"Entry level" tabletop games?

[jimbob123432]

Despite what some people are saying, I'd advise against 40k or anything with minis for your first foray. I will admit it's fun and all (except for WarHammer stuff), but you really should try it out first to see if you like it. As a president of a gaming society, I've seen too may people jump into a certain game and sink way too much money into it before deciding they actually don't like it that much. That being said, if you do like minis, here are my suggestions:

Dystopian Wars - It's fairly similar to 40k, only with a much smaller price tag. Also, cyborg squids.
Malifaux - A game that uses cards instead of dice and has a tiny price tag when it comes to mini games (~$60-$100). It's a clockwork-Western-horror.

As for board/card games, Magic: the Gathering is awesome and so is Wizards' lesser-known game Hecatomb. D&D is fun, so is Legend of the Five Rings RPG, D20 Modern ( if you house-rule the Heal skill), and Rogue Trader (40k RPG).

 

[piinyouri]

I cut my teeth at a very young age on Hero Quest and Battle Masters.

I don't know if you can even find those anymore though.
Hero Quest is beginners DnD and BattleQuest, from what I can remember, is the Warhammer equivalent(instead of commanding single characters like in HQ, you command entire squads)

 

[jimbob123432]

I personally wouldn't touch WH40k with a ten-foot pole as it is quite the money sink.

That's what it may appear like, but in reality, you get so much bang for your buck it doesn't really matter. You get the awesome miniature, you construct it, you paint it, you play with it against your friends, and you gain a whole new setting with background material to obsess over. Still a cheaper hobby then videogames, and I suspect everyone on this forum plays videogames.

I don't really like Magic: the gathering at all. This game is also a lot more expensive then miniature wargaming, even though it seems very cheap.
But since the cards are thrown randomly in a pack, making a working deck involves buying a lot of cards, and most people want more then one deck. Then the next batch of cards comes along, giving you a real risk of making your expensive decks obsolete, so you got to keep buying if you want to compete.
In our gaming club, the best players were the ones who always bought a whole box of blisters when a new set came out and spend endless hours building their ridiculously overpowered decks. Casual players like me and my friends just stopped playing it, unable to compete in some stupid arms race because we wanted to buy miniatures instead of stupid cardboard bully.

Magic sucks.
(In my opinion, off course)

Your opinion respected, but I'd like to know what kind of players you have in your club. I run my local university's club and no serious player (myself included) tries to chance getting the cards they want in a pack, they'll just buy them. Now, I do agree with you that some cards can get ridiculously expense, but I just suggest trading in cards to get the ones you want. When's the last time you could trade in a Carnifex to get a squad of Marines?

As for the question of obsolescence, there are different formats for older players. There's Standard for people who like the latest block and have too much money, Modern for the Standard vets, and Legacy for everyone. I think 40k is much worse for obsolescence. I own Guard units with targeters on them that I can't enter into tournaments because of WYSIWYG. Same thing with my friend's Squats army. At least in Magic you can still play with old cards, even when they're out of block.

Finally, under the topic of "Standard players", we used to have the same problem: people coming into our room and expecting everyone to play Standard. These players will do one of two things: leave because their two-turn combo doesn't work (good riddance to them) or they will begin to apprentice under one of our masters in the ways of playing for fun (at least that's how one of them put it). The people in the latter category quickly realize that there is more to Magic then just winning tournaments and start to really enjoy the game.

Sorry about the long speech, but I just wanted to give my opinion as well and I welcome your thoughts and what I had to say.

40k sucks.
(In my opinion of course)

 

[Starik20X6]

I'm going to suggest you give some Lego board games a look (because I never miss an opportunity to go on about how much I like Lego). There's a huge variety available, and because they're Lego, they're designed a) to be really easy to get into and b) to be easy to customise and create your own rules (which is not only easy to do but actively encouraged). My personal favourite is Heroica, a series of modular dungeon-crawl type games that can be played individually or combined in any configuration.

 

[justnotcricket]

If you want something quick, you can't go past the simpler boardgame type ones like Settlers of Catan, Alhambra, Carcassonne etc etc. When I say simpler, I don't mean 'worse' or 'stupid' I literally just mean you can open the box and play more or less as easily as Monopoly, and a game can be quite short. The Call of Cthulu games like Arkham Horror are also awesome, although that one takes a bit longer to play.

Having said that, I personally am getting into D&D at the moment, and it's really fun. I had no experience of tabletop gaming (in the DnD sense) prior to that and I've found it much less of a hassle to get into as I thought I would. In the interests of full disclosure I did have the advantage of having played Baldur's gate etc before, so I had a sort of feel for the rules and character building.

The other nice thing about D&D (which I'm sure is true for some other similar games, I just haven't tried them), is that there are so many resources available (for FREE, as in stuff people have made and posted online, or even free official tutorials and guides and things) and it's so well supported and known, that it's not too much trouble to hack into. Even if you don't want a dedicated weekly session, you can still run individual encounters as games with characters you make for the purpose so you're not limited by how long you want to play for.

To anyone who is wary of D&D because of the miniatures, I'd say don't worry about them. If my characater is represented by a coffee bean or a gummi bear, I don't care. Sure, it's not as 'realistic' as a miniature (wow, was that ever a bizzare sentence...), but let's face it - D&D is all about imagination, even if you don't RP much, and miniatures are nice but not necessary. If you're prepared to use your imagination, D&D is cheaper and far more flexible than any of the boxed games (note: I didn't say *better*. That depends on what you're into). Sure, Wizards of the Coast will try and sell you any amount of stuff, and Games Workshop is already synonymous with highway robbery, but you don't *have* to buy any of it. Public libraries and the internet have most of the literature you need, and then if you feel you want to invest later in some official books and stuff you can.

Sorry for the wall of text!