Wednesday 2 January 2013

A Young Padawan Joins the Dark Side...


"Ha,ha, ha" (throaty laughter heard in the background).
"My evil plan looks working and the young Padawan is irresistibly attracted by Dark Side ...of the hobby"

Yes!!! I tempted my son with a basic box of X-Wing on Christmas Day and finally yesterday we spent the full New Year Day afternoon fighting against each other in a far away galaxy... and he really enjoyed the experience, to the extent that we have another game scheduled this afternoon.

Little Luke Skywalker chasing Imperial baddies
First "wargame" for Alex, and a great victory to the father, considering that I have to fight vs Black Ops in the PS3 and the Magic cards addiction.

Seriously, I'm very happy with the experience. The game is really good and visually engaging. He very quickly grabbed an understanding of the main game mechanisms and, after the second game, he started developing some tactical sense of the game on his own. In fact I won the las game by a very short margin and after a very lucky last move: with only one of my Imperial Tie fighters on the table, and 1 hit point away from being defeated, I managed to put my ship on his flank and put a blast of my laser guns on him and ... kha-boom!!

Hopefully, a historical wargame would be the next step in the ladder. Now, for the expansion kits and deep space matt to play on it.    

9 comments:

  1. Afortunado tu hijo es.
    Aunque veo que el padre también disfruta con el juego ;)
    Con las expansiones y un tapete estrellado, el juego gana mucho. Merece la pena.
    ¡Que la fuerza os acompañe! :D

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  2. Well done, and all the best for future games too. Remember, plant the seed, but it takes time to grow.

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  3. You could try 'Bag the Jedi' from the TFL 2008 Summer Special and then after a few games suggest swapping the X-Wings for historical aircraft.

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  4. I did the same things with friends and youngins at a local comic shop. Started with Epic (the old system) and switched it out with Russians and Germans.

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  5. The force is strong with this one!

    Good work.

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  6. Excellent! It's great to get them to the point where they want to play with you.

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  7. I would try to figure out what draws him to play the games he plays, and build on that.

    For example, you mentioned Black Ops and Assassin's Creed, why does he prefer those games over others? Perhaps try and see if you can get him to game a modern game like Force on Force (Black Ops) or maybe something about the French and Indian Wars (the setting for Assassin's Creed III).

    You say he likes magic, is it the deck building aspect, the confrontational gameplay or something else that makes him play it? If he likes deck building, maybe a wargame where you can tinker and play around with your army list would attract him? (Maybe even, dare I say it... Warhammer, where you have the competitional nature as well?)

    If he just likes the gameplay, being able to pull off certain combos, then maybe Saga would be up his alley since it does combine historical figures with card gamey mechanics.

    What did he like about X-Wing? Just that it was Star Wars, or did he like the tactical challenge too? Then why not try Quadrant 13 with Star Wars figures? (You can get quite a lot of pre-painted Star Wars miniatures cheap on ebay, especially common figures like Stormtroopers and "ordinary" space creatures.) Or did he like rolling all the little quirky dice, then that's another thing that might make him like Saga.

    So meet him halfway there and try a game that might suit him better than what you regularly play. You can bring out the heavy stuff later when he's hooked.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Leif. Thanks for taking the time to think and write this. You made some excellent points indeed

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