"Most expensive game to get started in?" Topic

Assuming "start" means getting the rules and the minimum amount of miniatures & terrain to play a small game.

All of them. One of the reasons I play board games and computer games.

Anything from Games Workshop. High initial investment will only lead to more purchases. Add to that overpriced special figures. Other side of the equation, The Sword and The Flame. Low cost all in one rules. A less than 100 figures and your ready to go. That said, you will find yourself infected with "one more unit" and "one more army" syndrome.

28mm Italian Wars, and/or Samurai Wars, since you need so many figs, lots of time to paint, and the choices are seemingly endless.

My most expensive has been Star Wars Skirmishing, most figures I got were not too bad, but some of the rarer items….!!!!

Dating?

You know, I hate to say it, but tactical Napoleonics may be a contender. Skirmish can be done with a hand full of figures, and "grand tactical" can be done with RISK figures or equivalent. But for a tactical game you need castings big enough to see uniform distinctions, and enough of them in each unit to take losses and still form column, line and square--and enough units to keep an interesting game--all with the variety of temperate zone terrain. Enough units to fight out most Charles Grant scenarios at HALF the old Grant strengths means raising about 600 figures.

It can be done (relatively) cheaply--say with 1/72 troops and scratch-built terrain--but it's a very serious commitment compared to most.

Good one, Arjuna!

I would say…

Most expensive game company/figures = Games Workshop

Most expensive game period = Napoleonics
but at least you have a choice as to scale.

Napoleonics. That's a period after Napoleonics. Once you're in it is EXTREMELLY hard to get out. And there are never enough in your collection. And one scale often ends up into 2 or 3. Run away!

Good question but I think Napoleonics grand tactical at 28mm would fit the bill – I have a friend who does it and I think one of his armies would pay for my entire Napoleonic armies (I do 6 mm and have corps worth of troops for French and Coalition)

Especially given Skipper John's wisdom in that in Napoleonics you can never have quite enough – for example now that I have three corps worth of French I feel the urge to do some Guard

There's been several recent FB posts in various groups about gamers wanting to get into historical miniature gaming after becoming disillusioned about GW pricing. The recent was when one WH40K gamer saw that a set of three figures he needed was over $50 USD and he saw that a box of Victrix Ancients with 50-60 figs was around the same price.

I have not played WH40K in decades and I did a search, then found an article with a price breakdown on an army. Including the rules, it was around $500 USD for a standard army and that's with no terrain. I'm sure you could get some things cheaper online, but historical miniatures gaming is definitely cheaper.

GW is expensive only because the players let it be. The rules aren't bad by modern standards, and if you play the rules with non-GW figures you'd be OK for price, since the battles are relatively small. It's going along with the idea that only GW can sell you the Great Ork of Mork that costs the kids the money.

I figure doing Grant half scale (24 casting battalions) with 1/72 figures and scratch building terrain, you'd still probably be north of $300. USD

Fantasy Flight's Star Wars Legion. Starter box is $100 USD, you really need two per player. Basic trooper expansion boxes of 7 figures are all $25. USD Equipment boxes are all $25. USD All character figures are $13. USD Of course, you also get all the standard FFG cards and doodads, which you need.

I'm an FFG fanboy, but have avoided this one. I'm in too deep with X-Wing! And that sits in the closet rarely played.

USAFpilot, our family is there as well. We have a few hundred used/new board games we've bought at board game convention flea markets the past 15 years. Plus, it is so much easier to get together with church friends to play board and card games, which we often do. Far more local board game groups and local board game cons.

Agree about Gamesworkshop, but I'll also offer my BLOODY DAWN Alamo rules together with the Blue Moon 15mm buildings and minis. It is to fight the whole battle at a 1:1 scale (for the texans, with about 600 minis for the Mexicans). The startup cost in $$$ and painting is very high. It is really a project for a club.

Col Durnoford: huzzah on both comments. Also TSATF + 1/72s a great inexpensive way to get into the hobby.

It's all a matter of perspective and how "accurate" you want to be.

Hi. My name is John. ("Hi John!")
I'm an American Revolution gamer. I paint both sides. In 25/28mm. For a while I was happy to get along with 5 British regiments and their CONVERGED flank company battalions. Add a Hessian regiment or three.
Of course I had sufficient American troops to have good battles.
Then it happened. An "acquaintance" (we had had issues) was doing an AWI army, not affiliated with me in any way. He got fed up and gave them all to a friend, who having no use for them, promptly gave them to me.

Up to this point I was more than happy to say "In tonight's Guilford Courthouse game, (wrong trees) the part of the 2nd battalion of Guards will be played by deLancey's boys in pimp hats." Oh no. Not now. Suddenly having an "accurate" 2nd battalion mattered.
It also meant that I had to have the 71st Highlanders depicted in canvas overalls, rather than kilts. No more generic Loyalists to represent the Volunteers of Ireland, not when Perry made that very regiment.

As I started out saying, it all depends on your attitude towards the "accuracy" bugaboo.
If you're happy with proxies, you can keep things small. If you decide that you need the 23rd Foot, Royal Welch Fusiliers, in units wearing the three (possibly 4) different uniforms they wore from 1775-1781, then you are doomed.

At one point I noted that in the AWI the British had up to 104 distinct regiments, and I only had collected and painted "only" 7. At the time that was funny. Then I started making excuses that "only" around 75 actually put in an appearance in America.

Now I'm involved in a Fort Mercer project. That means that my share of the project is one "accurate" Hessian Grenadier battalion, and von Mirbach regiment, neither of which I already had.
I was gifted 6 Perry Queen's Rangers Hussars. A quick peruse of my scenario books gave me only Spencer's Ordinary. No problem. I only will need to paint up 75 Queen's Rangers infantry.
Not to mention Associators for Princeton.

It didn't take much to tip the balance.

I could also talk about Sword and the Flame 800 figure Dervish armies, but I'll let that pass.

I succumbed to 15mm Napoleonics. I'm in the "maybe one more army stage" but resisting as storage is now a greater motivator.

As far as Price I find that getting started in 15mm is @ $200 USD for everything that I would need for some countries, like Sweden, for my favorite Rules. Most French Allies are about the same or less (Bavaria and Wurttemberg)

Once you have a couple Corps, getting another is really not that much. It has taken me @ 15 years but other than Swedes and Danes I probably have 'enough' for every Major Battle (though more Russians…)

Ajuna +1

Games Workshop.

My next door neighbor's son decided to "dabble" in the GW mythos. He went to the nearest GW shop, bought the rules, an army book, figures needed for an army, and a selection of paints. His bill was a little over $1,250. USD Now he needs an opposing army…

As someone who just discovered Star Wars Armada, I was very pleased to find I could get a fully painted Imperial Star Destroyer for $50 USD!

Not to pick on GW but I try to imagine what the price per ship would be if they decided to release pre-painted ships for Battlefleet Gothic.

Arjuna…. I take it you are unfamiliar with the game of matrimony…..

Seriously? How can the answer be anything other than Games Workshop?

@JSchutt
Arjuna…. I take it you are unfamiliar with the game of matrimony…..

No game there, that's unarmed combat.

No game there, that's unarmed combat.

Your Better Half(TM) isn't armed? Lucky man, lucky man … SWMBO is of Scandinavian heritage, and thus has a deep cultural history that any physical object is a weapon first, and may have other uses.

Great question. "Start" is defined reasonably, but "game" is not.

The artifacts you use to play the game are not normally intrinsic to the game (I can play chess with stuff I already have in the house … and have.), unless there is some significant technical dependency. F'r'ex, I can't play the HALO video game without a system and a copy of the software, that I must ("must", which for me, implies "legally") buy retail from the vendors.

GW is a company, IMV, not a "game". They have several games. I believe their two flagship games require a rule book and two or three books each for at least two armies (I suppose you could play Khorne vs Khorne, or Orcs vs Orcs, etc). That is on the expensive side, regardless of what minis you use.

That said, their "starter boxes" which give you enough rules and minis to play a specific battle, and a reasonable number of variants. Those are well shy of the cost of a couple hundred 28mm minis per side.

I much prefer improvised and scratchbuilt terrain over retail (found terrain (thin on sale aquarium stuff) is third on the list). You should definitely count effort to set up as part of the cost. Scratchbuilding terrain is zero effort for me – I enjoy the process and afterward I have something I can use in a game.

Also TSATF + 1/72s a great inexpensive way to get into the hobby.

That's exactly the route I took to dabble in the Colonial French Foreign Legion era, which is very much of secondary(but compelling) interest to me.

Gotta be GW
I think what the cheapist not using proxy figure's is a more interesting question.

On another message board a manufacturer said he did understand the GW pricing for characters.

A bog standard figure is going to be cast 1000s of times, the sculptor is still only paid once, the mould is only made once (until its life is reached, obviously).

With characters they are only going to be sold once per army. This means the fixed costs are divided between fewer figures.