War games go back a long way, and I'm pretty familiar with the historical and fantasy games that came before the big names around today.
But I feel as though sci fi comes up a little short. Was 40k/Rogue Trader the first big one to hit the scene? What inspired it? And what lesser known games came after it? I'd really like to read more rule sets, because it's something I enjoy, but it's such a niche thing I can't seem to find much. Any old school, hardcore folks wanna educate me?
Pic related, it's deadzone. Which I felt was awkward and didn't like very much.
>Which I felt was awkward and didn't like very much. Try the newest edition (2.0) with someone. It's much better.
Joshua Perry
Of the top of my head, I can think of Infinity, Beyond the Gates of Antares, Warpath and Deadzone, X-wing and Star Trek Attack Wing, Dark Age, and the Firestorm games.
No idea about Gates, since they haven't posted the rules for free like so many other companies, but I've heard its close to 40k.
X-wing and Star Trek Attack Wing are dog-fighting games in space. X-wing is very popular right not.
Dark Age is pretty good for a small skirmish game. Combat is brutal, most things die quickly once its targeted by the enemy. The art style will turn some people off, though, and the old models are pretty clunky, especially compared to the newer ones.
Don't know much about the Firestorm games, but the rules are up for free to try out.
Deadzone is releasing a new edition like, next week. Much better than the older edition. Warpath is two games in beta: Firefight, which is 40k using Mantic's style of rules, and Warpath, which is like Epic. The rules are good, but there's some big problems in each set, and the Firefight author has been silent for over a month now. But the Warpath author is active on the forums.
Christian Gray
40k's setting came from Combat 3000 and Laserburn, which itself inspired Laser Squad which lead to X-COM. Praised be. Its mechanics came from Warhammer, which was mostly pulled out of the blue to sell miniatures. Laserburn's neat, but clunky as all hell. Play Imperial Commander if you're that interested in proto-40k.
Brayden Johnson
Forgot Infiinity. Infinity is small, fast, and needs a lot of terrain. The rules punish models for moving out in the open, since enemy models can react to models as they move.
Matthew Wilson
Also Battletech.
Austin Hall
The scifi 5Core games, 5 Parsecs From Home Clash On The Fringe and No Stars In Sight are pretty cool. Lets you do campaigns of small to medium skirmishes with what you have available and a decent but not overly complex rule set.
There's also Tomorrow's War, which is mostly like Force On Force which I hear good things about but don't know much more than that.
Heavy Gear for a mech/powered armour wargame. Models look dope, game support is sketchy and erratic, but there's a new kick starter in the works.
Renegade Legion is there for you if you want to get old school print out sheets of hovertanks blowing the crap out of each other. Sort of fiddly but the template damage for different armour penetrations of different weapons was a cool idea.
Haven't played Fast And Dirty, which is free scifi wargaming rules, Gruntz and Star Gunts for your respective grunting needs, and This Is Not A Test for post apocalyptic skirmishing.
Colton Scott
"5 Parsecs From Home Clash On The Fringe and No Stars In Sight" sounds like a really expansive game.
Ian Thomas
Three different games, same/similar rules, I missed a comma. Its '5 Parsecs From Home', 'Clash On The Fringe', and 'No Stars In Sight'.
Dylan Walker
Off the top of my head non-GW or Mantic
Heavy Gear Battletech Warzone Infinity MERCS Robotech DropzonetDropfleet Commander Firestorm Armada/Planetfall Beyond the Gates of Antares X-Wing Star Trek Attck Wing Star Wars Armada A Call to Arms Judge Dredd Relic Knights Dark Age
Then there are the companies that just make rules and you use whatever models you want. Stuff like Tomorrows War and Gruntz.
There's tons of options out there if you look beyond just GW. Hit up Tabletop Gaming News and you'll probably be exposed to a good few new games(I know I discovered a few through them).
Kevin Martinez
Dropzone Commander is pretty cool, but unfortunately doesn't have a very big presence in the states; I'm more excited for their space game, Dropfleet, but I'd definitely get into Dropzone if I could.
Here's the PDFs for DZC, it's a pretty decent ruleset if I do say so myself.
I have not been able to find a PDF of the expansion rulebook online yet, so I may just end up photocopying my own.
For any Shaltari players in this thread, what do you think of the new walker, the Leopard? There's already talk on the forums about pairing two of them up with a Dreamsnare (for a total of 7 e12 shots) and making a knife fight block, but I'm not sure how effective that is at only 9 inches. Also, Firedrakes; autoinclude, or no?
Jackson Diaz
bump
Sebastian Powell
What's the latest on Heavy Gear? I've seen some gameplay vids and like the idea of running around in big stompy robots blowing each other up.
Bentley Miller
They did an awesome kickstarter and hopefully by fall there'll be plastic gears and a new edition of the rules.
Parker Price
Interesting, I'll be sure to keep tabs on it.
Aside from Battletech and Heavy Gear, are there any other wargames that use mechs?
Dominic Cruz
Dropzone Commander, though none of the mechs are traditional humanoid shape
Daniel Perez
>Aside from Battletech and Heavy Gear, are there any other wargames that use mechs? To add on to , it's only one faction that uses them; and they're not so much mechs as they are n-pedal vehicles; they really don't have different mechanics compared to tracked vehicles.
Mason Roberts
Technically Warmachine?
Bentley Hernandez
>it's only one faction that uses them The Shaltari also use walkers. Also large power armor/small mechs like the Samurai and Ronin.
Xavier Cooper
And forgot the image.
Noah Taylor
>Shaltari Hurr, I'm fucking retarded; sorry, it's late and I completely zoned out.
Speaking of the Ronin, how are they? E9 shots on a tiny 20 point platform seems like a mighty fine alternative to tomahawks.
Oliver Martinez
I have a really common problem when I read a lot of not super mainstream rulsets, where they just go INSANE with acronyms and abbreviations. It feels impenetrable. I feel like it's part of why DnD and 40k are more successful. They've definitely got a lot of stuff like AP and AC and the like, but most of the rule names are really descriptive and easier to digest.
Other stuff gets so crunchy.
Blake Williams
Age of Tyrants if you want 6mm battles. They have a kickstarter that got funded and have the rules on their site for free.
Jaxon Anderson
also worth mentioning is the 3 wargames by Ground Zero Games; Full Thrust, Dirtside, and Star Grunt which can interconnect to varying degrees(one is space combat, and the other two are different scales of ground combat)
Christian White
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Owen Rodriguez
No one has Laserburn, Combat 3000 or Laser Squad pdfs laying around, do they?
Asher Young
In my experience decent, cheap scout, great for wreaking havoc behind enemy lines. Drop them from an Eden (or multiple Spirits if you don't mind taking a bigger risk) and go command vehicle hunting.
Christian Ward
>Pic related, it's deadzone. Which I felt was awkward and didn't like very much.
So did Mantic, so they fixed it, out in a few more weeks
Joshua Russell
Wow, that took them a while. Did they fix the issue where being in cover made you easier to hit with certain weapons?
Carter Peterson
I've heard about that issue before, but don't know v1.0 to know what it was. What was the rule that caused that?
Dominic Wright
Well it took them a bit over 18 months to get a 2nd edition out the door, Including among many other changes a massive re-do and simplification of the suppression mechanic as well as a "bonfire of the cardboard" and the addition of a campaign system that you might actually want to play as opposed to trying 2 missions in and then going back to single games. "borrowed" just the right things from Necromunda.
Cameron Williams
Huh, really? Last time i heard the rules are still messed up in some parts and some gear are downright OP.
The models are dope thought, and i wish they get better this time.
Laserburn is the squad/RPG games, Imperial Commander the massed battles. Different from Wh40k by a lot.
Also, don't forget all the Metagaming microgames, which include Ogre, GEV, Ice War, Helltank and the like. These were all later 70's early 80's. Then you had the Traveller games, which included wargames.
Oh and even before Wh40K there was an article in the Citadel Magazine (I think) which had rules for laser weapons and the like in the first white box Warhammer game (before it became called Warhammer Fantasy).
Jeremiah Ross
Oh, and don't forget Starforce 300 also by Tabletop Games in 1980 (who did Laserburn).
And that's all before you get into the starship wargames, of which there were a lot too.
So no, Sci-fi did not draw the short straw at all in my opinion!
Nathan Morales
Interesting; If I ever find someone to play I'll have to give it a go.
I'm real interested in that 2x leopard 1x dreamsnare knife fight brick, though.
Gabriel Brown
yes. Among other things. There are no cards, period. There are army lists which are all in the books, and each unit has some weapon options (some more than others).
What was handled with cards got replaced by something. Each mission type has their own unique secret missions table, so no cards for that. And battle cards were replaced with command dice, which are pretty simplified but can still have the same helping effect.
And yeah the campaign system is actually good.
Adrian Murphy
>Metagaming microgames, which include Ogre, GEV, Ice War, Helltank and the like. T
Any pdf for them lying around?
Joshua Richardson
The rule explicitly said that automatic weapons were more likely to hit people in cover than people in the open. There was a side-bar that tried to justify it. It was entirely intentional.
Jaxon Myers
I think that depends on the game. 40K might seem simple but has so many singular, unique special rules that you have to memorize shit tons of stuff and that stuff is often unique to that thing (unique weapons for every army, unique force-wide rules for every army, unique rules for units, etc). It's certainly true though that some games go down that road which makes them hard to get into if you're not getting the same hard ons as the devs. Though I'm playing Infinity at the moment which mostly avoids those issues.
Ayden Ward
I always wanted to get into heavy gear and I have a couple of unbuilt, old metal models. Are they still in the same scale?
Jaxson Brown
Infinity has MiniMechs called TAGs (Tactical Armored Gear) but outside of a few super cheap miniTAGs you'll never really field (or want to field) more than one. While they're powerful sledgehammers in game you want to keep them supported because of the number of hard and soft counters that can gut them or functionally gut them from your list. You can make an effective list without them and build to counter them without one of your own, but if you bring one you'll need to build the list around it.
Gabriel Hernandez
No love for Striker ? GDW, part of the Traveller brand, I think that was based more directly on Laserburn than WH40k, open to education if I've got that wrong. Striker can be found at all good Traveller archives.
Gruntz is quite good too, more modern feel, and Osprey have Horizon War just out, yet to get it.
Striker was my jam, still have much lead and lead type content there......
have fun, play nice
Aaron Foster
90% of the "crunch" is basic-ass military lingo. Like..SPG, APC, APDSFS kind of thing
Andrew Ward
>DnD and 40k >no acronyms >AC, (sometimes) bab, BS, WS, S, T
You've only played big name games and they're familiar to you, so you don't see how weird they are because you don't actually read the book with your eyeballs, you just memorize it from eight years ago and then go "Oh of course this is easy, I don't have to work very hard at it!"
Elijah Garcia
...
Isaac Green
I dunno if that's true. Yeah, they shorten stats, but they call them skimmers and zooming fliers, etc. I was reading drop zone whatever, and they refer to FM fliers and the like, and then they have Type A and Type B shit, whereas 40k would call it a stalker pattern or a mars pattern, or something that's a little less robotic. I personally like this better because it's like "Mars Pattern? Why that?" and then you learn in the fluff how mars is a huge military foundry and on and on, and it sort of adds to that aspect. It makes sense since 40k absolutely depends on interest in the fluff to be carry the game. If you aren't bullshitting around and FORGING THE NARRATIVE, you may as well just put the models away and get into a screaming match over something stupid with someone belligerent, because that's about what playing 40k competitively is like.
I do see where you're coming from, but I also think it's a trend for stuff that's more accessible to tend to more flavorful writing and more form first, function later design (I forget which is top down and which is bottom up)
Jace Evans
>was reading drop zone whatever, and they refer to FM fliers and the like, and then they have Type A and Type B shit DZ player here, that's not necessarily true for everything. Really, the AB designation is only used for light dropships and (some) small units, like the wolverine and angelos. Everything else has its own name.
What do you think of the rules, by the way?
Jace Powell
Not the same person but, I actually like them. I also really like the factions so that helps a lot. Looking forward to DFC tho.
Matthew Powell
The new rules are way better than the previous version. I haven't seen anything down right broken, but the new living rulebook will allow quick fixes. I'm excited to get my stuff from the KS soon.
Yep, still same scale. The goal is to get plastic to, hopefully, be able to make the game more affordable in the long run.
Alexander Torres
I'd need to play. They looked solid enough, but I wasn't really feeling the fluff or aesthetic.
Jonathan Gutierrez
Oh cool, I might actually get around to building them then and checking out the kickstarter stuff.
Liam Thomas
Totally. I think the rules are on their site for free. If not I can see if I can upload them somewhere tomorrow.
I'm looking forward to getting stuff built and painted and doing some demos. Got a store nearby that the owner is a huve Heavy Gear fan so I know he'll gladly let me do demos.
Leo Parker
>Was 40k/Rogue Trader the first big one to hit the scene? What inspired it? maybe Starguard! and the like back in the 1970s? That in turn was inspired by the Starship Troopers book.
Hunter Howard
bump
Henry Mitchell
Has anyone had any experience with Gate of Antares? The models didn't impress me initially, but the inclusion of the Ghar and the Isorians have caught my eye.
