How to Wargame Pt. 2 Electric Please Dear Lords Help Me

Hey Veeky Forums trying this thread again today, as yesterday I got barely any feedback. I've been into tabletop games for a few years now, and though I've always been interested in wargames, I've always been intimidated by the sheer volume, and price tags associated with them. If possible could you kind anons help recommend me a good wargame? If possible I'd like the wargame to contribute to some larger campaign or narrative rather than just being isolated "dudes fighting each other".
Secondly I'd like to be able to play an army with an undead/necromancer feel, use the dead of my opponents against them, recycle my own soldiers, etc.
And thirdly I'd like for it to not be too expensive (no more than 250 investment preferably)... I know that's probably a lot to ask, but I really would love to get into wargaming and make some friends, but I dont know where to start and I'd appreciate Veeky Forums's help

Age of Sigmar actually fits what you are looking for. Your dudes aren't isolated since it's possible to travel in and in between different gigantic realms.
And for playing undeads just buy a box of zombies and a necromancer. They do not cost that much in the long run.

Warhammer rules are great, age of Sigmar is sort of meh in my opinion but works too. Go with the undead or vampire counts army or whatever the fuck their name is now days, you get to run necromancers that can reinforce or summon up zombie/skeleton units in battle by raising the dead.

If the price of models is an issue (plus gw zombies suck) look at kings of war models instead for your rank and file, just use gw shit for hero or important units. Loads of campaign material is available for warhammer and you can get pdfs of all of it if you do a little digging.

Frostgrave is what you're looking for. A cheap campaign driven fantasy skirmish AND it is all the hype right now, so you will actually find players for it. In short: you have a little warband lead by a wizard and they search a lost city for magic stuff. I never played it myself, but afaik your wizard can be a necromancer.
AoS is not what you're looking for imo. I don't even hate the game, but if you're put off by expensive models/armies, that is the first problem. 2nd is, that right now it is in a state where everyone is waiting for the supplement, that makes it officially playable. And then it will probably have the same balancing issues that all GW games have AND it's really not made for an elaborate campaign mode. Also the fluff is the cheapest excuse for dudes fighting each other in the history of fantasy wargames. I really don't want to hate on AoS, but first take a look at Frostgrave.
3rd option, if you plan on playing with a friend/relative only, and so build 2 forces anyway, you can go for any game. So you might want to take a look at Song of Blades and Heroes and it's various supplements. It needs even fewer models/terrain than frostgrave and also has a campaign mode (iirc). It has no fluff though, so you have to make up your own stories, or buy models that already have a background (like lord of the rings, song of ice and fire and you normal warhammer fantasy dudes) and play with that.

We just had a general for fantasy skirmishes, it might still be up, they had most of the SoBH pdfs.

Not OP but I've never heard of this, sounds kinda sweet though but might be really niche depending on where you live.

Frostgrave is amazing but it's a play at home game, it's not something you want to pick up if you want to have a community to join.

If you want to make friends while starting the hobby, you go with a big game like something from games workshop.

Frostgrave is what you play when you already have cool people to play with.

I checked and the general is still up:
It's definitely a niche game, but it's one of the few really 'active' ones right now.

Ah. Me and my group of friends have tried to get games like this going so many times. Malifaux, FSA, Bolt-action, etc but it always crumbles due to someones family, work or money and people eventually lose interest. I've been forced to stick to games like 40k and warhammer so i can play a pick up game with guys at a local club. Sucks man.

OP here, what do you need to buy to get into Frostgrave (or AoS I'm kinda split right now) and terrain? Where do you start? How do you get good at painting?

Bumping this question

What kind of paints should I buy? Do I need glue? If so what kind? As I said I'm completely new to this sort of thing.

For the love of god, OP, don't start Age of Sigmar. It is really not a good game.

The common advice is to start whatever people around you are already playing. That works out well if you don't want to put in more effort than is necessary to start up an army.

If you want to put in the effort necessary to start your own group, the most important question is "What scale do you want to play and what scope do you want?"

>What scale?
There are different kinds of scales in wargaming. The most common ones are:
2mm
6mm
10mm
15mm
20mm
28mm
28mm Heroic (which is "anything goes", really)

Broadly speaking: The smaller the miniatures, the less detailed and the cheaper they get and the easier it is to get huge armies on the table. Smaller scales are usually a better fit for big battles, while bigger scales are better suited for more detailed battles like skirmishes.
Contrary to popular belief, small scales are also way easier to convert and paint, since you need to put less effort and details into each miniature.

>What scope?
Broadly speaking, most wargames fall into Battalion Scale, Squad Scale or Skirmish Scale.
Battalion Scale games are games where you bring tons of troops and dozens of tanks or warmachines to the table. Miniatures are usually organized in blocks on a single base and maneuvering and strategy is the flow of these blocks and the army as a whole. You are actually commanding an army here.

In squad games your guys are organized in several, smaller squads. It's usually somewhat of a hybrid between a full-fledged army game and a skirmish, sitting in between both in model count and in rules complexity.

In Skirmish Games you are usually commanding 5 to 12 miniatures at most, some with a little more, some with a little less. Every single one of these guys is a lot more important and the rules are usually more complicated and detailed to reflect this.


Once we have figured out what kind of wargame you want, we can figure out what game EXACTLY you want to play.

Paints - acrylic, dedicated to miniatures (art store craft are hard mode): Vallejo [Game Color, other series are compatible but this has best game palette to start), Reaper Master Series, Army Painter. Citadel is most widely available but meh quality and expensive. If you can get a basic Army Painter's 10-24 paint set for decent $$, get that. Also, primer and matt varnish.

Also: Modeling knife with swappable tools (the long triangle kind), files, PVA glue, sand, optionally static grass.

Stuff to remember/google: clean mold lines, wash minis to remove release agent, thin your paints, don't grab painted surface until varnished or the paint may rub off (hold by the base or blutac/2-sided tape the base to a cork or something.

Also, unfinished minis tend to look like shit until shaded. It's ok.

Fuck, forgot superglue. Basically: if it's hard plastic, like in plane models - plastic glue (I use Revell's with thin needle), if it's softer "boardgamey" plastic or resin or metal use superglue. PVA glue I mentioned is for basing with sand, grass and such shit, don't use it for the mini itself.

I don't know what people in the Lehigh Valley play, and I don't know whT size miniatures I want, what scale are like regular tabletop minis? Like the ones from descent, SDE, reaper, rune bound, etc. I'm pretty comfortable with those
As for scope, probably smaller to mid scope, if I really like war games I may move into larger scope war games but I'm looking to start small ish.

Reaper and Descent is mostly 28mm and Heroic, SDE is chibi stuff so all scale is out the window. If you aren't certain, go have a luck at manufacturers out there.

As for small to mid scope:
Song of Blade and Heroes is a generic build-what-you-want skirmish wargame. There is/was a thread yesterday that had all the books, if it isn't there anymore you might want to look for it in the archive.

Malifaux is a Victorian Horror Steampunk skirmish wargame that has its own necromancer faction.

Frostgrave was mentioned here.

Mordheim was a skirmish game set in the Warhammer Fantasy world. It is completely unsupported, which is for the better. Fans have taken it upon themselves to tweak the rules.
You'll find the official last edition of Mordheim on the web, and there is a fan rework called Coreheim that is supposedly decent but excludes a faction for idiotic reasons.

These are a few of the top of my head that include skeletons and necromancy and shit. You should look at them and decide from there.
Pricing is not an issue here, since skirmish games are sometimes expensive by miniature (many Malifaux models cost around 12 to 15 bucks), but cheap as an army, since you get seven to eight dudes and are done.

Thanks! What about terrain? When I see people playing war games I see huge landscapes with trees n ruins n pillars n shit. How does that work? Where do you get that stuff? How do you determine what's fair? How do you get some/make some without breaking the bank or spending a shitton of time on it?

Each game has its own rules for placing terrain. Mordheim and Frostgrave mandate more and denser terrain, while Malifaux and ASoBaH don't require quite as much, but you should be able to fill at least a quarter of your board with terrain of some sort to make things interesting and to ensure that the whole thing isn't just a shoot out.

You can buy terrain from lots of companies, Andrea casts has some good cheap structures, and you can make some natural features like hills and trees(Via model scenery trees and clumps of foliage) easily on your own. I am lucky enough to have my own 3D printer which does wonders for making various structures and objectives, and there are plenty of guides on making your own terrain online.

You usually build the stuff yourself. There are tons of tutorials out there and what you can't build, you usually round-out with a few bought pieces.

There are formats larger than 28mm but they're too niche.

Well technically Malifaux and Warmahordes are both 32mm, and those are pretty big. 35mm like Kingdom Death however is pretty uncommon.

Play a necromancer in frostgrave or a mordheim undead party.

They really are. I guess it's a combination of next to no manufacturers for terrain at higher scales, coupled with the board possibly becoming too small to properly play.

I never played Inquisitor at its original scale, but supposedly the boards were really, really small.

You could look into Deadzone. It's a skirmish game, so you'll be starting out small with relatively few models instead of starting out with tons of minis to build and paint. It's set up so you can do a campaign, the Plague faction has a zombie thing going on, and you should be able to build a decent starting force for $40, and get a big enough terrain set for another $40.
The bad news is that since the second edition is in the middle of being released you won't be able to buy the minis from them for a few months.