/awg/ Alternative Wargames General

I'm in a similar boat. I have people to play with, but said people have only expressed interest and not actually bought it, so I gotta get my armies up to standard to run demo games for them. I can't honestly tell you what does and doesn't work, but my current Freeborn list consists of 3x6 man domari squads, a sky raider squad, and a mag cannon. I figured it gave me a decent balance of bodies, speed, and guns for 500 points.

My Freeborn is on hold at the moment though, since those plastic domari are extremely disappointing. The kit isn't poorly made, but the figures are so deep in the uncanny valley I'd need climbing gear and a mountain of green stuff to pull them out. Here's something to illustrate how bad it is; there are two female domari out of every eight, but I didn't realise it at all until I noticed the boobplates on the sprue. Currently I'm considering sidelining them indefinitely, and instead converting up some Perry ACW Zouaves with Antares weapons to be ferals, fluffing them out as professional sepoys drawn from primitive worlds who use their traditional dress as uniform.

New thread, aww yee.

Trying to decide between 15mm dragon rampant or 28mm ASOBAH to start out with. Help brothers.

Sadly I'm not even on the same continent. Would like to play the game, but getting starters is somewhat expensive, and I really like the minis.

28mm SOBAH. You can expand to a warband for DR easily.

I still remember when we wouldn't even pass the hundred or so post some days.

I would go for ASoBaH because you will find a lot more people than play than scale than 15mm and probably they will play a game without having to buy another set of minis.

God bless drunk spaniards.

painting kromlech's soviet gobbos, pretty good and i still love the models, but i have to admit i was disappointed in some smaller parts which looked a bit fucked up, maybe it was a miscast, don't know. Still happy i bought them but not perfect. Also considering buying some 6mm minis you or some other user psoted last thread. I always was interested in them and i feel like doing it if i get the money.

>people happy about growing
>already dead
i don't knwo how much we can be happy about reachign limit if we require more then a bump per day, but bump i guess

I want to do 15mm near future combined arms stuff, tanks, mechs, helos, infantry. Front Mission style. Probably 15-20 units (infantry stands or vehicles) a side. Not too high tech.

Is Heavy Gear the best/only option or would Stargrunt work? I just want a battlefield of stuff like Hinds, Abrams, and Spetsnaz operators with mech support

Stargrunt is pretty good, but you can also easily use any 28mm ruleset and use cm instead of inches.

Am I the only person in the world thats excited* about a new Adaptus Titanicus and wish it would hurry the fuck up?
(*until I see the prices, that is)

agh adEptus. stupid fat fingers

Honestly, I'm happy if it's a good game and even more if it has some nice miniatures to use elsewhere, but 40k fluff has pretty much lost its magic for me.

I'm looking for 32mm manifacturers. I really love the scale because they usually have great faces and proportions. Does anybody have some sources other than Knight Miniatures? I know a lot of manifacturers mislabel their stuff at 28mm to not dissuade customers, but that makes it pretty hard to find them.

i doubt they'll be of much use elsewhere, I think they are going for a custom scale.

im kind of with you on the 40k magic, but in my nostalgia AT had its own wierd identity (pre-Epic) with the beetleback horus heresy titans kicking each other in. I'm not sure they even belonged to chapters, maybe more like the imperial knight households.

i'm sure for the remake they'll just crowbar Ultrasmurfs vs Chaos in anyway.

No, you're not the only person.

Also, ongoing Epic general

Pardon the tripcode, but I think I'm onto something here.
I created an "interrupt"-based alternating activation system, and got to do some additional playtesting last week. Although I originally designed it as a 40k homebrew, I feel the turn structure is going to be general-purpose enough for any setting.

The question now is what to call it? I was thinking of calling it WarStack, since the game uses "Command Points" akin to a Focus/Fury Mechanic for consecutive activations, or pre-empting Interrupts, with Interrupts resolving as a "stack."

Also, would any folks be interested in helping test the system out on TTS?

Sounds interesting. When you say stack, I assume you mean in the CS sense "first in / last out" activation resolution? So something in the vein of card games like Magic and its various bastard offspring?

i would be interested in reading, no playtest without reading first tho.

docs.google.com/document/d/1sK-Wzy1fF1nn__Le2h5q7qnpGKb7HuPbKWafVJCpHao/edit?usp=drivesdk

There's a lot of "work in progress" of course. The # of command points/turn is a placeholder for now. I'm actually thinking of doing it in a two-tier setup: Command-points can be used freely by your army, but characters/sergeants get "Hero points" akin to fight/fate in Lord of the Rings. Hero Points can be either used as "Heroic Actions" (rerolls, power attacks, etc), or as Command Points for the hero's unit.

Basically, I attack you. You interrupt. I spend a CP to counter-interrupt, you spend 2 to interrupt that, until neither of us interrupts with an action that isn't interrupted. (I find placing a die next to each unit showing its "order" in the interrupt chain works). Then you resolve actions, starting from the most recent interrupting unit and working your way down to

The key is interrupts are not free actions, nor is there a special action ("overwatch") needed to be able to set up an interrupt. It's a balancing act of juggling Command Points for chain-activations, split-activations, and bringing stuff in from Reserves. Basically, rather than being a "superpower" manabar (Hero Points do that), Command Points represent how coordinated your army is.

when i will have comments on it, should i post here or contact you some other way?
(i will post here too either way, but it's nice to have a more secure mean to communicate)

Messaging me on dakkadakka is probably best.

Is MERCS worth getting into? I've almost pulled the trigger a half-dozen times, but the company makes me shy away. Looks like, since the 2.0 update, they've pretty much dropped it for Myth?

I'm usually not pessimistic about games, but this one seems pretty much dead. I also want to say that 2 boxes aren't that expensive and they contain most of the models of their faction, BUT the rulebook is 60$ and I guess it isn't easy to pirate (?). Also aren't the models now all made of PVC? It's a real shame, because I always liked the fluff, models and the general 5v5 concept...

Enigma miniatures.
And Arena Rex, although that is 35mm.

aren't the rules free anymore? Pity. I guess if you find someoen to play with they will let you read the rules, so one way or another you can ususally play without rulebook.
i played 1st eition and liked it. I would advise for it if you have people to play with.

i just checked, rules are still free on theyr site

Looks pretty cool. Reminds me a bit of the philosophy behind warmaster or epic armaggedon, scaled up to 28mm, mixed with the order tokens and reactions of Infinity.

Can you give an example of what the interrupt mechanism is actually intended to do? I understand it mechanically, just trying to picture what it adds to alternating activation that can't be got with simpler mechanisms.

They're not a huge company, they seem to really only focus on one project at a time.

I got the PVC models for the boardgame version. They're not great, but work fine for what they are. Minis are generic hard scifi though, you could easily proxy from other ranges.

Epic had a lot of Orders which were simply combinations of smaller actions. "Move and shoot." "Move twice and shoot with -1 to-hit", "Move three times", "Charge", "Overwatch", etc. I wanted actions to be more "atomic". Rather than having separate "full advance" vs "run" actions ala Warmachine, you Advance twice. Rather than having separate "Full Advance" versus "Charge" actions, melee weapons let you take a 3" step, etc.

At its simplest, Interrupts can be used for Overwatch, Countercharging or retreating, or to "Go-to-Ground".

Interrupting Interrupts is more to enable small-team tactics, stuff like leapfrogging/bounding overwatch. One unit advances, under the cover of another, and all that.

Then there's "blocking". If your opponent wishes to shoot a bunch of anti-infantry at your tacticals, interrupt and drive their APC in front.

The key of course is managing everything. Bigger stacks eat up Command Points fast, and you're not gaining free actions out of it so much as pre-empting your foe's actions.

>trusting nuGW after they basically butchered Blood Bowl's community ruleset to sell it in "Season" expansions and card packs whilst pretending they'd resurrected it even though the tournament and 3rd party scene had thrived after they abandoned it

no

Nah.

They can, and they will fuck it up.

>Expecting a good game from GW.
Hue.
Perhaps 15 years ago.

I heard Gorechosen was supposedly pretty fun.

...said by the people who says AoS is great.

Yeah.

My problem with AoS is it's
>writing
>design direction of the models
>pricing

I never even played it. I genuinely can't speak to wether or not it is fun.
There is enough other stuff that turns me off about it.

In my opinion 40k jumped the shark by now as well.

Mind you I am a jaded bitter old man, but I try not give into the hate by principle. Even though I have no love for GW these days they may still be able to bring out something decent from time to time.

eeh, i played BB before they returned on it, the seasons thign is nto a problem, unless you want to get jewd into it and buy all the books, they made some retarded changes, but i believe all in all giving BB a new flow of players was pretty good.

Hi,
just read Horizon Wars and I cannot find rules or costs for transport vehicles.
There is only a brief page on air transport but nothing for ground transport.
Am I missing something ?

Gotcha. Think we're talking about two separate things. The atomic actions is one, and something that shows up in a lot of the more modern rulesets. Whether you do it with AP, short/long actions, whatever... just iterations of the same basic mechanic. I think that, on some level, you can completely divorce HOW a unit activates from WHEN it activates.

You interrupt system deals with the later question. How much of a decision making happens in declaring actions vs. resolving them? In your example, the APC drives to block marines, can the shooter switch to use an AT weapon instead?

I love how the BB Community reacted with "Oh neat, another source of fantasy football miniatures" and went back to playing FUMBL and LRB

actually fumbbl has rules updated with new BB rules for some reason.

>Even though I have no love for GW these days they may still be able to bring out something decent from time to time.

Well they produce some fine miniatures every now and then. I'm planning on using converted primaris as Space Marines for other games in the bear future and I get some Elf/Dark Eldar boxes every time I want to do something lithe. Ebaying stuff is especially great for this.

I need to hammer out the "no valid targets after an interrupt" section, as I scribbled them elsewhere, because I'm trying to figure them out. I figure the "invalid target" can mean three things:

-The target moved out of LOS (or in a transport)
-An interrupting unit moved in the way of LOS.
-An interrupting unit engaged in melee.

I am thinking the "quick fix" is that a unit may switch its target to a unit that is "up" in the stack, if the original target disappeared. If there is no valid target after that, it still performs its action as normal (which can be a "wasted" action in the case of a Combat Action).

The game ia fun. The 2nd edition is leaps and bounds better than 1st. The gimmick with the cards can take some getting used to, though, and remembering all the stat symbols took me a while.

For what it's worth; the book is beautiful and has everything. $60 is a big inveatment for a single book, though, so grabbing the rulea for free from the website is a good idea.

The plastic minis are alright. Not terrible, but some detail is losf from the metals. But if you grab one of the Recon board game boxes you get two MERC teams plus a damn fun little board game.

Continues to make me think of the stack mechanic from MTG (that's not a bad thing)... may be worth looking at those rules for inspiration. One cue you could take from there, if you think it might help, would be giving the different actions "speeds" - magic had like 3 or 4 grades of progressively more-instantaneous spell - and only allowing an action to be interrupted by an equal-or-faster action. You could use that to regulate some of the stranger interactions. It would also let you model firing speed for different weapons to an extent... make it so a SMG or shotgun will always beat an RPG or cannon on the draw, for instance.

>being this salty

Gorechosen is one of the best beer and pretzel games I have ever played. Gangs of Commorragh is also pretty great even if the power gap between Helions and Reavers is pretty massive. Both are also really good value, even if you ignore the cross compatibility and take them as stand alone games.

As for AoS, it's an ok game with shit lore that replaced as shit game with great lore. So yeah I guess it's a net loss but I still enjoy it for what it is.

Being a salty contrarian is as bad as being a rabid geedub fanboy so you should probabley give it a rest.

I've looked around at a bunch of miniatures sites, and I've noticed that they tending to be hugely lacking in qt grills (monster or otherwise). It seems like it could be an untapped market, and I'm eager and have most of the tool already to learn how to sculpt and cast miniatures, but I don't yet have a good idea for a game to put them in.

What would be a good concept for a monstergirl wargame?

Hate to break it to you user, but there do exist quite a few suppliers of qt grills.

Doubt there are many qt monster grills though

A third of the minis in infinity are qt girls user.

Hmm, my google-fu must not be strong enough, in that case.
Everyone knows that monster girls are the patrician taste, of course.

I will admit that there are definitely a few, but either we have different definitions of cute or I didn't take a close enough look at the game and need to check it out again.

I'm far less concerned about whether or not they already exist, though. Also, Infinity is 25mm, isn't it? I'm not sure as to what scale I should use, bu I want my models to be usable as proxies/for kitbashing in other games.

>Everyone knows that monster girls are the patrician taste, of course.

I hope you aren't referring to that weak Japanes shit they're trying to pawn off as "monster" girls.

Well, there are cute robos, cute girls with japanese/anime aesthethics, tough girls and monster girls, and probably a few more fetichs.

About the scale, 25/28 (than are those weird GW heroic proportions) it's the most comon for skirmish games, so pretty easy to use for generic games.

And a cute robo with a magical girls sniper.

Malifaux also has an abundance of cute girls, some of whom are also monsters.

I'll look into those, maybe 35mm also works well with the 32mm stuff I have.

That's exactly why 32mm needs to take over from 28mm. Nearly fifty fucking years and faces still look like crap teaches us that the scale is just too small for proper female features. Even boutique stuff like Kingdom Death looks crappy.

I've seen some pretty bad faces in 32mm too.

Sure, a bigger scale isn't magically going to make a crappy sculptor better. But there are barely any good female faces at heroic, let alone 28mm proper.

What I love about that figure is instead of typical OSL where you just slather the guy in orange or blue, he did normal highlights with maybe a bit of yellow mixed in at the very top, but angled as if the lantern was the light-source, rather than the normal top-down highlights. Looks infinitely better and is actually far easier than the slathering method.

>maybe a bit of yellow mixed in at the very top
that's not true, all highlights are orangish. The big difference is he used colours which could be mixed well with orange/yellow for an highlight so it looks far more natural, instead of just glazing a random colour on top of another colour like people do for plasma or small lights. (of course the other difference is how big the OSL is, but you mentioned it). It's not that hard, but the glaze on top OSL is not that hard either.
They are two different techniques for different purposes.

At least one of them should be barefoot DESU, still look bretty gud tho

Isn't Malifaux 32mm?

>it's not yellow it's orangish

Kek, ok m8

the important part was "all", not just the tip like you said

No.

yo, hasslefree.

...

Those are some good looking sculpts.

It still looks really good. I like it better than most OSLs.

REALLY good quality and customer service too.

It's been a couple of years since I've bought from them but I'm sure they are still pretty good.

>Isn't Malifaux 32mm?
I think the new sculpts are, although they are a bit thinner than most miniatures by the looks of it. I'll look into them!

Why would you choose kingdom death as an example? I thought you were arguing in FAVOR of 32mm. Anyway, this is a circular argument - of course larger scales have more detail than smaller. Why not just go to 54mm? Hell, go 1/16 for everything.

Personally, I think faces look fine at 6mm, so I'm gonna stick with that.

Because 32mm hits a sweetspot between usability and demonstrably higher quality of sculpts. 54mm is wholly impractical to play with, unless you use them as tokens. I know it, I played Inquisitor way back.

>Isn't Malifaux 32mm?
Mixed. The original game was more or less the same "heroic" 28mm as 40K. The most recent rounds of sculpts have gotten progressively taller and thinner... going even beyond truescale 32mm in some cases, in terms of the fine features. Not personally to my taste - they make great display pieces, but most of them are way too fragile for regular gaming.

People forget that there are very good reasons for the "chunkiness" of traditional sculpts - you want your tabletop minis to be durable as playing pieces and highly visible from an arms-length, top-down perspective.

Take a look at this pic. Left side is a 3D render of an epic scale space marine, close up and head on, like a sales picture. It looks distorted af, giant shoulders, tiny feat, comically huge weapon, etc. Right side is how you actually see it on the table, and it looks "correct". The scaling is designed to compensate for the distance and perspective, making it easy to quickly spot and identify models on the table during play. The head-on view is irrelevant, because nobody ever sees it in that context.

Sure, but Kingdom Death is 32mm, and you said it looks bad. I'm trying to figure out why you're offering counterexamples to your own argument.

That wasn't me, but I've seen KD repeatedly being called 28mm. Turns out after some research that it's actually 35mm. Seems like Poots just can't sculpt faces for shit and I stand a corrected idiot because I only own a bunch of monsters and no humans from that line.

actually i would be interested in which other examples you/ him have. It's filled with "28" mm minis nowadays and there isn't all that much difference really.

Interested in what? 32mm/35mm lines?

of bad 28 mm minis.

I get the "speed" idea. I might add it later but for now I'm trying to keep it relatively simple. For now, I like the idea that you can keep pre-empting your foe, but you have to pay increasingly expensive Command Point costs.

I modified the Interrupt Stack rules some. Yesterday, I had an addendum called "Uptargeting", where if a unit lost its originally declared target, it could target another unit "above it" in the stack. I ran a test and saw some immediate problems: For example, Uptargeting would let you shoot the APC if it drove in front of the infantry target, but not if the unit ran behind the APC, and that's before you get into future scenarios, like an out-of-LOS spellcaster using telekinesis to push said APC in front.

So I replaced "Uptargeting" with "Blockers." Basically, if a unit is directly preventing an attacker from attacking its original intended target (be it as a transport, LOS blocking, or engaging the attacker in melee), the attacker may declare the Blocker as its new target. This attack can be interrupted in turn, with new interrupts going onto the same Stack (Only one stack, not multiple stacks for different re-targets!).

I like Blockers as it's more organic than trying to retrace your way up a "phantom stack" while remembering which attacks were resolved versus which weren't.

KD minis have similar mass to 28mm heroic, but they are much taller... more than a head over typical GW stuff, and bigger in both dimensions than most malifaux (although GW and wyrd are both really inconsistent with scale, whereas KD is extremely consistent across their whole line).

My point about the speed thing was it might organically resolve some of those problems. So for instance, maybe you have a "full advance" where a unit can move 6", say, but it's a Slow Action. Versus a "quick advance" or a "dive for cover", where its a Quick Action they only move 2", or don't move at all but get a cover bonus. The blocker situation then is still possible, but much less common.

So, like, if artillery over on the hill opens up, yes you have time to run behind that building. But if some dude 40 feet away opens up on your with an AR, maybe you have time to hit the deck, but you're certainly not going to be able to sprint 20 feet before the bullets reach you.

So I am getting into Warmaster/Warmaster Ancients.

What is the best/cheapest miniature range? And should I be looked at 6mm or 10mm stuff?

Also why in the good fucking heavens is Warmaster Medieval impossible to find in .pdf form?

>Also why in the good fucking heavens is Warmaster Medieval impossible to find in .pdf form?

/hwg/ has it.

mediafire.com/folder/81ck8x600cas4/Medieval#mmng6rdjr9sc3

>let's fuck everyone with 28mm armies because reasons
Well, I fucking hate Prodos for the exact same thing.

Who does dem qt space mans? My old GW plastics are...not exactly state of the art.

>What is the best/cheapest miniature range? And should I be looked at 6mm or 10mm stuff?
Choice of scale depends on your preference and most common opponents. 10mm is the official scale, and my preferred, but there's a good argument for the "really big hugeness" quality of 6mm.

10mm - Eureka, Pendraken, Kallistra and Magister Militum have the biggest lines. Copplestone for LOTR stuff. There's also a few boutique manufacturers doing small lines. GW's old stuff can often be got used - especially orcs, elves, empire and dwarf - and the quality is very high on average.

Microworld is probably my favorite in 6mm, although there's a lot out there, especially for historical. In both scales, for fantasy, you can source monsters and other "big stuff" from all over the place, including other scales. I often use 15mm or 20mm guys for ogres and the like, and you can often make large monsters out of parts originally intended for 28mm.

Also worth pointing out that, for more esoteric stuff, 3D printing is a real option now. It's often on the pricier side, but you have the option to get EXACTLY what you're looking for.

>Who does dem qt space mans? My old GW plastics are...not exactly state of the art.
It's just a model for example. I think the guy did those up on a home 3D printer.

IMO, best bet for epic scale not-GW stuff now is Vanguard, Onslaught, or Age Of Tyrants. All those guys are turning out some really good looking stuff lately.