Guild Ball is dead

Interesting. This is something I've wondered about in the past: can a miniatures game really keep going forever? I can't see how it could.

I feel the old saying "you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain" applies to miniature games to some extent too.

Anyway, I say kudos for bowing out gracefully rather than ruining the game trying to keep it alive forever.

Also I have never played guild ball and know very little about it.

Hmmm while extreme... I do see the wisdom in the caution here - too streamlined/competitive can have bad consequences. I'm sure there is the diametric opposite in some other game?

Now, the longevity of a miniature game is a different subject imo.

Some streamlining is okay. Similar abilities can just be made into the same ability to cut down on rule bloat, we saw that with the MkII to MkIII transition. But it gets to a point, and they mentioned it in the article, where a game became so streamlined that anything fun and different was just dismissed as trash or instantly too strong. It's a careful balance to balance that has to be made. The best balance is not the perfect balance.

There is some truth to the notion that hyper-competitive players, whose opinions on new models fall into either “OP” or “trash”, do a good job of driving away new players.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, for all the people in the back: the vast majority of people who play miniatures games do not play them competitively. Casual players are the lifeblood of a miniatures game.

Source: I have been paying attention for the last 15 years, both locally and at various conventions. Maybe 20% of the people who show up to tournaments and events are the “competitive” crowd, while the remaining 80% are the semi-regulars-on-game-nights people just coming to have fun.

You are in trouble when the competitive crowd drives out the casual crowd.

Regarding Guild Ball: I only ever saw the competitive Guild Ball crowd locally. It died here (as far as I could tell) when one of the Top-10-in-the-world WM players jumped in, mastered the game almost immediately, and laid waste to the quote-unquote “competitive” players who had been thus far propping up the game. They quit playing (at least at the game shop where I could see) and that was that.

I did pick up on a bit of the "blame the players" vibe in the article, but it felt to me like they were blaming the ruleset for being designed to be competitive and non-random (and therefore inviting competitive players) rather than saying something like "the players ruined everything". Or maybe that's just me giving them the benefit of a doubt (which I don't think is a bad thing).

They didn't go into too much detail, but they did say that the reason for not releasing the last planned factions was, you know, the BlackBeer Death. I dunno, I'm sure if it made sense for them financially they would have done it.

As for it "ending"; I mean, you can still play it right? I know people who still play Monopoly and Cluedo, and those two games were actually invented by the ancient Egyptians four thousand years ago, and the last expansion pack came out back in 1894. Of course I realise that unsupported games aren't very popular, but hey: the market is full of great games these days, this could be a chance to get into something new and different, right?


Of course I would be singing a different tune if this was a game I cared about, so... I'm not meaning to belittle the death of this game or make light of how upsetting this news must be to people who were really into it. I'm just trying to be optimistic, I apologize if I'm being annoying.

Lets not forget that Steamforged has several other successful ventures in the board game space, so ending Guild Ball is far from the end of Steamforged games. I'll miss GB, but they did what they set out to do with it.

PP has only recently begun successfully diversifying their game lineup, but I'm glad they're getting serious about it.

One hundred percent right. It just follows every other thing that has a casual and competitive community, where the sheer majority of the population is in it for fun. Just looking at the conventions in general vs local meta proves this. Only the most competitive people will travel to a convention, maybe your meta has 10 players and 1 or 2 go to CaptainCon every year. The rest don't want that kind of pressure or aren't engaged enough in the game to dedicate the resources it takes to travel and play. 

Another factor mentioned by other people and by Steamforged is that even a ruleset will lend itself to competition. A tight ruleset with a make no mistakes attitude that also limits luck will promote the most skill to win. So the most skilled players will 100% beat less skilled players, and tournaments will be more "fair" which means competition will be regarded higher. A game like Warmachine has huge elements of skill but the 2D6 can also function as an equalizer, where there might be a game that you can absolutely blame the dice for a loss. If you roll 100 attacks and need a 6 to hit and roll under a 6 80 times, you may still lose to someone with less skill. 

There are also some games that really ham up the luck and add in RPG elements. ArcWorlde has a feat system, where you can do an action that is not defined by the rules, assign a difficulty to it, and then roll out the result. That means that a more skilled player can be beaten by a player that is less skilled but more able to roleplay some heroic act. The system is made to be played casually and I've peddled that and DGS's Freeblades around various forums as replacements for Guild Ball for the casual player, for a very good reason. Both games feature moments that you'll talk about over the weeks as you would talk about some insane D&D session or some great RP play in a session.