/awg/ Alternative Wargames General

>Feudalism is basically the first step above anarchy, where the various local warlords have organized hierarchically for mutual support.

It most certainly is not. Feudalism is barely related to warlordism other than the fact both are based around there being somewhat autonomous rulers.

>Monarchies are centralized power, feudalism is the absence of centralized power.

Feudal countries were were not centralized because there was no real practical reason for there to be a centralized power. After all, in a substance based economy you do not need a central government to control things like trade and infrastructure.

When you put it that way, maybe we've got it backwards. Whatever it's called, the setting I'm putting together is one where the governments of Europe collapsed in the 1800s and after decades of anarchy have reorganized into a hierarchy of warlords using the military power of their knights to keep order, and appropriating medieval imagery partly for legitimacy and partly because It's Cool.

Whether it's feudalism or just Somalia with heraldry, I already made a thread for the setting itself and I'll remake it if I feel like there's more to talk about on that front, I did get some good suggestions for refining it in the last one.

I mainly came here to talk about rulesets and I don't want to shit up awg with fluff discussion.

So as a general question to try to rein that tangent in, where would people start if they wanted to make a simple (at least at first) wargame with a non-fantasy alt-history sort of setting. Would you crib a different game or write something whole-cloth, and what would you do to make it your own in either case, instead of a weird pseudo-clone of a different game. Right now I'm looking at the knights and how I can flesh out their rules to make the ruleset stick out there.

>Somalia with heraldry
That sounds even better.

I'd build on something that's already present - re-work Rogue Stars to fit your setting better (different kind of warlords instead of factions) or something along those lines.

>So when it comes to rules design, how do people get around the whole "reinventing the wheel" element?
>Like, do I just build the same set of stats and do d6 under stat? Do I go for something unique for the sake of being unique?
Don't fix what ain't broke. In other words being unique for the sake of being unique is not unique, it's just the opposite of what you perceive to be popular at the moment. Which probably has been done just as often at one time or another.
>I've got a setting idea that I've decided would be more interesting a mental exercise if I tried to implement it as a little tactical wargame.
>Then I see the sheer number of tactical wargames and I wonder how I'd go about making this one not just a simpler warma-clone, but more important than that at the moment I wonder how to put together a ruleset when there's already so many out there.
The thing with designing a game is that you should always know what you USP is.
If you want this to be a vehicle to pimp your setting work with that. Design the mechanics of the game around the background and give it as much flavor as possible. That's more important than making a competitive/balanced ruleset.

Anyone has any of the old Chipco rulesets like Fantasy Rules! I remember having fun with them but I lost my copy on my last move and they don't seem to have an online presence anymore:
theminiaturespage.com/rules/index.mv?id=748145

Well, pledge manager for Siege of the Citadel has been exanded till the end of May. Makes me happy as I can gather money for all the addons I need.

pg. 10 bump

So step one is to break that mentality of needing to reinvent the wheel. Take a few rulesets you are familiar with and fix what you don't like. The idea is to get into the thought process of deciding on what works and what doesn't. It also helps give you a feel on how mechanics reflect game fluff.

After that, read more systems. Any system you can get your hands on. The more you expose yourself to new ideas, the more you can refine what you like and what you don't like. You can even dip into RPG systems if you like.

Next, start looking at the math of various dice. Learn what you can about bell curves and stats of diffent rolls have. Averages are you friends and make designing a lot easier down the road.

You'd be surprised how quickly a system can shape itself. I wenr from a fairly run of the mill Warhammer-Warmahordes clone to using a single roll resolution dice pool system just by following those steps and letting your mind wander into new ideas.

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Game design question: How many sprcisl rules is too many?

Depends on the type of game and the scale.

How do you feel about random initiative every turn?
Personally I'm not a fan of it.

If they are truly unique and each of them brings something new to the game, use as much as you want, the more the merrier. Case in point: Malifaux.

Define random - roll off, or different factors such as the commander's initiative has a purpose in determining it?

So these are coming out soon

Working on a skirmish.

Depends on if its influenced by an in-game factor, or just a roll off.

No where Malifaux level. More Warmahordes level, where each model has 1 or 2 unique rules and there's a few universal.

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I guess for at least 50GBP per item.

>More Warmahordes level, where each model has 1 or 2 unique rules and there's a few universal.
Sounds about right.

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I think the most is a model or two have different fire modes, so they have rules for those.

I like this one.

This one needs the helmet from

I'm talking roll offs

Trash.
Abominable if the game is full IGOUGO.

I'm talking roll-offs.
I tried some demo games at a LGS thing this weekend and that seemed to be a common trend.

Then yeah, its terrible.

Its the most basic way to determine who goes first. Personally, I think it needs some influence from the board, like tactical or field advantage. So you can play to it, instead of it just being there.

Don't try Dark Age then...

Yeah, but my issue is doing every single turn
I prefer to have some consistency in know when you are going to be able to move.

Who has the Judge Dredd mini game rulebook?

Around 2 months ago warlord took full control of the 2000 AD license I am really curious what they will do with it.

here are the stat cards for the Halo ground command releases of this month:

spartangames.co.uk/resources/downloads

Relic Knights is apparently getting a new edition.

Help me talk a friend who backs everything that Ninja Division puts out away from backing this. I've heard literally nothing about Relic Knights, and that's usually a bad thing. What happened with its 1st ed release? Did it bomb critically, or did it just fail to get a community going, or something else?

>Help me talk a friend who backs everything that Ninja Division puts out away from backing this
This is their 3rd KS since SDE which wsn't delivered as of yet.

>ninja division
>shits out anime pinups and chibi minis like there's no tomorrow
>lets hell dorado die

Trust me anons, I don't disagree. But some people have more money than sense. I've already tried pointing out the company's issues and he doesn't care.

In the end you can't save someone who doesn't want to save themselves, but I'd like to if it's possible. Thus why I'm looking for dirt on the game itself and not the company.

Relic Knights is without hyperbole the worst wargame I have ever played.

It's like they went out of their way to make everything different without asking themselves if it would work.

It's a truly awful game that I had to wait two years for before it turned up and when it did everything about it was awful.

Lots of people have something they backed on KS that stops them from buying into the hype and backing games, for me it's Relic Knights.

While I am a fan of weaboo bullshit, there is no way that I am trusting them after their previous kickstarters.

As you said 1st edition did bomb with both terrible rules and awfully cast models. I will concede that they improved though.

Don't forget letting the actual good animu game, Anima Tactics die alongside Hell Dorado. Having miniatures with actual detail is too much for them I guess.

Relic Knights was novel, but failed for many reasons.

1. poor sculpt quality
2. counter-intuitive rules (what? Pushing one man in a squad causes them all to fly backwards and die?)
3. Non-interactivity (the most powerful way to play was never to fire a shot at your enemy and just rush objectives)

I mean. It had some potential for trying to break the mold. No deployment zones ended up actually just being 'you kinda deploy in a zone shaped blob anyway' and the 'magic draw' system was.. odd. But still. It didn't work out in the end right.

>Alternative Wargames General
>WHFB in OP pic
Ouch

This this this

I like the noh sculpts, but that's pretty much it. The game is garbage. Typical Ninja Division crap about trying to be different, but not better or the same.

I got a good deal on a bunch of noh stuff that came with a bunch of star nebula and black diamond stuff. I've been sitting on it for about 2 years now, and I have yet to find a single person wanting to buy it off me. Like, I want to think of some clever way of repurposing the stuff, but only a few of them (like the diamondback) are useful. The rest is trash that I would probably have trouble giving away. Stay very far away from it user.

To wash out that relic knights taste and return us to awg, have some Dark Age CORE murderbots.

>that robot on the right
Is that fallout power armor? That head looks strikingly similar.

What's your favorite way of handling turns and why? Simultaneously? Init order per model? UGOIGO per phase/turn? Some other method?

I believe it is. It is definitely not the L1ghtbr1nger's default head.

Depends on the game style. For skirmish, alternating activation is my go to. I've played with the idea of group activation for larger scale games.

Yep, it's a Fallout enclave head. The Lightbringer's original head is pretty cool, but a bit small--- thought this was more menacing considering it's basically a robot satan.

Activation depends on the kind of game you want, I feel.

I know Aegyptus was about secretly making orders and then rolling off to see who would choose to activate a unit, either their own or an opponent's

Tomorrow's War had different morale checks depending on regular or irregular units.

Fivecore could change side depending on rolls, etc.

I think that the first thing you should do is stop trying to reinvent the wheel, but instead make a system that is familiar and simple, but use core ideas that turn it into something new.

I'll give you an example from vidya with the game Titalfall. At its core it's a regular fps shooter on foot and as a titan, however the combination of the two is what makes it interesting. All the new possibilities that open up by using existing systems makes the game feel unique without you needing to re-learn anything.

Maybe you should tr the same thing for our own game. Look at other game systems and find 1 element that you really really like about them, then try to design something simple that uses that concept in as many ways as possible.

This is not going to always work out, so you'll have to try a few different concepts, but once you find something that sticks you'll have a cool and unique game.

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Hey /awg/,
I've been reading up on the Gates of Antares fluff lately and I've come across the names of three major alien races.

My question is are there any pictures at all of them?
I mean at least the Vorl are mentioned so much in the background fluff that they almost seem like another major faction of the game, but there isn't even a proper description of them apart from 'chitinous' as far as I can tell.

You can use GW miniatures to play good games.

Technically the Isorian's Tsan Ra are the Tsan Kiri that they fought against, just raised to serve humans.

Damn those are lovely. I want to buy into Dark Age but all of the stockists I can find in the UK don't sell any of the new releases and have an eclectic stock of the other stuff. Shame as I'm a sucker for robits and Dark Age sounds like a pretty fun game.

Someone hasn't read his Duby.

When will people stop spouting this shit? First, you're completely misunderstanding feudalism. Second, you're applying feudalism to societies where it hadn't existed for nearly 400 years in some cases (19th century Europe).

>Stagnation

Wut. Both technological progression and the economy picked up massively between 900 and 1300 AD in Europe.

The "Between 530 and 1300 nothing interesting happened in Europe and there were no scientific advancements at all" is one of the most cancerous memes of our time.

This is one of my many problems with GoA. The rules themselves look fine and the background and factions are fundamentally sound but a lot of how the game is presented just doesn't work. It's interesting I guess since it's something Warlord have never had to do before since they just do historical games.

The background is full of instances where it's written as if you already know what's going on but you don't because they haven't told you yet and this is compounded by the book being full to bursting with dumb sci-fi names that make the fluff a chore to read. For example, the timeline of GoA is split into several ages and one of those ages is called the Xon times. Now standalone the Xon times sounds fucking stupid but they mention it several times before they tell you what the fuck it is. The books full of stuff like that.

More people need to play timeline.

Thanks for that. I missed those minis apparently.

If GoA brings out more weirdness like that it's gonna be great.

>are fundamentally sound but a lot of how the game is presented just doesn't work. It's interesting I guess since it's something Warlord have never had to do before since they just do historical games.
I'm 100% with you there. They really need to step up their game. Show better pictures of the miniatures themselves and pump out more artwork to make the setting come to life. And actually use that artwork to promote the game. There are a bunch of really nice illustrations in the rulebook you will not see anywhere else. Kind of stupid if you got the material to flesh out the background articles and you don't use the picture that show you instantly what they are talking about.

>The background is full of instances where it's written as if you already know what's going on but you don't because they haven't told you yet and this is compounded by the book being full to bursting with dumb sci-fi names that make the fluff a chore to read.
I agree with this too. Teleporters and homing beacons are fine, no need to call them Transmat and hooks just for the sake of it.

>For example, the timeline of GoA is split into several ages and one of those ages is called the Xon times.
Yeah, kind of why I'm asking. I was reading the fluff section in the BRB, where they mention the Tsan Kiri, the Vorl and a third alien race repeatedly. Then the fluff for the character models uses the Vorl as antagonists, but nowhere does it explain what the fuckers actually look like.

Maybe this is wishful thinking, but once they got the whole range in plastic or at least every choice in the army lists as model, we could get the Vorl as seventh Wildcard/Pirate faction?
Kind of got that impression, I just wish there was at least a verbal description of the guys.

More info and some stats on the new Dystopian Wars 2-player box.

spartangames.co.uk/clash-of-wolves

Any recommendations for fantasy skirmish games with campaign rules other than Mordheim and SoBaH?

Knocked out a squadron of escorts for when my new battleship arrives.

you know, I would really love to get into Dystopian wars but for some reason I'm a bit sad that the game is mostly focused on naval units rather than land units, oh and air units are weaker than navals, or that's what I've heard.

Land fleets are just less popular, and it's been a vicious spiral- naval units are more interesting because they make more naval units, because they sell more naval units because more people play naval because naval is more interesting.

Air depends on the fleet, but because they get unlimited sight and the ability to control to-hit numbers against them, they get less gun and more armour for the points

>Any recommendations for fantasy skirmish games with campaign rules other than Mordheim and SoBaH?
Blood Bowl

looking for a naval war game for 1700 -1800

Naval General might be better help

Transmat's a Brit thing, I think. I've heard it used elsewhere, like on Dr. Who.

But yeah, GoA has a real marketing and PR problem. Warlords probably never had to deal with these things, since they mostly deal with historicals. When basing off of a real event with so much already covering it, you don't need to promote it as heavily as you do with an unique IP.

ok, thanks

I like you mate, you're a chancer.

I've been painting like a madman of late for my 10mm Empire army and have realised after doing several regiments I've been doing each one with different livery as follows:

Halberdiers:
Quartered White and Blue with Yellow Cap-feather
Halved Yellow and Blue Tunic with White Cap-feather

Greatswords:
Halved White and Yellow Tunic with Blue Cap-feather
Quartered Blue and White with Yellow Cap-feather

Handgunners:
White Tunic, Blue Breeches

Artillery Crew:
Blue Tunic, White Breeches

I figure I will fluff it as each regiment is raised from a different landowner's household and while they all grudgingly have their troops march in the King's colours, they are all trying to have the most stylish uniform for their troops.

I'm going for a sort of foppish fantasy, the miniatures are Landsknechts with massive feathered hats and puffed sleeves and my army's general is a model of Charles I so a touch like that doesn't seem too unreasonable.

Household? I mean, of course, lands.

Aside from GoA, 40k and Warmahordes, what squad-based games are out there?

Warzone does.

Warpath Firefight, The other side (when it comes out)

So Mantic is doing their Resin casting in-house from now on. They also released this render of an upcoming Tree Herder model.

Those Dwarfs are nice. Any idea how much they'll cost?

I use to really be into LOTR SBG, but I lost interest after GW jacked up the prices for the Hobbit releases.

Eh I still like the LotR Ent best.

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So why does this image exist?

A year ago I purchased a lot of Space Marine era Epic Chaos miniatures. Something that occurred to me quite quickly is that the Beastmen, Minotaurs, and even the Juggernauts and Steeds of Slaanesh (those two have guns, but they might as well be clubs or maces given the low detail early 90s plastics) would double as fantasy minis. What do y'all think of making a throw back Lost and the Damned army that can also mostly double as a fantasy army? Only weirdness would be that I don't think 6mm is a popular fantasy scale?

Also, whenever I look to fill gaps, I'm immediately reminded how much better current third party sculpts are than this stuff. GW sculpts got good in the mid 90s and peaked in the 2000s. Space Marine era stuff is quite a ways before that....

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>Only weirdness would be that I don't think 6mm is a popular fantasy scale?
10mm is more popular I think.
Depending on what you use it might not even matter though. Demons don't really need to conform to regular human sizes.