/awg/ - Alternative Wargames General

Steampunk Victoria Edition

>What is /awg/?
A thread to talk about minis and games which fall between the cracks. /hwg/ doesn't entertain fantasy (for good reason) and the other threads are locked to very specific games, so this thread isn't tied to a game, or a genre, lets talk about fun wargames.

Any scale, any genre, any company, any minis. Skirmishers welcome. Rules designers welcome.

>Examples of games that qualify
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_miniature_wargames
Mighty Armies, Dragon Rampant, Of Gods and Mortals, Frostgrave, Hordes of the Things, Songs of Blades and Heroes, and anything that doesn't necessarily have a dedicated thread (gorkamundheim).

>Places to get minis
docs.google.com/document/d/1D2DbNJ2mYAUxh5P9Pq9NZqS5tXHGn0i2JhZchEwbA2I/edit?usp=sharing

>The Novice Trove
pastebin.com/viWJ1Yvk

Last thread
So the last thread after I posted about the problems with the Dystopian Wars Kickstarter. This led me to wonder, what does it take to run a successful Kickstarter for a wargame? And more specifically, are finished models needed or can you just have renderings of them?

Other urls found in this thread:

onepagerules.wordpress.com/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Has anyone played Maelstrom's Edge? I saw their ad on dakkadakka. I've literally never even heard of this game before but the starter set is about $120CAD and comes with terrain, which seems neat. The models look pretty good imo.

How are the rules? Fags make you pay $10 for the digital rulebook if you don't buy it in the box set

God damnit when are the japanese going to get here for k47?

Pretty sure its a dead game. I remember they did a KS for it, and then nothing afterwards.

That's too bad. I found a Let's Play from earlier this year on it, doesn't seem terrible but I'm only about 12 minutes in and the game hasn't actually started yet. kek

is this where my thread has finally run it's course? Page 8, 4 replies, no picture replies.

This thread is a shadow of the monster that I created so long ago.

Its Saturday night.

...

I dug up the GMG Let's Play to look at it. Looks like I never finished that video.

The last /awg/ thread was slow too but was up a week.


Anybody gave this a whirl yet?

>$90 USD starter kit
>comes with about 20 man sized minis and about 3 slightly larger minis

I don't know, I think Deadzone looks better, the rules look tighter and the terrain looks way better

>Deadzone

literally WHFB in space
>space undead
>space orks
>space skaven
>space dwarfs

nothing you posted invalidates my opinion that the rules in deadzone are really tight and good and that mantic did a fantastic job with their modular scifi terrain.

And?

Holy shit.

Got any more project pics abusing their terrain/building sets?

sadly, this terrain was built by mantic for a convetion to show off what is possible if you take out another mortgage on your home


there are lots of angles of this oil rig but I haven't come across anything more of this terrain system

I don't have any pictures, but there is a set of videos on youtube by the Terrain Tutor building a generic wargaming scenery for a table he built for charity.
Was a desert table and he used the pieces not only to build the cube based building, but made some other scatter terrain with it too. Ventilation vents and stuff like that.

Anyway, I find that watching people build scenery is immensely satisfying. Kind of brings the whole hobby to life, if you know what I mean.

>take out another mortgage on your home
Eh? I thought their sets were pretty cheap

...

>They snuk Ronnie and Fisty Glue Man in there
gotta love Mantic

Guess he meant to say if you buy that much it's getting expensive.

If you don't build exclusively with Mantic plastics you can stretch the milage you get out of it more and for most games you don't need more than a handful of buildings with three levels at most usually.

not if you're building an oil rig like this

terrain tutor is ok, he's a bit of an insufferable cunt personally but he makes damn good terrain.

I wish that nobody told me how loud he is when he breathes in, because that's all I can hear now.

terrainaholic is a guy on youtube I used to really like, but he cut down his amount of videos a lot, and now he's done a ton of lets plays with his wife

at least he stopped using his iphone to record his laptop screen

>he's a bit of an insufferable cunt personally
He rambles a lot and takes forever to get to the point. Don't think he's a cunt though. What makes you say that?

Another great channel for scenery porn is Terranscapes

>Guess he meant to say if you buy that much it's getting expensive.

yeah, that oil rig is about a 4x4 cube of plastic bits, overly dense for even a necromunda game

Terranscapes is ok, I find that his content lacks a lot of the punch that other terrain videos usually have, for example I think his best series is the rapid fire critique

>he's a bit of an insufferable cunt
Some of the opinions he expresses is beyond kid gloves, and stay away from the facebook group, shadow bans without reason and what not

>Terranscapes is ok, I find that his content lacks a lot of the punch that other terrain videos usually have, for example I think his best series is the rapid fire critique
Yeah most of it is just a documentation of his projects, but I really enjoy that. The rapid fire critique is something that you can just watch without context. Great for wasting ten minutes on youtube and also interesting because people rarely - or at least I rarely see them do it - try to get feedback during building scenery like they do while painting a miniature. It's pretty educational.
And got me pumped to start building stuff myself.

>>he's a bit of an insufferable cunt
>Some of the opinions he expresses is beyond kid gloves, and stay away from the facebook group, shadow bans without reason and what not
Fair enough, I never watched his live streams nor do I use facebook a lot. I just keep to watching his scenery vids and those are mostly pretty good.

Posting official Necromunda scenery for comparison cause it seems relevant.

always build, always keep learning, always keep growing

...

Nice. I've been hoarding building materials for Mordheim/Frostgrave buildings lately.

I've been pondering if I should leave a 1-2 inch border around the bases of houses as sidewalk. But then you kind of have to plan ahead which building you can put right next to each other.
You'd kind of give up a little modularity for some eyecandy.

At the same time you can build roads with the negative space between the houses though instead of putting them into the table or laying them down by hand.

it's not mine heh, but it is easily the most inspiring piece I have, something about that little bridge makes me pine for necromundheimgrave games

Not a fan of Pinterest othwise, but it's a goldmine for scenery porn

it's alright

depends on what you are looking for of course.

grinning fat doofuses next to dick-hardening terrain is what I need of course

(it's a paper crimper which he fed a can into)

...

...

> Bretonnian Fortress
> Sticks a Breton flag on top

kek.

>WHFB
>literally historical Europe in fantasy
>muh original setting

if you like the miniatures just buy the box and then user free rules such as onepage:

onepagerules.wordpress.com/

I am still kicking myself for not buying some of that terrain during their Warpath Kickstarter. I would love to see them do something similar for fantasy. Maybe when they decide to KS new Kings of War factions?

soo - I tried to start a Wrath of Kings General, and that didn't last too long. Anyone in this thread play it or hoard it?

I'm grudgingly holding onto my KS pledge even though I know I'll never convince anyone to pick it up.

My FLGS owner trolled me the other day.

Preface: I have been rather outspoken against AoS since GW nuked WHFB, and have steadfastly refused to play AoS after the first weekend of rules release.

Last month, I bought some WoK minis, and got some people to agree to play next month to get a feel for the game.

As I am in the store, chatting with people about it, my FLGS owner leans over the counter, and stage whispers "You know you are playing Age of Sigmar now, right? Medium army sizes with skirimish rules ... hehehehehehehe"

>Age of Sigmar
>Medium army sizes with skirimish rules

>Age of Sigmar
>rules

eh, some people actually enjoy sigmar, idk, I only play random old games older than me and obscure pdf releases anyway

I think that the difference is that WoK actually requires thinking.

>So the last thread after I posted about the problems with the Dystopian Wars Kickstarter. This led me to wonder, what does it take to run a successful Kickstarter for a wargame?

You need to have a solid concept, something that hasn't been done twenty times already. Having a big name (either the company or a designer/sculptor) that potential backers can trust is pretty much mandatory.

And more specifically, are finished models needed or can you just have renderings of them?

At least some finished and nicely painted models so people know that you're not just bullshitting them with concept arts. A render isn't a finished model and there may be a massive gap in quality between the two. Spartan Games gets something of a pass on that one because their costumers know that the 3D renders are trustworthy (pretty much the only trustworthy thing about SG) but even then that's very light.

>this game with 4-5 small squads is the same as the other one with 4-5 small seuads because 4-5 small squads
Hey guise, Bolt Action is Age of Sigmar.

Your FLGS owner is a dick, plain and simple.

I dunno, I like Deadzone but I wouldn't describe it as tight or solid.

It's fun don't get me wrong but the rules are pretty janky.

>literally WHFB in space

>implying thats a bad thing

Did you play 1st or 2nd edition? I heard the new edition was a significant improvement.

I've been really interested in Deadzone, but Infinity kind of filled it's potential space in the local stores.

What are the problems wit the kickstarter exactly? are they failing?

Only other kickstarter I've thought about backing were The OtherSide by Wyrd and dropfleet commander.

Skaven as a whole, some of Chaos and Elven stuff, and the Vampire Counts (not as vampires or necromantic armies, but as vampires leading necromantic armies) are pretty original ideas. I'd call Skaven and their take on Vampire counts almost seminal.

If you'd look around I'm fairly certain you'd find folk tales, myths and legends with EXACTLY those in them.

Yeah he's a dick and I suspect he may be severely deprived of oxygen but he's kind of right. WoK is basically AoS but good, unfortunately it has a weird aesthetic that puts a lot of people off.

That and CMoN couldn't provide decent support for a miniatures game if their lives depended on it and the post KS prices were less than stellar. I mean I was happy with what I payed for the minis but I dunno if I'd be as pleased if I payed twice as much.

2nd, never played first.

From what I've heard 2nd is a lot better but I don't really have a frame of reference.

He was trolling me, y'all.

No, they are 200% funded. The thing is, they could be 1000% funded if they didn't fuck it up.

What are the problems?
>No advertising beyond "Hey, here's our kickstarter" on the official website
>Fire-and-forget kickstarter, very few updates
>Quite unprepared, you can see they were cobbling together stuff to say in the updates
>We still don't have the renders for everything even though it's supposed to be 99% finished

Basically, it was 2000% Spartan Games. "Hey we got a cool idea, wanna join? We have no long-term plan, medium-term plan, short-term plan or plan in general. But you should jump in, it's going to be fun, take our word for it." When the company already has the reputation of being the ADHD-cursed "special" kid of wargaming, making a kickstarter that only prove just how short their attention span is wasn't a very good move. It only funded because it's a glorified pre-order for their most popular line.

>be a massive autistic
>do an autistic thing
>"was just trolling, bro!"

Not the guy you're responding to, but Skaven seem pretty original for me at least.

Vampire Counts as lords of the night and all that, mixed with undead and such, well, MAYBE it was a used concept, but not the skaven

The "humanoid animal" shtick has been done to death with every animal imaginable long before that.

Are Song of Blades and Heroes and Dragon Rampant good introductions to Fantasy wargaming? They both seem pretty light in comparison to things like AoS, WMH and KoW.

I've grabbed a bunch of minis from a couple of lines (mostly AoS and KoW stuff, some Hordes, lots of D&D board games) and being able to use them together appeals to me. But is there enough depth in these systems that the units will feel unique? Is the figure-agnosticism the only benefit of using these standalone systems?

You can't get any lighter than AoS.

AoS shitposting just on the cusp of 2017

and here I thought you faggots had matured and grown up

I don't think that is right. AoS has simple basic rules, but the complexity comes from all of the individual model rules which is what makes the game take longer to play than WMH and KoW.

Go back to the contamination zone of AoS general if you don't like it.

The rules are light, and you don't need every special rule, only those you have models for.

Yeah both those systems are excellent

>Go back to the contamination zone of AoS general if you don't like it.

Jokes on you ass clown, I STARTED THIS GENERAL AND I STILL PLAY 40k AND AoS AHAHAHAHA


AHAHAHAHA

YOU'LL NEVER ESCAPE GW, NO MATTER HOW MANY OUT OF PRINT PDFS YOU READ YOUR SOUL BELONGS TO ENGLAND

Both are great choices. ASoBaH has really straightforward rules and supplements for things like campaigns, and every unit does generally feel unique once the special rules have been put on. Dragon Rampant is a similar affair, but with more indepth rules. Don't listen to the AoS posters user, GW's game designers are consistently the worst in the market.

>he says grow up
>then writes this
Okay friendo.

And in the case of AoS, you will have a lot of models each with a lot of special rules. It verifiably takes more time to play than a game of KoW or WMH.

>YOU'LL NEVER ESCAPE GW, NO MATTER HOW MANY OUT OF PRINT PDFS YOU READ YOUR SOUL BELONGS TO ENGLAND

No it doesn't! I mean sure, every single wargame I have played was developed and produced in England, but... wait a minute minute...

I'm gonna pay China reprinters for my wargame rules so I can escape the grip of the UK.

Or play Infinity. Or With Fire and Sword. Or...iunno, there are plenty good non-UK wargames.

...

bump before bed

I feel like a lot of why it feels rushed is because they were supposed to be doing a Kickstarter for their ANOTHER Dystopian War line, this time with 15mm minatures. (Because they are doing SUCH a great job of supporting their 28mm line already.)
The only thing that stopped that idea was that every single reply to their initial thread was "Why Spartan, why?"
So who knows, it could have been they were really prepared for the other Kickstarter idea but then threw this one together after they relized they would never reach their goal.

And this is coming from someone who has backed the Kickstarter for $300. The only thing that keeps me from playing another game is the fact that I love the setting (Victorian Era alt-history), I love the models (Especially ones like pic-related that incorporate buildings into the design), and I love the fact it is one of the few games that tries to portray combined arms instead of just focusing on air, naval, or land aspects. The biggest problem is the sheer incompetency of Spartan games in things like what said.

Can anybody think of some good cheap ganger or raider models in 28mm for This is Not a Test?

I think alt-history is pushing it, next to nothing in Dystopian Wars is grounded in any reality at all.

Fair enough, but I think that Victorian science fiction with stuff based on actual nations is pretty neat.

I don't really see realism as being a prerequisite for alt-history, at least alt-history of this nature.

tiny 15mm bump

Tiny 10mm bump

my dick can only handle so much. We diamonds now boys!!

cool, i can dig the vibe! What minis and what rule set you recon? Would be nice as a small skirmish post bio-attack setting

pic related, that in MDF is my dream

Hey /awg/, can you name your pros and cons for Frostgrave?

I realize that its somewhat like Mordheim, but not as deep. So kinda Mordheim "lite"? Do you enjoy playing it?

>What minis and what rule set you recon?
I couldn't say what minis for certain but you can get similar Hazmat dudes from:

> Hasslefree
> ThunderChild
> Ramshackle Games (sort of, see pic related)

For ruleset, there's plenty of post-apoc skirmish stuff like:

> Nuclear Renaissance
> This is Not a Test
> Wreck-Age

these guys are 6mm user

hot fuzz skirmish game?

>bases not supplied. shown here based on metal disks

>metal disks

why didn't they just say washers?

They clearly meant Iron Maiden CDs.

>why didn't they just say washers?
Lol check out granddad with his antiquated appliances

You're gonna need some harder metal than that for bases.

>Dragonfarce
>hard metal

You must choose 1 to continue.

>thatsthejoke.jpg

>want to play figure wargame that has nice models and is not warhammer
>go back to warhammer in the end every time
i am lost ain't i

>>go back to warhammer in the end every time

Why though?

>pic related, that in MDF is my dream
If that is 28mm you should swing by 4Grounds and check their store out

I had this urge until I started playing Kings of War with my friend. Rules bickering, long drawn out turns and constantly having to remove models from large units have gone away and we can spend more time on drinking beer and playing the game.

4G is really nice, but its expensive.

If you are lazy and rich then thats fine i guess, but if you don't mind painting a couple of houses you can buy cheaper mdf buildings and paint them yourself.

But I like my games lasting 4+ hours!

Play 2 games.

It allows me to justify all the terrain I've bought and built since we can switch up the map a few times in a session. Also try out different units more often.