What do you prefer? Wargaming, painting minis or both?

[pa11ad1n]

I gennerally have some stuff to paint...and some stuff to play with (almost exclusively not to nearly the same standard)...

I really love both aspects but cant paint whole armies without alot of extra motivation.

((Money, btw, is a huge motivation...and I have time ATM...))

I support the direction Mongoose is taking for the most part. As long as I can still convert and paint something really cool on occasion I'll be happy.

 

[Mecha]

To me wargaming itself is more important from two and its reason for me to paint.

 

[Eisho]

So far the 'a bit of both' crowd are more numerous. It'll be interesting to see how the numbers change a year from now after SSTE and BE are released and Mongoose creates a new, and presumably different, fanbase.

Eisho

 

[Rob_A]

I do a bit of both, but I do a lot more painting. I only get to game once a week really, on a friday night, sometimes Im lucky if I do it at the weekend. I'm concentrating on painting. Its a different kind of skill that I personally feel I am better at.

 

[nezeray]

Personally I love to play games but I HATE doing it without painted figures.

Imagine playing a large game of Mighty Armies with every figure on both sides primed black. You get either have to have a great memory of which figure is which or you have to put your chin on the table and squint at the figures.

My Mighty Armies have painted troops and different color bases. Red is usually the sorcerer, blue the leader...

I'm not anywhere near the best painter, but I can do good enough for tabletop use.

nezeray

 

[Stratos]

For me the fun part of the hobby is painting.
Then it is the satisfaction of seeing my painted models on the board, then hanging with my friends, then actually playing the game.

Building terrain. Assembling, customizing, modeling, painting miniatures. And when I can... playing with them all. But the "Hobby" is more important to me than slick rules and toy soldiers.

- Stratos

 

[VFults]

Wargaming. I used to paint minis a lot, but my eyes are not as young as they used to be and my time is more constrained. Being able to play right out of the box has a great appeal to me now.

Regards,

V

 

[Makoto]

Both, but in about 60/40 for gaming. And having a choice I'd rather assemble/convert a model rather than paint it ^^

 

[Jeff Cope]

While I enjoy painting I just don't have the time for it these days (and, heck, I'm currently out of work...you'd think I'd have more spare time!) and will have less when I'm working full-time again...so, for me, it's all about the gaming.

I can have the most beautifully painted models in the world (well, um, hypothetically...I'm really not that good a painter), but if I'm not gaming with them they do me little good...and drive my wife crazy ;-)

Jeff

 

[Galatea]

For me the fun part of the hobby is painting.
Then it is the satisfaction of seeing my painted models on the board, then hanging with my friends, then actually playing the game.

You can quote that for me, too.
Though I like to play the game, I like the feeling that it is MY army there on the table, not just an ordinary 'you can see anywhere' army.
I fear with the prepainted modells most armies will look very similar, if not exactly like clones.
When I look into the Mongoose Gallery I can see Bugs in any pattern and colour shemes - yellow, red, purple, blue, green, black, some of them with stripes, some with dots, some with colour shifts.
It would make me very sad to loose this diversity.

Although I think it is actually a good idea (espacially for LAMI) and I'll speak for it, as long as I can order the unpainted sprues if I want to.

 

[Lysander]

I like both and love to look at nicely painted minis. I am a reasonably adequate painter and have won some regional painting competitions and some manufacturer competitions at Origins and GenCon.

My problem is that I am so darn finicky when it comes to my minis that it takes forever, literally, for me to paint an army and often times the game system is dead before I can run or play a game.

I very much like the idea of prepainted minis with alternative unpainted minis being made available. I am a huge advocate of the direction Mongoose has chosen to go because it allows me to play (and demo) games immediately with prepainted figs and slowly supplement or replace the prepainted minis with my painted minis.

I would have been running SST games locally a year ago if it weren't for the fact that I haven't yet painted any MI Troops but have tons of painted bugs. Ironically, the bugs, because they are painted, are being used in fantasy RPG games until such time as I get around to gluing (what a nightmare) and painting my MI troops.

Unfortunately, my local stores are already offering the SST stuff at discount which means they will likely not support new releases. Prepainted figures is the best way I can think of to avoid this conundrum.

 

[CudaHP]

Both, depending on my mood and present motivation at the time.

 

[KRakarth]

Unfortunately, there is a good possibility that the people you are asking do not accuratey represent the people who are buying. People who buy just to paint are not likely to hang aroung a forum where the major discussion is wargaming.......

 

[mthomason]

Unfortunately, there is a good possibility that the people you are asking do not accuratey represent the people who are buying. People who buy just to paint are not likely to hang aroung a forum where the major discussion is wargaming.......

Well, conversely, the people that want to just pick up prepainted miniatures and play probably won't be around here in great numbers until the prepainted games actually hit the stores.

However you're quite right in terms of not reading too much into the results of polls on this board from a "market research" perspective. The people here tend to be from the more hardcore gaming set than the typical customers in the street.

 

[Stratos]

However you're quite right in terms of not reading too much into the results of polls on this board from a "market research" perspective. The people here tend to be from the more hardcore gaming set than the typical customers in the street.

And they tend to be both die-hard MGP loyalists (do I hear a new political party?) and a loud minority. IMO.

 

[mthomason]

And they tend to be both die-hard MGP loyalists (do I hear a new political party?) and a loud minority. IMO.

Thats a very good point.

For "market research" purposes, polling those who are obviously going to say "yes" because they're sold on something already isn't as helpful as polling those who aren't on the forums - those you still want to try and sell to.

The majority of people on the forums are most likely here because they like what Mongoose are doing. Asking here whether X is a good idea or not is probably going to end up with a "yes" because thats why those people are here in the first place. What's really needed is finding out why all the people who would say "no" would do so, and of course those people tend not to be on the forums to start with.

(sorry for taking the thread off-topic, and I hope this isn't viewed as a criticism of this or any other poll on the forums, as it isn't intended to be. I'm just getting distracted by my thoughts on analyzing the section of the gaming community we have here and how representative of the "potential customer base" it is - or isn't )

 

[Stratos]

(sorry for taking the thread off-topic, and I hope this isn't viewed as a criticism of this or any other poll on the forums, as it isn't intended to be. I'm just getting distracted by my thoughts on analyzing the section of the gaming community we have here and how representative of the "potential customer base" it is - or isn't )

RIGHT! No negativity meant in my comments either. Just pointing out that we're already on the MGP forums because we're already MGP fans.

 

[Eisho]

Well, the point of the poll isn't for market research reasons. I simply started it at the time that the announcements about SST:E and BFE were made. Up to this time Mongoose has produced paint-and-play wargames which have obviously been very popular with forum members. I, and a few others, however - and despite being a Mongoose fan - expressed a preference for pre-painted minis on the SST board because I would rather spend my time playing. The results of this poll would seem to indicate that I am not in a small minority, particularly when you consider, as has been pointed out, that you would have perhaps expected a greater majority of people answering the poll to be fans of paint-and-play games.

I love the games Mongoose produces, but I will love them a lot more when I can buy pre-painted armies and get other people involved in a shorter time. The faster rules are also a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned as well. This has been brought home to me again in the last few weeks. My parents are out here now visiting their grandchildren. In between trips, restaurants, baseball games and stuff me and my Dad have been playing Magic (and a bit of Mighty Armies and chess). Simple, fast rules that are easy to get into. I'd love to get a game of SST or ACTA going (or a GW game) but they take too long to set up and explain.

I'm already well and truly sold on the idea of pre-painted minis and fast play rules.

Cheers,

Eisho

 

[mthomason]

Well, the point of the poll isn't for market research reasons.

No worries, I figured that There's a tendancy sometimes though for people to look at polls on here and assume it's a representative sampling of the Mongoose customer base, and for conversations starting "if you look at this poll, *everyone* says..." to spring up.

That said I'm also very interested in finding out what everyone on the boards think about stuff

I also agree with you that it's going to be good to have a game that bridges the gap between quick pick-up games and more complex wargames, and in this case seems to operate equally well at either end of the rules scale. It's really a good example of having two almost seperate games based upon one set of miniatures - which is perfect for economical reasons both from Mongoose's point of view (they get to produce more copies of the same minis for a wider audience, keeping costs down) and from players (we get two games for the price of one).

The prepaint idea has certainly divided the "traditional" wargamers, between those who have so much stuff to paint they're just glad to have something they can get a game out of, and those for whom the painting is a huge part of the hobby and can't really envisage it without it. I tend to slide myself into the former camp here - I've got enough LotR miniatures for a good couple of years worth of painting still to do, and I'm beginning to paint Dark Elves just for the sake of it (not even assembling an army here, just painting whatever I feel I'd like to paint). I've got enough unpainted boxes of SST to last me a lifetime. I never have the time to build the scenery I want to build. The likes of Mage Knight never appealed to me because they feel too much like playing pieces and not a wargame. The Evo stuff kinda fits in nicely with what I want right now - a pick-up-and-play wargame. The only thing I regret is that those who need the painting side in any miniatures they buy now feel "out in the cold" as far as the new releases go.