Cheap miniature games

Make your own, provided you have some creativity to work with. Shouldn't be expensive to invest in generic miniatures and a stack of graph paper.

If you don't want to create your own setting, there should be plenty of print-and-play games for free online.

I really like Fairy Meat. It even comes with paper cut out figures. Pretty self contained. And I've seen people make minis for it just by painting/modifying toys. I just don't see it sold anywhere, though.
annarchive.com/files/Kenzer - Fairy Meat.pdf

Malifuax is the best+cheapest, in my opinion.

I got my first crew for

This.

X-Wing's a good price point. You can spend as much, or as little as you want. $500 is more than enough to get a solid amount of ships and cards to play with.

You can use literally any models with Songs of Blades and Heroes, and the rules are available for free with a quick Google search

Just about any models can be used with any game as proxies, if the base size is right.

One option is of course use the 1/72 plastic minis for a fantasy rules set. Not many options for goblins or whatever (though a few comanies make skeletons, it's etc) but you have plenty of knights and archers to choose from. Box of 50 or so guys is commonly well under $10

Explore here a bit:
plasticsoldierreview.com/Periods.aspx

>Step 1: buy Reaper Bones, old cheap Warhammer plastics off eBay etc
>Step 2: play Song of Blades and Heroes

Great little system, open to plenty of thematic games, there's a PDF floating round of a lot of Mordheim and Warhammer Skirmish scenarios converted for SoBH

True, Kings of War is not THE cheapest but it´s still very cheap for such a (potentially) large scale game. And it certainly falls under OP´s request of "not overly expensive or trash". And if OP is willing to spend up to 500 dollars on his chosen game he could get a lot of stuff for it. Still. if OP is reading this post, I recommend proxying the game first with the free trial rules and some paper cut outs before spending money on it.

I'd second Malifaux. Crew boxes can be as low as $25 if you hit ebay at the right time, and the minis you get in them will always be useful to you.

The system using playing cards instead of dice gives the system a lot of depth in making decisions, and since you generate schemes and strategies when you start a game, you both have a lot of variety in matches and a bunch of interesting tactical choices.

I checked out Kings of War, looked interesting but not exactly what I was thinking. However, Deadzone caught my attention, looks pretty fun and isn't that expensive. Has anyone played it and if so what do you think?

>the minis you get in them will always be useful to you.
This was a big thing in Malifaux favor. It was refreshing to get a $30 box of stuff that's all good and useful compared to GW $80 box with about 50% models you'll use.

That cat eating spaghetti picture always bothers me because the cat's going to be vomiting all over the floor since it can't digest pasta.

some guys at my LGS play it, so i was wondering how much would an FoW vietnam army set me back, i was thinking of doing ANZACs or ARVN

I've done a little reading on malifaux and it looks wild ridiculous and fun. Care to give someone potentially interested a primer on it?

Or even just how to get started?

That's the secret, user.

They're all trash. There's no such thing as a good game. Everything is terrible, you will never be satisfied, and you will never have fun.

Your own impending mortality will suck the life out of everything you do until you give up trying to enjoy things.

To get started you need around 50 soul stones worth of models. A crew box will run you anywhere from 25-30ish barring Kirai since she has a lot of things she summons instead of hires.

When you start the game you each choose your faction flip a card, and the suit of the card determines your strategy, which is a victory condition both players share and might be things like kills so many dudes or control scheme marker on certain parts of the board.

Then you flip two more times to generate a pool of five schemes (Line in the Sand is always in the pool), which are little mini goals like killing a certain type of model, having a certain model of yours killed, having scheme markers in specific places, etc. You can hide these or reveal them for extra/easier to get points. Each player picks two schemes.

Then both players assemble their crew based on the faction they chose and start playing. You have five-ish rounds to get as many points as you can from the schemes and strategies up to a max of 10.

For a model breakdown or some more general info check here.

pullmyfinger.wikispaces.com/

I'd especially follow their terrain suggestion if you're new. If you go in handling terrain like 40k or Warmahordes you'll make it too easy for shooting crews to stomp face.

Deadzone is britty gud now it's on 2nd edition. Fairly solid balance (with a few underpowered choices here and there), and a solid campaign system. You'd be well on your way for a quarter of your $500 price. Basic box and some extra scenery should do the business.

Guild Ball is dirt cheap, $100 gets you a full tournament legal team including a sideboard, and is a seriously amazing game. It has some of the best models I've ever seen, is amazingly balanced while also being extremely varied, has a great competitive scene and is really starting to pick up steam in the U.S.

Pic related is one of the models I've been painting recently, so you can see the quality you're looking at. Lots of personality, great poses, loads of character. And like I said, the game itself is fantastic, probably the best game I've ever played including reams of board games.

Age of Sigmar

You can probably find the stats and rules for D&D 3.5 miniatures game somewhere. My brother and i had fun ignoring 90% of the rules and just playing with hp rounded to 5 and the few miniatures that we had at the time. It's pretty dead, though, so you'd have to play it with friends.

Thanks for the 4 megabyte image, fuckhead!

That would offer you a lot of options on either X-Wing or Armada. You could get started on X-Wing with decent amount of lists for under 100

Infinity is pretty cheap particularly if you target your purchases well. Can be rough to start learning the system, but it's a lot of fun and it allows you to do almost anything you can think of for small squad tactics.

>Chaska
Noice m8, here's mine and my goal.

>everything you need for a regular game for under $500 including paints/tools/etc.

That's pretty much every wargame not made by GW or PP.
Christ, Games Workshop prices really fuck with your head.

Chaska's just such a monster. Guy competes with Jaecar for MVP status in my games.

There's something just so satisfying about shotgunning Obulous to the face three times in a row. Serves the fucker right.

Random question, how does the Union play in Guild Ball? I picked up a starter for no reason other than I thought their minis looked cool as shit but I've heard nothing but ravings and praise for Guild Ball so I might check it out some time.

X Wing
Infinity
Malifaux

Well if it makes you feel any better that pic is so old the cat is probably dead by now anyway.

The Union is basically a team of Michael Jordan's. Every player they've got is very good at what they do, but there's no overarching game mechanism or theme that unifies them together -- they're just a team of very individualistic all-star players. With that in mind, you can basically make the Union into whatever kind of team you want to play. Want a team that is good at football? Run Blackheart, Mist, Decimate, Hemlocke, and Snakeskin. Want a team that murders the opposition? Run Veteran Rage, Gutter, Decimate, Avarisse & Greede and Minx.

If you're looking to get a couple more models for a full team, you'll definitely need to pick up Coin as Coin is the Union's mascot and also the best mascot in the game, and you'll also want Mist as he's the best striker in the game (don't let the Flint fanboys tell you he's better, he definitely isn't). Beyond that I'd recommend one of either Avarisse & Greede, (non-Veteran) Rage or Hemlocke for your 6th player.

Actually the rules of full thrust are out there for free, the continum ones are pretty cool. Emerald skunk for example has lots of content for it.

Well that sounds rather appealing, I do tend to like the 'elite' factions in most tabletop games. I'll look into picking up those models, thank you!

I wouldn't really say that they are 'elite' so much as very unique. For example, if you look at the Brewers you'll find a captain who beats people up (Tapper), a player who beats people up (Hooper), a support player who is surprisingly good at beating people up (Spigot), a striker who is way too good at beating people up than a striker should be (Friday), a big guy who helps other players beat people up (Stave), and someone who lights people on fire so they can beat them up better (Stoker). See a pattern here?

The Union, however, have a crazy untouchable shadow man who is the best striker in the game (Mist), a winger who floats around doing way too much damage with crazy mobility and also being really good with a ball (Decimate), someone who is really fucking angry all the time and can make four attacks on one influence (Rage), a super slippery assassin who likes to spread poison around (Snakeskin), a fat stinky person with a mask on (Fangtooth), and then Krang (Avarisse & Greede). They're all completely distinct and unique; there's no real mechanical theme running through them. But that's also what makes the Union so cool to play; they're just so damn customizable.

Infinity mentioned only twice?
It's about to get a new 2-player starter, even better than the previous one (although it's not like a new edition, it does not invalidate the current one). Armies are usually 10-15 models and the starter has 7 models per faction (6 in regular, one-player starters).
Downside is that it is a bit more advanced than most wargames and that it needs a lot of terrain.