I'm not going to include things like Uncharted Seas, which I have played a couple of times but am not playing much since then. The games on this list are some that I have played with some frequency at some point in time. I was thinking about one of them earlier today, and it got me thinking about why some games survive and some don't.
Arcane Legions
The game that I was thinking about that sparked my thinking about this topic was Arcane Legions. At GenCon 2009, this was the game that got my attention and got me pretty excited. It is a fast paced mass army game with some pretty unique mechanics. It wasn't too expensive to get into, though the collectible aspect of it was a turnoff. Fortunately there were not that many models that you needed to get, so it turned out to be affordable. The mechanics were fresh and it was a boatload of fun to play.
So why did it fail? I know it's still a big controversy (I checked their forums today and they're still talking about it), but for our gaming group, we simply could not deal with the archery rules the way they were. Whether archery units are broken in comparison to basic units or not isn't the point. Even when the game was in its infancy, the forums were filled with people harping on the fact that archery was too powerful. The company never addressed this issue, and soon people stopped playing the game, not wanting to play a game where one faction - the Hans who excelled at archery - would win most games where all other things were equal. That the company never addressed these concerns adequately left a sour taste, and soon we were looking for different games to try.
The game continues to flounder. Its first expansion has been put on hold indefinitely as it tries to build its player base. But of course it's hard to build players when there are no new models and toys coming out. To me, this is an example of what could have been a great game being completely mishandled by its company.
Even still, sometimes I look longingly at my models and wouldn't mind getting a game or two in again. Just enough to remind me why I stopped playing in the first place.
Monsterpocalypse
Monsterpocalypse was a game where you'd hit the table with massive monsters, aliens, robots, etc. and fight in a huge city scape. Several of us got into this game, and despite my insistence that I would not buy into it when it first came out, I was quickly convinced that I should and ended up joining the group with my own Martian army.
It was a pretty fun game for a while. But this game suffered from a couple of major issues to me.
First, it was collectible. I had to buy random packs that might come up with things I'd never use, and if I did, I had to hope that my friends got random stuff they'd never use that I would use, and would want to swap with me for the things I got that I didn't want. Annoying. We were able to get around this when we found sites that were selling singles, which was nice, so we didn't have to worry too much about that.
Second, it had collectors versions of all the monsters. This was not a case of "there are a couple of special models you can only get through tournaments", this was a case of "every monster can have a third, different form and you have to do different things to get them." Some you could get by winning tourneys. Some you had to buy a certain amount of product for. But whatever it was, there were a large number of models you simply could not get, and that discouraged me from wanting to play. I'm a completest, and not being able to complete my faction left me unhappy.
Third, and this is the one that really sealed it for me, we found out that every year, the game would cycle out six new factions and "retire" the six old ones. Sure you could keep playing them, but it meant that every year, if I wanted to keep up, I had to drop an entire faction I'd spent time and money on and start all over. For me, it meant it would be a good time to get out of the game, if I was still playing it.
It ended up that I wasn't still playing it at the end of the year. The reason for that is that it lost interest among my group. Their reasons for dropping it had less to do with the way it was being released like mine did, and more with the fact that many times, the game came down to "who got the first chance to throw their opponent through a string of buildings." When one powerful move could win games, it became frustrating.
Warhammer 40k
I know this game isn't dead. All I'm just saying it didn't appeal to me, and figured I should explain why.
Honestly, I don't know so much why this one didn't work for me. It's a decent enough game. It was fun the couple times I played it. I have an army that looks interesting to me. I think I can come up with a couple of the feelings I have when I think about it.
First, it's vastly different from other games I've played. In my experience, I'm much more interested in the skirmish games. 40k is definitely not one of those.
Second, I like when I can look across the table and know exactly what I'm facing. The learning curve for everything I'd be facing in 40k is very, VERY high.
Third, and I know this is really kinda picky, I like knowing who won and lost a game at the end. A number of times I played 40k, by the end of the game, we calculated up our points and ended up in a tie. A tie! I had just spent two hours playing, and ended up with a tie. I don't mind if I lose, and I love to win, but walking away with a tie leaves me feeling like, "Why did I bother?"
Now the odd thing about that, and I admit it makes me a hypocrite, is that I don't mind tying when I play Malifaux. I think it might be because ties are so much more rare in Malifaux and seemed fairly frequent in 40k, but I'm not sure.
In the end, the game was long to set up, long to play, and might not leave me feeling satisfied. I never felt like I really "got it" with the game. In other games, I can pick them up, figure out pretty quickly what I should be worried about, figure out what of my units are designed to do things, etc. but I never got to that point with 40k. That might have to do with the infrequency of playing - I couldn't watch for patterns in how things worked, but whatever the reason, it never really struck me as a game I would enjoy playing much.
Warmachine / Hordes
And finally, the big daddy of them all. Warmachine and Hordes. I'm going to come out and say first that I don't regret any of my time or money in this game. I got a good four years out of playing this game, and loved a lot of it. I met a lot of people through this game, including Dan, and made a lot of friendships. Overall, I call my time with this game a huge success.
So why don't I play it anymore? A lot of it goes back to my reasons for disliking 40k.
They made a new rule set: Mark 2, and already had hundreds of models available. When Mark 2 hit, everything changed. Everything. In order to keep up with the game, I'd have to relearn the entire game.
Not necessarily a bad thing - I could have done it. Mark 2 went a long way to cleaning up some of the problems I had with the game. The rules bloat, etc. But it also made the game size larger. More models were fielded. The game that had started as a skirmish game turned into an army-sized game. I tried a few games of it, but decided it was just too big for me. I know I can play smaller point levels, but it didn't seem like the game was intended for smaller point levels anymore. So I saw Mark 2 as the perfect time to drop the game and look for a new skirmish game to pick up.
Now that I have a new one - Malifaux - I am watching it and noticing that, frankly, it's going to do pretty much the same thing. It's going to get too big with too many models and too much rules bloat, and I'm going to want to drop it. But with luck, I'll get a good four years of fun out of it too, and by the, hopefully there will be a new skirmish game I can get in on the ground floor and ride the beginning of too.
