CARDBBOARD MANIFESTO
Pieces should have a purpose
If you’ve tried playing digital versions of board games, you’ve probably noticed something before too long – usually, it’s just not as fun as playing the physical version. Part of that is the fact you’re probably playing with people over a video call (if not just against an AI) but the other key part is the loss of tactility. Moving physical pieces around is satisfying and fun. Board games are, in one sense, simply elaborate toy sets – ones with codified rules and goals, but toys to be played with, nonetheless.
And with an ever growing push towards intricate, gorgeous miniatures being included with games, it seems this should be more obvious than ever. Sure, you could play Anachrony with your hulking robotic exosuits for traversing the post-apocalyptic wasteland represented by a cardboard hexagon with their worker pilot on top – but wouldn’t you rather actually have that exosuit in a 3D sculpt with a slot to slide your worker into? It gives impact to your presence on the board and sells the story of this expedition being costly to power and meaningful in impact. The toy aspect of the game shines through as you move your models around, playing out your decisions and actions.
But as more games – especially those on Kickstarter – find themselves adding these miniatures, some fail to identify the key difference between a toy and an ornament.
The models are crafted with care and imagination, but their role in the game is revealed to be ‘put it onto a card, then take it off again and put it back in the box 10 minutes later.’
For some people, that can be enough. A real physical rendering of what would normally have been left to card art and your imagination may help immerse you in the setting, and for fans of painting, a box of unique sculpts may be a joy regardless of their use in-game. If you’re someone for who those statements don’t apply, though, the addition of models with little to no use in-game can be a real negative for the product as a whole.
Take Vindication. This is a game of exploring an island and redeeming yourself via the medium of converting cubes into victory points. It’s a good middling-weight game with an intriguing mix of genres and game elements, but it lives in a box that looks like it’s been passed on by an older sibling before it’s had a chance to grow into it yet. This is the fault of seven stonking great miniatures (and a shaped insert to keep their remarkable number of pointy bits intact) of which the most used in the game is…the first player marker. This isn’t even a game with rounds – the marker is given to whoever goes first and sits stationary in front of them until the end of the game.
Meanwhile, the other models aren’t used unless you’ve included certain modules and expansions, and when they are, again just sit in a single place for half a game, before going back in the box.
Now, don’t get me wrong – these are great models. In a way, that’s what makes their lack of use so galling – I want to play with them. I want these pieces to be useful and to help depict my adventures in an immersive way. Unfortunately, though, they aren’t part of my toy set, they’re ornaments that honestly would feel more at home kept out of the box and on a shelf, always visible but crucially out of the way.
Components in games should have a place and a purpose – which means they need to be something you play with. This could be representing a unit you control, moving around to show its location; it could be an item whose physicality is directly used (think the birdfeeder dice tower from Wingspan). It could even be something that provides key information that nothing else could do as well, like the directions that ships are facing in X-Wing or the ‘strange objects’ you get in an EXIT game. But if I’m not picking it up, moving it around, using it in some way, then it’s not a playing piece: it’s an art book that takes up more space. Board games, when we can play them in person, should be tactile experiences. Let’s have games that hold that ethos for their actual pieces.