Last Saturday I had to opportunity to introduce a new player to Warmachine/Hordes. If I remember correctly he had no prior miniature war gaming experience but, like the rest of us who play this game, he is some kind of nerd. Usually we get a lot of timid lurkers who cruise by and peek at what we are doing but this guy was a friend of a regular player, did some research on his own, watched some videos, and came with questions and ideas. Awesome.
After watching some other people play, getting an insane amount of suggestions before he even knew how to play, and probably quickly going into overload my new models were finally glued and I challenged him to a battle box game. We discovered that the shop we were playing at had battle box figures available for our use. He mentioned he was interested in Cygnar and they had Cygnar's battle box...color us all shocked.
We kept the game as simple as we could. He had the Cygnar battle box and I made a quick Trollblood battle box (after the fact I realized I probably would have done better with the actual Trollblood battle box...meh). We played a nice, slow game. We paused for rules explanation, trying not to throw in rules and/or tactical tips that were not immediately important. He quickly developed a defensive strategy, not really knowing what any of the models did except that one of his models had an extremely long shot once it had the Snipe upkeep spell on it.
In the end he pretty much shot my army off the table and won. He told me on a number of occasions during our game that it was invigorating to come up with a plan, execute it, and it work out. I was super excited for him to win his first game. I have been playing the game for just under a year but I am brand new to playing Trollbloods and Hordes, in general, so even though I know the rules of the game well enough I am not solid on how this army works and my opponent outplayed me.
This brings me to something I heard on a podcast that I thoroughly agree with. When trying to build interest in your game it is beneficial to have extra models, especially battle box models, ready to go. That way, if someone looks interested in the game but you can see they are obviously overwhelmed by the number of models moving around and all of the rules they would have to remember you can ask them if they would like to give the game a try with a battle box game. They get the feeling for allocating focus/managing fury. They get to move some models around the table, getting to see how a battlegroup works within your Warcaster/Warlocks control area. Most importantly, they get to beat some stuff up with cool looking models. They may not win their first game but, if they were interested before, hopefully they are doing some mental accounting or cash counting and deciding how soon to buy their own battle box when the game is over.
I, personally, love playing lower point games because it gives me an opportunity to learn my army. It is too easy to pick a bunch of cool looking models in an effort to make a 50 point army and then as soon as you get it out on the field you realize the models you picked have absolutely no synergy. At lower point games, you can find strong synergies and slowly grow your army from the ground up until you reach whatever point value you are aiming for and, if you did it right, that army will be jam packed with so many synergies it seems like your options within the game are endless and you are ready for any and all challenges.
Building your hobby up is an awesome thing. You get to meet new people with similar interests without a lot of effort, you get to play the game in a way you might not have played for a while, and you get to keep the game alive. I'm not saying it is everyone's responsibility to bring new players in but if you like what you are doing enough to want it to stick around why not try and bring in new players. New players can bring in fresh ideas that can improve everyone's game.
Good luck and happy geeking.
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