Wargaming Deep Thought: Barrier to Entry
You have a handful of cash burning a hole in your pocket and your friends have talked you into getting into tabletop wargaming. Now comes the hard part…
I want you to take a step back and think about what its really like for a total newcomer to our amazing little hobby. Imagine that you are a late teen, early twenties person who for whatever societal reasons has decided tabletop wargaming is the next thing for him/herself. You have a couple hundred hard earned bucks in your pocket and you walk into your local FLGS looking to ease your fix…
You look around and see the following:
Warhammer 40,000 (sci-fi, huge amount of shelf space)
Warhammer Fantasy (ohh, look its like high fantasy novels, also huge amount of shelf space)
Warmachine/Hordes (hmm steampunk, good amount of shelfspace)
Flames of War (WW2 is kinda hot, massive range)
Dystopian Wars/Uncharted Seas (Interesting – Boats)
ManticGames – Kings of War/Warpath (seems like a smaller version of 40k/WFB)
DUST – (WW2 with lasers/gorillas/zombies, smallish range)
So hmm, how do you decide?
Explain what you would do taking into account the following:
-Initial cost of being able to play
-Quality of the game/models
-Time investment before being able to play
-Ease of learning the game before you feel competent
-Ease of finding games
~So who gets your cash, and explain you logic. The tabletop gaming universe is quite different than even 5 years ago now isn’t it?
