/awg/ - Alternative Wargames General

eugh i should do something with my 6mm fantasy.

I really want to do a chaos force, but i've done nothing with the 4 armies ive got already. Lack of opponents and no clear rules direction … didn't really like 6mm KoW.

When you say GW, you doing warmaster, or WFB?

Those tiny skellies are adorable.

>Lack of opponents and no clear rules direction … didn't really like 6mm KoW.
Did you try different rules? I hear a lot of mixed things about Lion/Dragon Rampant, but just just being breakable doesn't make the game necessarily broken.

There should be a pdf floating around somewhere.

Those skellies are even kinda cute.

How is 6mm? I'm about to jump down to 15mm and considering going down to 6mm.

Any games like Mordheim but still in print and maybe more streamlined and customizable?

A 10-man squad of TAG's Halfling Rooster Cavalry. I've been doing 2 per day this week and should finish the last two tomorrow, will post pics if I have ok lighting.

MoM is apparently sculpting Abathur.

Frostgrave is often compared to Mordheim.
Main difference is that you only get into the RPG elements of character building with the Wizard who leads your warband.
The rest are generic mooks that you can replace as needed, provided you have the coin, when playing a campaign.

It's not Mordheim 2.0 as a lot of people thought when it came out, it does it's own thing, but it certainly is still in print, as a nice range of plastic and metal miniatures from Northstar and the basic rules are pretty easy to understand.

As for customization you got a Wizard that gets to pick spells from several schools of magic, I think with the expansions it's 11 schools of magic, don't quote me on that though.
And you can use literally any miniature you like.

Because the profiles are generic the only important thing is the wargear. so your Wizard could be a human, ork, snakeman or a sentient owlbear.

There are a load of other skirmish games like Freebooter's Fate that you could look into as well. Frostgrave just come to mind cause it also has a focus on 'urban' warfare and campaign play.

I'm assuming the GW shit question was directed at me even though you didn't tag my post

I'm painting age of sigmar.

For 6mm I like HoTT, Mighty Armies and Pz8's really simple rules for pickup games or teaching new people

buy a 6mm sample from whatever company you like the look of and try painting a few things

I really like 6mm, but I'm thinking of making the jump to 15mm as well, mostly I paint 28mm so when I do 6mm it's for a break, but I really should paint more scales

28mm is by far my least favourite but it's the most commonly played at my club

>more streamlineable
>more customizable
these two are mutually exclusive

SoBaH is pretty good, they system is much more streamlined (which is hit or miss, you might hate it) but there's a lot of additional rules they've added and expanded on top of their simple engine.

That's Song of Blades and Heroes by the way

not him,but yes and no, of course more complexity brings more room for customization, but things can be more or less customizable. Probably he meant that the system mustn't be tied to soem set races like mordheim is, but let you create your own or at least personalize them.

since you can't play mordheim in GW stores anyways nothing stops you from proxying whatever you want, so you just pick whatever race you want to use as rules

>you can't play mordheim in GW stores

Fucking wot. Goddamn GW and their hatred of anything not currently being milked for all its worth.

.. fuck i now need 'invest' in this.

What manufacturer can expect a large order?

I mean, when was the last time you set foot in one of their stores anyways

You have a point, I'm just mad about gamers who want somewhere to play the game they want being denied that for no good reason.

Should I get the Advanced edition? Seems more recent

advanced has more rules, so if you like crunchy grit then yeah

otherwise the system is really simple

you'll have to homebrew a bit to make the older expansions work with advanced though, like the campaign rules, the dungeon crawl rules and stuff

If I get the advanced edition is there a clear line where the advanced rules come in to play? That way they could optional you know?

>That right guy perreando.
How horrifing.

of course, but if there is a rulebook which already does what he wants he can tweak, it would be easier.

GHQ, ALWAYS GHQ

www.magistermilitum.com is the best place.

Pictured: Baccus 6mm Mahdist Infantry and GHQ tanks/armored cars for my "Valkyria Chronicles: Kebab Edition" 6mm force (yes, I was the guy asking about panzerfaust-wielding camel cavalry the other day)

Why are company based wargames so dead anyway? Reminds me of the german government during the Weimar Repulic, tons of rulesets, all of them bad to mediocre.

People mainly Plays Gw games or historics. Heck, we have had lots of problem to maintain that general alive and it includes anything not-Infinity/WarmHordes/dropzone/Not-Gw-but-somehow-acept-LoTR.

> I have a cool idea for a wargame!
> Does a kickstarter
> delivers (maybe)
> game never gets widespread retail support
> game ded

It's the new lifecycle of wargames. There's SO MANY goddamn rulesets that it's really a buyer's market and you're only really gonna play the big games because those are the ones you can find opponents for.

>People mainly Plays Gw games or historics
No fucking wonder. I've literally been playing army level fantasy wargames since I started making simplistic ones up myself at age 7 using Risk miniatures, and I couldn't think of a single ruleset I'd actually want to play.

> game never gets widespread retail support
because most are mediocre, because they copy the staples (which haven't evolved since the 80s) or try some dumb shit like being "rules-lite"

yeah and the rulebook is mordeheim?

there's a reason why even without support we're still talking about mordeheim right now, nothing comes close to replacing it

There's always been a lot of chaff out there, KS and the internet just makes it so much easier to see it all.

Dark Osprey link in the trove looks dead. solutions?
someonr can share it again ?

ooh, i thought you were implying his qeustion was pointless because mordheim can be modded.

Anyone here play This is Not a Test? How is it?

All I can say is check out GMG's campaign on it about the remnants of the USDA chasing down mutant farm animals trying to form a communist regime.

That sounds amazing

this general is the best damn sign of free thought on Veeky Forums right now.

praise to you all.

It was. I didn't know the rules too well, but the story they came up for it was great.

Amateur game designer with a few questions looking for feedback.

First, would a platoon size game is the vain of Warmahordes or Warzone, a few small units that activate together but resolve their actions separately, using a one roll opposed die pool system set in a Classical Era high fantasy have its appeal, or is the market too saturated right now for it to find a niche?

Following that, if I was looking at about a few units of 4-6, a few solo models, and one or two larger showpiece models, aiming for around 20 models on the field, would the individual resolutions be too much if the system is
>Both roll dice
>Count successes
>Attacker does damage if he rolls more successes, without making a second roll

Undercoat them, paint the main colors (base color of uniform/skin, little dab of paint for a face or hand, paint the weapon, paint the helmet)
then give them an ink or wash, and you're done. They're pretty fast to paint and no one is going to be able to look close enough to see if there is actually any "detail". Usually you need a magnifying glass to get a good look. On the table they just look cool like tiny mans running around.

>no one is going to be able to look close enough to see if there is actually any "detail". Usually you need a magnifying glass to get a good look.
Depends on how you got to 6/3mm I think. From a historical context people might not look closely (but then GCHQ has amazing detail, so why not). If you are with people who got interested via GWs 6mm epic system there's a very high standard of detail/expectation (without magnifying glasses, 6mm isnt THAT small)

What does /awg/ think of the original Chainmail rules?

*GHQ

obligatory "the market is very saturated period". The market is indeed saturated fi you say somethign as generic as fantasy. The two examples which come to mind for high profile game which kind of fit the description are dark age and wrath of kings(which might be actually smalle, not sure), but of course there are bound to be other less known games out there (maybe maybe SoBaH was doing somethign like that? i heard soemthing).
What does "would the individual resolutions be too much" mean?I guess it could wrk whatever the question is, but there are many ways to go at what you are describing, but why make it bucket of dice? How are you using that feature?

Why are you thinking of getting into building such game if you don't even know the market?

Those are adorable.

Streamlining combat is always good, especially if you are doing squad combat like Warmahordes. That shit gets real complicated real quick.

It's pretty good, probabley my favorite skirmish game atm.

It's very much a sandbox type of game though, there are enough factions and options within those factions to do almost whatever you want. I know for some people thats a huge plus but others prefer a more structured.

It's very much a "your dudes" kind of game. My dudes are a group of Stalker/Metro 2033 inspired Caravaners.

Sorry, should've been clearer. The market is saturated, with the biggest trend being small fantasy skirmish games, with a leaning towards Tolkien-esque central European fantasy, though its moving away from that, with a large increase in steampunk Victorian style games; or mass games of a different scale, generally sci-fi or historical. What I was wondering is if there's enough of a niche without too much overlap. The platoon level of 20-40 models is still pretty bare. The biggest realistic competition (anyone that thinks they can go up against something like GW or X-wing out of the gate is a fool), is Warmahordes, which is currently in a weird spot with the transition to MKIII going roughly. It also has a different, though similar aesthetic (WMH going for fantasy in a later period, closer to WWI, while what I meant by classical era is an earlier period more attuned to Greek, Mesopotamia, Roman, north African, etc.). After that, I'd say Wrath of Kings. Again, fantasy setting, but different aesthetic. There's also games like Warzone, not a direct competition due to being a sci-fi game, but still fits the niche of scale, and Godslayer, a lesser known and smaller game.

And yeah, the wording on that sucked. I'm trying to decide is when too many actions is too many, especially when it comes to the level of interaction. One of my biggest issues with Warmahordes and GW games is that you do everything with little to no say from your opponent. But at the same time, when does the resolution feel like a chore? Is it better to go "I roll 3 dice, trying to score X+, and you roll 3 dice, trying to score X+, and then we figure it out from there" over one person making multiple rolls knowing they need a X+.

I think Warmahordes biggest problem is the lack of interaction. Unless you have Tough, you really can't do much as the other player goes.

i would say nothing really as what you are describing comes to mind, but i of course don't know everything and don't know if the overlap is enough to say there is no room or not.
As for the rolls, it's pretty obvious, the less rolls the better, the less exchanges in person rollign the better. I wouldn't say rollign dice in yuor opponent turn counts as interaciton, but i do understand that rolling for your mens lives feels better then just lookign at your opponent rolling. I like the fact that the rollign system you presented is simultaneus, so that the defending player both gets to roll and doesn't slow down the roll too much.
In my experience 2 rolls for the resolution of an attack is good, one is awkward or for more rules light games and three is just dragging it(unless it's a small skirmish game, and even then it can usually be avoided). Again i really like your idea because it means you get two rolls and it shouldn't take as long as the typical "two rolls to resolve" since you do them together. But again we are just talkign hipothetically and you need to make the system work of course.

Ok, the problem with interaction is almost always the turn system not the actual rolling.
Warmahordes is full IGOUGO which means you get to sit there and do dick for like three ~15-20 minute chunks (when it's your opponent's turn). Which sucks.

This idea that rolling dice to defend against an attack is any kind of real interaction is a false one - there's no choice involved in that, you're just picking up a die/dice and dropping it. All you're doing with that is slowing the game down by swapping the "cognitive load" over from the actual acting player to the non-acting player, and then back again.

Have acting and resolving a thing be fast. Have real meaningful reactions be a possibility. Shorten the delay between an opponent acting and you're reacting in response. That's how you create meaningful levels interaction. Don't pretend-add interaction by wasting the non-acting player's time with dice rolling.

That's not to say you should entirely discard the idea that both people roll for an action - that comes down to what you do with the dice. The thing with rolling is that you can introduce mechanics that are easier to mess with if you're rolling. You can't, for example, re-roll a failure if you never rolled at all.

>want to expand to something other than 40k
>the only other game played in my area is WMH (aka poorhammer 40k)
How do you get a community going for alternative wargames?

Show it off.
Frequently this might need you bringing at least 2 armies and sharing one with other people as you play games.

If you're lucky, you can maybe proxy entire armies and people will look at the rules rather than the models.

Any tactical tips for someone looking to start an Epic Tau force? The Onslaught Tau proxies look neat.
There's like 2 or 3 people who play it at my club and small scale stuff is appealing more and more recently.

I just got interested in Wargaming a few days ago when I watch some people play 40k on YouTube. Then when I watched some paint tutorials I was hooked. Problem is that Warhammer is ridiculously expensive.

I want to get into Wargaming and painting miniatures and playing, but I have no idea where to start or what other games people will play other than Warhammer, and of course I want it to be a cheaper alternative to 40k

The company no longer supporting a product is a pretty good reason for not letting you use their marketing tools (which is what tables are) for free.

It really depends of where are you from and your zone.
You will probably find x-wing easy, it comes painted and it's fun, easy and with depth.
For games, Infinity it's pretty good, a bit complicated at the start and the individual minis aren't cheap, but you don't need lots of them.
IF you like Sci fi, 15mm goes around less than a pound for infantry and ten to 15 bucks for vehicles. If you want to go cheaper, 6mm will give you plenty of minis to play "big"games for relatively cheap. Dropzone comander seems to be pretty popular, and you can find generic games like Gruntz if the your dudes aproach is your thingie.

Honestly, if you aim for a smaller force, and make use of the "Start Collecting" boxes, GW games are not significantly more expensive than their competition. They only get expensive when you get into large-armies big battle stuff.

Is that a kitbash?
what did you use? warlords plastic 2ww winter troops and something else?
looks amazing.
also post your tnt band, im waiting for some mini to arrive to make mine!

>warlords plastic 2ww winter troops
Russians right?

First you should let us know what you want in your ideal game:

Do you prefer fantasy, sci fi, or historical settings?

Would you like to play with a handful of skirmishing infantry, a few small infantry squads supported by one or two tanks/cavalrymen/monsters/cannons/whatever equivalent unit in the setting, or with large forces fighting battles with hundreds of infantry and dozens of bigger supporting minis as above?

Would you prefer something that's simple and easy to learn, or something more engrossing that tries to simulate warfare more accurately and give you loads of choices?

Lastly, can you more or less tell us what does and does not matter to you when deciding on a game out of these options: Cheap or reasonably priced minis, minis that are fun to paint, games with a large enough community to allow you to easily find opponents, minis with the potential for easy customisation, balanced or generally well-designed rules.

It's probably a lot to think about for someone with no experience, but it's useful for you to consider what you want out of the hobby and useful for us to recommend something you'll probably like. Fair warning though, even with extremely cheap minis you'll probably find that you spend plenty on just getting set up with all the paints, brushes, equipment, etc.

>Stalker/Metro 2033 inspired

My darkened familial relation

I think so.
And i guess the head is from gw steel legion.
the weapon from some wargames facrory sprue maybe.
Good stuff, i want to see more.

>And i guess the head is from gw steel legion.

Nah, it's plastic or resin.

Yeah it's a kitbash. Warlord winter soviets with a few warlord USMC bit too. The gun is the wargames factory/warlord apocalypse survivors.

The head is from a website I found called roleplayupkit.com, some polack making casts in his shed. I'd decided I wanted gasmask heads but I wanted them all to be different which was going to be hella expensive since most companies sell heads in pack of 5 or 10 so I'd need to buy 50+ to make sure everyone was slightly different. I was just about to give up when I found this guy selling exactly what I wanted.

God Bless you polack.

I've only got pictures of 2 other guys, I'll post more when they are painted (so in about 3 years ...)

This is Vaclav who is the leader of the warband and the owner and proprietor of Crazy Vaclav's place of Bargains.

And this is Bogdan.

GW is a minis and hobby company...If it gets people interested in buying minis from them, why get in the way of consumer goodwill?

>and of course I want it to be a cheaper alternative to 40k
If you like the setting you could check out Necromunda or Shadow War Armageddon. Those are smaller skirmish games were you need a lot less miniatures.

If you want to play a different game you'll have to do a bit of investigating about what is being played in your local meta. Or try to convince a few friends to start something with you.

Because they don't sell any mordheim minis? They gain nothing from someone picking up mordheim as opposed to AoS or 40k.

This essentially. IGoUGo is "I alphastrike, you stick your thumb up your ass."

Although Bolt Action is popular, I dislike the die-bag mechanic because it does not scale upward, and makes it easy to be Igougo.

I have been tweaking my homebrew "alternating activation" system where rather than being random, activating consecutive units or interrupting actions uses a "Command Point" mechanic, representing your ability to coordinate your forces. I stole the name from 8e 40k, but hate how CP in that system are basically a MOBA manabar.

CP replenishes at the start of the turn, but its usage is critically important, as you use it for bringing units from Reserves, having units activate or interrupt after a half-action, or to "retain the initiative" (letting you activate consecutive units during your activation). Rather than a die bag or initiative rolls or anything "random" to determine turn order, activating more than one consecutive unit costs an incrementing amount of CP, so activating 2 units then 2 units costs 1 CP, but activating all 4 at once costs 6 CP.

This is my latest iteration. I clarified the rules for Interrupt Mechanics, as well as the rules for using CP to Interrupt Interrupts, and resolving interruptions in a "stack." I find that the Interrupt/counterinterrupt system lets me keep a very small number of actions per turn (no need for an Overwatch action, "supporting fire" action, etc).

Yeah, stuff like this is probably my preferred.
Alt Activation where you have resources (preferably influenced by leaders of some sort, or something similar. As you say, it's an "ability to coordinate" resource) to mess with the activation system. Retaining the Initiative is a good idea to have. I like how certain armies can with it in special ways.

Well done. Have you properly play-tested it?

One thing I like to have with AA is that Initiative is only done at the start of the game, and the then for each round after the player who finished activating last round acts first in the new round. In addition to that, you cannot activate the unit you activated last, in the previous turn. Warzone Resurrection does this, I believe.

You appear to have Initiative rolled every round, yeah? If you do that, you should make it so you can at least influence it. Spending CP to add to the roll is a good, easy way to do it. That way is fun, too.

Finished!

Disregard the bare bases, I don't have my basing stuff with me right now so I'll have to wait to do that.

they're shit

build two armies and demo it

if you don't know what that means walk into a GW and tell them with a straight face that you've never played a wargame before and want to see how its played

>Problem is that Warhammer is ridiculously expensive.

how much money did you spend on your pc

They look proper cocky.

because mordheim didn't work to get people into WHFB, before the end times and the AoS reboot WHFB had awful sales, selling less globally than paints.

With the AoS reboot they've put a lot of work into recruiting and options for getting started, start collecting, three starter sets at different price points, free rules, skirmish, path to glory, etc etc.

So basically what they couldn't bother doing when fantasy was around, now they do with the new system that's shit.

I still don't know how any of AoS can be defended, but whatever. Go back to /awg/.

And to stay on topic - anyone happen to have Car Wars or Warlands in pdf? The postapoc car bug bit me, dug out my unopened Hot Wheels collection which includes mostly muscle cars and ordered a Ford Falcon to convert it to the Pursuit Special with parts from Brigade Games. Also, Dark Future pdfs are welcomed as well.

I love TnT - the problem is that the only FLGS nearby is really just a Magic/Yugioh place, and the few minis players are 40k. I've tried running demos and even chatting with Joe (the founder) online, but, very little there. I honestly have just wound up playing TnT as a solo using the Ground-combat rules from 5150.

Still fun as hell.

>Go back to /awg/.

Not that user but wut

Love him.

Love his soviet helmet too. I'm going for a more honest Fallout-style from Brother Vinni's minis.

I mean get back to /awg/, as in stay on topic. Sorry, 1.5 Skype meetings with Indians wears me out a bit.

Hello I'm from wargames general, a Veeky Forums discord server primarily focused on TTRPG and Wargaming. We've got a big community that we'd love to see more people come into. Come check us out.
discord.gg/GBcypkT

dude. Last thread was one of the few times we actually hit the bump limit.
Trying to take the discussion elsewhere from a thread like this is bad form, especially since it's the only semi-permanent place to discuss non GW shit that doesn't fall into /hwg/ territory on Veeky Forums.

What the fuck is discord anyway?

>What the fuck is discord anyway?

It's like IRC, only more proprietary.

Limited, not proper. Just some "mechanics" tests, each side getting 4 squads of 5 Tacmarines to test how the turn structure plays out. I haven't done full-on games, as well as explicit ways to break the system. How many CP is a placeholder for now, as I'm still thinking about how to do it, whether to make it a Warmahordes Focus/Fury mechanic, keep it abstracted but let HQs provide extra CP/turn, or some other implementation. I'll think about the init rolls and backtoback activations too.

I'm still at odds as to whether I want rules for aircraft ("Air missions") or offtable attacks, but I'm meh for now.

The Interrupt system will need more fine-tuning too. The key item is when you Declare an attack as an interrupt, it must be against the unit at the top of the stack. A 3rd level Interrupt would not be able to attack the original unit that was Interrupted!

Another item I'm on the fence about how to handle is what happens if you declare an attack, but then cannot actually carry it out after an interrupt. Say, a unit ducks out of LOS before you shoot. I imagine they could declare a subsequent target, potentially triggering another round of interrupts.

Finally, I'm thinking about how to handle vehicles ramming and stuff.

Discord is a voice chat program.

Tthat's a shitty comparison and you know it. I can spend $400 on a laptop that does a multitude of things. Miniatures gaming is expensive, and GW is on the higher end of the price scale.

That's not really a valid comparison, how much did you spend on your car? How much did you spend on your house? How much did you spend on your shoes? They're vastly different things you own for vastly different purposes.

And my original text got deleted. Weird.

Anyway I'm happy we'll be getting plastic Crusaders, but I'm irked at the changes to the arms. I liked the give connection at the elbow that the Cobra and Grizzly have, I would gladly sacrifice a bicep swivel to have that back.

I'm about to get into 15mm scifi. I was thinking of using Grimdark Future (converted to centimeters) but with the initiative/activation rules from Patrol Angis, as well as its unit composition so I could field dudes from solos, to two mans, to 10 man units. Do you think that would totally destroy the system balance or make it more versatile?

Awesome! I expecially love bogdan. Cant wait to start working on my gang, il make the most from the bikers from warlord/wargames + some greenstuff, hoping to recreate a mad max feeling.

Also gotta check on those heads.

Did tou already play a game?

A lot of the rules added in Advanced are modular. You can pick and choose what you like. The biggest difference is the reaction system where you can take actions during your opponent's turn.

Nothing about this sounds offensive or bad. But nothing about it sounds interesting. What's your game's hook? Why play it instead of the dozens of other games out there? What's the key feature here?

Otherwise, I played a lot of Warmachine/Hordes and gave it up when I started finding games like FiveCore and Infinity. I haven't played Guild Ball yet but it sounds like it'd be enjoyable as well. The biggest reason as like you've said, long turns with too much downtime. WM/H is fairly boring because of it.

Also, the individual guys in a unit activating are a massive time sink. The game can't decide if it's a skirmish game or something larger and rests uncomfortably in the middle.