What's the cheapest war game to get into...

Mech Warrior. The starter box is, like $50 or some shit and you get models for days

15mm scale gaming, be it fantasy of scifi, is the cheapest option short of using 2D paper cutouts. You can get 50 models for 20$, and 3 tanks for as much.

>What's the cheapest war game to get into?

Hex & chit. Wargames don't always require miniatures.

It really, really depends on what scale, level of conflict and setting you want.

You can get two whole forces for various WW2 and other modern military wargames by buying two 1/72 boxes. Or you could spend even less on playing a small level skirmish game in 15mm or smaller.

Osprey's 'In Her Majesty's Name' or 'Dracula's America' with crews made from Reaper Bones would be pretty cheap to start. You're probably looking at ~$30-40 a person and then $10 for the rulebook.

Skirmish games with cardboard cities on a basement table. Start small and evolve over time.

If you can find a group still interested in playing, 40k: Shadow War Armageddon is your best bet. Most of the teams in the game are designed to be playable with just one box of troops.

>tfw it was super successful at first and easily could have kept going but GW chose to just ignore it entirely

SAGA, Historicals are cheap and your not restricted to one manufacture for models

This comes up quite often and the answer is always Song of Blades and Heroes if you want to actually use miniatures and you are buying a rulebook and not using stripped down quickstart rules that are free.

Print your own.

MERCS is definitely one of the cheapest. 5 man a side skirmish game with full 10 model faction for $35.

You can also play BA using one or two blister packs of 15mm minis

Ask this question over in /awg/ and /hwg/ if you want a good answer, the majority of this board will tell you stuff like 40k and X-wing, which are way more expensive than stuff like historical skirmishes and 6mm scale games.

I'd say chess or checkers.

I think this is what you should ask yourself first .

My advices to alternatives to the common stuff is:
- Do 40k in 15mm, Vangaurd Miniatures sells a lot of different armys already and they will expand, much cheaper, faster and easier to paint etc. Also you need less space for your board and terrain and can expand to bigger games easier.
- Do KoW in 15mm, you can use Demonworld stuff for cheap and fast (usually 2-3 poses per Unit typ) and its roughly 20€ for 40 miniatures.
A 8x6cm basing with 8 men per base gives you 5 bases for 20 bucks. Then you can ramp it up, as much as you want, use different models etc. There is in general a lot of cool and cheap stuff in 15mm.
- If you like single based units in 28mm, you can go for No Limits, an older competitor to 40k that is d10 based. You can create your own troops. Maybe that sounds meh at first, but it gives you the freedom to buy even the cheapest used models and start an army, that isnt bent on codex creep or a big brother company, pushing you stuff to buy.
- Also look into games Like Pulp Alley or Songs of Baldes and Heroes, although the later can be bit silly. Both you can use pretty much what you want, Pulp is more or less completly free and very well designed, to give you a nice game or campaign, whatever you want. Songs is your generell "stats for every GW and Reaper Mini" game that also has a unit creator inside.
- Also look into 6mm wargaming. Although a bit small there are many cheap grabs for stuff, mostly WWII, Ancients, Napoleon and Sci-Fi.
Avoid GHC, they make super fine 6mm models but are very costly, go with Bachus or Heroics and Ros. You can play stuff like Impetus (Ancient, Medival to "By Fire and Sword") or FoW or many other systems with it.
- 1/72 boxes are often lacking in terms of tabletop quality as the plasitic maybe cheap and soft, the scale is regarded as dead by many and so on. Still, you can if you can find a box of two opposing forces they often come very cheap

What ever happened to that awesome little papercraft game we put together with Veeky Forums?

$35 for 10 miniatures?

I can have two companies (represented) or two 1-1 platoons for that price in 1/72.

There are a lot of fairly cheap war games. What matters most is what you want in the game.

Personally I recommend infinity as the rules and balance are both head and shoulders above any other war game I've played. The entry price is $35 or so for a starter box or $70 for a two player box with cut-out terrain and tokens and stuff. The biggest downside is how complicated the rules are and how different some mechanics are from other games.

Star wars armada is also pretty damn good in terms of rules and balance, it has the advantage of coming prepared if one of your group isn't into the hobby aspect as much. The thing I can't stand about it, and most ffg games, is that certain cards only come with specific ships and you might really want that card, but have no use for that $50 ship.

The most fun I've had with a war game is mordheim, though. Rules are free online and you can use pretty much anything as it isn't in circulation any more. Obviously suffers for those same reasons. It's definitely the most fun I've ever had and if you're looking for a campaign it delivers better than most and at the end you'll have a lot of great, stupid, fun stories to tell.

Meant to say Prepainted.

Arcane Legions, the starter set costs around $15 and it come with enough for two people to get started. If you get one of the army packs for about $5 you get enough base plates for 3 people to play.

Back when the rulebooks where in print I'd have said Battletech, but it's pretty much dead so I can't since all that shit's on ebay now so it's up in the air.

and a dead game. Also not really cheap.
You can do better with something like EDEN: The game.

Does destiny do "your dudes" well?
Not user, but I'm also in anons position of being poor & into wargames

Buy a tub of green army men and torrent any war game rule book

Y'all got anymore of those famalamadingdong?

If you mean infinity, kind of. The biggest issue is everything is monopose and many lists will have fun taking one of each produced sculpt. Most players within a faction wI'll end up owning most of their faction's range so if you don't come up with your own style or paint scheme, mirror matches can detract from them feeling like they are yours.

On the plus side even in tournaments and official games the rules for proxying and kit bashing are very loose and very fair as long as you aren't trying to trick the other guy and have to decency to at least use mostly their parts.

Fluff wise it isn't like 40k where there are chapters of space marines, or companies of guard, or craftworlds or w/e. If you play a faction, your dudes are just a team of dudes within your faction.

Yes. Besides Black Legion, I've also done Space Marines, Tyranids and Orks (all three mostly complete).

Obviously this stuff is for Epic: Amageddon

And this is the last one.

1/72 infantry and vehicles are incredibly cheap. A box of 48 men for $10 US. $20 and you have enough for 2 sides, each with a shitload of infantry and weapon types.

Then just get a ruleset from the /hwg/ mediafires.

Rogue Stars is a pretty fun skirmish wargame. 3rd party so you and your friends can use any sci fi models you want. Crews are usually around 3-5 models, can be 28mm or 15mm I think.

Someone has picked up the rights so it shall return.

And how's that not cheap. Cheaper than EDEN the game you mentioned by a long shot, and I say that as a big fan of EDEN.

you could start by playing shadow war Armageddon one box of basics troops and a rule book and you are good to go. terrain is up to imagination and budget.

i miss playing shadow war :(

same. such a good game. loved it.

>Shadow war

All these slack-jawed faggots that can't even into HOR Killteam.

I recommend infinity. Free rules, list builder is free and the rules a solid. Objectively, the best game available.

Other games to look into. Guild ball, batman miniatures game (this game is pricey but the model count is low and the rules are really good), 1/72 scale as people have recommended. Also frost grave is good.

WW2 Historical war games you can play with plastic army men from the dollar store if you want.

batman is expensive as fuck.

AK-47 republic is 15mm and pretty cheap with a great theme and mechanics to support it.

what?

rules are kind of autistic though. most alt wargames i've seen have a kind of loose "play what you've got" style but AK has very specific rules about basing and unit size.

Not that guy but I believe he is taking about this.

heralds-of-ruin.blogspot.com/p/kill-team-rules.html

It's basically fan supported Shadow war with fluffy options and more characterization of killteam leaders, I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to play 40k on the "Cheap." A typical Killteam depending on faction is 1 leader model, 20-30 core models (General rule of thumb is MEQ=20 GEQ=30) and 3-5 Elites also dependent on faction. (Heroes Like Vanguard/Sternguard/Terminators for Space Marines or Nobz/Lootaz/Mega Nobz for Orks as an example.)

infinity without the army.

Bolt Action with 15mm minis from PSC.

>Tfw i'm running a cooperative HoR campaign for some friends
>Tfw they decided to answer a distress beacon on an uncharted world
Pic related is what's in store for them.

Holy shit man where do you get those

This. 1:72 can be absolute peanuts or you can buy some of the best minis on the market in any scale still at a price that won't hurt too much. There's some excellent rules out there too.

It really depends of what you want.
If you have a group, you can avoid GW games than tend to be very unbalanced, clunky with special abilities out of the wacko and expensive for what you got.
For big armies clashing vs other with lots of vehicles, the best scale for that is 6mm or even 10mm if you want more quality in the minis, Dropzone commander, Epic,and lots of generics for that scale, there was Planetfall for spartan games but I dunno where it ended. Skirmishes with platoons and some vehicles/mechs and not bad looking minis? 12-15mm, I'm liking the look of Ion Age game for that, Heavy Gear if you are from the USA is interesting if you like Scopedog like mechs, lots of generic and mini makers for that scale too. Skirmishes with very good looking minis with some really big minis? 28-32mm, the later has some awesome minis, the first has the most minis and some pretty cheap.
As for games, there are plenty of good ones, from generic and simple like A song of blades and heroes to more deep and very flavourful like Infinity.
Again, it depends of what you want. For about 50 euros you can make a decent game army/party for one player in any of the above.

Historicals. You can buy entire armies for most systems with about a $100 and your minis can be used with any ruleset you wish provided it matches up with the period. So say you buy some US WWII GI's, you can use them with bolt action or chain of command or 5 men in Normandy, etc. You can go as casual or as crunchy as you want, there are games out there for people who know nothing about historical (Bolt Action) to games where you need a major in History to play it, and everything in between.

Plus, since no one can own the rights to historicals, there is a ton of competition to keep prices down both in rules and cost. Not only that, most major stuff is in plastic, especially in 1/100, 1/72, and 1/56, or 15mm, 20mm, and 28mm. Then throw in that you can go all the way down to 3-6 mm for doing stuff like proper armored combat or Napoleonic ranked combat and you can get entire companies of troops for fairly cheap. It's a very freeing way to do wargaming and has been around the longest. It's not just for grogs.

Not anymore, the amount of shit you need to stay up to date in that game for competitive play is getting unreal. Everyone thinks they'll just buy 4 ships and be done but it never lasts. There's always more you need. Some new upgrade or ship you want, it never ends. Also be leery of licensed games, they have a nasty tendency to have supply issues or just disappear overnight. Usually through no fault of the holding company, but the property owner screwing with license fees and making it unfeasible to continue. FFG seems like they have it down ok but that kind of makes them the exception to the rule.

My fuckin nigga

Patience and lot of searching on eBay, combined with disposable income. They are not easy to come by since the game died about 10+ years ago. I've got about 50 and have kept a few sprues intact so I can hopefully recast them to make more. People scalp the shit out of them on eBay these days

>Scale doesn't particularly matter
Barfight simulator

Echoing others; historical all the way, ideally smaller than 28mm

Nobody owns the IP for *Insert war here", so prices get driven down

Of note: WWII in 15mm right now. Two of the big companies "Battlefront" and "Plastic Soldier Company" are in a full on bidding war.

Special mention to 6mm wwii: I recently got a quote off Irregular Minatures for
>a battlepack (2 forces & rules)
>This comprises approx 30 x 4 man inf bases, 10 tanks, a gun and prime mover and an aircraft and stand PER SIDE.
>This ios £36 unpainted and £132 painted.

That's bloody good if price is a big thing for you

Plastic Soldier Company are the best in the market IMHO. No as cheap as classic boxes in soft plastic, but still cheap as fuck. Their vehicles are recommended too

Depending on if your tastes run to SciFi robots+combined arms, Battletech is a good choice. Counters and rules are freely available. If you like miniatures you’ll only need a handful apiece. If you want to hone your skills on nights off there is MegaMek that has a bot opponent built in. There’s a good sized community of players here in the Battletech General /btg/ everyday who are friendly to newcomers. BT has a long track record so there’s a lot of fluff if you’re interested in that (while avoiding the inherent racism of studying the Earth’s history). Depending on your geographic location there may be games you can check out, especially if you’re within striking distance of Toronto, Cincinnati,or Memphis (Germany too I’ve heard).

>Irregular

Do they still run a primitive 90s website, that lacks a cart and needs physical mail to order what you want?

Yep
I think the website might still use frames!

Then again as a dirty millennial attending my first Salute I was shocked that there were all these games I'd never heard of, with good followings, clearly operated via these things called "magazines" and word of mouth.

I'm trying to persuade my local group that we should all attend this year with a few hundred quid each and massively buy into one of the games that's knocked out by some old bloke in his shed

Mighty Armies from Rebel Miniatures. It's element based (lots of dudes on one stand), and scaled at 15mm. This makes your army look bigger than it actually is and gives a very impressive table appearance. $30 gets you a preconstructed army.

If you downsize to 10 or 6mm, you'll spend similar amounts of money per army, but they'll look even more impressive. You remember the bugfuck huge fight at Minis Tirith in Return of hte King? It'll be like that on a coffee table.

Seconding tiny games - GHQ has shitloads of cheap, abundant 6mm miniatures. A pack of 60+ is $12, which in FoW will get you about a platoon and some change. Tanks are even better for the money, with 5 per pack. Friend and I were basing them on Flames of War bases and playing the game that way for a long while, and it worked quite nicely. Even made the engagement ranges look vaguely realistic, with the tiny models.

Nigga, you can get full 1000+ point armies for 100 to 150 on ebay

Lets think outside the box here - it's real easy to find the original Necromunda pdfs, you can use figures from a hell of a lot of sources to make aesthetically-compliant custom gangs, and the game is a hoot if you've got a bunch of dudes since it's small scale, low investment and has simple rules that just work. I dug out my box over Christmas and had a hell of a lot of fun.
Van Saar 4 lyfe yo.

Do you have a blog where you post these up?

your own system

15mm gaming is great. 15mm WHFB/KoW and 15mm 40k and similar platoon level games are a blast to play, because you have a lot more space to maneuver in and it's cheap as fuck.

Not exactly a war game but Blood Bowl is dirt cheap with all the non gw suppliers and you can have multiple teams for not much at all.

Historicals.
>up to 50 minis by the low cost of 10 to 20 dollars
>minis are heavily reusable and so is terrain
>terrain can be built out of literally anything
>hundreds and hundreds of rulesets
>no one owns a historical period so you can get minis from anyone that sells them

Nope.Also nothe that the base images are from the wh40k Vassal module, I just manupulated them a bit.

Don't forget the shit load of terrain you'll need!

40k isn't THAT expensive. (or at least in the UK, although I'm sure it applies elsewhere as well). Think:
>If you can get a good price, a set like dark imperil costs around £80.
>Choose the side that you want to play and sell off the other models or split the price with a friend.
>£40 for the rule book and around £100 worth of minis.
>eventually in the future you can get the codex (or just use a PDF) and upgrade your army with a few used models OR just get some of the cheaper models over time.
>This will cost you £75 max.

Never played an 6mm games.. They seem pretty cool though, the scale makes the battlefield seem way bigger

If cost is a priority you should probably not be trying to get into wargames.

Speaking of historical, I've been looking into it lately because I miss wargaming. I was thinking either Impetus or De Bellis. I've heard de Belli's is hard to read because Barker can't write for shit, and I'm more drawn to Impetus because it doesn't enforce you to autistically number how many models you have on a base.

Which should I go with? Also, basic or standard Impetus?

You can get blood bowl teams for around 25€ each and print your own pitch. I can't think of a cheaper miniature game right now

I would've said brickwars, but Lego is expensive as fuck nowadays.

>Not listed:
>Number of models
>Points costs
>Because you get shit-all for over a hundred burgerbucks
40k is shit for value even in the "good value" packs.

If I am not mistaken dark imperium comes with an army that is nearly 1000 points (969):
reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/6ei1r6/dark_imperium_primaris_marine_point_breakdown/

(At least for the marines)

Combat Storm
Just get some cheap army men and the rule book and you're good to go
combatstorm.com/

So you need at least another 500 points to a regular game, more like 750 or 1000 because I haven't seen a 1500 game in five years.
And let's not kid ourselves here, pure primaris are dogshite and you are going to want Guilliman or anything else that multiplies your value and that's a lot of cash down the drain very quickly.
You can pirate the books, but they aren't supposed to be free, so they should be noted.

40k is just shit for value, no two ways about it. Privateer Press is a bunch of complete retards, so being better than those is no accomplishment. What's really shocking is when brand skirmish games, which ARE expensive as fuck per model, are becoming better value per model than your platoon game. And if you go off-brand (which you absolutely should), you pay very little for skirmish games. Platoon games are also significantly cheaper if you don't chain yourself to Games Workshop. Not to mention that 15mm, 10mm and 6mm shit all over 28mm games in terms of value. Well, unless you are those 28mm dwarves where you get 50 for a tenner.

Not 40k, but I put together simple 1,000pt print-and-play sheets for Warmaster and Warmaster Historicals.

The lined GDrive not only has the printable sheets (which should scale the tokens as 4x2cm or 2x4cm) but also the master sheets if you wanna make your own armies.

drive.google.com/drive/folders/1H6jDPYvy6dGJ14IEKERDygQ57d6NfLKS?usp=sharing

In the drive I have 1,000pt. Warmaster armies for...
>Beastmen, Bretonia, Empire, High Elf

I also have Swiss Confederacy, Teutonic (called 'Thanisch', since I'm using it for a fantasy-historical campaign), and Ottoman (called Isarist/Karamind for the same reason).

Why check for death guard if you want. I doubt it will be that much different.

I'm not saying it's perfect. It's not. I am saying that people over exaggerate HOW bad it is.

Try something other than Space Marines or Deathguard then. Say, Orks or Tau. Without going second hand.
It's a hobby, so it can be as expensive as it wants to be, but apart from Warmachine, 40k is the most overpriced miniatures wargame.

If I had to choose again, I wouldn't choose IMPETVS. It's not a bad system, but we had our problems with it. Also, we made the mistake of using their recommended base sizes.

The thing is, do you already have a group? Maybe your best bet is to use the DBX basing and just join the bases together if you want to play IMPETVS.

PD: I prefer Basic

Then, I agree it is expensive. However, the game it's self is not. If you are desperate to get into it, it is not as bad as it seems. As I mentioned before, it is by no means perfect or even ideal though.

Its from the old starship troopers game by mongoose publishing. Rebel minis has some of the line. Ebay is your best bwts. Its been oop of ten years now.

Historicals and moderns, especially in small scales like 6mm

Chess.

Chess.

Find a ruleset you like. Make appropriately sized counters out of cardstock or heavy paper. Play whatever game you like on the supercheap.