/awg/ - Alternative Wargames General

Explain further
Also Do you think they might re release season 1 and 2 minis in plastic?

Plastic is cheaper to produce tons of monopose minis over long periods of time. You have the upfront costs of the molds but they last for a decade, and plastic is cheap. Metal molds have lower cost, but must be retooled often for high volume production. And metal is very expensive.

> lighter
> easier to cut
> easier to remove mouldlines etc
> cheaper to produce in bulk
> easier to convert
> less likely to require pinning
> more resistant to paint chipping

And probably some other stuff too.

it has free rules so you better check it out for yourself. Its rules are pretty simple and standard, the only big shifts from the standard skirmish rules are that you also get teams together with your soldiers, these teams can (and often should) act together like a Warhammer unit shall we say; the other big change is that depending on your army composition you get an amount of rerolls per turn.The game seems fun, but armies are rather undevelopped with only like 15 options to them since they chose to add more and more factions(fucking aliens) instead of expanding existing factions.

i am very ignorant on the matter,but doesn't plastic allow for more details to be casted on the miniature?

You can get finer details, yes. But the real factor there comes down to the skill of the sculptors moreso than the medium.

For example compare the detail of Infinity's metals with Reaper's plastics. Not meaning to disparage Reaper at all but there are clear differences.

thank you

Metal allows for more details and, more imporantly, better poses. The details thing has become less of an issue in recent years, at least if you go with cutting edge technology, but it's very hard to do good and dynamic poses in plastic. The reason is the mold material. Metal uses vulcanized rubber, which means that the miniature can have undercuts and cavities, since you can just pull the rubber from the miniature. Plastic uses metal injection molds, so everything has to be on a flat plane. That's why GW's one piece characters are completely twodimensional, or Wyrd's plastics are a multipart chaos.

hi guys, i am looking for goosd fantasy skirmish or slightly bigger games(possibly not campaign based),anny suggestion?Also why is it that all skirmish games are sci fi?

How many guys per side? 5 to 10 or bigger than that? Skirmish games usually focus on five to ten guys. Any special kind of Fantasy or anything goes?

So let me get this rigth. in the whole wide market there's no a skirmish game based on SWAT operatives (and other law enforcers) V mooks and delinquents in general?

I'm currently working on one, so don't remind anyone to work on one until I'm done.

>implying
ok now i lost it.

also
>I'm currently working on one, so don't remind anyone to work on one until I'm done.
like for real?

Spectre, Osprey's Black Ops, maybe Force on Force and Skirmsih Sangin.

from 5 10 of a normal skirmish, to slightly bigger, up to "platoon level". I guess almost anything goes, i would prefer normal tolkien fantasy.

Yeah, I was inspired after I got into SWAT 4 with my m8s.

I wanted to create a game that was highly lethal and based on clearing buildings room by room.

I'm also tempted to add features from siege like destructible terrain and rappelling.

Absolutely add at least rappelling. Needn't be mechanically complicated at all.
Destructible terrain is maybe more so (especially tracking it), but probably not too hard.

SWAT 5 when

>Needn't be mechanically complicated at all.

Thats really my goal, I want to make a game thats simple to play but contains plenty of depth and optional rules.

I'd say my biggest inspiration is Fistful of Tows

>That spoiler

Never user, it hurts but never

>spectre
it's normal for them models to have monkey faces?

>Find out about warzone resurrection
>Imperial minis are fucking cool
>Get a goddamn mech with a pillbox on it's back if you want

Too bad everyone says it's a dead game...

No it's fucking not. Stop asking 40kids if they want to try something new.

Not that guy, but literally everyone I know that the was head over heels about it, including a dude that has a character named after him, is done with wzr.

Five Core has a gangs supplement. That should work for that.
And I'd be surprised if Osprey didn't have a game for that.

y tho
I've played a few games of 2.0 and it seemed fine and cool enough.
Are they mad about a bunch of changes and rules rewrite in like 1.5 -> 2.0 or what?
I think all happened recently.

See

It's like the more you play it, the more the flaws stand out. I'm sure it's gotten better (I personally bailed early afternoon the remodel of the brotherhood stuff), but it just doesn't seem to hold water.

Any game that uses other form of resolving damage? I mean I have nothing against dice but sure is an annoying thing to fail a shoot/hit/blow just because the dies says so.

kinda unrelated but something I liked of Doomtown was that for resolve battles you draw from the deck who also works as a french playing deck. the one who makes the best poker hand wins the duel and the other one has to suffer casualties by the difference of ranks between the two hands.

Using dice or cards is both pure chance. I don't see how one is better than the other if you dislike the element of chance on principle.
So I don't really know what you are asking for here.
Chess is good, I guess.

well I didn't think that was necesary but in doomtown you were able to build a deck to improve your chances to get X poker hand by filling the deck with values of your choice.
in a 52 cards deck. around ~32 cards are values of your liking and ~20 are made up any other value. other concepts involve thining the deck by removing the unwanted cards but that's too much information.

the point on all this is maybe have an alternative to deduce damage or at least improve the chances of succeeding by playing with the "meta". in Guild ball I read that if you have units surrounding an enemy you gain 1 more die per friendly unit to the pool increasing the likelyness to score more hits.

Sorry if I'm coming off as contrarian here, that's not my intention, but by that logic your choices during army composition should count in that regard too. You know beforehand which units have which stats, so you kind of know how the probabilities of succeeding with any given unit in any given situation are. That literally is the meta of the game.

And a rule like you mentioned for being surrounded is also not too uncommon, although it depends on what the game was designed for. Frostgrave for example does the exact same thing.
But then again it's the same thing as using any other rule of the rule set to your advantage, so I'm still not sure I understand what you are talking about.

Anyway, maybe somebody else has some insights to share though.

Well, the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battles game is the best game GW has done in years. The books and minis usually go for dirt cheap on ebay and there are lots of third parties that produce fitting models. Since it's also more in line with realistic scale, you can also get fitting historicals to pad it out.
Get the actual LotR game though, The Hobbit iteration wasn't good.

Other than that
>Malifaux: Weird Steampunk Horror game for about 10 miniatures per side
>Freebooter's Fate: Pirate Skirmishing for 5 to 10
>Song of Blades and Heroes: DIY Fantasy, play literally anything you want, for about 10
>Mordheim: WHFB skirmishing

Alkemy is also not bad, but kinda dead. Nice minis though.

Apart from Confrontation (dead as a doorknob) and Warmachine/Hordes, there's not really anything in the 15 to 30 miniatures bracket, though.

10mm user here

I don't want to start shit, so can anyone give me the basics of Hordes of the Things and Dragon Rampant, so I can compare them with Kings of War for multibase fantasy games.

My army basing comprises 5 "large" infantry per 40x20 stand or 3 large cavalry, which seems 10mm too small for HotT if you're absolutely strict.

I didn't think Dragon Rampant *was* multi-base, I was under the impression that it was large-skirmish.

Malifaux uses a deck of cards instead of dice

The metal and resin ones are definitely better as far as detail goes. They aren't using hard plastic, and are opting for made in China pre-assembled board game plastic instead. Steamforged is switching largely to cut costs.

oh really? how so?

>and are opting for made in China pre-assembled board game plastic instead.
is this a good or a bad thing? I can't help feel a bit uneasy when I see the word China and GB in the same sentence (implicit)

freebooters fate uses cards as well

Every attack had a damage spread for mild, moderate, and severe damage. For example a model could have a sword that does 2/3/5 damage. When it flips a card that has a value of 1 to 5, it does weak damage (2 in this case). When it flips a face card, it does severe damage (5). If it flips a red joker, then it does mild+severe, or 7 damage.

Flipped card value + relevant attack stat vs opponents' flipped card value + relevant defense stat to determine whether or not an attack hits, and how accurately.

You have a hand of cards that you can 'cheat' in over the top of a flipped card, and there are lots of ways to allow you to flip multiple cards and pick the best, or prevent your opponent from 'cheating' in a card.

damage is determined by card value and a gradient of damage: Ace-6 is 'Weak Damage', 7-10 is 'Moderate Damage', face cards are 'Severe Damage'

Jokers add additional effects too.

Largely bad, the detail just isn't as crisp. That said the models will likely cost much less, so I will be fine with it personally. You get what you pay for.

>Freebooter's fate
>it's a fantasy pirates game
now that's not something you see everyday.

personally i'm not a big fan of the setting, but it has some really nice minis and from what i heard the game itself is pretty good. I'm not sure if there are players for it outside of germany though.

Oh I see. personally I havent considered Malifaux because of reasons but this sure piqued my interest. I'll give it a look again some later.

>Largely bad, the detail just isn't as crisp.
Awww. I don't like any of this...

>I'm not sure if there are players for it outside of germany though.
just fantastic. well it doesn't matter since no one here plays anything apart of Warhammer AoS and 40k so anything that I might bring will make little to no noise in comparison.

thank you very much for the suggestions helpful user

does any one know if the guild ball kick off 2 player box was a limited run offer or will it be the new standard start box for the game?

Wasn't there some sci-fi warband skirmish game releasing around this time?
I can't remember the name now.

New standard.

Rogue Galaxy or whatever Osprey's was called?

>but it's very hard to do good and dynamic poses in plastic
Malifaux would like a word

He mentioned Malifaux and their sprue tooling nightmare, but that's partial a different reason, not the fact its plastic.

That was an example. Malifaux does high fidelity dynamic stuff, but as a trade off there are lots of pieces compared to the more static GW figures.

anyone else playing halo: ground command?

The gist of the game seems to be:
Assemble a crew of 3 to 5 dudes. Choose whichever minis you like. Pick traits to represent the miniature.
Play whatever the missions are.

bümp

Anyone has a book about how to place stage props on the table to make a fun and balanced game?

40mm frontage is the small standard for WRG games, you're set there for HotT/DBx. 20mm is infantry depth, 30mm for other stuff but depth is not *too* important. Figure count and depth are traditionally used to differentiate types but that's most useful in DBx - with fantasy stuff, it's a lot easier to tell the difference between blades and warband and whatever, and as long as you can tell different types of unit apart (or don't have One Of Everything as an army list goal) you'll be fine. Armies are about 12 bases, six of which are cheaper, more generic units because you can only spend half your 24 points on expensive stuff.

Dragon Rampant's skirmish-based in 6 or 12 figure units, but you can use fewer figures and give them hit points instead. You explicitly can have one hero or troll figure be a whole unit. Generally 6-figure units are the more elite ones. Each unit has to maintain 3" separation from each other unit except when they charge in to melee - partly a gameplay thing, partly a zone of control deal, I think it works fine and looks nice on the table myself, others disagree and some houserule it out. You could go army-style and have each "figure" be a base with multiple infantry on and just keep them together, tighter for some units and more dispersed for warband types.

>20mm is infantry depth
sorry - that's heavy infantry depth, specifically.

fanaticus.org/discussion/showthread.php?t=10774 was a proposed basing chart for DBA 3 a few years back, I forget what they went with, you'd have to download it for that. It should give you a basic idea. But really, it's consistent frontage that you care about.

Actually, my mistake - some infantry (the heavier sort) is officially 15mm, but pretty much everyone says fuck that, hence the change to 15-20mm.

>You could go army-style and have each "figure" be a base with multiple infantry on and just keep them together, tighter for some units and more dispersed for warband types.
Demonworld used hex bases, but did something like this.

Don't think you'll be able to find an entire book devoted to setting up a gaming table.

What specifically is balanced and fun really depends on the game you are playing.
Setting up scenery for a game without ranged combat is gonna look pretty different than one that does it mainly.
Or maybe you are playing a mission that already tells you how to set it up anyway.

So what are you playing?

Jesus christ, that's some dry grog stuff.

I am going to say fuck it, make sure all my armies are properly based on 40x20 and 40x40 for monsters, and just play. Orcs versus Landsknecht-style humans with plate armoured knights, like the old Empire. Keep it simple and sell non-wargamers on it as "it's like an RTS".

What happened to Confrontation?

Iunno, but sold now by Cadwallon.

rackham made a shortlived attempt at selling pre-painted before the entire company went belly up.
You can still buy some of the orignal mold in an onlineshop in france.
A handful of minis are being sold in resin by a company called legacy miniatures on CMON. These are the legal successors.
Cadwallon as a pretty complete selection of metal models, which i'm pretty sure they are producing themselves. The casts are good, if not flawless though. They also expand on their selection from time to time. They miss a few basic minis like the morbid puppets though.
They also expand the range with original sculpts.

oh, yeah and I'm not sure how reliable this information is, but drakerys might be the 'spiritual' successor as it seems to be by some of the same people.
Haven't investigated that, just something I heard said, so don't know if it's actually true.

Looks pretty similar to Confrontation in terms of style though.

Ospreys Black Ops is in this op or the /hwg/ one. It's a really good versatile game worth checking out. It's kind of like 40k 4th(?) ed killteam, but not necessaryly asymetrical.
Also two hour wargames 5150 cyberpunk stuff could be used. It can also be played solo.

So Achtung Chtulhu became a skirmish wargame, built on Spartan's Dystopian Legions.

Not sure how I feel.

As long as Spartan isn't actually managing the game, it'll be fine.

It's made by Modiphius, who'll also manage Siege of the Citadel (no connection to Prodos, thank god), so it could be fine.

bump

This might help

That is something I didn't tought much about, I imagined a good book will cover all I need to know
Soon I'll play warmachine with a friend so I better ask on their thread

That's very good thanks,
My only concern is if it fits on the scale I'm using

>My only concern is if it fits on the scale I'm using

If it doesn't you should be able to just play around with distance measurements a bit and make it work.

there are bunch of games from exrackham guys (wrath of kings is another)

>Soon I'll play warmachine with a friend
2d terrain it is, then.

This was definitely from the game mechanics guy. Drakerys has a lot of of the same stuff that appeared in AT-43 and the last edition of Confrontation (universal roll chart, resource pools for the heroes, etc.). The English and French rulebooks are up on their website.

Drakerys has some fucking awesome looking minis. I don't really care for their rules, but will pick some minis up for shits and giggles.

Muh sci-fi dudes
>Sfiligoi

Great, yet another SoBH hack. Pass.

Pretty much how I feel.

Very dead. Blame Paulo Parente. Cadwallon sells most of the line now, with some new and very nice looking figures that they release occasionally. Wrath of Kings is more or less the spiritual successor, but the style isn't quite as good IMO.

>Sfiligoi
>Great, yet another SoBH hack. Pass.
>Pretty much how I feel.

Please elaborate.
I never played song of blades.

So, the game tried to simplify everything down to needing only 2 stats. To make up for it, there's dozens of special rules, some of which aren't sitiational enough ti justify the use of a special rule. Like, you could've included a movement stat and cut out a few special rules. It just results in a more complicated mess.

Sounds bad. Still curious about Rogue Stars though.

Maybe he did it different in this game.

Anyway I think this is probably the greatest strength and weakness of Osprey's approach to publishing games.
There's no QA or consistency, at the same time it means a lot of different games that come with an affordable pricetag.

Dunno how to feel about Rogue Stars now though. Guess I'll wait a little and see what others have to say before ordering the book.

Rogue Stars is apparently a d20 system and uses TNs and has some other shit

lead-adventure.de/index.php?PHPSESSID=531b33308f5ac364eff6caca47307945&topic=84272.msg1036460#msg1036460

Skipping ahead, 3x3 board is apparently standard and people are talking about it already having a fair amount of errata (Thanks, Osprey.) and a shitton of modifiers (28?).

Working on one as well. Are you doing freeform movement or grid based?

I'm currently experimenting with both right now.

I think I'm going to be going for grid/hex based movement from what I've seen. It just feels simpler to model building interiors, cover and the space occupied by models on a grid based system.

I'm working on a square grid right now, simply for the ease of npc movement when it comes to civilians and such. I'm aiming more for a bit of an expanded payday 2 tabletop simulator, where the police dont arrive right away and you have a "heat" attached to your crew that affects what shows up.