Want to pick up a Wargame

I want to pick up wargaming as a hobby due to the customization and strategy aspects but I have no idea what game I want to actually pick up since there are so many. I'm already familiar with 40k and Warmahordes, but I was wondering if there were other popular choices and what sort of benefits those other games might have. I'm pretty in the dark. When I was younger I picked up a box of Orks and started reading the rules of 40k but that was near the end of highschool and my life got nuts and ended up storing and losing those models before I had even finished painting them. Well I'm a big boy now with big boy money and a big boy attention span so I want to play with action figures like a big boy.

Few things:
Sci-fi or fantasy, no realistic stuff. It just doesn't tickle my interest.
A game that's moderately popular. I live close to large population centers, but I'm not keen on picking up something nobody plays
I'm currently space-limited so something that doesn't require a gross of models to play is also a plus. I am aware that many games support scaling army size for this reason

>A game that's moderately popular.
Figure out where the local gamestores are, go to them and ask what's popular there

Chances are they'll have a handful of regularly played games. Once you have that knowledge you can better make your decision. It also gives you a good idea as to which stores you'd actually want to give your money to and spend time at.

This See what grows well in the ground before deciding on what to plant. Although if you find something else that tickles your fancy you may just have to become a gardener and plant some seeds yourself.

play 40k
play as tau
get a few riptides, stormsurge, and some crisis battle suits and you are set

Internet search is coming up really thin if you don't play Magic: The Moneyholening

Play Kill team?

Bite the bullet and actually get into historicals (6mm WW2 is cool).

Do what he others have said.

Ain't gon shell out for realistic. I'd sooner buy some random neat miniatures to paint for fun than that.

I'm looking into what others have said, though.

Maybe this thread should just be about people shilling their favorite miniatures game now

At least where I live each system has it's own community on facebook. But do what and recommended, go to the store and talk to the owner, and see what gets played and what store you rather avoid.

Malifaux and Infinity are decently popular and focus more on skirmish scale (say 5-10 minis for an army) and have good rules.

Infinity is near future sci-fi special ops with an anime esque style to the minis.

Malifaux is sorta dark victorian fantasy, uses cards instead of dice for rng in an interesting mechanic that gives you semi control of outcomes.


Both are the same scale as 40k with similarly detailed minis (that lean more towards truescale than Gws exaggerated heroic scale), though less parts options.

There are a shitton of great wargames, just have a look at /awg/ and see if there's something you like.
As for popularity, that is highly dependant on your area. So do some research and see what people around you play.

Kings of War and Infinity are big in my area.
Kings of War is great because there's a big sense of freedom to it- use whatever miniatures you like to represent given statblocks. There isn't much in the way of fluff, which might put you off, but personally I prefer it that way. I like to write the stories myself, through play, instead of having the story dictated to me.
Haven't played Infinity, my favourite sci-fi game is Dropzone Commander. There's lots of fast, decisive movement, and the slightly smaller scale makes so much sense for the size of a typical game.

Seconding Infinity and Malifaux. Or both, each scratches a very different itch for me.

40k
It's played everywhere
It's actually good

HIghly recommend infinity, but as says, look at what's popular near by and ask for demo games, its worth shopping around for a group that you really like. The games will only be as good as the people you play with.

Good Luck user!

>It's actually good
It's legitimately the worst wargame I've ever played. Every aspect, from the balance, to the tactics involved, to the corporate attitude of GW is dreadful.

You're forgetting it's fun

Runewars Miniatures Game is coming out soon, probably mid march. Same designers as Xwing and developed by Fantasy Flight.

The rules are TIGHT - really elegant rules and turn structure. Basically every unit has a dial where you program in their actions (each unit has different actions available at different initiative) and a modifier for that action. This simulates the fog of war and provides an incredible layer of strategy.

Then basically everything both players programmed in plays out in initiative order. Units have threat which is how wide their engaged facing is and the depth of their ranks determines how many rerolls you get on your dice.

There's custom and dynamic dice for damage and morale is an active element, you actually activate panic on ENEMY units (as opposed to the save or suck nature of morale GW games for example) where you draw cards from a deck and play them according to the severity of the morale check.

There's full points based list building and force customization. Main play space is 6x3' but the core set which is 100 and comes with two armies can be played 3x3.

Seriously so impressed with this game, highly recommend checking it out if you're looking for a rank-and-file style wargame.

Considering your space requirements I also recommend checking out X-wing. Bound to be a bunch of players in your area (probably the second most popular miniatures game outside of 40k and growing) and it's a really fun dog-fighting miniatures game set in the star wars universe. 3x3' board.

40k is dogshit right now, especially for Orks. The rules are about to change again, you need 100's of models, and the game takes forever to play.

Honestly, something like X-wing would likely work well for you. It doesn't cost $1000s to make an army, takes up very little space, and has a pretty big player base.

Buy second hand minis and you get a large army for like 200 freedom dollers. Kitbashing and converting also save you a pretty penny. Only an idort would buy new GW boxes.

Depends on the people you play with. Tourney gaming in warhams is ultra-autistic and it goes double for the people who play tourney lists in casual games. If you have few friends who want to start warhams army, i'll be pretty gud.

You havent played any other miniature game ever it seems.

Battletech.
While it's not really common, it's very easy to get into.
All you need is a lance (4 mechs) and 2d6.
If you can find them, the Lance boxes cost like $12, buying mechs individually is a little more expensive, but you'll never pay over $60.

Drop Zone is my favourity sci fi wargame at the moment.

In fact favourite wargame total.

Also check out drop fleet, only played a game but it looks poromising

>no realistic stuff.
I was going to recommend bolt action but you could try konflict 47 werid ww2.

tell you the truth most fantasy and sci fi games are crap at the moment

40k is a terrible unbalanced mess of special rules and author favoritism. Only playable through houseruling and gentlemen's agreements.

Try Dropzone Commander instead. Or Warmahordes if you want a tournament scene.

>recommending Runewars
Dude, are you payed to shill (if so, who do I contact to get me some of that money)? Seriously though, that game is going to FLOP, because FFGs main demographic are casuals who don't want to paint miniatures, but are used to being fed painted X-Wing miniatures. Plus their game design is generally bad.

Unless you require the multitude of charts, the pages of mech sheets, and the explanation of what most of this shit is, in which case you're picking up the $100 starter set. And don't say "Just pirate it" because if you're planning on getting into something, you shouldn't half-ass it.

Yeah my interest in X-Wing died when I saw they're prepainted

Fundamentally BT has changed little over the years. You can get cheap sets off ebay that cover the rules. You can print hex maps to taste (right down to a4 size if you dont care about using official minis).

Pick up a box or two of giant robots and off you go: Move, turn/react, fire, hit things, do your heat scale, micro manage your resources, repeat.

Played with one 40k player who hated it. Mind you, he is well invested in GW with Tau, Necrons, Eldar, and Chaos armies for Ao$.

>dollarsignedgelord.jpg

Runewars looks okay, but this guy fucking shows up every time and shills it so hard
Makes the occasional thread about how great it's going to be as well. Makes me not want to get it out of spite.

Just prime and paint them, what's the issue? Hell, I've heard that you don't even need to prime them.

If you have to run a heap of self-imposed restrictions to get a decent game, that's the game's fault, not the players. Play something better where everyone can have fun doing what they want.

Ha I wish. Op asked for a recco and I think it's seriously impressive game centric design, for the reasons stated.

Ffg entering into the more traditonal miniatures space is interesting, more traditional gamers with an appreciation for painting models and an actually balanced rule system definitly have a market. Price point is great, models are great, paintable, rules are better than anything Ive played before (wfb, kow, hordes, 40k, shitmar).

Two factions to begin with and up against the retarded giant of GW are probably the biggest hurdles for it iniatially. But at least we know it will be balanced af.

Overall I think it offers something the market really needs i.e an an easy to learn hard to master miniatures game that doesnt take 4 hours to play one game because the rules are actually good.

i tried painting my T-70 X-wing black and orange, before Heroes of the resistance came out, and the paint adheres pretty well

theres actually a big community of X-wing painters out there and some look really good

>Overall I think it offers something the market really needs i.e an an easy to learn hard to master miniatures game that doesnt take 4 hours to play one game because the rules are actually good.
There are plenty of these though

Kek
>first time ive posted about it
Where are all my runewars shill bretheren at?

sure thing buddy
the rest of us want to talk about wargames, so just run along now

What's the opinion on Warmahordes? That's looking pretty good from where I am, actually.

On a scale of 1 to faggot how much does winning matter to you? Because warmachine does tend to attract more people at the faggot end of that scale. The rules are really solid, with almost no wiggle room for creative interpretations which makes it a good base to work from, but the rock-paper-scissors nature of wargames is also more obvious here with entailing issues.

Its a fun game though if you have a group that doesnt go too faggot for you. I know quite a few people who dont like the style though.

salty hambeast detected

I thought it was a spicy Dropzone meme, actually.

But the models are super generic/not very interesting.

fpbp

I never get people coming in and asking which game they should play, as if they can find players for all games nearby. It's kind of like saying 'guys should I take up snowboarding or surfing?'

>similarly detailed minis
>40k
>Malifaux and Infinity

They are, if you compare sculpts of a similar age and more usefully unpainted vs unpainted the quality or fineness of detailing is comparable.

>detailing is comparable.
Well nope, Infinity models much better detailed, simple because they didn't bury the model under shitton of useless details

Stylistic choices isn't the same as technical quality. GW minis like infinity are highly detailed, being ugly is irrelevant.

Looking better to your subjective tastes isn't better detailing, its just different aesthetics.

>Looking better to your subjective tastes isn't better detailing, its just different aesthetics.
Since when "overdesigned" decome "aesthetic"?

>Since when "overdesigned" decome "aesthetic
Since always, being over
designed or not is a subjective trait.

It also still has nothing to do with detailing quality.

Pic a genre/setting, pick a scale, pick a ruleset.

Don't you get bored coming in these threads and saying the same thing over and over again?

>It's the same person because NO TWO people could possibly think 40k is bad.

It's a bad game and the rules don't even work all that well for 28mm especially during larger games.

Yawn why don't you suggest an alternative or do you not even play table top games

Future War Commander; scales very nicely from 6mm up to 15mm (can work with 28mm but needs a big table), handles company level actions and upwards very nicely, and it's a generic ruleset so you can use it with pretty much every setting.

It's even got lists for the miniatures of a ton of stuff; so you have army lists in there for GW stuff, Battletech stuff, etc so you can use your existing collection right off the bat.

I posted mine very early in the thread, actually.

I posted mine very early in the thread, well before the useless GW drones showed up and stated parroting their broken mess. Despite the OP specifically stating not 40k.

That's actually a really fucking good idea.

FWC, CWC and BKC are cool.

Also look at TwoHourWargames Chain Reaction system.