/awg/ - Alternative Wargames General

Spooky scary edition

>What is /awg/?
A thread to talk about minis and games which fall between the cracks, or people's homebrew wargames. /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

Other urls found in this thread:

mediafire.com/folder/08hq9c7x4clme/Documents
paizo.com/store/byCompany/o/otherworldMiniatures/undead
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

First for Easterlings and god you have to love painting gold for these guys.

Which games work best with MORE THAN 2 players?

Watcha building, watcha playing?

Building Easterlings with scenic bases. play LotR battle companies.

Working on a fishmen themed warband for a narrative campaign using SoBaH. The story is a deep empire is rising to flood the surface, and the other players build their own warbands of heroes in an effort to stop it from happening.

I'm experimenting with a cool rule to give the deep empire a little edge. All deep empire models will have the aquatic rule, and when I activate a deep empire personality I roll a d6 and place that many small water features on the table, either on a board edge, or connecting to another water feature, so as the game goes on, the board is slowly flooding. Either end the game or kill the personalities to stop the flooding. Still working on other campaign rules.

Building Flintloque, playing Sharp Practice.

Contemplating wether or not I should do a radical warband for not a test.

>Making awesome things and not posting pictures
What are you, some kind of heterosexual?

how dare you sir?? i am of the flaming homosexual in nature. but seriously, i'll try and do some pics tomorrow. the threads not going to fill that quickly.

Waiting for the dark elves I got on BlackTree's 4th of July sale. They're going in my ASoBaH army, and I'm super excited. I got the old Citadel Dark Elf painting guide off /wip/ that I plan on using that as a base.

whats the basic scoop on flintloque? I've got in the neighborhood of 15 orcs with muskets and pikes I'd like to turn into a warband for something. was just gonna go asobh, but if flintloque isn't like a straight up historical in terms of model count maybe it's worth looking into?

Prepping for the Mantic KoW Global Campaign in a few weeks.

is my folder of Osprey books scary enough for you

mediafire.com/folder/08hq9c7x4clme/Documents

Anyone have a PDF of Dystopian Wars 2.5?

Frostgrave is pretty nice for multiplayer bashes, games get pretty chaotic quick. You only need to adjust the rules a tiny bit (we play with each player placing two treasures and one in the centre worth two roll on the table usually).

Double Tap by One Page Wargaming is also good for this, it's a very simplified version of Infinity.

Anyone able to suggest a good rule system for something along the lines of Warmaster? I'd like to play a 6-15mm fantasy based game.

If Warmaster is my best bet, I'm good with that too but I just don't know where to look.

Ral Partha Chaos Wars, or Kings of War with inches changed to cm.

Pretty much just Warmaster, desu.

Anyone have any experience with that Human Interface game? To be perfectly honest, I'm interested in the models more than the gameplay- the Hybrid models look pretty sweet in photos.

Same, in the meantime also having a blast with Bolt action and the men who would be kings.

Basically, it's Napoleonic small scale skirmish with some fantasy elements. In universe, magic is basically dead after Mordred, the Napoleon stand in, replaced it with black powder.

In game, guns are king, and unless you are playing with ogres or undead, chances are you won't be able to close in for melee. The rules also feel very dated, as they basically not been updated since the game came out.

Thats why I usually play with Sharp Practice, as it is a far easier game to run.

Dragon Rampant actually seems pretty cool. I read through the rulebook and was really digging what I was reading.

But the SoBaH guy is designing a mass battles ruleset right now. I forgot what it was called though.

SoBaH is becoming little be little the GURPS of wargames.

>In universe, magic is basically dead
>not being able to play as a gunsmith mage

I'll pass.

Pig Wars.

>Building
Some 40k scenery, specifically the shipping containers kit, need some scatter for a swamp encampment I'm making.
>Playing
Warzone: Resurrection! Just had my worst game of it yet today. Last stand mission, ambush and convergence deployment, I was the attacker, and I got fucked up like you wouldn't believe. Max Steiner is a god damn monster with the right cards. Here's a pic of the table we played on, got a very XCOM vibe going on, was pretty boss. A pity then that I lost so horribly, Rangers with missile launchers in commanding positions were more than able to blast away my forces. probably should have given the Mk.9s their SMGs.

painting my Ion Age Prang raiders because the regulars are getting new releases next week.

Currently playing nothing ;_; but I plan to look into joining a nearby club in the near future.

Either SoBaH or FiveCore, anyway.

>Building
Nothing until my Ravenstar order turns up. The lack of a tracking number on a $100 order worries me intensely, but it has only been a week or so since it was posted and I know transatlantic postage can take up to 2 weeks...

>Playing
Nothing at the moment, my Full Thrust/Heavy Gear opponent is busy with shifts :(

So I'm just writing scenarios and background stuff for my campaign.

Anybody got the pdf ?

Both interesting suggestions!

Never heard of it before and I can't find much material online, is Ebay the ony way to get the rules?

>spoiler
Hey, thanks for posting my feel for me

I guess this is the best place to ask, since you guys are probably all invested in more than one game.

How do you guys divide your time between different projects usually?
Paint a whole army/warband for one game and then move on to the next or do you do a few models here and there and do whatever you feel like?

I feel like I'm hitting a wall in terms of motivation lately. Haven't painted a lot in the last 7 years, so I'm basically getting back in the saddle right now. I used to paint assembly line in batches of 10 or more.
I feel like I'd be more productive if I'd just paint one model at a time now. And I want to switch up more to stay motivated.

Painting big armies is one of the main reasons I kind of dropped out of the whole thing for a while.
So the idea of doing everything for one system/project before moving onto the next kind of sucks the fun out of it for me, I think.
Kind of boils down to having fun vs keeping track of things in a way.

Google Warmaster Revolution

Make a list of the models you need to paint.
Group them by system, army and unit (add or remove as appropriate).
Write/print that out and stick it over your desk.

Then pick six of your models that you are most looking forward to painting, write those out.
Stick that piece of paper over that depressingly long list.

When you've painted four of those six, make a new shortlist, stick the new list over the old list, to track both your successful painting and which models sit on shortlists too long.

I generally view painting stuff as such;

> Painting rank-and-file goons is boring because it's repetitive
> Painting more unique models (characters, vehicles, monsters etc.) is more fun because you can be more creative

So I use the latter as a 'reward' for finishing the former, i.e. if I get 5 goons painted then I can paint a cool standard bearer or something.

>I'm interested in the models more than the gameplay
Same desu - sadly true with most boardgames with miniatures. Don't really give a shit about Zombicide, but has some nice minis. I even got the Monty Python's Holy Grail figures for shits 'n giggles.

What's a standard game size, models wise?

This is why I like skirmish games. Your list is like 6-20 models, usually without a ton of repeats. Lots more fun and manageable, but the obvious downside is finding people to play with if you don't have a crew, or you move

Does anyone have PDFs for Frostgrave expansions after Thaw of the Lich?

I'm looking to expand from my safe bubble of GW games but not sure where to go (all WM, Infinity and Malifaux look good) and am wondering if there are any alternative games I should consider.

What do you like setting wise, and what do you enjoy wargame based? GW games tend to be clunky, there are a lot of other systems than play faster and are simpler, while other are a bit more bizantine but integrate cool stuff well.

I have enjoyed previously fielding unwiedly armies in 40k and old fantasy but want to move to a more intimate and smaller game style. Setting wise I like grimdark (40k, mad max) blanche style (see picture) but also wouldn't mind something on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Malifaux is probably what you are looking for out of what you mentioned. The individual models have a lot of character, and their rules have a lot of flavor. It is as intimate as you want. Setting wise, while it has tons of scary shit murdering people in the middle of the night, it is more heroic than grimdark.

Thanks user, I was considering malifaux but the card thing sounded odd to me but I'll have another good look at it.

The card aspect is generally just resource management, but at the same time using a deck of cards makes the game much less swingy. You are generally going to go through an entire deck in a turn, and as there are only so many high and low cards you will see the whole range so you won't just be screwed over by bad shuffling.

You might like Beyond the Gates of Antares. It's a recent sci-fi game written by Rick Priestly, but that's really all it has in common with 40k since much of the setting revolves around humanity exploring and advancing and generally making things better for themselves. There's only one faction (the Ghar) which tends towards grimdark. The gist of the setting is that thousands of years ago humanity discovered a gate at the edge of our solar system which linked up to a gigantic nexus of other gates. Consequently humanity spread all throughout these gates and colonised their way across the galaxy. The nexus (Antares) occasionally collapses though, cutting all these colonies off from each other and essentially forcing planets to fend for themselves every few thousand years while it regenerates, which means that different empires emerge every time, and some planets regress back to the Stone Age while others continue to advance. The end result is a setting similar to 40k in the sense that it's wide and varied enough to accomodate most kinds of stories.

As far as the game itself goes, it mostly focuses on short-medium range firefights between a few small squads of guys and the occasional tank, with even basic weapons being deadly and long-ranged enough that cover is a very pressing concern. It also has some neat mechanics (although these mechanics aren't unique to this game) concerning the order in which units act and the ability of units to react to other units' actions.

Yeah it's rare to see games that drift from the you act, I act game style and most are better of without it.

IGOUGO needs to die.

Not that user, but thanks for the tip: will check it out.

Seriously, what is this? Every time I ask, I always get a different answer. Likely what your answer is will be similar to another guy's answer, but different from everyone else's.

It's like trying to pin down what 'SKIRMISH' means. It's a different definition for everyone.

>IGOUGO
I go, you go.
Turn based games with alternating activation.
this user advocates using different activation schemes in games, like a blind draw from a bad like in Bolt Action or Gates of Antares or a switch of initiative upon a failed activation like in Rogue Stars or a whole bunch of historical games.

Skirmish in my book means any game with a scope of around a maximum of 30 minis/units. Bigger than that and you get into wargame territory.
If you activate groups of models instead of single models you can still use a lot of minis in a game with a comparatively small scope in terms of rules upkeep.
One is a question of scope, which is admittedly somewhat more fluent, the other is something very specific, i.e. the method of activation.

>Seriously, what is this? Every time I ask, I always get a different answer.

How can you get different answers?
The entire definition is in the fucking name.
Like said:
First one side makes all it's moves - then the other.
Usually firing and melee for both sides are thrown in after each side's move, but the principle's the same.

The best example would be a THW's description I read on the forum:
You're sitting in your living room, watching TV - when suddenly a thief enters, steals said TV in front of your face, and gets out of dodge.
And you can't do jack shit 'cause it's not your fucking turn to move.

For the worst example of this kind of shit, take a look at Warmahordes or 'One Hour Wargames'.

Those are nice definitions and all, but again, I have heard them before, as well as many other explanations from different sources giving different ones.

We don't have an official dictionary for these terms, so they are going to vary from persona to person, community to community, game to game. This is why I don't use terms like 'skirmish' or 'igougo', I describe things like "generally 5 to 20 models per player, each acting independently" vs "30-60 models per player, acting in units". Or in the case of turn sequence I will say "one player takes a turn activating all their models, then gets passed to next player" vs "one player activates a mode/unit, then the opponent does one, then back and forth".

So whenever someone says "its a skirmish game" or "it uses igougo", I ignore that part and probe further for descriptions, because I have seen plenty of fights, especially on Veeky Forums, over misunderstandings on a game and arguing what type of game it is, even thought they both agree with each other and they don't realize it.

>You're sitting in your living room, watching TV - when suddenly a thief enters, steals said TV in front of your face, and gets out of dodge.
And you can't do jack shit 'cause it's not your fucking turn to move.
That's a gross exaggeration. That more describes "your opponent takes 2 or 3 turns in a row before you get to do anything". What you guys describe as "igougo" would more be like All robbers break into house, then all people in house react to it, then all robbers do their action, and so on.

>What you guys describe as "igougo" would more be like All robbers break into house, then all people in house react to it, then all robbers do their action, and so on.

That part depends on the movement-to-action scale, tbqh & imho.

If a single action enables you to move clear across the fucking table - or there is so little miniatures involved in the game that an alphastrike is insta-win (i.e. 'robber' example) - then that kind of IGOUGO is definitely cancer and should be terminated with extreme prejudice.

OTOH, splitting a movement into a shitload of smaller actions (aka 6" moves) - which is more reasonable for a IGOUGO game - creates a looong game (even with a few minis) which is impossible to finish in less than four hours.

So, yeah, imho IGOUGO deserves to die a slow and painful death. (preferably by tearing it's heart out with a wooden cooking spoon)

OTOH, IGOUGO can work for the Mass-Battle games, IMHO.

And, before you ask:
Any player/commander can realistically control up to about 20 'units' in battle.
The only difference, imho, between a Skirmish and Mass-Battle is that, in Skirmish, 1 'unit' = 1 figure & in Mass-Battle, 1 'unit' = 2 or more figures 'working' as one.

Since Mass-Battle is all about Command&Control, it's natural that some enemy attacks will go in unopposed & unanswered by supporting units - as it takes time to react/send orders to other units.

For mass battles I prefer what Armies of Arcana did - roll for initiative, winner moves all his units first, then the other player does, shooting and melee is simultaneous. My biggest annoyance with Warhammer and derivaties is that there's two melee phase per turn, making shooting somewhat redundant.

That's my preference, too.
Although, initiative winner can, IMHO, also be determined by one side giving up the initiative. (a.k.a.: initiative is rolled only if both sides want to go first)
Another favorite of mine is: each 'movement' (like yours) can be done with any amount of units, but each unit gets to move only once per turn, and both sides keep alternating until all units are moved - or until they don't want to move any more units.

Other than that, you've only got Variable Length Bound - but that's complicated as all hell.

Naturally, at 'skirmish' scale I prefer THW's 'reaction system' to anything else.
Sadly, it doesn't work so well for the 'Mass-Battle' scale. (all attempts at conversions were failures)

currently painting my first Gates of Antares minis.
I feel like I may have to push the red a little further looking at the pics.
The reason I posted was because I'm not sure what to do with the bases yet and I'm not sure I like the ice grey for the weapons.
Originally I thought it would be nice to have the weapons stand out a bit, but now I'm contemplating painting the weapon casings in ivory white too.

Thoughts?
Open to any suggestions for basing too.
My first thought was tundra with wildflowers or something, but now i'm thinking maybe snow?

I still don't get why Armies of Arcana isn't BTFO of 9th Age, Kings of War AND Age of Sigmar.

It's literally all that WHFB should've been.

The red could stand another highlight, sure, but it's clearly to an acceptable tabletop standard.

Assuming second-from-left is almost finished, the colour scheme works for me.

Basing is, as ever, to taste.
Tundra sounds cool though.

>isn't
*hasn't

oops - sorry.

Sadly it's not supported, their forum doesn't work...but yeah, it's a really solid system.

Can somebody toss up a pdf? I'd like to have a look before I buy

Finally settled on an easy but (imo) effective scheme. R8 my goon, lads.

also pls do not r8 my photography, I am aware that it is rubbish

Looks crisp and good, especially for that looks like 15 or 10mm. I'd maybe do the eye lenses in another color or hazard stripes on the gun for a highlight, but that's up to taste.

Pretty much. I find myself not minding 40ks long turns as much because both sides abide by the same rules, in which case the game has its own flow. It's just longer than some people prefer.

Malifaux actually sounds good, I should check it out

I preferred Wargods order system for mass battles of ranked up units

Is it also a rank and file game? That's one thing I could never warm up to, even though I know so many prefer it, especially historical players.

Whfb was fine but the way units moved felt so artificial. When 2 units clashed there was no organic movement representing them piling in to each other. KoW to me is the worst offender, as models are not removed to represent casualties. It's just immersion breaking for me. I know KoW players love it, for several good reasons, but I just can't get over it.

I see what you mean about the goggles, I might try green for a nice complementary colour.

Thanks for the input. Went ahead and painted the weapon casings all in blue.
I think I like it.

Only gotta do the a few additional highlights, implants, hair and bases now.

If only the weapons were separate, these would do fucking awesome postapoc raiders.

Yeah, they'd definitely fit the bill.
I bought a box of celtic warriors from warlord too. I plan on kitbashing them with the concord from the starter set to make more ferals.
Pretty sure that would work for post apoc guys too. The celts are basically naked or wear pretty universal cloths minus a few mail shirts and have empty hands. Provided you got some weapons they'd be easy to convert.

I recently also stumbled over the range by 4em miniatures. This guy and a few others was featured in the This is Not a Test rulebook.

Now that you say it, they would probably make great ferals for GoA too...

Yeah, but they are so bent forward they seem like they are ready for a long-ass buttfucking session.

The celts?
Yeah they are leaning quite a bit.
But I figure if I use the Concord legs the posture will be easily fixed. To carry the theme of the metal figures over I'm also gonna sculpt some of the rags around their mid section too.
The models themselves have a balljoint at the hip too. I haven't put any of them together yet, but I figure that it also depends on how you put them together.

Warlord also have a pretty nice warband of woodland indians in metal. Those would make great conversion fodder for post apoc games too I think.
Or the married zulu warriors if you want plastic.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this after Fury Road came out.

Those 20 models are not literally representing 20 individuals. Its an abstraction.

Also it would be completely impractical for units to pile into each other like that, it would take twice as long to play and lead to lots of broken models.

They also sell a box of Woodland Indians in plastic which should be far easier to convert. (originally designed by Wargames Factory).

>Casualties not removed
>ogres with multipoint health values are injured but not removed
>Monster units not removed
>Wants realism in wargame
>units don't die from starvation
>units are not affected by time spent marching or moving or being far from home from loved ones
>Thinks AoS is just fine
Hey guys, I found the Monopoly fan in the thread!

Just in the interest of fairness, user did not *actually* make some of those claims.

40k and AoS do it just fine. I'm not even being ironic, the game plays smooth enough in that aspect

Also in WHFB it is not uncommon for a unit to take 50-100% casualties in close combat.

Compare this to real battles and that almost never happens, the vast majority of casualties occur after one side has already broken.

Guess it's a lot less common in WAB where not every second unit is fearless, or instead of breaking it just evaporates or something that negates that long-ass section on morale.

Also, a figure removal could mean men routing, men getting wounded and escorted to the back, etcetera etcetera.

Changed the goggles to green and added some armour markings in yellow to make him look a bit more rogueish and piratey.

Also tremble in fear as my shitty photography is compounded by even shittier lighting.

Does anyone have a scan of the KoW Historical book?

/hwg/ has one I think.

looks good

Where are those skeletons from, i want to make them mine

Looks fun and like getting in the googles is a pain in the butt. I would keep about that level of pirate flash personally so they don't look too much like an explosion at a paint factory, but I'd have to see a squad of them on a table to be sure.

Also the face seems like you could do a good wut?.jpg reaction face with it.

paizo.com/store/byCompany/o/otherworldMiniatures/undead

True - but they can be inferred, nicht war?

The 'AoS is fine' one was a bit of a stretch.

Yeah I'm deliberately limiting myself to 1-2 yellow bits per model to keep things tasteful.

If you are in the UK, you have no excuse.
Try starting up a 15mm scifi game in the middle of the USA, then you can whine.
Good luck, user!

you know Otherworld has its own store, right?

I know there's a club in my city but I'm gonna be away a lot this month so I'm gonna wait 'till things are back to normal before getting in touch with them.

No - I did a Google image search, and Paizo was the first result. I am almost as lazy as the other user.

I can't stomach a 10-man assembly line, I do 3-5, depending on the size of the unit and how much colour-variation there is. I watch miniature painting videos on youtube to keep me interested and inspired to work. Seeing the crazy setups some bloggers have also inspires me to work

Has anyone played Afterlife, the game by Anvil Industries?
Kind of wondering what it is like.

I played an early playtest version, it had really good if complex blind deployment where things set up as tokens until observed.