/awg/ - Alternative Wargames General

Well, I pre-ordered Rogue Stars and some miniatures. Hopefully it'll be a fun game.

Stevie, Howard and Jeff.

those don't sound very polish to me

Stevesky, Howardsky, Jeffsky.

SHITSTORM SHITSTORM SHITSTORM!!!

give us your qualms with the game frostgrave

No.

I play LotR SBG instead.

That doesn't seem like its really going for the same type of game.

Well, yeah, but at first I used my LotR minis for FG.

Is frostgrave a good game or is that just a meme?

A good meme.

It's good if you like if a game is centered around a single member of your warband, and if that one member is a wizard. Also, if you don't mind that your dudesmen are all the same.

It's fairly biased towards ranged attacks and the game favors murdering enemies over doing anything else especially for your wizard and experience gain. Is that bad? Up to you; the game is supposed to be about looting treasure, but the mechanics don't incentivize it as much as they do just killing the other people. Or whatever

"the same"
As in everybody pools from the same pool? Because yeah that's true, but there are a bunch of different types in that pool (knights, thieves, infantrymen, rangers, etc)

I think the complaint is that they don't level up/get injured/involve bookkeeping/etc. All thieves are thieves, all knights are knights, etc.

Well that but also that they are fairly pointless in and of themselves.

Too much of what a unit does is based on how well you roll rather than how skilled they are. Yeah a Knight is Fight +5 and a Thug +1 or whatever but the rest is all from the D20 so it just boils down to rolling high and your actual skill level won't enter into it a lot of the time.

This would be less of an issue if the price difference between a thug and a knight weren't so massive but as it is buying high level troops is pretty pointless.

*ski

>as it is buying high level troops is pretty pointless.

If its five thugs versus a knight sure, five knights versus five thugs in a campaign is an entirely different story.

Also just play with 2D10, its a pretty simple fix.

>If it's five thugs versus a knight sure, five knights versus five thugs in a campaign is an entirely different story.

No it isn't, that's exactly my point it's entirely possible the 5 thugs will just roll high and steamroll the knights, the whole extra 4 points of fight the knights paid 400 gold for doesn't count for shit.

And even if the thugs only killed 1 knight they've got their points back.

>Also just play with 2D10, it's a pretty simple fix.

I don't care how simple it is to fix an unfinished and poorly made game. The point is it's unfinished and poorly made.

So you are arguing it shouldn't be possible for thugs to get lucky? That's silly.

You are being ridiculous, Frostgrave is a great game. All the complaints are either entirely subjective or easy to deal with.

Like writing a complete experience system for henchmen, and somehow placing the objective into focus rather than the killing?

Shouldn't this be the job of those who write the system?

I got that ghoul king for my undead warband, together with some regular ghouls. He will take the part of a hero character (unfortunately with the pathetic dreg characteristics..... but still, Ill give him a 2 hander to match his miniature looks!).

>"Game is simple, has one page of rules."
>"You can rewrite the rules with houserules if you don't like them

Why the fuck bother. It's poorly game designed, where stuff like cover or gale force defense winds don't do anything to prevent arrows from one-shotting you on like a 19 or 20.

Or how about a customizable gang based skirmish game only having rules to customize the leader? And not in loadout variety, but just a bunch of poorly thought out spells?

Classic Mordheim or This is Not a Test are both far superior games.

It's not about thugs getting lucky. But the knights have at most a 10% qualitative advantage on the thugs, but cost 5x more. In a system that uses D20s, where the different in stats just changes the threshholds of success, not the margin of success.

This is why the fucking attack dogs are the best thing you could ever get for anything but objectives, the rest should be fast thieves sporting shitty bows for volume fire. And that's stupid and boring.

Your sidekick doesn't even get his own stats. Just yours -2. That's really dumb.

Not wanting to agree with dickless here because I like playing and have tons of fun with the game, but the cost/usefulness of units is incredibly unbalanced, especially if you're playing on a campaign and you're spending money pimping out your HQ. Archers, thieves, thugs and dogs are disposable and cheap and will win you the game 9 out of 10 games, expensive units give the party a more fleshed out feel but you'll spend a lot of time not committing completely to an attack in fear of losing all your sheckles. Having said that if both players are running fleshed out warbands (as you should) it's a really cool game to play.

tl;dr
It's a flawed game but the flaws are easy to ignore if you're not playing against terrible players.

Should malifaux general join here? The threads never last the night

>Frostgrave is a great game

Finally people who aren't retarded.

Why waste your time playing a shit game with decent players when you could play a good game with decent players?

Yeah anything is fun with the right people but why bother? Why waste time jumping to the defence of something you admit is bad because it's fun with the right people? Do you have brain damage?

60£ isn't that steep of a buy in to be honest, but I can get into any more games, that for sure

>but the rest is all from the D20 so it just boils down to rolling high and your actual skill level won't enter into it a lot of the time.

I like Frostgrave, but this right here is one of my major my beefs. I'm fine with the wizard being the only one progressing and the wild imbalance of spells because the game is about a power-mad wizard, not the goons he goes to carry loot for him. But the math sucks.
The wide and flat distribution of probability and narrow range of modifiers makes luck a greater component in success than the model's starts. Pretty much anything d20-based has this problem. I gots to have those bell curves, son.
My other beef with Frostgrave is that the narrative of the game is about treasure-hunting, but the structure of the rules reward straight murdering the opposing team.

I think a great game should have a book that works well without the need for houseruling or gentleman's agreements. I think Frostgrave is cool and I have enjoyed playing it with my friends. I wouldn't call it a great game though, because it has several serious design problems at the heart of its ruleset.

Yeah Infinity has the samme problem with it's d20 mechanics as cheap fodder guys are just as good as expensive elites.

Frostgrave looks like a good idea but poor execution

Surely this is intentional, so that players that get ahead early aren't just going to snowball by buying better troops and giving the other players no chance to catch up?
You can invest in a small improvement, but there's always the chance a thug could kill your knight.

>but the cost/usefulness of units is incredibly unbalanced, especially if you're playing on a campaign and you're spending money pimping out your HQ. Archers, thieves, thugs and dogs are disposable and cheap and will win you the game 9 out of 10 games, expensive units give the party a more fleshed out feel but you'll spend a lot of time not committing completely to an attack in fear of losing all your sheckles. Having said that if both players are running fleshed out warbands (as you should) it's a really cool game to play.

I haven't played frostgrave, but the same is basically true for Mordheim. There is always one asshole that just takes thousands of skaven slings.

That's incorrect.

Infinity has units on their turn rolling multiple D20s to shoot enemies that have a single D20. This results in a pretty hard to gauge probability curve.

Likewise, the 'results' of the roll aren't tied to succeeding. The armor check is a different roll. Just because you hit on a 20 didn't mean you decapitated the enemy.

Combined with meaningful stat mods, the orders-activation economy and the 'price is right' dice system, Infinity's mechanically a LOT more effective than Frostgrave.

The difference is although you can fuck up games like Mordheim with some setups, the campaign variety is interesting enough to let you have a fun time about it. As well as letting a multi player campaign crush 'outlier' players with everyone teaming up.

The rate you level up in Frostgrave is atrocious as well. It takes a half dozen games to get a measurable improvement, and just on your one guy.

I'd never get an experience like in Mordheim with that, where one guy's Dwarf sidekick got crippled twice for movement penalties, but kept ranking up toughness. He eventually became a wheelchair bound tank that slowly rolled forward and blasted people with an arsenal of musket pistols.

The problem is that players who get an early lead will have better wizards and since wizards are the only thing that really matters things really start to snowball from that point on.

Making expensive troops not worth their points does nothing to rectify this it just makes them not worth buying when compared with buying cheaper troops and saving your money or buying more gear/spells for your wizard.

And if people took off their nostalgia goggles then they'd see that Mordheim isn't a very good game either.

Mordheim isn't a great game. But it's worlds ahead of Frostgrave. Every gang you can build has a lot more character potential, which counts for a lot in a community based campaign game.

Frostgrave is just empty and cold. Like it's source material. Ultimately pointless, as it doesn't make you feel like a fun wizard. You'd be better off playing Pathfinder with miniatures.

no no no the stats are pretty much meaningless since the dice roll is d20 so the range band on odds is so much wider.
Not only that but when you make a roll your opponent is allowed to make a roll for AROs
so it becomes whos dice rolls beats the other even with modifers it makes very little difference

>so it becomes whos dice rolls beats the other

So... like basically nay game? Is your issue with games that use dice, head-to-head competing dice rolls, or are you just trolling?

sorry i've not articulated that well.

There quite few reasons why i dislike infinity mostly the pople i know who play it.
I think i' just trying to find reasons to shit on it.

Model wise superb but the rules are just be lucky while covered in fuax complexity with worse balancing than 40K

Agreed.

>Like writing a complete experience system for henchmen,
>Shouldn't this be the job of those who write the system?
The experience system for henchmen is something Morheim had.
Frostgrave is not Mordheim.

The game was never supposed to have a system like that.

Just because you want that in there does not mean the game is unfinished.

I just can't wrap my head around why people get so riled up about FG.
It's not Mordheim 2.0 and if you are looking for that you have to look elsewhere.

Yeah, why not.

>The experience system for henchmen is something Morheim had.
And like a few dozen other games before and after Mordheim.

The only figure who can advance in the game is the wizard. That's my problem. Doesn't matter if your archer took out five guys in a game, he still has the same shitty stats.

It's like you are complaining about not being allowed to touch the ball with your hands while playing soccer.
It's not a valid complaint that other games let you do it.

Just play one of those games and stop complaining about a non-issue.

That is genuinely autistic behauvior.

Frostgrave is garbage though.

You fags recommended it and I checked it out only to thank god I hadn't spent money on it.

Their henchmen boxes are the only interesting thing they have and that's no even part of their game.

>That is genuinely autistic behauvior.
Defending a game that's universally panned as "not THAT bad, but there are certainly better ones" is just as autistic while we're at it.

so if Frostgrave isn't that great, what fantasy skirmish game would /awg/ recommend, assuming Mordheim isn't an option either

Why isn't Mordheim an option? It's a genuinely good skirmish game.

Savage Worlds Showdown, Rack and Ruin, Otherworld

lord of the rings strategy battle game

I've heard good things about song of blades and heroes but haven't played it yet

in this scenario, I'm wanting a game that's still in production/gets publisher support, which is one of the main appeals Frostgrave has

also Mordheim isn't exactly easy to find, either in physical or digital format, and I also would prefer a system that isn't as tied to it's setting as Mordheim is(one of the things I like about Frostgrave is that you can easily justify using almost any fantasy miniatures with it, while that's not as easy with Mordheim), or as reliant on as many books as it is either(since to my recollection a lot of the interesting stuff is spread across a bunch of different books)

it's been a long time but I vaguely remember not liking SWS too much, Rack & Ruin sounds interesting, but it's physical book only being available through the Drivethrustuff POD makes me wary(hate dealing with that company, they cost too much and take too damn long, not to mention have the worst Shipping rates in the universe), and Otherworld loses points both due to not having a PDF option(at least from a cursory google search), and being from a British company(which means I'd have to pay more than I'd be comfortable with)

>lord of the rings strategy battle game
nothing from Games Workshop please, also I remember that game being not very interesting from a mechanical standpoint, plus too tied to it's intended setting

>I've heard good things about song of blades and heroes but haven't played it yet
I have a couple of their games lying around in PDF format, and to my recollection I found their system really bland

Well user, let me help you with your problems:
Rack and Ruin:
mega.nz/#!TE9UDJpB!QE5JHlEOzGdt5yCsPSmwl_Vet7xHhEW60ZEy33kAx4o

Otherworld:
mega.nz/#!PVMgmQxK!Re6pYbapzxfkwN_aC1WXmFKIcx2RP4iAaWncXiW5RMU

Also, LotR SBG is so tied there was a Samurai army list in Wargames Illustrated and they made a Cowboy game with it. Also, eBob's Rebellion is based on it as well.

thanks for the PDF's(I probably would have bought R&R's pdf, my grudge with DriveThruStuff is solely with their POD division)

>LotR SBG is so tied
huh?

>Also, eBob's Rebellion is based on it as well.
never heard of it, mind giving some info?

mediafire.com/file/o17308c74xrzr87/Rebellion (Scottish Wars Skirmish).pdf

Medieval skirmish for fighting the Scottish War of Independence with Wallace, Robert Bruce and all the gang. Highlanders are straight up fantasy, but there are some nice figures, and the melee is a bit better written than SBG's.

I meant the game is not THAT tied to the setting - it's kinda easy to modify to your liking as others have done it.

And going back to for a while, Mordheim was available from GW as a free pdf for a while, not sure if it still is, but if you want, there's a drive with a shitton of Mordheim stuff. You don't really need any more support to it desu since it has so many extra shit added over the years it'll keep you entertained till they eventually release it again as it was rumored.

>there's a drive with a shitton of Mordheim stuff
mind linking to it, my google-fu is off tonight as I can't seem to find it

onedrive.live.com/?cid=02B7C1D22EA7D959&id=2b7c1d22ea7d959!455&authkey=!AByFcnV1qMjZdzg

man that site sucks to actually download anything from, at least in comparison with MEGA

>I just can't wrap my head around why people get so riled up about FG.
>It's not Mordheim 2.0 and if you are looking for that you have to look elsewhere.
You really don't get it?
The reason people get pissed about it is that it was widely shilled as being Mordheim's equivalent of all the Blood Bowl knockoffs. Then it turned out that was a load of horseshit and now a bunch of aspie gamedefenders are mewling about how the game isn't Mordheim, GET USED TO IT, CURRENT YEAR.

>The reason people get pissed about it is that it was widely shilled as being Mordheim's equivalent of all the Blood Bowl knockoffs.
That were a bunch of people talking about a game they hadn't read yet.

>Then it turned out that was a load of horseshit and now a bunch of aspie gamedefenders are mewling about how the game isn't Mordheim
That's because a bunch of aspie's don't understand, that if they want to play Mordheim they can just play fucking Mordheim.

You are free to not like a thing, but please just shut up about it already. Every thread devolves into some people chimping out and flinging shit for no apparent reason.
It makes it impossible for anybody to discuss the game, if there is a horde of idiots that just spam the thread with 'it's bad, cause I didn't like it' when most of the complaints they have about the game have been discussed to death and already resolved.

Literally anybody able to rub two braincells together will be able to find the solution to the most common issues people have with the game within two seconds via a simple google search.

This isn't the Frostgrave general. It's the /awg/, which means stuff has to be able to coexist here. Nobody else is going on and on about why game X is shit in here.
Just grow the fuck up and ignore it, if you have a problem with the game so at least the others can have a discussion.

>a good game with decent players?
And you mean..?

>Every thread devolves into some people chimping out and flinging shit for no apparent reason.

The reason is that someone will come into the thread asking what people think of Frostgrave. Someone will say they don't like it because it's poorly balanced, poorly designed, and generally just a bad game. Then the FIDF will roll up and post something along the lines of:

>Literally anybody able to rub two braincells together will be able to find the solution to the most common issues people have with the game within two seconds via a simple google search.

OR

>a bunch of aspie's don't understand, that if they want to play Mordheim they can just play fucking Mordheim.

Not liking having their opinion misrepresented and dismissed the shitposting will start.

You literally bring it on yourself every thread because you can't accept that people don't like your oh so precious Frostgrave. You say it's OK to not like a thing but clearly it isn't if not a single post about how someone doesn't like Frostgrave can't go unchallenged.

Follow your own advice and ignore it.

He said in his own post that the real issue is that people were hyped about it before it released because of the superficial similarities to Mordheim.
The game was never marketed by Osprey, nor did McCollough ever do anything to promote that idea.

Therefore the 'criticisms' like an absence of a progression system for other members of the warband are not really a criticism of the game, but an issue with a skewed expectation of what the game was gonna be.
Those expectations were disappointed and I'm sympathetic to that, but the behavior displayed here is just idiotic.

It's hardly the game's fault that people imagined it something to be it never set out to be in the first place.

This is exactly what I mean, the argument has been reduced to "People only don't like it because their expectations were wrong, it's not the games fault!"

Which completely ignores that a lot of people don't like the game because it's poorly balanced and has dodgy game design.

Is that their fault to for expecting a balanced game? Of course not that'd be ridiculous.

To be fair it is sold on being a campaign game. Most people would expect unit advancement in a campaign game as a given regardless of any comparisons to Mordheim.

Does anybody have the Warpath Mass Battles "final proof" that was linked on their kickstarter back in mid october?

It has that. For the Wizard. And you can customize him with an insane amount of different spells.

All in all the game mixes rpg elements (wizard, d20s and the D&D bestiary) with wargaming (the warband, the objectives, scenarios).

That is a pretty original approach the whole thing.

>poorly balanced and has dodgy game design.
the issue with stuff like this that a blanket statement is void of any useful information.
And a lot of people don't understand that this is very much a campaign game in the sense that for example the stronger fighters are more expensive, not because the price reflects their combat effectiveness, but because over the course of a campaign you amass excess gold. If you have enough you can spend it on a Knight or what have you. If you start a warband and only buy the expensive units you made a mistake that is gonna cost you.
So how can you take criticism seriously from people that have obviously not understood the rules of the game?

That is really a common problem. People also often complain about the ranged combat being overpowered. The game repeats ad nauseum that you need a lot of scenery, some scenarios specifically require 3 story buildings, yet people play on a table with only a handful of walls and then complain that the rules are at fault.

Other things like the way XP distribution favors combat oriented Wizards are fair complaints, but easily fixed. Just don't reward extra xp for kills.
If your games devolve into slugfests because your players try to kill each instead of going for treasure, just play a predetermined number of turns, six is the most common suggestion for that situation.
Again though, this is caused by players ignoring the primary objective of the given scenario. Could the rules somehow incentivize treasure hunting more during play instead of after the session? Maybe. Though in a campaign setting where people are dependent on treasure they have more than enough reason to go after the treasure first.

>And you can customize him with an insane amount of different spells.
You can get one per level, OR improve casting number OR improve stat. Your wizard will either know a lot of spells but can't cast them due to target numbers being high due to spels coming from opposing schools of magic, or he'll spam Bone Darts on a 2+, or he'll have some...not high enough stats to be considered safe on the battlefield still.

Since when a wizard is an RPG element? Or the d20? Is Infinity a game with RPG elements? Is Warzone a game with RPG elements? Random encounters...okay, you got that one. And if by "original", you mean a castrated version of any other game that features a campaign and an advance system for all of your figures, then yeh.

Ranged combat is overpowered even if you shoot the enemy from 4" away. Can he beat you from a defending point? No. If he dies, he can't charge you back, and even then you have the chance to at least survive, and in case you activate first, you can run away. To build a battlefield for the sole purpose of nerfing archers is kinda shows what the problem is. Some skirmish games solve this by decreasing the range of shooty weapons, which could work as with mass battle games, volley fire is more effective.

>Just don't reward extra xp for kills
Erm....ok. Bullshit. That won't fix it.

Aso, why are these aren't in the rulebook? Why do players have to solve problems like the slugfest? If there ain't nobody to take your treasure, then you can take all of them, simple as that. Also, if you focus solely on the objective, and either go only for the safe treasure, or take more risky moves get shot to shit, and with the former you could just play it solo as it'd have little to no player interaction.

Speaking of Mordheim, has anyone here tried out The Star-Struck City? Its that ruleset using KoW.

ironwatch.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/the-star-struck-city-deluxe-edition/

Originality doesn't mean shit if it's badly implemented.

>So how can you take criticism seriously from people that have obviously not understood the rules of the game?

Again condescending bollocks. And your point doesn't even make sense, the more expensive troops exist not because they're better but because you need something to spend your excess cash on? What the fuck, are you actually retarded? How is that in any way acceptable game design?

Whatever mate, you win the game is perfect and everyone is just playing it wrong and you're really smart and cool for enjoying it.

This frostgrave convo reads like "DnD 3.pf isn't broken, you can just fix it!"
It's also pretty amusing to me that the game being discussed is also dealing with wizards vs martials.

I haven't played it, but it's based on the KoW ruleset which is solid enough IMO. Of course at this scale it's basically just rolling 1d6 >= your model's Melee/Ranged stat and then beating the other dudes Defense stat. Toughness/Nerve (1d6+wound suffered versus your toughness stat to see if still alive) is cool.

I haven't really looked at it much to determine lethality or balance (skaven can't wreck with slings, at least) which are fairly important to me. All I can quickly tell is that on average a unit (using humans with their 5/6 toughness) can be rendered dead after a single wound (33% chance), and then +16% per further wound - of course a Stunned result (generally 16% more likely) can also happen and means your man is in for a bad time.

I really dislike how they kept KoWs phasing system. IGOUGO "whole side activates" with strict move->shoot->melee phasing already irritates me in rank and file wargames, and it just feels extremely dumb and stiff at the man-sized level. I mean you can "easily" just make it a more alternating-activation freer-phase setup, but god knows what effect that has on balance and design implications.

It was sold on being a campaign game, and also not having advancement for anyone but the wizard. They were pretty clear on that, but the second- and third-generation hypeposters tended to miss that because they were reading hype about hype, and not looking at what the author was pretty clearly saying.

I still like it for what it does. I'm fine with not having full advancement for everyone, and also fine with "upgrading" a thug to a knight or whatever.

>they're better but because you need something to spend your excess cash on? What the fuck, are you actually retarded? How is that in any way acceptable game design?
The gold is not equivalent to points costs in other games cause you are not listbuilding.

It's a campaign game. So yeah, that is the way it's intended.

As I said, a lot of people apparently have a problem to understand that approach to wargaming for whatever reason.

So we're agreed you're retarded and the game is poorly designed.

Great, discussion over.

If it makes you feel better sure.
You can ask McCollough yourself in the FAQ thread on lead adventure.
You don't have to take my word for it, just read what the author himself said on the matter.

Anyway, for somebody calling me condescending you are pretty quick to call other people names.

But as I said if you approach this like a GW game, expecting points costs and such you're just gonna have to deal with the fact that other people write games that work differently.

I don't care what the guy who made it has to say or how he justifies his piss poor game design and non existent balance as just being a feature of his game and it working as intended.

Something can work as intended and still be shit all that proves is that the person who made it is an idiot and that the people who lap it up are even bigger idiots.

"A good salesmen can sell a bug as a feature."

modern video game development onto the tabletop then.

Everything is a skirmish game nowadays and most are shite help me

How?

What are you searching for m8? RIght now we are in a golden age of fantasy skirmishing, you can find any kind of them. But for mass battles is different, Lion Rampant, Old-Hammer/ 9th age or Kings of War.

Get into horse & musket, build some ridiculous old-school regiments with 48 soldiers and 5 officers and march them around in formation using The War Game by Grant.

Or go for a saner scaling, but still horse & musket. Marlburian's my preference, not Napoleonic, but you get some really nice stately battalions going on. Classic wargaming period for a reason, it is.

And no, you don't need thousands of 28mm figures on a 12' table to do it justice and have a great game.

Would simplified pathfinder (or another existing rpg system) allow for a good progressive skirmish game? Instead of buying pre-built mooks, you would essentially build an adventuring party with a set amount of experience and gold to spend equipping them.

(you could also do imaginations, which is where you make up fake countries and armies and shit, or go full flintloque and have elves and dog-people and orcs)

hahahahahahahahaha no.

You'd have to basically build an entirely new game using nothing but the core D20 mechanic to get a sane balanced playable game out of Pathfinder. Soz.

You could use a skirmish game made for that. Like Mordheim, Frostgrave or Song of blades and heroes. SoBaH is very simple too.

Yes, they can...probably. A lot of games (EG, pathfinder) would be awful at this because balance would be atrocious and they're built to generally be cooperative and longer-running so may have weird mechanics/interactions, but I bet some will work alright enough? You'll likely end up ripping out most of every system though, unless the system is literally just combat elements to begin with.

Hell, Savage Worlds Showdown is basically the Savage Worlds RPG but they ripped out all of the RPG elements and added a point system. It's not like it'd be hard to just put the RPG elements back in to it.

I'd use a skirmish wargame with campaign rules, though like Wyrdwarz/Mordheim/Star Struck City, Frostgrave, Song of Blades and Heroes, This is Not a Test, etc.
They're built for this.

>it's a 3aboo attempts to avoid learning another game clip show episode

Anyone here play KoW? Looking to start up a Dwarf force using the mom miniatures ones.

Some of us here play it, aye.
A player just went to an tournament with some ogres the other day.

To be fair to him, learning new systems is a pain

How did he do? Or did he not say?

...

Frostgrave's a great game for playing Irresponsible Wizards who have warbands as basically expendable equipment. Which fits into the theme of the game immensely. I've yet to find a game that captures that feeling so well.