Wargaming

>Well yes of course "look first what is actually being played near you", still...

So get on with it then.

Had a look into it, quite like, but considering the price tag of the hobby I want to make the perfect choice for me, which would have been WHFB. But seems like a sinking ship...

Hard to say - I dislike oversimplification but have other things in my life than spending it optimizing for an overly study-intensive ruleset (Which is why I quit mtg for example). Ideally something taking about two or four hours, depending on army size, would be ideal, with minimal min-maxing-at-home time (which I enjoy very much but again, got other stuff too). But then a game is dead for me when I feel like I hit the wall of chance, where I mastered it to the point that only the dice decide if I lose.

>Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames
>FiveCore
Thanks, gonna look into them.

> If you wanna play, you have to develop a scene
Not for already popular games.

Thing is firstly, you might recommend for/against my logic here (i.e. "WHFB is never gonna die!!"), secondly, your advice might refine my search (didn't think of looking for historicals-communities before this thread), thirdly I want that delicious mental masturbation of discussing wargames now and not in seeral weeks when I'm home again :3

>not for already popular games
See, Historicals has a pretty lackluster scene. Most people play Bolt Action and Flames of War. They're ok, I suppose, not my style. Hex-and-Chit games like ASL have a good amount of support within their communities, but it's mostly some old as fuck grogs - on the other hand, you don't have to paint miniatures and hex and chit gives you a lot more options. Other than that, historicals is generally a scene that needs to be developed, unlike the majority of other scenes. It's very flexible (the same terrain could work for so many different settings), but at the same time you won't find many people as a rule. And certain periods have spikes of interest; it's much easier to find WW2 and Napoleonics and ACW than it is to find stuff about the Great Ottoman War, Charlemagne's conquests or the Italian Wars of Liberation. So figure out what your scene likes and work off from there to help it build further and further.

OP here again.

Can you sell me on round bases? Why did GW abandon the neat rectangular unit thingies? I loved them. Also getting the feeling AoS is more like out of a comic book while WHFB feels like out of an alternative history book.

*insert more whining about how WHFB combines an ancient, dry, historical feeling with awesome design and lore and AoS feels like anime"

Round bases are easier to handle and allow more more individual units, which is good when you're selling 28mm, which is GW's standard. Comparatively, 6mm pretty much uses rectangular bases exclusively and fields much more men, but they're smaller.

Well I agree on that, but there seem to be the majority of units with large head counts too on round bases.

I mean, for something like chaos or orks I think it is fitting as well as for small-headcount-units and WH40k, since they don't have battle formations. But a fantasy game without battle formations just feels wrong, like they try to be more modern with the old stuff. Fantasy has to feel "dusty" for me though, not like "WH40K without bolters".

Sorry for the whining, just disappointed that after years of drooling I don't really get what I wanted...

...Ok, just dialed the stupid down a little to remember that there was this 9th age thing, which means no, I am probably not alone in my opinions and others will continue playing WHFB with AoS figurines on EDGY bases. Phew.

40k is expensive, but if you can find the right boxes and right dealers you can get stuff for ~30% off.

The Dark Imperium set has a really good point per dollar ratio compared to other 40k kits.

At the most basic competitive-among-casuals level for 40k you'll want:
>1-2 HQ choices, at least one should be psychic
>1-2 ranged troop choices
>1-2 melee specialist troop or elite choices
>a dedicated tank busting unit, either a tank itself or infantry with 3-4 high strength weapons

Some armies won't be able to fit this exactly, but they should be able to cover it pretty well with the right mix. E.g. a basic marine army might be:
>Librarian
>2 tactical squads with a plasma gun and lascannon each
>dreadnought

The librarian gives you psychic support, the tac squads are hardy with good range and okay melee, while the dreadnought is tough and can be equipped for killing high value targets in melee, as well as any kind of target at range.

If this sort of thing you want to play with, then 40k might be for you.

They abandoned them because AoS is more of skirmish game so you dont need bases that line together/its cheaper and more convenient to make just one type of base

any suggestions on where to get started with historicals?
I always figured historicals as having massive overly complicated rulebooks

Why does it matter that they discontinued the game? Unless you wanted to play tomb kings most of the models are still for sale and the books are just an E-bay search away.

>Unless you wanted to play tomb kings
dang

Kings of War if you want you wanted out of WHFB. It is designed by Alessio Catavore (Who also designed Warhammer) and endorsed by Rick Priestly (Who also created Warhammer). It had even more options than WHFB did, with more in the way of factions and units. You can use any miniatures you want in the game, including all of your WHFB miniatures, cheapo historicals, or anything fitting in 28mm.

>WH40K without bolters
That is just Age of Sigmar.

>Kings of War
If your description is correct that hits the spot! (Well exept for the "everyone is playing it" part, but better than "engineer my own system and cross fingers for finding someone willing to play")

Which is exactly what I was saying.

>Why does it matter that they discontinued the game?
The "there are people everywhere playing it" part might wither away; also rules refinement and new figurines would be a plus

Kings of War has players here and there. I am lucky enough to have weekly nights nearby with about a dozen dudes playing the game. It is the best option right now for rank and file square based fantasy line battles IMO. You can use the exact same figures in WHFB and AoS for that matter, so if you can't find people for KoW you can always use your army in one of those other games.

Yeah cool! But probably can't use all the cool monstrous GW models since they seem to have no analogues in KoW, or can I?

They do. Only some of the end of times stuff don't have equivalents. Check the full rules for your respective faction in either the core rulebook or Uncharted Empires. Heck, they even have more big monster profiles for some factions.

Well that is just awesome.

Any idea though why they discontinued the beautiful tomb kings monsters? They where my favorites when I drooled at GW's windows a few years back...

Check out Warlord Games. They have historicals from ancients to WW2, and rules are pretty light. Bolt Action is near 40k, and games like Pike & Shotte and Black Powder are really easy to grasp. Their own models are 28mm non-heroics, but IIRC rulebooks have easy conversion tables to use the rules for smaller scales for those really huge battles.

Honestly, FiveCore is great and so is Ostfront. For something with a higher proliferation, SAGA. The big issue with historicals, however, isn't how insanely complex the rules are since most are quite simple, just that they have some of the worst fucking layouts.

Because Tomb Kings as a faction no longer exist in the fluff, due to Age of Sigmar having a new setting. Your best bet to grab one is ebay or recasters.

But why would they do that, I mean, the new fluff is already ridiculously inconsistent and random, the models look nice and have no design+production overhead...

Tomb Kings weren't a hot seller I imagine, so they squatted the range because it was cheaper to do so than to keep making them. To be fair a lot of the Tomb King models were ancient, but they really have no excuse getting rid of fairly recent ones like the Necrosphinx. It's ironic as if they had actually supported the range people probably would have actually bought Tomb Kings.

That or Leviathans, Catalyst's stillborn project because China doesn't like Taiwan being recognised as a separate country and refused to give them the product they paid for, no refunds.

That, plus Porchbux.

If WHFB was your original draw, I'd say look into Kings of War and 9th age, which is basically WHFB but with all the names changed. Pretty sure both have the rules for free too.
I'm always going to recommend Blood Bowl. Not exactly a wargame, but it's my favourite game and fucking fun.

If I can somehow field awesome desert skeleton naga snakes, scorpions and animated egytptian statues I'll be sold on KoW.

Then I had another look into 40k which I also find interesting - found out about [b]dark mechanikus[/b] and HOLY SHIT they are the coolest thing ever.

Please tell me how I can play them in 8th edition (my guess is: not)

I mean...

more thedarkmechanic.blogspot.de/2012/08/dark-mechanicus-in-6th.html

>So what can Veeky Forums recommend?

Okay... I love minis, I own a bunch of minis, I play game with minis about once a month.

That being said, IMHO hex & chit is the way to go. Hex & chit lets you more easily:

- Play many different sides
- Play in more eras
- Play at more scales (tactical, operational, etc.)
- Play more types of combat (land, sea, air)
- Play more types of games (tactical, strategic, COIN, economic, political)

If you buy minis, you're "locked" into that nation, that era, and even the scale of combat (squad, battalion, etc.) For the same money it takes to field a single DBM, BA, Saga, 5Core, or other minis army, you could buy a half dozen or more hex & chit games covering many more battles, wars, and so forth.

I love minis. Well painted figs and a well dressed table can be beautiful. Hex & chit games give me more of everything, however. More games, more kinds of games, more opponents, more chances to play, more, more, more.

So, ask yourself this; which would you rather do more often? Play wargames? Or collect, paint, prepare to play wargames?

Thanks but the reason I am considering the hobby are the combination of awesome visuals and complex strategic gaming.

Is it allowed, rules-wise,

1. to combine Adeptus Mechanicus (painted chaotically of course) with Plague Marines and Chaos Demons? Does Chaos have to be either one god only or undivided? Or can I combine everything chaotic nilly-willy?

2. to modify models with parts from other factions? To what extend? Can I put some Tyranid tentacles on Necron warriors and call them (chaos) servitors/marines/cultists?

>Thanks but the reason I am considering the hobby are the combination of awesome visuals and complex strategic gaming.

Awesome visuals? Yes, most definitely.

Complex strategy? No. Mini rules sets are pretty straight forward and table play involves mostly simple tactics. Most of the "strategy" in mini gaming involves "working" a given rule set's 'army list".

Because of table sizes, figs, basing, etc., you're going to be nearly always gaming at the battalion levels or lower. So, no attack of the Old Guard at Waterloo, but instead La Haye Saint.

Please don't misunderstand me. Preferring minis isn't the "wrong" way to play wargames because there is no wrong way. I just wanted to point that you're going to do less actual gaming within a far narrower range if you go the minis route.

>big armies organized in nead rectangles as well as badass monsters and magic
Runewars always looked kind of fun. It might be dead though... I saw it played a lot at release about a year ago, not so much these days.

>Please don't misunderstand me. Preferring minis isn't the "wrong" way to play wargames because there is no wrong way. I just wanted to point that you're going to do less actual gaming within a far narrower range if you go the minis route.
I get and know that. If I want to exercise my mental muscles I just play chess (sidenote: would be awesome to play chess with WH40k minis!). What I meant was just that I want to own the awesome minis and actually use them to fight other's awesome minis, while pretending to be generals in the same grimdank universe.

>Most of the "strategy" in mini gaming involves "working" a given rule set's 'army list"
I fear the brokenness of the game though, first I don't want some always smugly winning because he minmaxed, secondly I'd like to go by optics not minmaxing and still, y'know, not get my ass handed all the time, thirdly I want to play an extremely "hacky" army to emulate Dark Mechanicus as mentioned above (Chaos + AdMech + maybe some modified Necrons) which might cause a lot of scorn.

>Because of table sizes, figs, basing, etc., you're going to be nearly always gaming at the battalion levels or lower. So, no attack of the Old Guard at Waterloo, but instead La Haye Saint.
Well at least I'll be gaming without difficulties. And finding WH40k-people ready for huge fights might still be around the same difficulty level as finding people to play historicals. And Table size can surely be solved, the historicals-people seem to do it all the time.

>And Table size can surely be solved, the historicals-people seem to do it all the time.

You still don't understand. It's a function of base sizes and the 4x6 table nearly all games are designed to "fit".

I can easily play the entirety of the 100 Days in any number of hex & chit games at the regimental, brigade, divisional, etc levels. There are few minis sets which would allow you to do the same while also providing the "visual' spectacle you want.

In order for Ligny to "fit" on the table, that spectacular stand of figs would be representing an entire brigade or division. Even with a sole stand representing a division, you still won't have the room needed for the maneuvers and other kinds of "strategy" you mentioned earlier. That lack of room means minis games rarely involve operational aspects, what gamers call the "move to contact". Instead the armies are placed and the battle then begins. You'd basically move forward from your starting position, detach a few flankers, make your attacks, and depend on your dice. "Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle" so to speak.

Again, there is nothing "wrong" with any of this. It's just a narrow subset of what is available out there.

You seem to be the one to misunderstand - what prevents me from pushing several tables together, or playing on the ground somewhere, like again, the historical people seem to do?

>what prevents me from pushing several tables together, or playing on the ground somewhere

Number of available figures/stands, amount of terrain available, ability to reach figs/stands so you can move them, lack large scale rules in many rule sets, etc., etc., etc.

>>like again, the historical people seem to do?

How may historical minis games have you actually seen? Don't be fooled by those fantastic pics taken at various 'cons of huge battles on huge tables involving hundreds of figs. Those are the rare exceptions. They happen at 'cons because they are wonderfully spectacular. They require the resources of entire clubs and they can take a day or more to setup.

The game in your club or at your FLGS - the game you're going to playing more than once a year - will involve a few dozen stands on a side on a table which is 4x6 or a little larger.

Again, once you choose a rules set, paint up your army, and deploy your stands, if you're playing anything over skirmish/platoon in size your "strategy" will be little more than "straight ahead & trust the dice". It's only when you "break" the other line that any maneuvering occurs.

Not that guy, in fact I was the main dude going for a historicals push here early on. Time and space are both factors. It's much easier to duke out a certain campaign in hex and chit than in minis. Even at 2mm, just because of how much you have to take. Most people that play campaigns and use minis on the historicals scene generally do the operational part outside of the game because time is an issue, size is an issue, and while you could feasibly detail something like Waterloo, it's not easy. Hex and Chit, on the other hand, is pretty specific for that.

I will say that a disadvantage of Hex and Chit is that most of the time you can't fight sudorandom scenarios as easily as you'd be able to in minis. Imagi-nations stuff gets a lot harder when the hex and chit aren't exactly modular.

>I will say that a disadvantage of Hex and Chit is that most of the time you can't fight sudorandom scenarios as easily as you'd be able to in minis.

That's very true. Few hex & chit games have scenario generators and, if they do, they involve some amount of work.

Just to be clear, I am NOT suggesting that h&c is "better" than minis because it isn't. I am also NOT suggesting that choosing minis is "wrong", because it isn't. I am suggesting that you need to be aware that h&c and minis both have their own advantages and disadvantages.

All of those things are in Kings of War. They even have rules for hierotitans and skeletal dragons.

May not all war games have complex strategy, but some do. While 40K is very straightforward and wouldn't really have complex strategy, Malifaux has a lot in the way of objectives, interactions, and overall thinking at every moment of the game.

>Malifaux has a lot in the way of objectives, interactions, and overall thinking at every moment of the game.

Malifuax is a RPG masquerading as a wargame and much of the "strategy" involved occurs "off" the table top when you "build" and "kit out" your figure.

I think that you are confusing it with Through The Breach. You can't actually kit out figures in Malifaux like you can with 40K. The game is much more reliant on player skill than either list building or luck.

Sorry, should have clarified that getting cool (read: probably GW) models might be the issue in the future.

With the entire Tomb Kings range being squatted that will be tough. That said you can always find second hand or even recast Tomb Kings models. There are a lot of third party models at this point as well. The WHFB generals should be able to help you with that.

>>I think that you are confusing it with Through The Breach.

You put together a "party" consisting of several different figures each of which has specific attributes, right? The figures you choose can only be those from a specific faction list, right? You use a card deck to to various things like throwing spells and fighting, right? You compete in various ways against other parties to finish a mission first, right?

It's D&D crossed with MtG. It's not a wargame no matter what the ad copy claims.

The playing card deck is just a system of randomization. Of course it has army building l, but I don't see how that makes it more like D&D than a miniatures wargame.

>>playing card deck is just a system of randomization

The cards were more than that when I saw it played. Certain cards allowed certain activities to occur.

>I don't see how that makes it more like D&D than a miniatures wargame.

Specific figs with specific powers? And that doesn't seem like D&D's "magic user - cleric - thief - fighter" paradigm to you?

It's not a wargame. It's D&D with a dash of with MtG and figure collecting ala WH40k.

Cards in the game are literally just playing cards. Using a pack of Bicycles would be tournament legal. Instead of rolling dice for a number, you flip a cars and use the number on said cards. The caveat being that certain suits have triggers, ie hearts/rams can often let you do extra damage. Otherwise you could use dice in the game as with anything else. It isn't like a card from MTG or X-Wing even, unless Poker has suddenly become a MTG clone.

Almost every single miniatures wargame has figures with specific abilities. Trying to say that those traits make something like MTG is just reaching too far. I could get if you were complaining about the original rogue trader requiring a GM making it like D&D, of Shadespire having deck building that makes it like MTG, but you are instead wailing on a game that actually has very little in the way of customization or ambiguity in the rules.

Stop trying to shill a format nobody wants to play.

>Originally I heavily considered WHFB, since I like big armies organized in nead rectangles as well as badass monsters and magic
Ah well, as awesome as Infinity is, I suppose it's not for you.
I'd get into historicals in your case. By Fire and By Sword, Flames of War, SAGA, Deus Vult etc.

I think he means there isn't so much emphasis in things like that basics of warfare, as it is much harder to encircle an enemy, for example, or flanks tend to be not nearly as effective as they ought to be.

It doesn't use facings like Warmahordes or WHFB, but positioning and cover are still very important in the game. Saying that a game isn't a wargame because it doesn't have that feature is silly, especially as a lot of the hex and chit games that he is trying to shill even don't have much in the way of flanking bonuses.