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2
The Chime of Eons - A Column about the Fluffy Bits
Oct 10 2014 01:00 PM |
Asklepios
in Warhammer 40k: Conquest
Warhammer 40K: Conquest Asklepios
"A man may die yet still endure if his work enters the greater work, for time is carried upon a current of forgotten deeds, and events of great moment are but the culmination of a single carefully placed thought. As all men must thank progenitors obscured by the past, so we must endure the present so that those who follow may continue the endeavour"-"The Chime of Eons"
Hey there, 40K fans, and welcome to the first article of my first cardgamedb column: "The Chime of Eons"!
The title of this thread hopefully evokes the connection between Warhammer 40,000: Conquest and the many works relating to this IP that have come before it. This is a rich and detailed setting, and hopefully I’ll get you engaged in it!
If the Emperor of Mankind wills it, this will be the first in a long series. We'll work our way through slowly though the cards and the setting, tramping ever forward to the battle cry of "One More Day for Rogal Dorn! One More Column for CardGameDB!"
My CardGameDB and general internet handle is Asklepios.
To give you a little background, I am a long time wargamer, cardgamer and roleplayer with a love of these hobbies since the early 1980s. My love/hate relationship with Warhammer 40,000 has been one I’ve nurtured since my earliest gaming days, with my school age self acquiring a copy of Rogue Trader, the first edition of this game and the first time we saw this amazing setting.
Since then I've pursued pretty much every game or creation that is tied to this IP: spin off games like Adeptus Titannicus and Spacefleet; RPGs such as Dark Heresy; computer games like Dawn of War; Black Library novels and so on.
My greatest love, however, has always been the original miniatures wargame which I have collected edition through edition, and spent a small fortune on miniatures, wargaming materials and books. While I am by no means the most knowledgeable Warhammer 40,000 fan out there, I can claim to have been a fan of this universe since its inception, and am someone who has spent more time and money on this game world than is most likely sane.
But then, “Only the insane have strength enough to prosper. Only those who prosper may truly judge what is saneâ€. That, in case you’re wondering, is an Imperial proverb and tells you quite a lot about the setting!
Small wonder then, that this LCG is the one that persuades me to once again don my internet columnist hat, and to leap back into the fray!
The goal and focus of this column is Fluff and Fluffiness.
"Fluff" is a word used by wargamers, boardgamers and roleplayers to describe the setting and ambience of a game. In Warhammer 40,000 communities, the big section of the gamebooks and army books that describe the worlds and peoples of the setting are described as “the fluffâ€.
For those familiar with the AGOT LCG, this is a similar term to "nedly" - the style, setting detail and fiction of the world. In game terms, a rule is "fluffy" if it adheres closely to what it is meant to represent in setting. Fluff can include "flavor text", which is the non-rules text you might find on a card that adds a little flavorsome background detail, but it also goes beyond that.
The fluff of Warhammer 40,000 is the vast, detailed and beautiful setting of its universe, which exists as an independent entity regardless of what rules set you are using to represent it.
The other half of this equation is the Crunch – the hard rules and mechanics of a game: the sort of thing that your competitive players are most interested in. In the Conquest LCG, the crunch includes the game rules, the rules reference guide, the numbers on the card, their keywords and traits. For the competitive tournament purist, crunch is all that matters, but for many of us it is the fluff that makes the game engaging to our imaginations.
My goal will be to look at the cards of the Warhammer 40,000: Conquest LCG, and to examine the "Fluff" of the game, and how it is represented in terms of the crunch, the depicted artwork, and the emergent story that results from using the cards in the game.
These aren't going to be strategy articles, and while I'll be rating the cards I won't be rating their utility or efficiency, just their "fluffiness"!
With this column I'll be looking at each of the cards (going faction by faction for the core set, then one pack at a time with the expansions) and rating each card between 0/5 and 5/5 for the fluffiness of the crunch and the art. It'll look something like this:
- 0/5: Fluff-free, like a lump of wood. The card's art and crunch bears no relation at all to the fluff it is supposed to represent, and there's no indication any effort was made to make this the case. FFG has good quality control, so don't expect to see this rating often, if ever.
- 1/5: Barely fluffy, like a teenage boy’s moustache. Elements of the art and crunch bear some relation to the fluff, but it’s a poor match, poorly executed. An effort looks to have been made, but by my judgment this is a card that really lets the game down in its failure to be fluffy enough.
- 2/5: Wisps of fluff, showing some promise. There's a definite attempt to make the crunch and art represent the fluff, but it fails more than it succeeds. Either that or only one of art or crunch succeeds, and the other fails.
- 3/5: Fluffy like a rabbit. A purple fluffy rabbit of Slaanesh. This is a "pass rate" in that this represents the minimum level of engagement with the IP that I'd consider acceptable for a Warhammer 40,000 themed game. This card keeps me within the imagined reality of the game, with minimum abstraction and does the job acceptably.
- 4/5: Excellently fluffy, like the beard of a 1970s wargamer. This card goes above the call of duty in representing the fluff in crunch and art. If emergent play that its design encourages is appropriate, artwork shows attention to setting detail and the rules reflect what is represented, we have a 4/5.
- 5/5: The Emperor’s Chosen Fluff. Blessed Be Those Who Fluff Well. A rarity, this card represents the fluff exceptionally well, with a near perfect match of rules and artwork to what the card represents in the setting. If I can criticise the fluff depiction in any significant way, we drop from this 5 star rating, so it'll be a rarity! This sort of rating I reserve for cards that are not only accurate in their depiction, but are also clever and inspiring in a way that makes me think “damn that’s great and fluffy card design!â€
This first article is just a taster of things to come! In the next, with the column beginning proper, we’ll step aboard the Craftworlds of the mighty Eldar, with the arrogant and puissant Eldorath Starbane leading us poor short-lived monkeigh into the domains of his people.
Till then, my friends, stay fluffy!
- bigfomlof, Kaic, istaril and 11 others like this
12 Comments
I must say, i'm more of a fluff focused person when it comes to almost all games, it goes so far that i lost my fair share of games just because i prefere to play whats right than whats effective. In WH40K i love my tau units, but not because they are OP, because i love the design and the story. So even if kroots are useless to some tournament players and piranhas not worth the points, i still have them and i still field them, even if i loose.
Now the only thing i don't like about Conquest is the fact that it is horrible in the fluff area. Alot of stuff makes no sense at all. "If i have a Rockrete Bunker in my HQ, why can i use it on all planets?" "How can an Ambush Platform make it easier to deploy an ion rifle?" "And how can a firewarrior squad carry an ion rifle?". And don't get me started on the unit combat values, show a warhammer player that a fire warrior has a higher defense than a space marine squad and he will laugh in your face, and contrary that a firewarrior has only 1 attack.
To be fair, Conquest isn't a tabletop representation but a cardgame in the same universe, so i'm aware of that. And i love the game and its design very much. But for fluff ... alot of the game hurts my geek spot.
This might help me gain interest in the game. Currently I have no experience with or much interest in the Warhammer 40k IP, so playing the game is not rewarding enough for me to actually buy in (yet). I do look forward to reading these however.
I'm looking forward to reading your articles. As someone who stopped playing while 4th (maybe 5th?) edition was still current, it'll be nice to re-ground myself in the lore.
Incidentally, I don't know how much detail you'll be going into in your explanation of each card's 'fluff rating', but for me, the more explanation the better. I've always found the setting compelling, and I know there are plenty of awesome things that I'm still ignorant of (there are certain Space Marine chapters or Craftworlds that I know next to nothing about, for example), so the more fluff you can wring out of each card, the happier I'll be
Well, to give you an idea of the columns I've written so far, I've gone from a 1300 word count introduction to subsequent columns of 8000-10000 words each. When it comes to fluff, I just can't stop talking, so there may well be shouts of "LESS DETAIL! LESS DETAIL!"
To nooble: your complaints preview my ones almost exactly, though there's way more beyond this to criticise and to sing the praises of.
What I'm emphatically not doing is seeing how well the LCG simulates or correlates with the crunch of the wargame. There's no point in that, as the wargame itself can be really bad at representing the fluff. The only time I'll mention the wargame rules is when those rules tell us something about the fluff, like for example wargame rules telling us what psychic powers a Farseer has, and what those powers roughly do.
No, this is about how the LCG represents the setting, the backstory, the lore and the sense of being in the 40k universe.
Hope you'll stay with me and read on!
I just want to note that game's theme (maaaan I refuse to call theme 'fluff' and you can't make me) in constructable card games (ccg, lcg) is almost impossible to do on whole card set level. On a card level, yes, there definitely MUST be some theme-mechanics ('crunch'? no way I'm saying that, sorry) match that makes a card whole. On a deck level it's more difficult, but designers do try to put in some nice thematic combos that kind of define the basic archtypes (I mean, decks can and should be thematic, though not obligatory) - cards that have synergy also often have similar thematic points - events, factions, characters
On whole set level it is just too much cards, and weird things can start to happen. Like a character/troop/creature having an item/weapon they can't physically carry, or killing a magical creature made of fire with fireballs, etc, etc And if designers start to push the other way, and restrict cards to each other, then the number of deck types will become too small. Some decks just use crazy unthematic combos - but they're creative too. That's a clever balance you have to keep in mind.
I absolutely agree with what you're saying, and actually I'm much more of a Jaime/Shagga player than a Ned one, in AGOT parlance.
I'll happily optimise my decks purely for the joy of the emergent gameplay, and actually I'm much more interested in the stats and special abilities of a card rather than the story behind it.
However, as someone who is not that great at playing games (I mean I'm okay, I'm just not great) I'm in no position to write a strategy article, and thats best left to better players and deckbuilders (like say, Kingsley).
The fluff, however, is something that I love a lot and can say a lot about, hence this column.
Ah. Really nice approach, and really an unexpected suprise to find another fluff-addict after stumbling around here for only a few clicks.
Are you also active within the Lexicanum?
http://wh40k.lexican.../wiki/Main_Page
I have a more or less related question though: After leaving school I never had the time, patience and continous commitment to play the original Minifig-Tabletop. But, I was always looking for a game, that offered the smae degree of own creativity and freedom in creating your own Warband (Army seem to be a bit too big Word for those handfull of Warriors you get when you play the Tabletop). Especially as I consinder it closer to the fluff, always choosing the right Warriors and the right Material for the given Mission.
Now the Question: Which other 40k-Game (or non-GW-Game) is closest to that Mechanics, from your perspective?
By the way: Is there an easy way to follow this Column, like an RSS-Feed or a Following Option within the Forum?
Naa, I'm not active on lexicanum, though I do appreciate it as a resource.
Not sure what you're asking with the second question. If you're asking which game best reflects the fluff of 40k, I think I'd have to opt for Space Marine 2nd edition. The range of weapons seems more sensible, the scale more appropriate, and so on.
Not sure about this - I'm relatively new to the site myself. I have a forum topic to which I post every time there's an update though.
Also, I always tag articles with "chime of eons" so you can use that function to find articles with same tag.
Yeah, thanks, that was the question.
Do you mean that Game:
http://boardgamegeek...01/space-marine
The Tags don't work (at least on my Browser/OS), when I click on them, I get:
But I thought about your series and came up with another question, but maybe that one will be answered in the last Episode: How would you judge the Fluffiness of the main Game mechanics?
I mean … If I were a Imperial Warlord fighting for a Segment of the Galaxy, I would have all Troops at hand right formt he beginning. Drawing Cards each turn, and slowing gathering your troops somehow doesn't reflect tha conflict tooooo well, does it?
Have you thought about that already? Or better: Will there be an own Post on the Main Crunch?
Thanks again!
Thank you for the interest!
Yeah thats the space marine I meant
As to the overall game mechanics, I've not specifically commented on it, but mentioned it a bit in the main thread
As to the whole deployment thing, I think it actually makes sense. It'd be interesting if the game had some sort o set up phase to represent the conflict in media res, but I also think that's kind of what the first turn represents.
In fluff terms, I'd note its a battle for a Sector, rather than a Segmentum. Also the fluff suggests that battles do indeed escalate over time. The typical Imperial response would be:
Defensive action:
1) PDF and local forces seek to repulse invader
2) Getting overwhelmed... ask for help! If you're lucky Space Marines turn up
3) Weeks, months or years later, Navy and Imperial Guard turns up. Depending on whims of Departmento Munitorum this may be piecemeal or a vast army may be assembled first.
Offensive crusade:
1) Munitorum assembles vast army
2) Sends army to warzone
3) New forces arrive as they are assigned to support the crusade if it flounders.
Either way, escalation over time is very much in-fluff.
Ah. Thanks! You're right. The conflict is about 7 Stars, not about one (which is quite often within the literature), so one match of Conquest would naturally take quite a while in "the fictional time" of the Conflict.
I knew, it would be a good thing to ask you on that! Thanks again.