cupodcast

Mini Gaming

Added 2025-04-25 02:19:14 +0000 UTC

Last night my friend taught me and another friend how to play Warhammer 40K. It always seemed interesting to me, but I never played it as a teenager because of the length of the games and the seeming complexity of the rules. I did dabble in Battletech as the money investment was smaller, but I soon found out that the games can take similarly forever despite the smaller amount of units. I left miniatures gaming behind and rededicated myself to killing hundreds of PlayStation RPGs. As I’ve gotten older I’ve seen the hobby become more common among peers and my interest to try playing it returned.

My friend Jameson brought over a few armies for us to pick from. I chose the Necron army and our friend Kevin chose the Space Marines. The ones with flamethrowers? I think they are standard Space Marines. Anyway, Jameson guided us through a game of Combat Patrol. The rules that seemed confusing at first had clicked like second nature for me by the time the game ended. We played down to the last unit (in what is apparently not standard Combat Patrol) and I ended up coming back from behind and eliminating the opposing side with one unit left remaining.

My takeaway is that it’s a great time, but I’m not sure I want to buy into the hobby. A combat patrol box and the unit Codex look to run anywhere from $125 to $200 and that’s not even enough to play the full-scale game. Maybe further down the line after we move and there is more space. In the meantime it has reawakened my interest in Battletech, which is much cheaper. The Alpha Strike rule set looks like it might scratch a similar itch!

-Ian