As part of my ongoing research into tabletop miniature / board game type hybrid games, I recently picked up Puppet Wars Unstitched from Wyrd Games.

I know this game is NOT new.  It’s been out for a while, but I still picked it up along with another few games as I think it’s a great place to start my research and also because it looks like it might be a lot of fun to play!!!

I’m doing this research because as I mentioned in my Developers Journal blog post last week, I want to eventually design my own tabletop miniatures game, and I haven’t totally decided yet but I’m leaning towards first launching it as a tabletop mini / board game hybrid and then re-investing any profits I make from that launch (if any) into building out an actual full sized game universe.

In the past I haven’t really been into these tabletop miniature / board game hybrid type games.  I preferred to spend my money on buying more miniatures for my tabletop armies as I love the hobby side of building and painting them.

However, since I have been thinking of coming out with my own miniatures game and realizing that I may need to start with a tabletop / board game type hybrid I figured it would be really dumb to even attempt such a thing without first playing a bunch of the games that have already come out in the last few years and getting a feel for what they offer.

One of the first games I picked up was Puppet Wars Unstitched from Wyrd Games and in this post I’ll show you guys some pictures of what’s inside the box and my first impressions so far.

What’s In the Box

First, let’s start with the most important part, which is the miniatures! 🙂

In the box you’ll find four sprues.

The first sprue contains three Masters – Seamus, Lady Justice and Pokey Viktoria, and five Sidekicks – Misaki, Judge, Bete Noire, The Hooded Rider and Rusty Alyce.

Here is the sprue show below – front and back.

The production quality and detail of these miniatures looks identical to Malifaux.  It looks like the same type of plastic, and the miniatures are sculpted with the same level of detail as any other Malifaux miniature.

The second sprue in this set contains all twelve of the Pawns included in this set – Nurse, Ronin, Malifaux Cherub, Convict Gunslinger, Rotten Belle, Silurid, December Acolyte, Punk Zombie, Death Marshall, Razorspine Rattler, Executioner and Guild Austringer.

Here’s the sprue shown below – front and back.

There are three sets of these Pawn sprues, which gives you a total of 36 Pawn miniatures.

Combine that with the 8 miniatures on the Master / Sidekick sprue and you’ve got yourself 44 high quality plastic miniatures to build, paint and play with! 🙂

Next we have a 43 page rule book which explains exactly how to play the game and an assembly sheet showing you how to assemble the minis.

Next we have all the stat cards for all the Masters, the Sidekicks and the Pawns.

Each of the Pawn cards also double as upgrade cards on the back, as is explained in the rule book.

Although I haven’t played the game just yet I have read through the rule book and my understanding is that when a Pawn puppet gets killed (or Torn Apart in Puppet Wars lingo) – it’s possible to take parts of that Puppet and use them to upgrade another Puppet. 🙂

How fun! 🙂

Next, included in the set are also two full Fate Decks!

I’m not sure if all of the sets are like this, but my Fate Decks came as plastic covered cards which is really awesome as they’ll make a nice set of durable Fate Deck cards I can use not only in this game but also for playing Malifaux.  Sweet!

Next, we have a bunch of tokens, markers and of course a 44 plastic bases for the miniatures.

You’ll notice that the bases have holes in them, which are there for mounting the Puppets to the bases once you build them, as each Puppet is designed to have a round cylindrical peg on the bottom of it which fits into one of those holes to make them easier to mount to the bases.

And then finally we have the actual game board itself which you play Puppet Wars on which is really bright and colorful!

As far as my initial impressions on this game, I’m actually really impressed with the amount of value they include in this box.

If you’re mostly into the hobby side of tabletop gaming, you get a nice set of 44 high-quality miniatures to build and paint to your liking…

… and you get everything else you’d need in the box to actually start playing the game…

… and you get two Fate Decks that you can use for Malifaux as well.

Speaking of Malifaux and how it relates to this game, after reading through the rule book in Puppet Wars I realized that this game is basically like a simplified path to learning how to play Malifaux.

Meaning, the rules are similar to Malifaux, but just simplified.

Some of the mechanics and dynamics of how the game is played are identical to Malifaux, except maybe a bit more simplified, so if you’re just getting started with Malifaux, this game might be a great way to jump in and to get a feel for what the Wyrd / Malifaux universe of games is like.

I’ll do another post once I’ve had a chance to actually build all of the miniatures as well.

Have you played Puppet Wars Unstitched yet?

If so, what did you think about it?

What other tabletop miniature / board game hybrid type games have you played and do you have any recommendations for any that I might want to jump into and add to my list of games to research?