Battle for Macragge

One of the guys I play with bought Battle for Macragge a while back, and well, we don't play it, because we play 40k, and as far as I can tell, Battle is just a 40k starter set. The thing is though, if you don't already know this, it is a very inexpensive starter set. It comes with a bunch of genestealers, a bunch of gaunts, a few marines, some really cool scenery, and a rulebook.

The real rulebook for 40k costs about $50 (last time I checked) which is only slightly more than Battle and you get a slightly abridged softcover of the book. Mostly they take out the crap rules that you could either come up with yourself, no one ever uses, or the ones you can get on line for free. No 40k in 40 minutes, for instance, but other than that, nothing you really need to play.

So, overall, I think Battle is worth the $45 it sells for. Here's the thing though, and I think this says everything about GW as a company and its relation to its players. The major terrain for Macragge is a crash space ship that basically composes five or so plates ranging from 2"x3" space to enormous plates of about 8"x4." They look good too. I'll give them that, but as a guy who builds terrain, let me just say this: getting terrain that looks good isn't difficult. Think about hills. Do you think it's hard to make a hill that looks natural? No. It's a lump of stryene insolation, nothing more. Cover it with some grass and people are likely to say, "wow, that's a good looking hill," but terrain makers don't do that. Nor, may I add, do we grab models from Korea anime and bury it half into a plate of styrene concealing the lines with spackle. We could. It's not that hard.

The thing is, 40k scenery has to serve two functions. It has to look good, sure--that's the first function. But it is the second function that is the most important. A miniature has to be able to interact with the scenery. If a building is supposed to block line of sight up to level 3, then I don't want to see the skimmer hovering over it. If the footprint is cover, then any miniature inside the footprint better look like it has cover. Otherwise, I could just draw out the battle on a vinyl battle map. At the very least, a miniature aught to be able to stand on the terrain.

That's why hills aren't made as lumps but created in steps of height. That's why staircases are the bane of 40k terrain designers. But GW evidently doesn't know this because it is nigh impossible to stand a miniature on any of the scenery that comes with Macragge. You end up having to call it impassible terrain or some shit, and it's just not true; it doesn't look impassible, just poorly envisioned.

Still, you get a rulebook, a bunch of miniatures, and terrain that looks good if little else, and for $45, as far as the GW line is concerned, that's a steal.