Alternative War Games General /awg/

They look pretty neat, but contemporary military just does nothing for me.

so the not-lotr have been announced for this month, i'm just hoping for future great orcs and metal orc characters

To make this /awg/ relevant, has anyone played BATTLEFIELD? I liked what I tried of Rogue Planet from the same guy.

bombshell-games.com/battlefield/

So I have a really short attention span and I haven't had my wake-up juice, but a cursory glance over the first half gives a few points:
>scatter dice could use some alternatives for people who don't have a gw die.
Examples could be the 9th age 'follow the 6-1 axis of a d6', or use the triangles on a d20(/d10/d8)
>Page 2, spellcheck baring to barring (I think)
>your teardrop template needs an end radius, otherwise it's just a line
>some stats (WS, BS) may want changing to sound like not GW, but it has no functional effect
>there's no real reason that saves shouldn't be roll under like other characteristic checks
>maybe keep WS rolls to hit and General rolls to wound as roll under.
It seems odd that you've said things are mostly roll under, and then 3-5 of the major rolls in the game use a roll over mechanic. With the to hit/wound, you could probably fix it by changing the first - to a + in the formula, or by swapping the order of things in the brackets.

Hopefully that's been useful, I'll try and go over the rest in a bit.

/awg/ I come to you in search of an alternative to 40k. Only stipulation is the lore is cool and the models for it are somewhat neat.

Beyond the Gates of Antares maybe. Infinity and Warzone Resurrection are also options. I assume by alternative to 40k you mean similar but different, and not simply any other wargame at all.

Similar yeah.

Mantic has an alternative, I remember black earth by nuclear shrimp but that's dead in the water.

Warzone looks cool. Those new vehicle models of theirs looks atrocious though.

So I was wondering, are there any fantasy skirmish games out there with a good depth of customisation per model? I was thinking something where you can roughly make a DnD party in a wargame.

isn't that savage worlds?

>Only stipulation is the lore is cool and the models for it are somewhat neat.
What do you consider cool?

I recently bought into Gates of Anatares, cause I liked the Freeborn Ferals.
Freeborn are the neutral intermediaries that facilitate trade and sell mercenaries to the other warring factions.
They basically take tribal people and give them sci-guns and put chips in their heads to make them compliant. I thought that was a cool idea.

There are a bunch of other interesting ideas in there like how the Boromites basically operate like crime syndicates and Ghar are basically mentally retarded Klingons.

You could read up on the factions a little, warlord has a bunch of articles on them, and some shortstories on their page.
They could be a bit better at marketing the game, but at least the game is steadily growing it seems.

They'll run a kickstarter for some inane exclusives, and make 100-200 times what you'd spend?

Rack&Ruin

Not fantasy, but for sci-fi, rogue stars has RPG-level of stat customization. Playing it really feels like I was playing a party of NPCs against another party. As cool as that sounds, the game, by it's nature and not the designer, is extremely granular and slow, with so much to track and deal with every shot and every turn. I say this because even if there was a fantasy equivalent, be careful what you wish for, I wouldn't be interested.

That being said, I don't know of a fantasy game like that. SoBaH has unit customisation freedom you are looking for, but not the level of depth you want, which I think makes for a much smoother game that isn't a drudge to play.

See that is cool.

Gates of Antares is based around human offshoots right? Also just looked into it. Those isorian models look amazing user.

Thank you.

Thanks for your feedback. I think ill add a picture of how to make a scatter dice with a d6 and a pen, its what I did a kid, worked great.

I'll take another stab at the formulas.

As for the roll over roll under decisions, those are actually all the same as warhammer. I thought it made sense to include some level of familiarity rather than make it different for no reason.

Roll over roll under is actually a really interesting topic. People want to see high numbers as better, both stats and dice rolls. So you have to balance that in terms of use. The way warhammer does it is that it gives high number better priority to all the things you use often, rolling ot hit, to wound, and making armour saves. And then to make it so most stats have high is better they use roll under for the characteristic checks, which dont happen very often.

Yeah, the story revolves around the titular Gates of Antares, which you can imagine as a hub of interstellar wormholes, that enable people to travel all over the galaxy. But these Gates occasionally collapse in on themselves, effectively cutting planets off from each other. It's one of the reasons why Ferals exists, they are usually forgotten colonies and also why divergent human offshots like the Algoryn developed during centuries of isolation.

Isorians got real aliens though. Tsan Ra are kind of weird insectoid looking things.
The backstory for that is kind of interesting too. In GoA there is a thing called Imtel, i.e. integrated machine intelligence, basically nanomachines that create a neural network between everyone living in their sphere of influence, if 'infected'.
During a war between the Human Isorians and the Tsan Ra the nanomachines from both factions intermingled/got corrupted an that is why they are now able to use the funky biomechanical alien tech and use Tsan Ra allies.

I think there are also plans for an entirely alien faction with either the next expansion or the one after that.

>STALKER

damn, i wish there were affordable STALKER minis available

TnT is a great game. Probably the best of the Necromunda-alikes (ie, campaign based individual advancement skirmish). Being able to be Mad Max or Fallout or STALKER or whatever without even much skinning was cool too.

The NPC roster is pretty great as well

Infinity's Ariadna has some stuff that might fit the bill. WarmaHordes has the thrulg for a bloodsucker stand-in, and I'm sure you could find some misshapen horrors somewhere for pseudogiants, controllers, snorks, etc.

Did you give Dark Age a look? The lore has a similarly grim tone that a lot of 40k stuff seems to have, the minis are really good-looking as far as I am concerned. The rules are free online and simple to learn, and you don't need that big of a monetary investment to get started. You can read some lore snippets in the core rulebook, as well as in each faction document on the main site's download section, to see if you like it or not.

>damn, i wish there were affordable STALKER minis available
If you live in the EU, Surus, Brother Vinni, and Lead Adventure all have a shitload. In the US it's a little more difficult to find 'em, but ctrl-f the pastebin for post-apoc links and I think you'll scrounge up a few.

IIRC, the Pulp Alley Sky Pirates are also pretty close to the STALKER look, all you need for them are ushankas.

Oh? The Mishima one looks bad but I like all the others I admit. What's wrong with them?

where was that announced?

wargameterrain.blogspot.ie/2017/09/breaking-northstar-miniatures-new.html

they announced it last week, kinda fitting too considering that they have finished the ghost archipelago thing

the models like mechs and the iconic bauhaus tank look stunning. Just don't like the look of the new imperial tank, the flyers, the bauhaus half track.

That just opinion though. Love a lot of the other stuff admittedly. If I was gonna start I'd play capital or bauhaus.

That looks amazing. So just a fantasy wargame? Love the Northstar figures.

Might just have to jump in on that.

This is awesome user. Just saw too the isorians are getting tanks and an apc as well. Love their biomechanical look of the faction too.

Lemme think it over and see of I can't wrangle up a friend and I'll jump in.

it's miniatures are inspired by the old art for tolkiens stuff like the orcs, desu i fell in love with the orcs straight away

They're getting jetbikes soon too. Really all they're lacking now is plastic infantry.

So wait it's a fantasy mass battle game with minis inspired by the old school tolkien? Fucking Hyped.

What's the games name so I can follow it from now on.

Bauhaus is where it's at!

I admit I love the new Bauhaus half track, but as you said it's a matter of opinion.

>Bauhaus is where it's at!
GO BACK TO VENUS, SCRUB LORD.
WHAT IS THAT?! IS THAT A HORSE?!
HAHAHAHA WE EAT HORSES!!
IF YOU WANT TO GET SOMEWHERE, LIKE A MAN, THEN PUT A ROCKET ON YOUR BACK!

There was a bunch of drama in another Veeky Forums related Discord this week, so a group of us got together to make a new Discord for game design. Decided we needed a Discord where honesty came first so we could get proper feedback on games we're designing.

I know a lot of you guys design games and post them here (I do myself). So I'm inviting you guys to come join the fun. Honest feedback and a thick skin are the name of the game, hoping to create a good design environment rather than a hug box.

discord.gg/qWYX3uT

>Drama
>In a Veeky Forums related Discord

Color me shocked.

Those minis look amazing I love the CORE. Thanks for bringing this to my attention user.

Dead thread?

Could anyone recommend a pulp 28 mm skirmish game?

So far, all I've considered is Rogue Stars.

Working on making a Mordheim like skirmish game. Decided I wanted to do classic fantasy with a twist. It's inspiration is based on the Behavioral sink and to be honest a bit of modern politics.

The idea is that Dwarves were the world keepers. They kept the darkness at bay, policed it and did the shit humans normally do. Elves also exist but are busy doing elf shit (not decided yet). So dwarves become too rich, too powerful and start to lose their morals. This leads to "fuck the ancestors who cares?" and "we should help the lesser species" until dwarven kingsdoms have their gates opened..

Orcs are more than happy to move in, kill all the dwarves and loot their shit. This is where the game setting is, destroyed dwarf kingdom where the beasts of the world are fighting over it.

Since I'm doing a twist on Dwarves I also want to twist everything else. I don't know what to do with Goblins and Orcs yet, I want to keep them very much brutes.

Here's the other races

>Vermin are nobles. Every rat is given a knife and works his way up to become honour guard They also have messengers who go from town to town and work as rogues if need be. They were pushed out by the Dwarves and had to fight monsters to survive. Oh and suicide bomber rats because it sounds good, just giant rats who explode

>Beastmen are corrupt animals but keep the pack mentality. When an alpha loses a duel he offers his throat to be cut. While Ratmen have a more Asian style of honour, Beastmen have a barbarian type of honour. Ritual scarring and friendly honour duels abound.

>Undead are not Zee ebil magics. They're using life magic which created all life on the world. There are ghosts revived by the energy left over from that event. Ghosts made by ritual are honour ancestors or leaders who could not leave their post. Those revived by the energy left over and not a ritual must feed on souls to survive though. Necomancers are part mage part engineer. They make bone creations and bind souls to them.

Nah, /awg/ is just a slow boil.
Speaking of, lads, anyone been getting any games in? My regular opponents haven't been feeling like playing and I'm still a few weeks away from getting a mate of mine into it(another friend overseas is sending me his Bauhaus collection, lots of stuff coming). I've got some ideas for some ladder campaigns but it's hard going getting people together to play.

System wise I want to go with an EXP system like bloodbowl. You get EXP for a kill or achieving an objective, you level up and spend this on a set of skills (may make skills 3-5 per troop type not 1 big table). You find equipment post battle or in treasure chests and equip it as you desire. This means your little ratmen will have different equipment as you find it. Injuries will exist and give a - to a stat.

Stats I'm thinking
>Movement
>Melee accuracy
>Range accuracy
>Dodge
>Toughness
>Wounds

I'm thinking combat will be rolling a D6 and adding your stat against your opponents and the highest wins. Unsure if I want to go full Warmachine or if I want to do contested rolls where both players roll. Thoughts?

I want each faction to play very differently. Orcs are simple and brutal, move in and smash.
Goblins are a swarm with shamans buffing them. If you drop them below 30% strength they will just instantly flee.
Beastmen get bonuses for 1 on 1 battling.
Vermin swarm you with rats and harass you with tunnelers until the slower guards move in and as a block and finish you off.
Undead's Skeletons don't level up, you trade in your skeletons for the next tier of bone creature. They will also be bad stats wise but if a necromancer is close have a 50% chance to stand up each turn. This means the necromancer can't hide away but needs protecting. Bats will act as beacons to extend the Necromancer's influence. They will also be able to create skeletons in game from injured models. This way Undead's focus is on causing casualties as their primary "income" source. While other factions buy new troops the undead will make their primary troops for free.

Maybe income mechanics could vary by faction? Maybe Beastmen get an extra bonus for every 1 on 1 duel they win. Ratmen get a bonus for attacking as a block. Make how you play the faction matter in how you're rewarded.

As I've found Test of Honour is a really good wargame system for teaching to new players I'm thinking of making a fantasy mod for it.

Just add some basic racial stat differences and refluff weapons away from obviously Japanese ones.

It gives me an excuse to get more sweet fantasy dudesmen, too.

I know it's technically not the right thread, but since we talk about skirmish rules a lot (and the /whg/ doesn't seem to very interested in it) I'd like to hear some opinions on pic/vid realted. It kinda reminds me of warcraft, how all the miniatures seem to have their own special abilities and I always liked some of the warma/hordes minis, just not enough to fully get into it. Sadly the starter seems really boring miniature wise....

Not really a fan of the hunchback kind of Orcs. I wish they had gone for either the wgf or the elder scrolls approach.

>split into tiny secret clubs of aspies
>said aspies split even further
Discord is a cancer to Veeky Forums. If I wanted a more moderated/structured kind of forum, I'd unironically sign in to reddit.

I'm looking for cheap(er) alternative for GW greatswords.
Something on par with their eye-catching look.

The original - Empire Greatswords would be fine, but I don't need all 10 of them + they look a bit the same.

Tips?

lead adventure has 3 landsknecht greatswords, but they are even more expensive than GW palsitc ones. The other option would be any of the historical companies. Artizan designs has decent ones but I think foundry and various others should also have landsknecht with greatswords. Just google '28mm renaissance/landsknecht/zweihander/greatsword' . The problem with historicals is that their scale might be a little smaller than the GW 28mm heroic though. I'd go for the GW plastic ones tßh.

well the actual game itself hasn't been announced yet, just that it's starting this month. the orcs and dwarves are the only ones that we've seen, there's meant to be elves and wargs. they said that these are the beginning so i'm hoping for great orcs and trolls all tolkien style

Wargames Foundry has a nice range of Landshnekt minis that should work for you.

wargamesfoundry.com/collections/early-16th-century-renaissance

So is there a specific repository where updates/FAQs are located for TNT?
Can't seem to find it on their website.

I scrapped with some Bauhaus recently but it was a smaller game.
10 trenchers
5 special forces
5 blood berets
1 officer
vs
10 hussars
1 vulkan
3 jugglernudes
5 etoiles mortant

Imperial took the day thanks to evasive actions that kept us safe long enough to conduct a bayonet charge on the hussars. We lost 3 trenchers in the charge but made 2 bonus kills when the hussars tried to fall back but didn't clear the break away clearly.

Vulkan played hell with the blood berets and special forces who were trying to take on the jugglernudes. The vulkan lost its legs at one point, can't quite remember how, so it was more of a nuisance than a threat come the later stages.
Blood berets and special forces each lost 2 men to the jugglernudes but managed to kill 2 of them which seems like a fair trade to me. The mortants brought my trenchers down to 3 men with an admittedly awesome charge which saw them leaping off a building into us.

Fun stuff. I'm thinking of running Barracuda next time, but I don't have any experience with them. All I want is Conquistadors as a outflanking force. prodos pls ;__;

>All I want is Conquistadors as a outflanking force. prodos pls ;__;
Nice report, my dude, I've actually been plugging away at adapting the old school units and weather conidition rules for WZR. I should have something workable to share around soon.

Page 9 bump, holy shit people.

>I've actually been plugging away at adapting the old school units
Care to elaborate?

>Not really a fan of the hunchback kind of Orcs. I wish they had gone for either the wgf or the elder scrolls approach.
Good thing these are goblins.

I'm curious about CoI - been longing to get into WarmaHordes in one way or another, strictly on a casual level as I like painting the miniatures.

Artizan Miniatures, Old Glory, alternatively, Chinaman. Maybe you could try hunting down some spare greatsword arms and gra a box of Warlord/Pro Gloria Landsknechts.

Guess he meant that the old units were somewhat different - e.g. Capitol's Light Infantry had access to Light Machine Guns, Grenade Launchers, Grenadiers (think the Grenadier concept has been taken out in Resurrection), some units doesn't exist (Ducal Militia), or look nothing like the originals (Capitol Heavy Infantry and Imperial Golden Lions). The old books have tons of useful stuff in them.

>The old books have tons of useful stuff in them.
I always wanted to work through this backwards and turn it into a skirmish game. Rather than having battles, players would be taking part in the smaller fights that make up the battles.
You know when you move dudes towards a building and then just shoot everyone and charge?
I think it would be cool if there's 10 dudes vs 7 slightly better dudes at a skirmish level with more customised gear. Remember the cybernetic arms for extra strength and shit like that?

>Landshnekt
>A fat, jolly, puffy sleeved gastropod

I'm working on a small project right now with a friend of mine and I have an idea that might be horrible but I want to see whether it works or not.

Basically, before each battle there's a preparation phase that involves a deck of cards.
There's a deck of cards that's default to every battle, but players can bring their own set, something like 10~ cards. The cards would be based on the commander that the player is fielding and also some that are faction-based.
Each commander has a certain number of tactical points, which the player can spend to shuffle cards into the shared deck. Some cards cost more points to shuffle in, some less.
When all the players have shuffled their cards in, a number of cards are drawn from the shared deck and revealed. Their effects are then active for the battle.
The cards have a type, for example "forecast" cards which, for example make it so the battle's fought during heavy rain.
If two cards share a type, a player may spend his tactics points that he has reserved to basically brute force it into play by betting on it. The other player may ante up and spend his tactics points to keep it from play.
The commander can also use tactics points to activate abilities, so just forcing your cards into play may not be the best idea, because you won't have any to use during the battle.

Does this sound like anything usable or is it hopelessly retarded?

Eh, sounds needlessly complex.

I'm fucking hyped. Those orcs and dwarves alone look miles better then anything mantic has put out. Super excited that Northstar is doing them to. They do damn good kits.

You new here, son?

UGNH

YES

it's pushed me to finally get my mordor army under way desu.

i only found out about them in august and i'm glad for it, because apparently they've been teasing for most of the year

I'm pretty sure they are not gonna let the Frostgrave minis go to waste. Especially since the dwarf sprues have the same weapon layouts at the FG ones.
Pretty sure they are also gonna use the Soldiers, Cultists, Barbarians and Gnolls. Would be surprised if they don't.

>Especially since the dwarf sprues have the same weapon layouts at the FG ones.
'xcept they aren't, the dorfs have enugh bows, spears and swords/axes to arm each of them with a single weapon type+command bits.

Then I apparently remember this completely wrong.
Kind of a shame though, since the other ranges already have fully fleshed out metal character models too. You could easily build an army for a full scale wargame with the FG minis I think.

Yea, it's called Kings of war

Man I wish I could download the model data file.
That looks easy to print.

Thicc.

Think I'll do the same when the kits drop. Gonna do orcs or goblins if they have them. I know I'll get flayed for the but playing shadows of war in preperation for shadows of mordor has got me hyped for lord of the rings shit.

How is it? I'm interested but fuck paying retail.

Where can I find minis that fit this aesthetic?

Lego

That might actually work

Got the two mixed up. Playing shadows of mordor. Mordor is good. I'm getting shadows of war for like 40 bucks so bonus.

they've already shown some conversions with fg soldiers and the dwarf sprue

before i saw the orcs i was actually gonna use the wargames factory orc heads and the fireforge seargants bodies

Is there a "month paint goal" for October? Missed the september monster one

Infinity Ariadnans are very stalker, particularly Ariadna Spetznas and Scouts, who have poncho'd, facemasked AK dudes.

Nobody has gone ahead and decided on one but a couple of suggestions popped up last thread. I put those and a few more I could think of into a strawpoll, and whatever the winner is 24 hours from now can be the next theme.

strawpoll.me/14084255

You can vote for multiple options.

In regards to northstar fantasy line that's dropping when can I get my hand on it?

they announced that it's kicking off this month, no exact date yet or a name for the actual game but the dwarfs and goblins are likely the first wave

Buying me some fucking goblins.

i feel in love with them at site, and i'm hoping for metal characters cuz that's what they're doing with the dwarves

wow my english here was really good

Yeah no idea what's goin there user. However gonna have to keep an eye out for them to release.

Do want

Thanks user. Voting

No worries, I just figured someone had to do something for this to get going. When I get a spare moment I'll also track down everyone's monsters and throw them all into an imgur album so we can see what we got up to last month.

I'm making a homebrew adaption of old edition squads that haven't been added to the official faction army lists and hazardous environment rules to fit them into the current edition of warzone because I think it'd be cool and I believe that fan content helps keep a fantasy/sci fi wargame alive and healthy.

nth for fuck homebrews

i'm guessing mid october at the least, late october at the most

Does the WMH skirmish use generic trooper models from the core games, or does it use all new models just for the skirmish?

I'd imagine the former. I can't see PP being quite so daft as to require new buy in without the minis having some function in the core game.

I think the only things that are new in the box are the characters and they are usable in WMH.