I’m a big fan of Wizkids’ Pirates CSG. I must say that I was a little disappointed at first when I found out that the miniatures and their placement on the tabletop does not enter into the strategy and holds no relevance to the game-play. However, after coming to the realization that this was essentially a TCG like Magic, Pokemon, or WoW and was never intended to be a miniatures game, I really appreciate and agree with their decision to include the constructable miniatures in the game.

Like Pirates, building the miniatures is part of the fun and adds to the whole experience, and each pack comes with at least twice as many miniatures as a Pirates pack and only costs about $1 more.

Also, using miniatures of the ships instead of cards or counters helps draw you into the game and lets you better visualize what’s going on. This is part of the main appeal with any miniatures game. After all, you could play Warhammer 40000 with green pawns as orks and blue pawns as space marines, but would you really want to? (by the way, I’ve only played Warhammer 40000 once and do not have any miniatures for it. I don’t have that kind of money or time to blow on a hobby)

(This is not a rhetorical or pejorative question, actually; I really want to know. I’ve generally agreed with you on this in the past, and for some reason your putting it like this is making me question my position. I think I kind of like board game pawns to look like what they are, even if that doesn’t enter into gameplay. The question, I guess, is whether that adds enough value to a game being sold like this one.)

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