/awg/ - Alternative Wargames General

Rogue Planet is a ruleset that's wonderful for such things. It's skirmishy, though, you won't get a company on the tabletop, but the rules are pretty simple and make charging in with a gravity hammer and smacking the enemy through walls a viable tactic.

It's amazing how much better a good paintjob and good photo makes those figures look.

Thanks! Skirmishy isn't a problem, I'll take a look.
One thing I sort of wanted was just a good range of models that I might be able to play Lion Rampant with, for the completely analogous units.

I wondered how fast this response would be.

spartangames.co.uk/tengu-and-semyenov-debut

>it's a sub hunting melee aerial mech

Do any of you know any good 28mm minis for a male bard with a lute? Game doesn't matter but preferably something that's easy to find. I don't really like Reaper's Alfred Redlute for some reason but it's closest to what I want that I found by myself.

hfminis.co.uk/shop?product=minstrel~hfv009&category=fantasy-& steampunk~fantasy-humans

>And the fluff doesn't seem to inspire that much discussion either, since it's fairly open and not too specific.
I think this is by design. It's basically a "here's some much better rules you can use with your WHFB armies" with a side of "oh, and if you need to fill out a few units, we sell cheap doods". The ruleset is Alessio's baby, and it kinda comes across as a version of WHFB with all the fat cut off.

The fluff they included feels more like an obligatory inclusion... most people I know still just play their warhammer armies as exactly what they were built to be, and use KoW rules.

>It's Spartan

Who makes good quality large demons at reasonable prices? I'm thinking like GW greater demons/demon princes type of thing.

I'm in the mood to paint something cool and want to have a wander through some larger model ranges.

Depends what you define as 'reasonable' I guess.

Momminiaturas, Scibor and mierce miniatures spring to mind as people who do big monsters.

The fluff is getting better and better, especially with the new campaign coming out soon.

It's very popular but there isn't much to discuss, the rules work so not much complaining can be had about that, things are released together rather then in stages and the fluff dosn't have an speculation like 40k does and is growing and growing.

Was just about to finally bite the bullet and pick up some Dark Age faction starters to try and rope in friends, and all of the faction starters I favored have sold out in the CMoN store. Figures.

For anyone that may have picked up the two-player starter, how would you rate the plastic quality?

I don't get the hate for their miniatures. Who really cares about their rules, you can still use their stuff for other games if you like it.

Most of their rules are fun too.
Spartan hate has transformed from disbelief at Neil's ADHD into a indiscriminate and irrational loathing for the entire company over the years, which is unwarranted.

After putting up with the same annoying behavior for years, its not really unwarranted.

However, criticising all of a companies products and rules when one behaviour is at fault is silly.

If that one behavioral quirk caused the death of games that I was invested in I'd be pretty pissed off about it too.

In my book part of being taken serious as a professional also means looking to it, that your product lines stay alive as long as possible. Which also means you have to put in some work to keep them alive long enough in the first place to gain traction and become profitable.
If you just crank one project out after the other it just looks like you are feeding a massive ego trip and do whatever you fancy on a whim.

But then again I never bought any Spartan Games stuff.
Just my outside perspective on it.

But it's the same mindset that would keep me away from games that Paolo Parente is attached to in any way shape or form.

I was thinking of making "Weird War" type rules for Five Men at Kursk including vampires, werewolves and all that fun stuff. Is this plausible? What kind of abilities would you guys give, say, an SS Vampire? I was thinking better movement stats but they need something more exciting, I'm just not sure how to execute it.

>What kind of abilities would you guys give, say, an SS Vampire?
what purpose do they serve?
Player characters or something else?
Do you mix those with regular humans or not?

Well Five Men at Kursk is a skirmish game, so I guess they'd just be like more powerful leader units. I was thinking of having that model be the leader for my German warband and giving him some kind of special vampire-y abilities.

If you use them as quasi-heroes I wouldn't go too far with their powers unless want them to dominate the game.

It's been a while since i read the rules, but something like being able to scale buildings quickly (bat form) or an extra dice in melee for bloodsucking may already be quite powerful I imagine.

I can't really think of anything super useful in terms of rules right now, but if you want to go ahead with this make sure to check the Westwind weird world war miniatures too. They've got loads of great minis for this kind of genre.

Cool, thanks for the tip about Westwind. I'll check it out.
And yeah I don't want them to be superheroes at all, I'd just like to give them subtle abilities to make them stand out. The ideas you had about wall-scaling and bloodsucking are totally in line with what I was looking for. Thanks man.

bumping for a slow day

That model is awesome, thanks for letting me know it exists.

Bell of Lost Souls covered the 2p starter, were pretty positive about the quality of the models IIRC.

I'm not 100% familiar with the rules and just quickly read over 5 men at normandy a while ago.

Are there rules for day/night? I imagine this might be important for a vampire.
Besides that i wouldn't make them to strong. Maybe twice as durable as a regular soldier and better in hand-to-hand combat?

Btw, check blackball games for some awesome weird war minis

blackballgames.bigcartel.com/category/ae-wwii

(Way better than that generic K47/Dust stuff in my opinion.. but also way more expensive i'm afraid)

Does the game has hitpoints/wounds for its characters? Maybe give the Vampires the ability to heal if they kill in close combat? (i.e. drink blood of their victim)

To be fair "flying steampunk gundam that fights submarines with a sword" kind of feels like a unit designed by throwing darts at a dartboard

Sweet model but lolwat idea

em4 Miniatures have the bags of 50 plastic shields on sale again, so I picked some up and got a couple of other random bits. You've probably seen their slightly naff silver plastic "Space Rangers" and the like. Their website needs an overhaul, the tiny pictures make the Gang War metals look bad, in real life they're actually pretty nice and chunky enough to slip into 2000AD or Necromunda gangs or whatever.

They do grey plastic Fantasy stuff too though, people seem to like their plastic Orcs more, but I think the Dwarfs are a steal at 20p each, think you get 50 in a bag for £7. They're not perfect, but could have a legion for £20.

Seems they always send slightly wrong amounts though, I ordered 2 of each and got an extra Dwarf Crossbow, but only one Orc Archer and three Orcs with Swords. Can't complain at the price I guess, I'd feel scabby asking them to send a 20p Orc to me.

Just while googling I managed to find a picture of someone using the Space Rangers (at the back) and making them look semi-decent.

I think I need to start a "shit miniatures" blog where I fuck about with cheap plastics and stuff like Reaper Bones. I mean, who really wants to see airbrushed NMM OSL big plastic kits like Nagash or Leviathan Dreadnoughts whatever?

Those are some great older-school looking dwarfs. Not completely oldschol, but definitely an older design.

Yeah, they're not Nick Lund but deliberately in his style.
They were originally made for a game called Fantasy Warriors by Grenadier, but he was too busy with the rules to sculpt them himself.

I'd definitely read a blog about salvaging oddball old sculpts.

In the back of my mind I've always sort of wanted to see how cheap I could make an Orc and Goblin army using em4 Orcs and old WHFB starter set goblins from ebay (the goblins vs elves one, you can find job lots of the goblins from that for super cheap).

Yeah, myself I've always preferred more "honest" project logs of people mucking about with all sorts, over "here's my perfect 3000pts of Death Korps/Imperial Knights/Heresy Legion etc.".

I always go back to this guy's log, still sticks out in my memory for some reason, eight years later. The painting isn't great, but it's clearly a labour of love to somebody.

warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?129053

Goddammit.

Spartan Games has FINALLY released the 2.5 ORBATS and they are basically a carbon copy of the 2.0 ORBATS with the KS units in. And new typos, mistakes and failed copypaste. And the old, ugly, 1.1 unit card style.

I am just amazed at the ability of this company to just NEVER do ANYTHING right.

>I think I need to start a "shit miniatures" blog where I fuck about with cheap plastics
If Airfix 1/72 Robin Hood figures were good enough 28mm Hobbits for Gary Gygax, then they're good enough for you.

But seriously, I'd read the fuck out of that blog. I kinda like the em4 Space Rangers when they're not all armed with the huge heavy weapons, and then you've got the old Warzone plastics...

Shocking. This is Spartan 'My sculpts got worse over 10 years' games, along with Spartan 'my average game's lifespan is 2 years'.
The same guys who thought making literally the same game in 3 scales was a good idea, in case you wanted to play the same rules with more models.
The same guys who decided to make 4 ship combat games with nearly identical rules, two of which are in space and visually indistinguishible, but one's IP'd.
They're unsalvagable. That's why everyone here rags on Spartan. Because it's a warning for new players to keep far away, because you'll be burned. They are incapable of learning.

>They are incapable of learning.
They are in fact actively forgetting at an alarming rate. DW 2.0 had an extensive betatest for every single part of the rulebook and ORBATS, while the DW 2.5 ruleset wasn't even re-read once.

Whatever. This was their last chance as far as I'm concerned and I was probably way more forgiving than I should have been. I have spent more than enough on those jokers and there's no lack of other companies more deserving of my money.

you know the video games battlefield: bad company and battlefield: bad company 2

they were going to be called battlefield: spartan but microsoft threatened to sue them for infringing on halo ip

Holy shit this font is unreadable. What a fantastic change to make just as they add models with entire pages of special rules.

Getting into Spectre

...

I can agree on several complaints against Spartan, but this

>The same guys who decided to make 4 ship combat games with nearly identical rules, two of which are in space and visually indistinguishible, but one's IP'd

Really? You wanna tell me that HALO and Firestorm look exactly the same? Now you're reaching.

Anyone have the Blood and Plunder rules?

I really don't want to rock the boat, but didn't Spartan Games used to have their own general?

Shame it died if so, I love /awg/ but I get a bit bored of that particular manufacturer and their clearly abysmal management.

Spartan used to have their own general when Firestorm Armada 2.0 and Firestorm Planetfall were new. Now they are here and you only hear about them when some Halo fanboy passes by. Or when they fuck up yet again with one of their non-Halo games.

Which is okay, they barely release anything anymore so it's not like there's a lot of stuff to say besides "don't buy from Spartan".

That's about all there is to discuss about Spartan. The playerbase for all their games is pretty much dead. If there are anons that play Spartan games, good luck getting more than one playing the same game in a thread.

Spartan general threads get about 30-40 posts before they drop off the board, and most of it is complaining. At least in /awg/ complaining bumps a thread that might see some good discussion.

It's all a shame, really, because they have put out some really nice models in their time, especially FSA.

Speaking of dead space games, does anybody make reproductions of Battleleet Gothic minis?

Depending on what you need, there's chinaman.

There's a store on AliExpress, username Irene. Or at least there was two years ago, I don't know about now. She had a good but poorly labelled range when I got my fleets, and pretty good quality resin castings

Alternatively, at significant cost, there's a lot on shapeways

Not come across that one, what's it like?

Preview of North Star's goblins for Frostgrave.

I can't look at anything except the base thickness

Good thing these are just the 3ups and the actual figures will have like half this thick bases.

The character may perform a Q roll on one die (as a free action) to ignore any targeting priority restrictions on his next ranged attack performed with a bow.

Thank you! What book is that in?

An alliance of Russian soldiers led by a rational commissar and a band of rag tag superstitious anti-nazi partisans fight a vampire and some zombie fodder over the course of a night.

Or perhaps a small German team composed of a cabal of conspiring officers/ncos that form a hunt after noticing that wounded men under their command have started disappearing since the hated SS detachment showed up.

Have it that fire arms can temporarily slow the vampire down/down it without killing it, really the main objective is to survive until daybreak, it can be killed in melee but is extremely tough/provokes terror etc.

>it can be killed in melee but is extremely tough/provokes terror etc.
I never understood this - how would you better in melee with a knife or a bayonet than with a bloody rifle, shotgun or machine gun? Especially if the vampire is stronger, probably more trained in melee and has his fangs "at hand". Blow his head off from a couple dozen meters away and you're better off, retreat while his head regenerates or something.

neat - are these gonna go along with ghost archipelago or something else?

>than with a bloody rifle, shotgun or machine gun?

Because those weapons are poor for melee, the vampire could be on you before you get it to bear.

I was working off the concept of vampires being resistant to bullets/weaker to chopping/piercing weapons.

Really the ideal weapon would be putting a stake in a PIAT.

I think Northstar is working on it's own generic wargame to use the frostgrave plastics with.

Ghost archipelago will have plastic crewmen/pirates and snakemen in metal afaik.

Can anyone suggest a good unit for a Kings of War Dwarf Steel Behemoth? Preferably easily obtainable in the UK and under £20.

This is what I've turned up so far.
ironcladminiatures.co.uk/ourshop/prod_1020484-Steam06.html
ironcladminiatures.co.uk/ourshop/prod_1020479-Steam01.html
ironcladminiatures.co.uk/ourshop/prod_1020480-Steam02.html
ironcladminiatures.co.uk/ourshop/prod_1020481-Steam03.html
ironcladminiatures.co.uk/ourshop/prod_1020483-Steam05.html

Tell us more user, those minis look fantastic.

Recommend me a good skirmish game for these guys /awg/. I got em from the Warlord half-off sale and quite like them.

I don't like them enough to attach the right pic tho.

LotR?
Could kitbash a Shaman and do Frostgrave.
SoBaH could work too.

Hmm, I have been thinking of getting into frostgrave, and sobah looks cool. Thanks, user. Have an orc with a gun as thanks.

Chevauchee, Frostgrave, SoBaH if you're into that, D&D(1974) LBB, uh, Pulp Alley

>shotgun poor for melee
The fucking point is that you don't want to fight in melee with a vampire so you put a bullet to somewhere where it takes him a lot to heal up. If you shot a vampy's kneecap, he can't run, and haven't read any vampire stories where they had adamantium bones or anything.

Those are some nice insurgents.

It sounded like he's suggested it will put it down, but the Vampire has Wolverine-tier healing so it's basically pinned for a turn instead.

I love it. All sorts of wooden-charge AT weapons, like the Vampirfaust or Drac-zooka.

Number 3 is my favourite of those. Can't think of any further suggestions though.

I thought about buying into this, would like to hear what the rules are like.

So it's basically a primitive tank?
I'd take a look at WW1 kits, tanks from that era might fit the bill nicely.

They are pretty good, but those helmets are very ugly. The weapons... There's some 80' heavy influence there, so I bet some will love that.

Open Combat?

Head swaps are simple enough I suppose.

Since they'll be multipart, yeah.

I like them as they are tho. They'll make nice tad more organized gobbos.

Does Dreamforge actually post news anywhere? I wanted to get some of the female troops and now they're not listed.

Don't forget VSF stuff, although they've already posted the ironclad minis stuff.

maybe on facebook?

Or you could just write them an email.

Seconding this. I'd love to see someone take on crappy models and do something neat with them.

Give me a month lads, I'll blow your socks off I promise

What are some good tutorials for terrain building at 15mm and 6mm? I get pretty nice stuff done at 28mm, but for some reason I can't go it for smaller scales.

Which era?

If modern, I just bought a bunch of monopoly buildings off of ebay, painted them up and used them.

The scale is a tad wonky, but I'm not playing 1:1 FFOT so it hardly matters.

SciFi and Fantasy, for both scales.
I'm a huge to-Scale fag at smaller scales, something about everything being properly scaled makes me really happy.

>What are some good tutorials for terrain building at 15mm and 6mm?

There should probably be like a dozen different Hobby Railroad magazine at your nearest magazine-selling store that can probably help you out here.

I think you should be able to get pretty decent mdf scenery for sci-fi stuff at least.
4grounds or Sarissa probably have something like that.

For 15mm TT gauge railroad stuff should work fine as well.