My kids, Niilo and Saara, have always been interested in daddy's gaming nights. Especially the snacks and
candy. At one point Saara exclaimed: "Mommy can not play games. Mommy does not eat chips." Seeing that
they had started to grasp the concepts of simple boardgames, such as movement, turns and generally
having rules at all, I decided to introduce them to the wonderful world of miniatures gaming.
Thus this introductory game. Saara is 6 years old while Niilo is 3. There are no hard and fast rules here, I just wanted to familiarize them with the concept of moving the figures, planning ahead and so on. For the figures I chose a bunch of MageKnight figures I had bought as a sampler but never really used. This proved to be a good choice, since pretty soon after spotting the miniatures Niilo decided to simulate fighting by banging miniatures against each other.
We had a simple basic fairytale plot: The princess had been kidnapped by an evil witch, who was holding
her captive in a sinister tower. Two groups of local heroes set off trying to rescue her. All sorts of
monsters would be lurking by the trail, and there might be some help too.
To keep things simple, all models moved 12" per turn. I handed 12" rulers to the kids for measuring.
Niilo did not quite grasp the concept of measuring the moves, he would frequently just pick up the
figures and move them to a spot he thought suitable (though I do know some adult players who also
do that sort of thing). Saara adjusted to the concept pretty quickly.
It was surprisingly hard keeping their focus on the mission at hand. Niilo just went flying about
without a care, but Saara more or less followed the trail. However, upon spotting any monsters, she would
just run away from the confrontation.
After a couple of abortive attempts at getting Saara to explore off the beaten path, I just railroaded
them into a confrontation. The combat system again was simplicity itself, just roll dice and compare
scores. Even though they had already used dice in boardgames, it was a novel concept to them that
dice scores could be compared.
Soon the heroes dispatch the opposition and head reach the witch's castle. Sound the trumpets, good
has triumphed over evil again!
On the whole it went relatively well, though I guess the next time I will build the game around some sort of competition they are already familiar with, e.g. racing. That should cut down on the "what am I supposed to do now?" aspect.
Showing a penchant for terrain building, Saara grabbed a bunch of popsicle sticks I collect for
terrain work and proceeded to build a pit trap over a crater in a styrofoam hill. After the
trap was finished, Niilo took one of the figures and started jumping it up and down on the trap
to see how it worked...
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Copyright 2003-2021 Mikko Kurki-Suonio
Sucks!
