/awg/ Alternative Wargames General

15mm a best 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
Grimdark Future, Age of Fantasy, Mighty Armies, Dragon Rampant, Of Gods and Mortals, Frostgrave, Hordes of the Things, Songs of Blades and Heroes, Freebooter's Fate, Dark Age, LotR 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

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onepagerules.com/
ideaswithoutend.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/tabletop-game-review-test-of-honour/
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Bump

Give me your most interesting rule wise skrimish games.

Honestly malifaux's core mechanics are amongst the most interesting to me. Action points and alternating activations, with card based resolutions and a solid scenario generator. Too bad their current aesthetics and individual unit designs aren't that great IMHO

Any Two Hour Wargames' system lets you step into the shoes of a real combat commander, fighting to keep his troops under control, as well as taking out the enemy, and all using one basic stat & two simple mechanics.

It's pretty realistic & fast-playing, but that's it's weak point, too - not many people can stand seeing their troops running away or being incapable.

Otherwise, it's great for campaigns, since most of the games (as advertised) last less (sometimes a lot less) than Two Hours.

Morning bump

This definitely isn't /hwg/ territory given the designers say they want a "movie inspired" game and cite The Last Samurai as a key inspiration. So here's my thoughts on Warlord's Test of Honour:

1) Miniatures: They're the WGF Ashigaru/Samurai sprues reboxed with some metal heroes and conversion bits. The faces aren't "40s Superman comic Hirohito" but aren't the best I've seen across plastic ranges. The poses are highly variable and there's no real part numbering so out of box you might get some wonky looking dudes. BUT they're cheap. 35 guys for 32 bong pounds in the starter set cheap.

Don't think you can cheap out and buy elsewhere, the stat cards come in the box. This is a big stroke against.

2) The rules are very brief and absolutely need the FAQ to fix some dumb omissions. But they work fine as a quick skirmish game. It's your usual Warlord "rummage in your sack" activation mechanic, but with a twist. The tokens are either "activate hero", "activate grunt" or "nothing happens". When 3 "nothing happens" are drawn, turn over. I think Too Fat Lardies do something similar.

Combat is based on slinging proprietary dice and counting hits. 3 hits, you succeed. 5, you crit. More Xs than hits, you fucked up and fall over/misfire. Damage is 3+ hits to kill a man, 5 for a crit which lets you consolidate or swing again. I had a game where my guy got so many crits he blendered his way through a team of mooks, then critfailed against the enemy hero, fell over and got oneshot. It's a swingy system.

Hits that don't kill inflict Flesh Wounds. Each flesh wound increases the strength of subsequent attacks against the target. I like this.

That's pretty much it. There's morale, and an experience system, and a thing where you can be "dishonourable" to buff your hero but your men's morale drops because you're being a twat.

Overall: It's a light, fast game which I enjoy playing and can teach in very little time to non wargamers. It would be a good next step from Walking Dead.

So let's say that I've been playing Ronin for a while and through some delusions of Kings of War I've amassed quite a few of those WGF ashigaru in both arquebus and bow variant.

How hard would it be for me to try out this game, given I've basically got enough figures to outfit a handful of players.

You can get the core rules in PDF, but would be lacking the special dice and stat and ability cards you can only get in the boxed game. I can understand why this was the choice Warlord made (they wanted to sell a complete boxed game for new players rather than just a ruleset) but it is annoying. That said someone will doubtless scan the decks at some point (I don't own a scanner).

I've posted in the PDF share thread but you guys will be able to help more I'm hoping.
Im looking for a copy of patrol Angis and call sign Taranis from the ion age.
theionage.com

Thanks.
I'm not going to buy any of these sets. I'm really not impressed by the WGF Japanese stuff and I'm not a fan of special dice.

I'd characterize malifaux's rules as "a lot of good ideas". There's a ton going on there that nobody else really does... but there's also a great deal of complexity that doesn't add depth (the original sin for wargames, as far as I'm concerned). As a for-instance, they got a little carried away with the upgrade thing - it can be tough to keep track of what upgrades are even available, and quite a few are non-decisions (either automatic or never taken).

The aesthetics are obviously down to individual taste. For every person I've met that hates it, I've met at least one other that thinks Cowboy Ninja Robot Horror is the best theme for a game they've ever heard of.

>I'm not a fan of special dice.
I'm usually in this boat with "proprietary doodads" in general. I'll take it if they really bring something to the game you can't get any other way, but usually they're just gimmicks.

To be honest if you're a seasoned wargamer it's not a great recommendation. I bought it because I know a lot of boardgamers who don't go in for wargames beyond stuff like Walking Dead, and it's a good next step from there as it has the same simplicity but teaches squad movement, multi-action units, list building and so on with a low buy-in cost and a pseudo/pop-historical theme that people like that isn't Nazis.

For what it is it and for its target audience is a good product - the rules are easy to explain and katanas and muh honour shit appeal to people who wouldn't want to play WW2, steampunk or fantasy. But it is still a lightweight boxed game that seasoned gamers will find unsatisfactory and offers little solid history for history buffs.

3*, but 4* if you can use it to get someone into wargaming.

Pulp Alley. Works for a hell of a lot of settings, especially with the occasional supplement. Seen it used for fantasy, SF, and straight-up Rogue Trader-style 40K. Games tend to have multiple objectives other than just doing fights, with plot points on the table to interact with for clues, resources or macguffins, and so on. Also fun for bog standard men doing fights. Rules-wise, the scenarios are really where you're looking - they're not too specific, but the plot points being a major part of play and tying into the rules do make things great.

Rogue Planet. No measurement (except for one minor element), SF/fantasy leaning towards space fantasy with melee playing a major role, and the rules to pick someone asshole and throw them at someone else (or through a wall) are simple and elegant, like the rest of the rules. Things are basically line of sight for weapons, and movement is straight line - it works a lot better than it sounds in a quick description.

Two Hour Wargames for the campaigns and reactions. They also have a couple of comfy games, like that one where you can play a trapper in C18 canada, hunting and collecting furs for the season then travelling down-river to sell them at the trading post. After the Horsemen was also good for just general slice-of-life stuff, IIRC, and that's a sorely underserved niche in gaming.

Aetherium (though it kind of straddles the line between mini and board games)

The base playing field is all hazardous and slow terrain. On top of this are tiles that are safe spaces and the contain objectives at the center. A big part of the game is manipulating these tiles, shifting and rotating them.

>Pulp Alley
Not the guy that was asking for it, but I just saw that they have a solo version of the game too apparently.

Do you have any experience with that?

Your pitch got me curious any way.

The game works great solo without that, and lots of people play it that way. I haven't tried the new official solo stuff.

I think there's a pirated PDF available, and there's definitely a quickstart, but I ended up buying the cards. Oh, right: it's card-driven. Dice for combat and so on, but you do use custom cards. That might be a deal-breaker for some people.

Seems like Prodos is trying to unfuck themselves for this quarters delayed warzone releases. They've teased a new cartel strike fighter/fighter-bomber, a new dark legion vehicle kit and are set to make release announcements throughout this week. Who knows, maybe they'll engender some positivity among the fans and customers for once.

There are also some excellent AARs over on LAF: lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=98821.0 for example.

"League" is what the game calls a warband - there are four ranks of character, you have one level four leader, then ten points of lower level characters costing one point per level. One of the supplements adds gangs though, costing two points but having five models, for instance. There are also perks and stuff.

There are a bunch of optional rules in the supplements, but thankfully Pulp Leagues, the latest one, is basically a greatest hits supplement that adds all those character options into one book, along with rules for specific genres - adventure, fantasy, sf, war, western, horror, lost world & swashbuckling. If I was telling you what to buy, I'd say the core card deck, the core rulebook, and pulp leagues, in that order, unless you like PDFs and want to use homemade cards.

Thats pretty much what I mean by not liking the individual unit designs. But damn do those core mechanics rock, shame the other side looks so shit.

Does Kings of War work for smaller games?

I'm talking like 10 Goblin Archers, 20 Spearmen, maybe 10 Saurus and Fimir representing Orcs or something, and a few Reaper Bones monsters.

Why not just play a skirmish gane?

I do play Song of Blades and Heroes, I unfortunately played sci-fi instead of fantasy games as a youth so I don't have buckets of bits.

Just want to get a feel for the system.

You could always use the miniatures you've got as icons and put them on larger movement bases to represent a big unit?

How many factions do you think a fantasy or sci-fi wargame should have?

Runewars (pic related, not mine) has two factions at launch and two more basically announced (although with no specific products attached to them yet). Is that enough for a new game, or do you think there should be more?

Is there an upper limit above which additional factions just becomes clutter? Are there any games that suffer from this?

The number is largely irrelevant, as long as what's there is interesting to look at and engaging to read about.
That being said, anything below 3 makes it probably quite hard to write about. Still, if I ever get around to doing my own game, I'd start with few factions and flesh those out properly to satisfy wargamer autism and move on once those starting two to four are built up in the lore.
Miniatures aren't an issue mostly, unless you have some super special snowflake factions that can't be played with other manufacturers.

generally 4 minimum I think.That way you could conceivably play each other race in a 3 round event.

I think 3 can turn out really good if they are actually unique factions that complement each other.

>anything below 3 makes it probably quite hard to write about.

I'll put it out there that Heavy Gear tries to make two core factions interesting by making them both massive multinational empires owning half a planet each and with different regional militaries that do things their own way (and have Infinity sectorial-style rules, so a MILICIA army is different to a core Southern army).

Of course it also has various other factions but I feel that "weird brain in jar earth federation assholes" "space trucker french resistance" and "whatever the fuck utopia is" aren't as developed as the North and South.

bump

It absolutely will "work" at that scale of game, might not be super satisfying though. A skirmish system of some kind might work better for you though.

The LOTR skirmish game worked wonderfully with just two major factions and a number of loose subfactions.

Two factions could work very well if the game lore supports it, and either way it's a good place to start before expanding. If you want to start with more factions, four is a nice starting point.
I've been writing (and scrapping) a lot of skirmish games and always ended up with 4-6 factions.

None, 0 factions. No fluff also, 0 fluff.

Deadzone, break away from the domination of D6s.

Solid system, alternating activations wiith short and long actions. Exploding 8s making any action potentially possible if increasingly unlikely. Nicely varied factions (still has some balance issues, though all factions are viable in 2nd edition unlike the 1st). Campaign rules are a bit Necromundery, with different exploration charts for different supplements. Most factions have varied hard plastic models with some unpleasant "restic" making up the specialist choices. Hard plastic terrain, the initial sprues that come with the base set are a little limited but there's plenty of expandability with more varied sprues for a reasonable price. Benefits from lots of terrain but quite playable with less. Fits in a 2 foot by 2 foot space.

No rules either. Fuck that. We don't need rules. Concept? Pff, get lost.

But I don't want to copy AOS

Fluff does not equal concept, nor do factions equal rules. I don't own a single set of rules that have fluff in them, factions either (aside from the odd generic/guideline faction i.e Hivemind Aliens, Colonial Militia). I've had a great time so far. Expand your horizons user, no need to get so angry

I was just continuing your train of thought, desu.

You told me to get lost, senpai.

Down with the D6. Embrace our new D12 masters.

D8s in the case of Deadzone, you've probably never heard of them.

Gates of Antares finds a middle ground with d10.
Oddly enough the unit sizes are multiples of though.

>Oddly enough the unit sizes are multiples of though.
Three. Multiples of three I meant.

I know, but the D12 is still superior.

Break free from your dice shackles,
Brothers

Those look awful. Even the previous version of the card was easier to read.

Anyone know why Khurasian stopped production if his 15mm sci-fi Pelagic Dominate Man O' War vehicles?
They have been on my wishlist for a while and now they are listed as out of production.

Agree, retro is my favorite. Looking forward for the iconic deck

Earth Caste Dragyri incoming.

Oh seriously? Saw the pic with no context and thought they were fire caste. Very cool. Curious what they'll look like.

The left one is Earth. Not sure about the right, he's the Immortals 2016 winner.

Hell yeah, love my D12!

Oh shit! I still love the Ice Caste designs the most, but that does look pretty mean.

Also fun questions for you guys. You can pick any game that qualifies for /awg/ and get every model available for two factions of your choice so you can demo the game to people. What game do you pick, and what factions?

For me I'm torn between Dark Age and getting Ice Caste and St. Issac stuff(as is the 2-player starter) and going with my oddball love that is World of Twilight and getting Knights of Orel vs. Delgon. I might lean more towards Twilight because fuck man I love that unique little game.

Hmm either Dark age or Warzone Res honestly.

For Dark Age Kukulkani and air caste (Once the resculpts are done).

For Warzone Bauhaus and Cybertronic.

Bauhaus for life. I keep debating grabbing some Cyberyronic, but it seems like there's no interest here.

Cybertronic are pretty dope, the options in army building available to them is amazing, from standard OOC to the enhanced formations it all makes for interesting and effective armies. Once I finish off my Dark Legion and Brotherhood the Cybers will be next on my painting table.

>Gates of Antares finds a middle ground with d10.
ree non-platonic solids get out

I love the concept of this game, but just haven't gotten around to trying it

I'm broke as tier unemployed and I'd rather not see a free pdf, I'm going to want to buy the triple set next month. I think that need the support!

But what if I want to fuck my solids?

I was intrigued by the mechanics but none of the factions drew me in. That is until these guys released at Adepticon.

>How many factions do you think a fantasy or sci-fi wargame should have?
Depends on a lot of factors. Rules perspective - If factions are largely monolithic, anything more than 4 or 5 quickly becomes superfluous clutter. If there's a lot of ally rules, mercenaries, or dual faction models, you can get away with more (I'm a big fan of the "lots of mini-factions with allies as a default" style of design).

From a fluff perspective, anything more than 3 quickly becomes pretty ridiculous, since any tabletop setting basically requires that every faction is at war with every other faction, indefinitely. You can kiiiinda get away with it with something like Infinity, where it's really the intelligence apparatus of the various powers that are fighting. You can also take the 40K "infinite monkeys" approach - in a large enough universe, with large enough factions, everybody really IS fighting everybody else, somewhere.

>Are there any games that suffer from this?
Basically any mature, supported wargame suffers from this. Assuming a new game system survives its first couple years, manufacturers have a vested interest in continuing to release new models for it long past the point where the game itself actually needs more stuff. This is one of the main reason most popular rulesets get a "reboot" from time to time - they grow into sprawling, unmanageable messes almost organically (and usually at a rate proportional to their popularity).

I mean, not actually a tabletop, but the ridiculously long-lived popularity of the original Starcraft (especially for its medium) is pretty strong evidence that 3 factions is the magic number.

I'm actually a really big fan of the classic deck. Not everyone's cup of cards, though.

Something me and my bro were implementing in our homebrew wargame was just using different dice sizes to represent the quality of attacks. There was no to-hit roll, just a flat "target number" representing defense values. Things that were especially stealthy or hard to target were covered with a special rule. This was for 10mm scale, so it was somewhat abstracted and probably wouldn't work that well for skirmish, but it's very fast to play - one roll, easy to do as a batch, and no math.

So for instance infantry armor might be anywhere from DF 2 for basic troops to DF 5 for power armor, with most anti-personnel weapons rolling lots of D4's or D6's. Other end of the spectrum, your super mecha might be DF 9 or 10, with anti-tank weapons being the only thing rolling D10's or D12's (and maybe the occasional "titan-killer" weapon busting out a D20).

It's not something I've seen in a lot of other wargames, although obviously the original idea of dice size = attack quality is ripped straight from the original D&D.

This is sort what Force on Force does, but with one flat target number, a 4+.

I think nor more than maybe 6 or 7. The key thing is making sure each faction feels unique while also being well rounded as to orevent the classic lazy game design of one line descriptions(i.e. "this is the all-rounder faction, this is the elite faction, here's the horde faction and over here we have the glass cannon faction!").

Too few and there's not enough variety in gaming, too many and it becomes neigh impossible to balance. Also with that 6 or 7 area people can easily collect two factions with differing feels and not say "well I have two armies, and so I own half the factions in the game."

Anyone else interested in Black Scorpion's KS? Anyone pledged? It looks pretty polished

/projects/69613072/tombstone-old-west-tabletop-game-and-miniatures-in

Black Scorpion makes nice models, but those prices with the current dollar sucks dick. Also fuck resin.

I really like Black Scorpion's miniatures and I've been tempted to buy some pirates from them just to paint them.

But I already have so much stuff I haven't painted yet, I can't in good conscience commit to another project that will just sit on a shelf for the next few years.

The dollar and pound are pretty close right now man. Nine pounds comes out to a little more than $11.

I'm A FUCKING LEAF, so it's about 15 maple shekels.

I like BS's models, but I'm not someone who does Kickstarter.

I'm also not terribly interested in whatever rules they're putting out, just the models.

Hey, I don't mean to distract you all from your minis, but I come with a wargaming question.

I'm looking to revise and expand a worldbuilding game, Dawn of Worlds. It's a lovely game, but the army/conflict mechanics are total shit.

What are your favorite conflict resolution mechanics in wargames? What are the simplest you've ever seen?

I'm currently looking at Axis and Allies and Risk, but I want to see more rule sets.

Bonus points for simplicity with depth. I want a conflict between two forces to resolve in a single roll if possible, and not require turn taking or initiative systems. Preferably, the system would generic enough to apply to any type of military conflict or even ideological conflicts or social conflicts. Doesn't need to use dice, but should have some level of "indeterminacy" before the engagement begins.

The simplest would probably be Diplomacy, where you win if you have more dudes and that's it.

As for favourite, Quartermaster General (at least the WWI variant I own) has some neat card-driven combat which involves a decent amount of forward planning and mindgaming your opponent.

What you are asking is a really open question.
People could write whole essays about how to approach the stuff you mention in your post.

Anyway if you want a simple and generic system have a look at one page rules.
If you need inspiration for systems that utilize personal and political motivations have a look at Five Men in Normandy, which by the way is also a really good ruleset for skirmishes.

The simplest way to resolve anything is a single dice roll.
4+ on a d6 is the same as a coin toss.

Cool, added these games to my list to check out

Yeah, its a very open question, I realize that. I want lots of answers.

What are "one page rules"? have any games that fit that description?

I will check out Five Men in Normandy

>What are "one page rules"? have any games that fit that description?
onepagerules.com/
It's the pet project of an user that tried to simplify and streamline 40k and WHFB and then it took on a life of it's own apparently.

Bump

Can someone recommend me games with a big focus on individual characters, which have RPG-esque traits such as pic related? A good amount of character creation options would be a plus.

How about the game that picture is from? It's Chevauchee, right?
You could always follow it back to FiveCore and it's variants.

I'd be tempted as I loved most of mechanics from Cutlass(sans random run distances), but I'd have to buy enough to demo and I just can't toss $132 at a game right now with no promises of getting to play.

Such is the life of /awg/ I suppose.

Do they all have stuff like motivations? I looked at Force on Force and it didn't' seem to be that way, but I will check them out then.

In the campaign section, absolutely. I've only really sat down to read Five Men in Normandy, Five Parsecs From Home, No Hope In Sight, and Dungeon Scum.

All of those have motivations and backgrounds in their campaign set ups.

Thanks for the advice. I am really digging the narrative aspect, so I will be playing more Fivecore for sure.

Two Hours Wargames has a collection of RPG-esque games with Background Traits & Abilities:
Larger Than Life (Pulp heroes)
By Savvy & Steel (Three Musketeer swashbuckling)
And others (haven't checked them out yet)

I will have to look at these, thanks user!

>I had a game where my guy got so many crits he blendered his way through a team of mooks, then critfailed against the enemy hero, fell over and got oneshot. It's a swingy system.
Seems pretty cinematic to me.

>The hero battles his way through mooks only to die to a single blow from the villian.

That's kind of a shitty movie user. Imagine if it had been, say, the Bride in Kill Bill - she fights all those Crazy 88's only to trip in front of O-Ren and die.

F I V E C O R E
I
V
E
C
O
R
E

I'd rather a new game focused on two interesting, well fleshed out factions than divide its attention over a bajillion small, boring ones.

Pig disgusting
Less horrible
Much better!

Probably a better movie. Also, who says that you're the hero and not the villain who is murdering his way through Good And Noble ashigaru?

You're better off with one of the "light" RPG systems for something like that, I think. FATE springs to mind - single roll resolution, with the option to add as many layers as you like.

>I'm A FUCKING LEAF, so it's about 15 maple shekels.
Still better than it was, right? I feel like, a couple years ago when the pound was like 1.6 USD, you guys were sitting at like 1 pound = 1.8 CanuckBucks.

>1GBP=370HUF

Well, I'll just go out and shoot myself.

Heroes don't employ mooks.

well it's an accurate depiction of pursuing Lu Bu

It turns out the intro rules neglect to mention heroes get.a save if they're going to die which lets them fight on but draw an injury effect card.

For what it's worth I wrote a longer review here:

ideaswithoutend.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/tabletop-game-review-test-of-honour/

>Heroes don't employ mooks.
They were his FRIENDS! They were having a BIRTHDAY PARTY!!

You monster.

* Strongly resists making bad pun about inflation and being Hungary *

* Fails miserably *

Hey guys... I have an idea for a movie

Amusingly, looks like Tombstone is using a scaling dice mechanism like we were discussing above