friend to miniature gaming. She isn’t interested in painting, but we play casually with my miniatures
. We tried Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Deadzone, Guild Ball and A Song of Blades and Heroes. OPR is the more suitable game for both us, in terms of fun and casual play. In my case, the next things help us to have more fun playing the game:
- Playing with painted miniatures, some mat or board and some scenery, even they’re simple or 2D printed
- Reducing things to memorize (in this aspect, I think OPR and Magic The Gathering do an awesome job)
- 1 sheet for rules to follow the game
- Unit cards with their explained rules, whenever it’s possible; you don’t have to search rules in a book or sheet
(http://onepagerules.proboards.com/thread/1194/stat-card-data-sheet-layout)
- Tokens to keep track of game effects
- Keeping it simple; approaching wargames to board games. I think people may be overwhelmed by the usual size (board, number and size of miniatures and scenery) of a traditional wargame. To reduce the board size, I’ve finally decided to use centimetres instead of inches (board of 48 x 48 cm instead of 48 x 48 inches). This way, the game can be played on a smaller space and the two players can be sat; no need to walk around the table.
- Making the game friendlier. Not everyone likes a dark or war setting. We think in a world more related to fantastic adventures, like the books of The Chronicles of Narnia or The Name of the Wind. In the first of them, there are battles, but few deaths; they go fencing, the looser surrenders and returns back home.
- Playing for fun and forging a little narrative:
- Using the odd results on dice. Usually, when the hero on horse fails all his attacks, it’s time to shine for his horse. It’s fun to see how a horse is more proficient than the hero of the army
- Taking strange and epic choices over the strategic ones. In the last game, one of the best melee miniatures in the board (dwarf king) was hidden inside a forest
instead of approaching the enemy. Nevertheless, the opponent army sent some units to the forest to try to defeat it (high elves heavy cavalry); none of them came back. It seemed that the dwarf king preferred taking a break inside the forest instead of the battle, but he got mad when his break was interrupted
In summary, the advice is to see the game as an amusement with a bit of strategic thinking and unpredictable results, mixed with the experience of reading a book or watching a film; not as a complex competitive game or sport.
. We tried Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Deadzone, Guild Ball and A Song of Blades and Heroes. OPR is the more suitable game for both us, in terms of fun and casual play. In my case, the next things help us to have more fun playing the game:
