MiniWarGaming
This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it |
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 is part of the team too) and backgrounds.
It is well known that if there was justice on this world these guys would be the headstaff of Games Workshop.
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 (otherwise it wouldn't have been possible for him to be friends with Matt). As you may imagine, he is the crazy red oni to the calm blue oni Matt, not that Matt doesn't have his moments too. He usually has a very cheerful personality and likes to joke a lot, he accepts 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 beeing something entirely different, have totally different loadout ... you name it.
Matt
The other co-founder, a calm and soft-spoken guy (except when he is playing, but come on who hasn't got bumped up when rolling the die). 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 (thanks to 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, unlike Anne Rice, we are totally ok about that), 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 bring in to help during the summer (now a permanent member of staff) 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 is actually a film editor and started to work at MWG as such.
Lee
Angry Viking who lives 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 is often seen with Josh or being interviewed by one of the other hosts on his work.
Rob
Angriest and Vikingest of them all he is the pretty cool guy that edits their videos. Rarely shows up in person, mostly with Dave.
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.
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 an 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.
Vito
AKA The Vest. Originally part of the Bunker crew, now content producer. In addition to making videos, he's a backup painter for MWG (probably because of his mad painting skillz).
He did comission painting before and one of his armies was even featured on MWG some years ago.
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. As for now, there is no show featuring the Middle Earth/Lord of the Rings/Hobbit games. Some members such as Steve run small after work hours channels, in which other systems are played from time to time.
The Bunker
The MWG crew is currently working on their new office, called "The Bunker". The new place offers much more space and they will put in 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 there is no official opening day so far. However, Dave runs a series of Vlogs, showing the progress of the Bunker. Some new guys were hired to help with the build. According to them, some of the studios had been completed in Summer 2018.
An online article featuring an interview with Dave has confirmed that June 22 2019 is the grand opening of the MWG Bunker.
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 usual with businesses). However it does not seem to be in bad blood as he commented positively on MWG's website and a video short was released with him in it shortly after his departure. 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. Left around October 2018 due to passing Realtor exams and now works selling property, but he still hangs out with the MWG crew and will most likely show up in videos as a guest.
===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 left MWG left in August 2019.