Appreciation post: the guy who swapped his minis for tokens mid-session

Last night at my local shop in Austin, this dude just stopped a game of Twilight Imperium after two hours. He pulled out a bag of plastic tokens and replaced all his painted minis with them. Said he was tired of the miniatures blocking line of sight and slowing down combat. Honestly at first I thought he was messing up the game. But after that change, his turns went from 5 minutes to under 2. He finished his objectives way faster because he wasn't fiddling with positioning. I’ve been thinking about trying it with my Gloomhaven set after seeing how smooth his game went. Has anyone else ditched minis for tokens and noticed a big speed bump?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia_jones721mo ago

My buddy Mark tried this with Warhammer 40k last year. He spent like six months painting these Space Marine models, then just pulled out a bag of poker chips mid-game and started using them as units. One blue chip was a tactical squad, red chips were heavy weapons. Everyone at the store stared at him like he lost his mind. He won that game in half the usual time though and now he takes chips to every tournament. The painted minis just sit on a shelf at home.

james_butler1mo ago

People always react like it's some kind of heresy but honestly Mark's got the right idea. The whole point is playing the game not staring at your paint job for hours. Poker chips are basically perfect tokens once you assign a color code and nobody argues about line of sight when it's just a flat chip sitting on the table. I bet half the guys who gave him dirty looks secretly wanted to ditch their own backpacks of minis they'll never finish painting. It's just hard to admit you spent two hundred bucks on plastic that now lives in a box.