034 - Puppet Wars - what did I miss?

Several threads are starting to show up on the Wyrd boards of people showing off their puppet models from Wyrd's new Puppet Wars board game, and there's been plenty of admiration, but I have to admit I'm just not seeing the model's appeal.

Let me start by saying I haven't played the game, or seen it played. I've been hoping one of the local gamers has picked up a copy as I'd quite like to give it a go and see how it runs. I do really like the idea of a stripped down "Malifaux-lite" that takes less than an hour to get through and doesn't need a lot of space or time to set up. I'm sure it's a lot of fun to play, although I have my doubts about how successful it'll be outside the established Malifaux player base. To a person not already familiar with the Malifaux fluff, it doesn't seem to me that, for example, Puppet Nino or Puppet Bad Juju would be particularly characterful, instead they'd just end up being abstract pieces devoid of context.



What is "Nino" anyway?

There's one main reason, though, why i don't plan on buying the game for myself and that reason is, im sorry to say, the models are just not very attractive! Compare something like the Puppet Rotten Belle or Puppet Witchling Stalker to pretty much anything in the Malifaux range and the lack of detail is astonishingly obvious. I honestly believe I could sculpt models myself to the level of detail on the Puppets I've seen so far.

Brown blob with a sword

I know they're meant to be puppets, and so will inevitably be simpler models, but some look like amorphous blobs and don't capture the essence (for me at least) of the Malifaux models they're based on. There are a couple of notable exceptions - Lucius is nice, and the Canine Remains is rather cute, but on the whole I'm not too excited. Usually when Ratty on the Wyrd boards posts up his most recent work it inspires me to run out and try something similar, but this time I'm not feeling it.

Mike