Getting Started with Minis (by Richard Rush)

I feel like I need to preface this with the disclaimer that I'm coming at this primarily from the perspective of a sci-fi/fantasy mini gamer. Historical wargaming is an extremely similar, but different animal. But it's generally my experience that, when someone asks about minis: they mean 28mm elves, dwarves, and space marines. And, although I have my preferences, I'm going to try to keep things generic within that context.

Step 1: What's This Warhammer thing?

The best way to get started with miniature wargaming is to hit your FLGS (friendly local gaming store) and identify yourself as someone who's interested in learning more about the game you've decided you want to learn more about. It's that easy.

There are hundreds of mini games out there, and I'm sure that each of them is seeing some amount of play somewhere out there in the world. There are, however, four games that I know of that see a substantial amount of play locally. Apologies if I don't list your favorite game: but it serves you right for liking something I don't like.

• Malifaux 
• Warhammer 40,000
• Warhammer Fantasy Battles
• Warmachine / Hordes

If you're interested in one of the Games Workshop games (Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, or Lord of the Rings), it's even easier: GW stores exist to help bring new people into the hobby. Non-GW games (like Warmachine and Malifaux) tend to have some pretty evangelical fans, who will be more than happy to run you through some demo games.

So, it's pretty easy to get an overview of how a game plays and what the different faction options are like before you've spent a dime.

Step 2: Choosing a Faction

Deciding what faction/army you want to play is probably the biggest decision you'll make with minis.

You're going to spend an immense amount of time playing around with your toy soldiers, so it's very important that you're excited about them. If you're not excited about the heap of toy soldiers you need to assemble, convert, paint and push around… there isn't much point, is there?

There are four criteria you need to consider when choosing your first faction

Cool Minis 

Fundamentally, these games are about the toys. You've got to think those toys are cool, otherwise, why bother? (Inevitably, every faction has a dud or two, but if you're excited about most of the line, you're in okay shape.)

Skim the internet to look what models go into a faction's line. Look at what other people are putting on the table: sometimes a model just doesn't photograph well, but looks great in person.

Interesting Fluff

Every faction comes with some amount of backstory: be it fiction inserted between sections of the rulebook (as with Malifaux) or articulated in video games and dozens of novels (Warhammer). They each have a distinct personality that goes well beyond "good guys" or "bad guys." 

More than anything, you need to find that backstory interesting and fun. If you think Space Marines are boring, bland and vanilla then you really shouldn't waste your time on them; waste your time on the awesome verminous ratmen that dwell beneath the surface of the Old World, instead.

Again, hit the internet: your chosen games' website will have a lot of information on it, and it's more than a little depressing how detailed the information about these settings is on Wikipedia.

Engaging Gameplay

Different factions play differently: if they didn't. Some will be more mobile and fragile; others slow and resilient. Some will excel at a range and falter in close combat: others excel at close combat and ignore shooting. 

It's important to find a faction that supports a playstyle you enjoy. If you enjoy playing games where your troops punch the other guy's troops in the face, then you should find a faction that supports that, and avoid factions that make that sort of playstyle difficult. 

Note that this can be tricky. Although it should be quickly apparent that Elves favor small units of elite troops and Orks, favor large mobs of enthusiastic if unskilled troops… what's less apparent are what playstyles you'll actually enjoy. It's possible that, beginning, you want play an faction that stands at range and blasts away at their enemies… but after several games realize that you'd rather be playing the faction that engages the enemy in melee as quickly as possible.

This is where demo games and interacting with other players will be very valuable.

A Forgiving Learning Curve

The fact of the matter is that some factions are easy to grok while others are tricky. Unfortunately, it's not immediately apparent which is which: factions don't come with Beginner-Intermediate-Expert labels on them.

Playing a faction you can't get your head around is going to be frustrating: nothing kills enthusiasm quite like frustration. Starting with a faction that's easy to learn, mastering it, and then (if you're inclined) moving on to a more challenging faction is a solid plan. Don't set yourself up for failure.

Research and talking with veteran players will help make this clear.

Step 3: Do It to Do It

Buy your toys, put your toys together, and play with your toys.

Buy Your Toys

I'm not going to kid you: this isn't a cheap hobby, but it's a relatively inexpensive one. What I mean by that is: yes, that model tank might cost as much as an Xbox game and yes, you'll need more than one… but you're very likely to spend more time assembling, painting, and playing with that tank than you would playing through said Xbox game. 

Different games have different entry points, but regardless of the game: a full army isn't going to be cheap. But, in a dollar/hour of entertainment sense, you'll get a lot of bang for your buck.

Additionally, there are a host of things you can do to mitigate those costs: it's easy to find great deals on someone else's unwanted toys on eBay. Online retailers offer a ~20% discount off MSRP (though you should, if you can, support your FLGS). Companies like Mantic and Wargames Factory have built a business model around offering lower-cost models for other companies' games. What faction you choose to field will drive what your options are.

Finally, I'd recommend starting as small as possible. It's tempting (and, in its own way, fun) to buy an entire army's worth of models at once… but this leads to an enormous, intimidating pile of minis to assemble. It's better bite off manageable chunks and to do a unit or two at a time.

Build Your Toys

There are pages and pages about how to go about doing this. Rather than repeat all of that here, I'll touch on a few key things and direct you to the internet for the rest:

• There are different kinds of glue. If you're gluing plastic to plastic, you probably should be using plastic cement glue. There are many brands, but Testor's Liquid Cement is the best of them, period. For everything else, use some form of superglue.
• Invest in hobby clippers. Don't try snipping your bits off of their sprue with anything else.
• Also, invest in an X-acto knife. You'll use this to shave mold lines and flash off your models.
• Be patient. Dry-fit things before you glue them together.
• Set your expectations to reasonable. You just started; you're going to make some mistakes, and that's okay.

Play with Your Toys

That's the point, right? Hit your FLGS, talk to the other folks who play the game there, and start arranging learning games. Don't be intimidated. Everyone in the hobby is happy to see new folks pick it up, and knows what it's like to be just starting out.

That's how everyone gets started: by playing games that aren't about winning, losing, or even finishing so much as being about going through the motions, working through the ruleset and figuring out what you're doing. You'll have your sea legs in no time.

Paint Your Toys

Note that I left this off the initial list. That was deliberate. Outside of Grand Tournaments, playing with painted models is generally optional. 

Some people are really only interested in building and painting toy soldiers. Other people don't want to bother with painting; they just want to play the game. There's a large middle ground between those two extremes. The hobby is a big tent, and there's no one right way to enjoy it.

Nobody expects someone just starting out to have a fully painted army. It's better to play unpainted then not at all. 

It's good to work towards painting your toy soldiers, though. The time you spend and enjoyment you get from it goes a long way towards delivering that great dollar/hour value I mentioned above. As importantly, the game is just objectively better when played with two fully painted armies.

Just don't let unpainted miniatures prevent you from enjoying the hobby.

Do's & Don’t's

In closing, some random pieces of advice I didn't have room for above:

• DO cruise the hobby blogosphere. There's some really neat stuff out there, and a lot of people are hugely supportive and happy to help you out with advice and tips.

• DON'T go near forums. It's tempting, but there's something about hobby forums that gets unusually hostile, negative and argumentative much more quickly that most forums. There's an entire subhobby, for example, of people who haven't played Games Workshop games in over half a decade but still feel the need to vociferously complain about the company at every opportunity.
• DO strive to get better. The great thing about this hobby is that there's always room for improvement, in play, in painting, etc.
• DON'T let yourself get intimidated. John Kovalic said it best when he described White Dwarf as pornography: pictures of beautiful, sexy things printed on glossy paper that you'll likely never have. Nobody expects you, particularly as a new player, to paint to the 'Eavy Metal standard. Paint to what you're happy with, be happy with what you paint to.
• DO play with lots of different people. There are lots of very cool folks involved in this hobby. You're going to have a great time.
• DON'T get discouraged if you have a bad game. Every hobby has its asshats and everybody has bad days.
• DO look at the different games being played at your FLGS. Different games have different strengths.
• DON'T pay attention to folks who play a different game than the one you've chosen when they tell you their game is objectively better (c'mon, really) / cheaper (it almost certainly isn't) / more fun (that's really driven by you and your opponents, not the system).

Most importantly have fun!  

The badass images are all from Rush's blog, Warpstone Pile