/awg/ Alternative Wargames General

Dare you enter my magical realm? - 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

Last Thread:

Other urls found in this thread:

coolminiornot.com/shop/miniatures/confrontation-miniatures
gatesofantares.com/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Heresy miniatures do a Black Friday sale atm too btw.
The code for 20% off is CONSUME. The whole thing works till Sunday (today) night.

Bit hard to find cause they only announced it on Facebook, but there you go.

Oh I just noticed that's only for orders over £50

On the topic of which, what good stuff that they didn't need have people bought in the sales?

I got myself a couple of the Hasslefree super sale things, and a mantic crazy box, should keep me vaguely interested for a short while.

Stuff I didn't need? Seems kind of subjective, but the only thing I didn't intend to get were Flashpoint Batman from Knight Models. Only because I didn't know it existed, and would've planned for it if I knew, cause it's Flashpoint Batman

threadly reminder to say something nice about akkad the concerned

Any idea on when we'll see plastic elves?

Though, to be fair, I need more elves like I need a hole in the head.

first sign of the elves will be in january i think, the facebook has been quiet, so the next announcement there will be goblin releases, they did say the elves were 2018 tho

Speaking of which, does anybody have good alternatives for dwarf heads?

What was the news with Warstack? He still working on that?

Viking/Celt heads from historicals? Rugged, beardy, but probably not potato.

Well, I bought some Team Yankee Americans, and have been humming the Airwolf theme as I make whooshing motions with my new toy attack helicopters...

Good idea, I'll try it. Although most historicals will probably look a tad too small for the Northstar dorfs... So maybe I should look for heroic scale barbarians and vikings. WHFB Marauders maybe?
I'll just try and see.

What are some good open source skirmish/tactical wargames that could relatively easily be adapted to play out events in my own fantasy setting?

I specify open source because I want to "publish" my setting online for free and just keep adding to it (in the forms of short stories, OSR rules for roleplaying in the setting, and rules for wargaming in the setting, as well as possibly eventually a novel or three).

You can't copyright game mechanics, pick a ruleset you like and go nuts.

Yeah, but you can trademark terminology and it's a bigger pain in the neck to avoid being too similar.

This is a big part of why OSR didn't really happen until the OGL came along.

Open Combat is a slick little system, although its magic is lacking if that's a big part of your setting.

Are you just looking to publish like a splat-book that uses the stats and stuff from a game for tour setting?

Yeah, and maybe some house rules.

I actually intend for magic to be not much of a part of it. Magic in my setting is all either "we do these rituals and the cops grow better" type stuff or terrifying sword-and-sorcery shit that takes hours or days to do and slowly corrupts you. So I may let people give something up in order to have an ongoing magical effect that lasts throughout the game (or until their otherwise-squishy caster is dead).

>we do these rituals and the cops grow better
Make them eat their veggies.

Whoops! Crops.

I looked at a bunch of stuff, but none of the deals was either what I needed, wanted or worth it by itself. I mean Mantic slapped a 20% price increase on their black friday deals in €.

Kind of disappointing, but I also don't think I missed anything.

I was a little sad that CMON didn't pull another stealth sale. But its for the best I didn't continue to dump money into a game I'll never get to play anyway.

>it can get weird trying to measure it, since you have to bend around the corner
What problem are you actually trying to solve? In the above example there is already a solution within the base rules. If the distance from elevated models base to the edge of terrain is within their height number, they can be seen and attacked.

A Kings of War hardcover rulebook (I can use a PDF, but the cover is just so cool), more Kingdom Death expansions, the Blood Bowl box set, some Confrontation recasts, and some of those nifty greenstuff rollers that GreenStuffWorld sells.

I'm trying to solve the issue in my own game rules.

Is the preorder still on?
The discount is still up in the store, but the text says 'until the 23rd'...

>Pre-Order Offers end 6th December

Interesting.
The main preorder page says Nov 23rd, the individual order pages say Dec 6th.

Yes, but if you are lifting Malifaux's system, why isn't the inherent solution included?

hmmm got big army set of mantic orcs on Black F and iam planing to convert them to chaos for my nurgle army but i still got no idea where to start an help ?

the end is the 6th, so you can still get akkad the concerned!

General Question:

What's the point of rules light systems?

For some reason most systems that have surfaced out recently seem to fall into the 'minimize stats, add a catalog of special properties, keep rules minimalistic' school of design. I really, really do not understand this approach. If I wanted a generic fantasy wargame I could crunch up a lite system in a bout an hour, why am I expected to shell out 20 bucks for the same thing? They're not even balanced better, because lolruleslite. They usually come down either to being pure dicerollers or hinge on a meta mechanic rather than on traditional strategy.

There's literally one exception that comes to my mind which is reaper's skirmish system, while I can't think of any recent large scale system with a granular crunchy approach at all.

What's your opinion on rules-lites? Worth the money? Cash-grabs or genuine design decision? Is this trend going to last

>I really, really do not understand this approach.
Cause you are obviously not the target demographic then.

>Worth the money? Cash-grabs or genuine design decision? Is this trend going to last
Of course it is a deliberate choice.
Honestly, people these days have an attention span of 3 seconds before they lose interest. Nobody has interest in referring to pages of tables to look up what happens or do a bunch of math anymore. People live faster lives these days and their entertainment has to be just as quick to keep up.
It's not just something specific to gaming it permeates society as a whole so obviously, yes it is going to last.
For me personally I also feel put off by something as soon as it starts to feel like work. Everybody likes learning new stuff, but if it starts feeling like a homework assignment then that is a design problem for a game imo.

Even then there are still more games out now than there were ever before. So I don't get what you are upset about. You have more choice than ever before.
Maybe it is just me but your post seems like it's only aimed at stirring shit up and baiting people.

If it really is that easy to crunch up a system in an hour you should pitch your genius to Osprey, and you'll be walking around in gold pants in no time. Or even better write a game that you actually would like to play and pitch that.
If you don't like it, don't buy. It's that simple. Doesn't mean that there is no place for the games at all just because you personally don't like the style they are written in.

Because I'm not a fan of how they do it.

Get some Plaguebearers and kitbash. Are you trying to make them daemonic or mortal followers of Chaos? Either way adding sores and pustules is easy by stippling greenstuff.

>Nobody has interest in referring to pages of tables to look up what happens do a bunch of math anymore
Agreed, that's pretty clunky design. However, involved design is not automatically clunky.

>So I don't get what you are upset about.
I mostly don't see where the audience is. I never expected the community of niche wargamers to react so favorable to light skirmish systems like song of blade and heroes.

>You have more choice than ever before
Not really. The most recent systems I use is Warband and even that tends to the light side (but makes a fantastic basis for a heavier system) and the aforementioned system by reaper.
Either I suddenly became an imbecile at using google or no, there really is not.

>If you don't like it, don't buy. It's that simple. Doesn't mean that there is no place for the games at all just because you personally don't like the style they are written in.
Mostly I don't see where this 'massive' market comes from as I would expect people with less time invested to flock towards the highly visible games like stuff from GW or Warmahordes or something. It's entry level niche and that confuses me.

>Maybe it is just me but your post seems like it's only aimed at stirring shit up and baiting people.
I know this is Veeky Forums and all but not every post is automatically some vile troll out to get you.

Why? Seems like you're adding needless arithmetic instead using the dead simple approach that is included.

>Either I suddenly became an imbecile at using google or no, there really is not.
In addition to the games that are released each month and those that are fully supported you can also go back to the games that did those things, if you liked them better.
Unless you mean to say there never was a game that struck the right balance between dicerolling and strategy as you put it.
And in a way we are all quite limited, or imbeciles in a way, when it comes to knowing what's on the market. Who can truely play every game that could possibly like them.
That is why I'm saying your post struck me as inflammatory, cause it is incredibly vague. If you give an example for a game that you like and can describe what you liked or didn't like about it you are much more likely to get useful feedback from people that have played games they could recommend you.

>I mostly don't see where the audience is.
>It's entry level niche and that confuses me.
Even grogs like to switch it up now and again. I see mostly people that have a lot of experience and years behind them switch to those small games just to try something new once in a while. It's not 'just' for beginners. It depends on which circles you move wether or not you see the audience. Veeky Forums or the internet is in no way representative or a good indicator for the demand or the size of certain demographics. Bongland for example has shitloads of middleaged or older gentlemen that are into historical wargaming that are probably not browsing the internet as much as tje teenagers that wank over hentai and play 40k that end up on Veeky Forums.

>What's the point of rules light systems?
It could be for marketing, many want the slogan of easy to learn difficult to master. Possibly as states, to align itself with cultural expectations of time invested to learn. Maybe they are trying to lower the barrier to entry and make more sales to prospective casuals. The popularity will probably undulate like everything else. Though, your conclusion that they are all generic fantasy or that you could spit ball a superior system in under an hour is a bit strange.
What would be some examples of systems you consider granular/heavy?

The only arithmetic is halving you range, which may not make it in the final draft. The system boils down to:
>Is the target model on terrain that is equal to or less than the attacker's Size?
>If yes, then they can attack
>If no, then they can't

The wording sucks, but user helped me with that last thread.

The halving is what I refer to.

>Is the target model within their height of the edge?
>If yes, they are in los and can be attacked
>If no, they are not and cannot be attacked

This is malifaux's system for any attack and height disparity, not just melee and not only upwards. Currently your system seems different only for varieties sake and not easy of play. You previously said you didn't like the above system, but what is this variant providing?

Can you name a few of these rules lite systems? I'm curious what you qualify as rules lite.

CMON is having a sale. It just happens to include nothing that I wanted, and I'm not even sure if they restocked half the shit they ran out of months ago, either.

That's how general LoS works in Malifaux, not melee range and elevation. Malifaux's take on melee vs, elevation is you increase the measured distance between the models by 1" for each Height of terrain between the two models, unless the model on the lower elevation is taller than the terrain's Height difference.

...

>For some reason most systems that have surfaced out recently seem to fall into the 'minimize stats, add a catalog of special properties, keep rules minimalistic' school of design.
I hate this, but it's mostly the middle part I dislike.

I like playing rules-light systems that don't do this because... I just want an excuse to put toy soldiers on a table and move them around without thinking about complex rules like "rolling more than one or two dice" or "modifiers." Just come up with an interesting scenario or objective.

It's not for everyone, and I also like crunchier games - it's the Song of Blades & Heroes-style "no stats! but take this trait if you're slow-moving, this trait if you're fast, this trait if you can shoot people, this trait as well if you can shoot people at a long range, this trait if you can move and shoot..." that I don't like. For the love of fuck, guys, just add a movement and range stat to the statline.

I think some of it comes from the weakening boundaries between boardgames with miniatures and miniatures wargames.

As says, attention spans and media likely has a lot do with it.

Has a lot to do with it as well, at least in my group. I'm about 30, and I'm the youngest regular player. The old guys aren't interested in getting bogged down in rules as our once a month meetup is it for most of us. So things that are light, easy and capture the feel of a period/genre are often good enough for one or two games a month. It also makes it dead easy to try out a new system with our same models.

Smog 1888 was so cool.
A pity it ends up property of CMON

They provide more options to choose from (in terms of games you can play, not tactical options). So you might be able to go for whatever models you like and roll with that particular game. Or maybe you collect too many games, and want something easier to keep straight in your head instead of having to recall a bunch of game-specific rules work. Or maybe still you're trying to get a friend into a system but they are coming in with next to no gaming experience, and something less intimidating from a rules perspective might help ease them in.

Or as postulated, people can't go more than 10 seconds before they get the dopamine itch and reach for their phones to re-check their social media feeds.

Not that guy but I'd call something like Rogue Planet rules light - combat is a single opposed roll, weapons are boiled down to modifiers that cap out at +/-3, movement is simplified to "move from point to point", there's very little measurement and most stuff is just abstracted.

Asking in new thread:
Any Warstack news? What's its status?

I haven't seen him in /gdg/ for a while.

So, a fantasy-WW1+2 style game, armies sized around Bolt Action or 40k 3rd/4th Edition
Would you prefer classic races ported over, with dwarven tank operators, elvish snipers and orcish trenchers, or would you prefer OC donutsteel races to populate the game?

Isn't Panzerfäuste basically already this?

is right, but there's no harm in doing it with your own take.
Personally I prefer the standard races, because creating something truly unique is really tough, without going way overboard and losing people's interest that way.
Also, unless they're recognisable like those, you've as good as changed them to being aliens, and that removes the point in taking a familiar setting and weirding it up.

Yeah, but I'm still curious. I've been rolling around an idea for a game in a Valkyria Chronicles like setting, so I wanted to hear some opinions.

Understandable. A lot of people connect easily to the standard roster because its so well known.

Bought the Scibor Cthulhu. I like the new Figone one better, but he won't get a discount anytime soon and at 50% it felt like stealing.

I would prefer some original races (something with the sea or maybe slightly lovecraftian) and some classic ones (for sure elves and skeletons)

Also I think that fantasy/satirical games work well when they are over the top with gore, splatter and desperation.

They tried something similar with Rivet Wars years ago, but Cmon dropped the game

The 'big' rules lite ones are playes by people who are modelers and painters first and players/'tacticians' second. I wrote this before, because this question gets asked a lot, but my reason to play Dragon Rampant is that I'm burned out by min/maxing in whfb and I can do all the projects I want to do without caring for 'viable' or 'playable'. Also I like systems where powerlevels of units have a small range. ALSO I hate snowflake uber elite units, like basically every unit in 40k/whfb/aos. And everyone is asking for more and better special rules for their units all the time. The constant dickwaving in the fluff is one thing, but the inflation of armywide special rules over the last editions of whfb for example was atrocious (worst offender: elves). Also rules that get overwritten 90% of the time like moral values and their tests. For some reason everyone got basically immune to them. ALSO FUCKING REROLLS, FUCK EM. And don't get me started on r&f movement autism. There is just so much stuff that pisses me off...
You see, I still get fucking vietnam tier flashbacks when thinking about anything crunchy especially in fantasy. That said, I do like 'heavier' historical rulesets and I like whfb 3rd and 6th simply for their nostalgic value.

Their subsequent miniatures were also infinitely worse.

In skirmish campaign games, how do you like the advantage of previous campaigns scaled for interaction with new warbands? I guess on a scale of Frosgrave to Mordheim.

I uh...what? Previous campaigns? Like entirely unrelated games with entirely different warbands and whatnot?

Sorry, precision of language.
I am referring to new warbands entering an ongoing campaign with many, many previous games. I used Frostrgave as an example of what I feel is a slow rate of improvement with some hardcaps such as 10 units. I used Mordheim as an example of relatively quickly improvement with fewer hardcaps.

Where can someone find the rulebook for Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago around here? I checked the pastebin, so if it's there I missed it or it isn't labeled. There should be a scan by now.

Its like $20 on Amazon.

I mean, I prefer if newer-warbands are somewhat even in power. It's not overly fun for most people to curbstomp/stomp, so if you want a game to keep going just until people get bored (rather than, say, "Collect 20 Magic Stones of Power, and then if you defeat another band, its destroyed, last team standing wins")
The obvious explanation here would just be you start encountering other warbands that have always been there in the background, you just haven't fought them before.

I like it when games provide underdog bonuses, whether it be "if you're 200 pts below, you can pick 200 pts of stuff from these things eg Ambush, Night Battle, Reinforcements (once-off troops), Forward Deploy, etc" (System example: This is Not a Test) or stuff where the underdog just gets more of a reward at the end (more exp, gold, bonus on wounding rolls, etc)

Looks like CMON is offloading some Confrontation resins at a really good price

coolminiornot.com/shop/miniatures/confrontation-miniatures

>Dat hydra for $24
wut

Wow, they are actually cheaper than the recasts are. If only I had know that before I bought my Molochs on black friday. I suppose that this is a symptom of CMoN selling off the rights to Confrontation to those French guys.

So DP9 posted the render for the Curiasser for NuCoal today.

Apparently more possible delays due to still being down a designer.

Interesting that it doesn't show off the variants like a lot of the PRDF stuff has been.

This seems like the place to ask.

What the fuck is Beyond the Gates of Antares? Seems interesting enough, but I've never seen it mentioned (probably because it went into direct competition with 40k). Has anyone played it? Is it any good?

It's Sci-Fi Bolt Action made by Rick Priestly. It is good, though the minis are pretty lame.

>but I've never seen it mentioned
So you are not a regular then I take it?
It comes up every once in a while when they release new models.

I have some of the models, but I don't think anybody around where I live really plays it. In England there seems to be a pretty good community.
They also have a game finder thingy where you can register.

If you want some info on the background check out the Nexus, the new website they launched recently
gatesofantares.com/

>So you are not a regular then I take it?
Nah, I only came here once before to grab the Starship Troopers PDFs.

Thanks for the link though.

>Looks like CMON is offloading some Confrontation resins at a really good price
Yeah, so I just went and spent all my money there. You can get an army of fiannas for less than what it would have cost you last week to buy one of them on ebay.

>Apparently more possible delays due to still being down a designer.
Geez. Gotta wonder what the heck is going on over there. I feel like I could have sculpted these things by now (and my 3d CAD skills are limited to using freeware to make some conversion parts for printing at shapeways).

I'm sure figuring out the connections and range of motion for the ball sockets adds some complexity, and it's probably not as easy as it looks to cut them up for casting... but you're also talking about guys who's 9-to-5 is 3D modeling. And if it's anything like my job before a big project deadline, that 9-to-5 is probably more of an 8-to-8. Hard to picture how this could run past the target date more than a month.

I keep thinking of getting into it, but means a lot of models to paint and I just don't have that scale of a game at 28mm in me anymore I think.

If I recall their lead designer had a death in the family and had to step out for a bit to handle things, so now they're on some freelancers.

I'm totally down with them needing to push it back if it means one factions doesn't seem uber rushed. I have no interest in playing NuCoal, but I would hate to see those who do get fucked with sub-par models compared to the others in the same KS.

But yeah, I can get how the constant delays can be obnoxious. I'd rather there be delays now than after they've got my money.

Yeah when I bought the Antares stuff I was super hyped, but it only sank in later that I started with a wargame and not a skirmisher.
I also didn't want to get into a huge wargame like WHFB anymore.

But after reading the rules I realized that it doesn't operate on the same scale as GW games do.
The main rules are written and designed for armies of around 30 models plus/minus a few. At least that is what I'm shooting for atm.

>But after reading the rules I realized that it doesn't operate on the same scale as GW games do.
>The main rules are written and designed for armies of around 30 models plus/minus a few.
Ah, the scale 40K was best at. Not that it was great at it, but that's the sort of game that a lot of people find best - a squad or two, some elite or specialist types, a vehicle or something else big, a hero.

Yeah, it does feel closer to Bolt Action scale of two dozen or so guys and a vehicle of some sort.

But man even that's hard for me to push towards at this point. My Heavy Gear is the biggest armies on my plate right NIW (well and my BA Canuks which will probably get a total overhaul of new models).

Still: I do really dig the Freeborn and Algoryn (especially those heavy suits of theirs).

GoA's line has been weird for me, since the newer the release, the more I like it. I had no real interest in the Concord, Algoryns, and the Boromites; the Freeborn caught my attention; I like the Ghar; and the Isorians are my favorite in the line. If this trend continues, I'll probably end up buying whatever their next army is.

I liked the Algoryn designs, the Ghar battlesuits are pretty cool and I love the Dune stylings of the Freeborn.

I never did liken the Boromites or the Concord, and while the Isorians have some cool stuff I dislike the plasma weapons. They just look ugly as sin.

>I'll probably end up buying whatever their next army is.
That's probably the Vorl. They are slated to appear sometime after the next supplement.
Supposedly some kind of insect like scorpion centuar like creatures.

The thing that turned me initially off from the Boromites was that they were one of the first sculpts teased, just when they had announced GoA as an hard sci-fi setting. Which it is decidedly not.

After a while and reading up on the background I came around to like them as a slightly goofy thing in a Space Opera setting though.

The newer Boromite stuff I like. Like that giant monster thing they got.

I like that they are trying to go over the top with their aliens and avoiding rubber-forehead ones. The new mercs they released are cool.

Nigga got a damn fine scimitar, battered shirt of scale and mail, and a proper Gobbo helmet. He's gonna lead my Goblin horde for sure.

i'm thinking of using him as a grishnakh for my mordor army

>the Ghar battlesuits are pretty cool
Those are easily my favorite thing about the line. Haven't actually made the dive yet, but it's been on my radar for a while.

Can someone help me with Kings of War listbuilding? I want to play Abyssals, and wanted to see what would be worth taking. Would I ever use The Lord of Lies or a Chroneas at all?

bump

I don't have much experience with Abyssals but if I recall correctly, the Chroneas at least is pretty nice. Breath Attack 20 Piercing 1 that can't be disordered is great.
I don't really know anything about Lord of Lies. Looking at him he seems solid, although he's paying for both excellent melee ability and LB (7), which kinda is unfortunate.

Hey, I know ya'll are pretty good when it comes to Miniatures and manufacturers; do any of you know some good Ad Mech counts as?

Micro Art Studios used to do a range of models like that but I can't find them on their store so maybe they're discontinued.

Raging Heroes' Iron Empire troops kitbash very nicely with Skitarii, just use a little greenstuff to fill out the collars and shoulders.

Looked through their store, and I think your right; although its a shame, they made some really nice and blocky infantry dudes.
Raging Heros kinda pushes my limits to lewdness, but I do kind of like some of the models they have. This one really caught my eye. I have no idea what to use them as, but I do like them quite a bit; they remind me a bit of the Big Sisters from Bioshock 2

Check out easy army kings of war and look at the stats for the units ect. there.

I have very little experience with the game and I can't really eyeball whether a unit is good based on its stats yet.

So anyone interested in Wrath of Kings, now's a good time to check it out. CMON's sale has almost everything reduced to $10 or less for each box.

The best deal is the starters for each faction. $70 normally reduced to $21 and they come with enough for a mid-sized game.

I essentially agree as I prefer improvement through an increasing variety of options and not widening stat disparities, though a couple in my group are not as keen. They're more aligned with wow esque gated progress and don't find any thrill in a new opponent reading them and having the tools to dismantle their strategy. Though I do understand the disappointment in seeing all you've worked for crumble, which is why we include a bit more npc options a la Frostrage. Thanks, was just interested in others positions.

Wow, right on the heels of their Confrontation deal. This has been a brutal time around Black Friday for me this year.

saw that too, is it a limited sale or are they dropping the line? hope not, cause I enjoy it quite a bit when i get to break it out.