"Is the Balance Wrong?" Topic

I bought a new set if rules at Partizan at the weekend. Full colour, £25.00 GBP pricetag. I knew I was buying the rules so I had also prepared a shopping list for the relevant figures which cost me around £75.00 GBP for fifty or so figures. Nothing unusual in that, those seem to be fairly typical prices.

In the afternoon when my wallet was empty I chatted to two rule authors. Both told me that a set of rules takes a minimum of a years work, often twice that, to get to the stage where it is published. Interesting when you consider that figures can be sculpted quite quickly and produced fairly cheaply.

I'm wondering if we have the balance wrong in the hobby. Are figures too expensive and rules too cheap? After all it is the rules that determine how enjoyable a game is to actually play. I've had some great games with terrible figures and good rules, and some awful games with beautiful figures bug terrible rules.

Unless you insist upon full colour and lots of illustrations, there are plenty of cheaper – even free! – sets of rules that may not have such good production values, but give entertaining games.

For example, Bob Cordery's Portable Wargames rules [available via his Wargaming Miscellany blog] and Ross Macfarlane's Hearts of Tin and Square Brigadier rules [from his Battle Game of the Month blog] are both free, and have gone through numerous playtests and revisions by their authors.

Some of the time spent getting rules ready for publication is devoted to layout and proof-reading, rather than to testing or developing the rules themselves. Glossy presentation doesn't necessarily guarantee a good game.

You are quite right about the rules determining the quality of the game. The solution, IMHO, is to experiment widely, trying as many cheap or free rules as one can, until one discovers a set one enjoys and can, if necessary, adapt to suits one's preferences.

As I don't particularly enjoy painting, I use 10mm figures with a simple, basic paint job, so my armies don't cost too much either.

Which of course is fine unless I *DO* want one of the popular sets that everyone else's is playing.

The option of free rules is an appealing one, the same as free food or free accommodation. But, in reality, taking the free option rarely gets you what you actually want.

Sorry if I misunderstood that aspect of your original post.

Perhaps I've just been lucky in finding some free rules – those I mentioned – that give me, personally, a perfectly satisfying game, though I appreciate they may not be to everyone's taste.

But, an investment in figures will result in an army that one can still use when today's popular rules have fallen out of favour!

Interesting when you consider that figures can be sculpted quite quickly and produced fairly cheaply.

That's awesome, please point me in the direction of these cheap and fast sculptors please!!!

A good figure must be sculpted by someone with a great amount of skill, I don't think you are giving them nearly enough credit. Almost to the point of being a little dismissive of their talents.

As to cheap to produce? I don't think you've got that one right either I'm afraid.

I second your opinion Crossover miniatures. Producing minis is NOT cheap. Nor is it quick. Beyond getting the sculptor right there's the mold cutter and all the equipment.

Anyone can throw a set of rules together, it's just talk and words. Crafting a good mini- that's art.

years? Not at all. But it's a lot more involved than people tend to think.

Some problems don't become apparent until a "meta game" pops up and you realize certain tactics are far too effective.
Army list issues depends on what people actually play.
The first three groups or clubs to play a game may never run into an issue because it never occurred to them.

Games aimed at hardcore tournament play will suffer more of course than more casual fare.

To use an example from Magic the Gathering, Necropotence was an old card that upon release was mostly ignored for being pretty weak. Then someone did the math and figured out how to win routinely, using it.
Fast forward, and it gets banned or restricted to prevent it from wrecking the game, but it took time for that to occur to anyone.

A product is worth what you can get someone to pay for it.

Pretty much. Pricing is 100% arbitrary especially on the internet.

I've paid a lot of money for terrible games (both tabletop and computer) and gotten amazing stuff for free.
In the end, we live in a time where your customers pay you because they chose to do so rather than just get it for free.

It usually takes me 1-2 years of work to craft the rules and then another year to do all of the things that are required to bring it to the market, from layout to graphic design to photography, dealing with printers, updating the webstore, etc, etc, etc.

My wife recently asked me if I'd calculated how many man-hours that was, and I told her that I was afraid to do so because if I knew, I'd probably never do it again.

It's funny that this hobby requires two separate things that are so utterly different as products: rules and figures. (And I suppose a third: terrain, also).

Figures can be evaluated by a customer in about one second. You either like the way it looks, or you don't. But if you do like it, then you'll potentially buy quite a lot of them, potentially for many years to come. An individual figure is cheap, but nobody ever buys just one. So people don't usually complain about their price, even when they spend hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Rules can't be evaluated until they're played. It takes a while for most thoughtful people to decide whether or not they like them. But whether they do or not, there is only ever that one purchase. And that one purchase can be pricey, so people almost always complain about it, even though that $40 USD might result in years of happy gaming.

So it's very hard to compare the two as products, which is funny, since the hobby is based upon using them together.

I suppose the two things they have in common are:

1. In many cases, people buy them both but then never use them.

2. In both cases, there is the solitary pleasure of using them (painting, reading), which might be totally different from the social pleasure of playing with others.