MiniWarGaming

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We play and call it work!

Co-founded by Dave and Matt, MiniWarGaming is one of the best known gaming groups online, hailing from the glorious Canuckistan, Canada. They originally had a gamestore in addition to their cool Youtube channel until That Guy Tom Kirby messed up with GW sales rules. They switched to bringing a physical space for wargamers to play in very cool themed war-rooms at The Vault in exchange of a fair quote. They still make tons of videos which are very good for anyone who just wants to enjoy watching a good tabletop fight, see them discussing about a wide array of tabletop news and topics, or get introduced to the hobby. They have hundreds of HowTo Videos, especially painting guides. The fair priced paid membership (called "The Vault") gives access to all of their videos including even painting DVDs, full narrative campaigns, list/aftergame discussions... Dave and Matt have a team of employees who help them in their mission to do all the stuff needed to keep the business running. Each are really cool guys, each one with his own quirks (no, not Quirk, who was part of the team too) and backgrounds.

It is well known that nobody on the MWG team can get through a game without showing egregious misunderstanding of the rules.

The Team

Dave

Co-founder and wearer of a badass beard and long hair, Dave is well known for being a Chaos, Space Wolves and Blood Angels player, and runs the Shrine of Chaos commentary section as well as Life of a War-gamer slice-of-life section. Like any self-respecting melee-oriented gamer, he hates the Tau with a passion, although he never takes it personally if someone plays them (probably to keep his long time friendship with Matt). He tends to be the energetic songbird, while Matt is more like an Owl. He usually has a very cheerful personality and likes to joke a lot, accepting challenges from anyone around the world to show the prowess of his Chaos, Space Wolves, and Blood Angels armies. His filmed games are titled "Banter Batrep" for a reason - there's a lot of chatter and they can get very silly. He's half Chinese and half Norwegian, which is pretty cool, and he makes movies about being a ranger and fighting orks (one of them played by Steve). Dave is the inofficial Chaos God of proxying miniatures. All miniatures can obtain the "Mark of Dave" for being something entirely different, have totally different loadout. You name it, there's a good chance it'll get the Mark of Dave.

Matt

The other co-founder, a calm and soft-spoken guy until the dice start rolling. In some ways, he is the opposite of Dave as he seems to have a range-oriented playstyle. He is a long-time Tyranid player, even during the period where they were having a bad time, which shows how he would prefer to actually have a fun game rather than curb-stomp your opponent. This doesn't mean that he could easily do that too, curtosey of his blue-themed Necron army. He also runs the Sit And Talk Q&A vlog, and isn't afraid of talking about serious stuff like religion (like Dave he is Mormon), politics, society and some other off-topic stuff fans may like to ask. Like Dave, he accepts challenges from all around the world in his the battle reports. He does a funky dance at the start of his batreps, for whatever reason.

Steve

AKA The Mountain, an elegan/tg/entleman who likes to have a good fight, discussing the rules and helping with the videos. Steve helped create some homebrew rules for playing a point based system for Age of Sigmar. MWG's resident Eldar/Dark Eldar player (Also plays a lot of Dark Angels) as well as the main host of Old World Wars, MWG's Warhammer Fantasy show. Though he has played almost every army, he mainly plays High Elves, Lizardmen and owns a Vampire Count army he claims not to like and has even tried to sell on occasion. He paints fast and well, which is amazing considering his muckle hands. He also runs a small spin-off show called "Moutain Miniatures Gaming" where he and (mostly) other MWG employees do games from time to time after work. Sometimes they also play different games from other manufacturers, too.

Josh

Plays for Sandwiches. Has a massive beard and has to use an old-school mic because of it instead of the clip-on style everyone else uses. Before working at MWG, Josh was once a player back when they had a store playing in some of the original Warmachine League series.

Janene

She is another great painter of the MWG Team and she does a lot of painting tutorials. An American woman based out of Utah, she herself is not Mormon, despite her location.

Cullen

Young guy they would bring in to help during the summer who has become a permanent staff member. He is known mainly for playing Skaven and having awful rolls, especially when it comes to artillery dice. Cullen was later introduced as a host and today he often does interviews with the other staff members. He was orginally hired as a film editor, which comes to show you how far he has come.

Luka

Mr. The Dice. The guy obsessed with cats and tacos (rightfully so). A fan of Warhammer Fantasy, he initially mentioned that the only 40k faction he liked was the Necrons, but nowadays, he plays pretty much anything. Gets very into it when roleplaying be it RPGs or narrative campaigns. Him and his character, Festus Duberstein, are the breakout stars of the Dark Heresy campaign they're doing. Now Yogvir in "Yogvir and Tor". Has a buddy called Kenny with charming mannerisms. He also has a bad habit of bending the rules when something doesn't quite suit him. Sometimes this isn't malicious as he will flat out just not remember the rules correctly (wulfen are t4 buddy! NOT t5!)

Erin

Is not a game host but she shows up on cam quite often as a sidekick in "The Open Vault" and that kind of shows. Being a secretary (and most probably doing some actual work while everyone else is playing around with toys) she seems to know every former and current staff members - indicating that she is most probably one of the longest hired employees at MWG.

The scheduled shows

After they stopped selling miniatures they went filming full time. To compensate for their expanses, they sell "Vault" Memberships (starting around 4 CAN$/Month) which grants subscribers access to more videos, batreps... One weekly show is called "Sit and Talk"/"Sit and Vault" where staff members answer viewers' questions. Another show is "The Open Vault" where they show how they work to the community.

One of the big pros of this channel is their narrative campaigns for different gaming systems. Despite any of their campaigns is a new show strictly speaking, they are released that often, that they are like a scheduled program on their own. Matt pointed out in several "Sit and Talk" shows that those campaigns are the most common reason why people sign up for the vault.

In addition they have a lot of battle reports going on. Those are normally played against visitors. Anyone can challenge them for a game or two and is then invited to their office at Niagara, Canada. Despite their high production quality the reports are aimed at casual players and normally don't include high level tournament lists. Lately two assisting shows appeared "In the mind of ..." and "The Breakdown" where the hosts and the guest will talk about what their list was intended to do and how it went in the actual game. Especially "The Breakdown" is aimed more towards tournament players and uses official tournament rules and objectives.

Other gaming systems than AoS or 40k

The channel officially covers 30k/Horus Heresy - however they don't have as many guests for that. So battle reports for 30k occur more rarely. Other systems largely depend on the remaining time, as most visitors want to play 40k, according to different statements by several hosts. There are some games of Fantasy on the channel but even Dave and Matt learned Age of Sigmar lately. They sometimes do cover other GW games such as "Kill Team" and "Shadespire". For other systems and/or manufacturers Matt stated that the viewer interest is quite low (actually really low). To give other systems a chance, they offer a sponsor program in which they will honestly play other game systems for a fee. For a long time, Lord of the Rings/ Middle Earth/ Hobbit wasn't featured on the channel. However, since the end of 2019 some battle reports come out from time to time now. Some members such as Steve run small after work hours channels, in which other systems are played sometimes.

The Bunker

The MWG crew opened their new office, called "The Bunker". The new place offers much more space and has a lot of studios, storage rooms, a real kitchen and even guest rooms, allowing visitors to stay over night. In the front of the building there is even a miniature store, run by some other company. As the place had to be stripped down and rebuild to meet legal requirements, the move took around two years. There is a series of Vlogs where Dave shows the progress of the Bunker. June 22 2019 was the grand opening of the MWG Bunker - a local event even the Mayor attended. The completed Bunker features a big tournament hall, recording studios, offices and guest rooms - almost everything is themed to match the Warhammer/Miniatures hobby.

Former Members

Dan

A passionate and avid Ork player who wears a quite epic beard able to rival many. He was a big part of the team until he sadly had to leave MWG, moving away. Dan is very excited and loved playing, getting into his role of an Ork with the most impressive WAAA(Gh)s on the site (Even though he did also play Tau for a while). Dan was sort of a middleground between Matt and Dave, having a lot of enthusiasm with the game but being a more calm person. Dave and Dan are close friends and Dave sees Dan as his battle brother. Dan still makes videos on 40k and Warmachine on his own channel, Codex Dan.

Leland

Left around December 2015 due to reasons Matt will not disclose, as is the norm in business. Sadly with his departure this brought an end to the Infinity videos as he was the only one who played them. Though Matt claims that Infinity was going to get in the way of their 30k videos anyways. Played Sisters of Battle, and was much loved for being a nice guy and playing in one of the best narrative campaigns on the site, "The Utgard Infestation."

Jay

AKA MiniWarGamer Jay. He moved away from the area where MWG is located and and thus had to leave. He has his own YouTube channel for 40K batreps, painting tutorials, and codex reviews. He's best known for his big eyes, which MWG players (especially Dave) call back to on 1's when rolling.

Owen

AKA The Cooler, due to people's dice going Fenrisian whenever he walked into the room. He has his own gaming channel on YouTube. Mostly seems to love Mordheim.

Ash

A former GW employee who worked for MWG for about a year then left. Ash plays a wide variety of games, and knows a lot of people in the tabletop business. He now runs Guerrilla Miniature Games' YouTube channel and Patreon.

Joe

Joe is no mere man; for he goes to the tops of mountains shirtless - for this is the best way to cut glass. Joe was in fact never employed by MiniWarGaming but appeared in many of their older videos. He ran a series of battle reports on the road with his camera phone which did well simply because he was enjoyable to watch. He voices the strange sounding grots in 40k Rejects.

Quirk

Born David Beverly 'Quirk' Quirk. He's the brave guy who did an Eldar/Harlequin 24 hour painting live stream in preparation the LVO tournament. Played Harlequins, Alpha Legion and Orks for Miniwargaming, and he owned a Brimstone army (which was sold to MWG). He entertains the public with fun reactions to bad rolls, pranks and an amazing mohawk. He was the resident Warmachine player until they recently stopped covering it and he shortly hosted MiniWargaming Plays, a show based on GW themed video games. Despite often losing games to ridiculously bad dice rolls, he is a successful pro tournament player off-screen. He is the origin of the "2 wound lootas" meme. Allegedly fired around October 2018 due to a lifestyle the Mormon owners did not agree with. He now works as a realtor selling properties.

Kris

Bearer of epic hair (both facial and cranial), Kris was MWG's senior painting guru. He provided the vast majority of their painting and model building tutorials and had his own live show, Way of the Brush, on Saturdays. He played Eldar, mostly in Steve's "Mountain Miniatures Gaming" show. Kris was let go by MWG in August 2019.

Lee

Angry Viking who lived in the basement. Paints miniatures like a hurricane with a brush. He scratch-built them a Thunderhawk Gunship and they imported him from Iceland to paint their armies. He is a master kit basher and terrain builder as well. In front of camera he was often seen with Josh or being interviewed by one of the other hosts on his work. Lee was let go by MWG in September 2019.

Rob

Angriest and Vikingest of them all, he was the pretty cool guy that edits their videos. Rarely showed up in person, mostly with Dave. Rob left MWG in September 2019. He has returned as of the sit and talk on March 13, 2021

Vito

He was originally part of the bunker crew and then full time staff. Most notable for his painting skillz, he mostly plays White Scars, Daemons of Slaanesh and Thousand Sons. It was announced in a Sit and Talk at the end of August 2020 that Vito has left MWG.

tl;dr

A great bunch of people.

Links

• The official MiniWarGaming website.
• MiniWarGaming's YouTube channel.