Why Board Games Are Brilliant!

Ever since Space Hulk, I've found a real appreciation for miniature board games.

A good board game (with miniatures of course) comes straight out of the box and is ready to play after some assembly.

You rarely, if ever, have to worry about the rules changing and you get a small selection of models to paint -if you really want to.

But ultimately, board games seem to offer everything that I love about wargaming. You get an engaging setting, a range of challenging missions and two sides to take turns playing.

Best of all, there are no taboos about playing with unpainted miniatures, so you can get straight into a game.

Meanwhile, when you do finally sit down to paint your miniatures, it's not quite so intense as having to paint an entire army.

Space Hulk, Super Dungeon Explore or even Dread Fleet are all great examples of miniature board games that give you a variety of detailed models to paint in a range of colour schemes.

For me, this makes the painting much more fun than painting a whole army because I have less models to paint, but each model is quite unique, so I can paint them differently.

This seems to break the contents of each board game down into bite sized chunks for painting rather than feeling like I have to paint 100 identical miniatures all in one monstrous session.

Speaking of which, we will be playing Zombies!!! between Christmas and New Year. And the great thing about this game is that even your less geeky relatives will want to play it too thanks to pop culture.

Last time even Mum and Dad were happily gunning down hordes of the undead, believing it to be some form of socially accepted (and encouraged) norm after having watched Shaun Of The Dead and The Walking Dead. It's amazing what pop culture can do!

In the end it was a close run between Mum and Dad.

Dad was blasting zombies apart by the dozen as was only 1 kill away from winning the game with the prestigious "Zombie Killer Of The Week" award.

Meanwhile Mum was fighting her way through the zombie packed landing pad and finally managed to climb aboard the helicopter and escape to safety, winning the game.

So how did you get into wargames?

I ask, because for many people around my age Space Crusade and Hero Quest opened the door into the wider world of miniature games.

I remember one of the older kids in my street had Hero Quest and a year later he got Space Crusade as well. Because I spent a lot of time playing my Turrican 2 on my Commodore 64, Space Crusade really appealed to me.

A few years later, I walked into Games Workshop in the newly opened Lakeside Thurrock shopping centre and bought the 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000 game with all my saved up pocket money. Good times!

Board games seem like a great way to bring people into the hobby. They're great fun, much more affordable than an army and best of all, your relatives don't mind buying them for you and will sometimes ask to play them too!