/awg/ Alternative Wargames General

Pretty much, somewhat similar to Warmahordes that models can work in either of them, but as the other one is located underwater, most models don't work effectively in both RAW. Harpoons have short range in dry land, air breathers drown etc.

Most models have something that lets them ignore darkness. Murkiness can be an issue but that depends on the scenario/shooting the dead whale.

Decompression could have been ignored imo, but it's rare that people move levels that fast.

Antimatter Games should concentrate in building a community. They are not "present" except for some crowdfundign campaign here and there

Setting agnostic, points calculation rules made available, generally simple with a few dozen special rules that you can buy, and a good activation sequence that isn’t the 40k one.

Do people reckon we should be starting with a thread question or theme every time, similar to /wbg/ or whatever?
As always:
>what are you working on this coming week?

>>what are you working on this coming week?

Painting up some Posses for Dracula's America, guy at my FLGS wants to start a campaign and after playing a test game I really like the system.

Of course now I'm looking at buying enough mdf wild west terrain to fill a table as well as drooling over the various Wild/Weird West ranges available.

>with a thread question or theme every time
usually helps to get the thread rolling, but I don't think making it rule makes a lot of sense

Does anybody have the Rogue Planet pdf?
Looked in the trove but couldn't find it anywhere.

From last thread:

I still need to write out the Strategy Phase (stealing the initiative is tenatively a system where both players bid Strategy Points, but the loser gets half his bid back) and the Resolution Phase. The next page will presumably be statistics/weapon charts and/or a cheat-sheet for LOS/terrain, as well as how heroes work.

Heroes in this game get their own pool of Hero Points; Hero Points can be spent as ersatz Strategy Points by the hero/hero's unit alone, OR they can be used for certain Feats (probably printed on the Hero's datacard).

Does what I have written down make sense so far? I imagine the main rulebook will have diagrams for showing how the assorted stack scenarios resolve, as well as "a sample game" or so.

So I'm building some industrial terrain for our games and trying to think of tall terrain pieces to act like "trees" or other such light area cover.

So far I'm building burnoff stacks but otherwise can't think of much. Any ideas?

Use those big tic-tac containers for dumpsters. Look up how to make Infinity terrain for inspiration.

electric relay stations?

Oh I've already got a bunch of nice dumpsters. I think you can only see one here though.

Ignore the church. It was my first attempt at a MDF lazer cut
Ah good idea

I do, but it's watermarked sadly. Drop me a mail at [email protected] and I'll send it to you.

Pop over to the PDF Share thread, find a cleaner, share it with them first.

Then everybody gets the goodness.

I’d say pylons and transmission towers are your best bet for tall area cover. For lower stuff, a market works well

Help me, /awg/, I need suitably ribald unit names for two regiments of halfling archers.

So far I've got 'the Longshafts' but more suggestions are always welcome/

Big ones?
Boobies (the bird)?
Small package?
Thunder snakes?
Unit 80085?

Far pokers
Long rods (too similar?)
Brilliant Underfoot Kinder Killers: Ace Kingdom Exterminators or BUKKAKE for short - Known for shooting all over their faces from a long ways away.

And that's my gripe with deep wars and even asobah, they're simple games, but really bloated and cumbersome. I just prefer to stick with the original SoBaH for my fantasy low model count game of choice

Yeah. I have a setting and theme already in mind.

For example, something I brought up in the last /gdg/ thead before it died, if given the option for adding special weapons to a unit, would you prefer 40k or Warzone style where you upgrade an existing model to carry it, or go Warmahordes style where they are models attached to the units?

Email sent.

I think either works, but it really depends on how you wanna approach sauad building as a whole.

Do you want squads to have a set number of models, or be more free form?

Two things I will say for rules that I tend to look for:

1) No phase system/forced sequence of actions: It's clunky and antiquated and only limits tactics and choices which is just bad. Few games I feel can get away with such a thing, and thise are large army, rank and flank style games like Kings of War where movement is super important. Forcing people to do things in a specific order (I.e. have to move before shooting or taking an action) is just bad. It's shit in 40k, it's shit in Warmahordes.

2) Alternating activations. Fuck IGOUGO right in the ear. Again, few gamea I feel can get away with the tired ass IGOUGO system. Nothing makes me bored more than sitting there for 20 minutes not doing anything in a game.

Also, in a platoon scale game, make vehicles expensive and rare. Yeah big models sell better, but tanks and shit in large quantites (I.e. more than maybe two per side) quickly becomes a clusterfuck at anything in 28mm and up. If you want a shit ton of vehicles aim for 15mm or smaller.

I'm assuming Guild Ball fits in here, as it doesn't have it's own thread.
Does anyone know where to get individual models for GB now? Seems most online shops only have the half-team boxes now, and I'm only two models short of a full Brewer's team.

>Alternating activations.
Alternate Phases are the perfect evolution of IGOUGO for platoon sized games in my opinion.

What is alt phases, again

Fucking terminology

Steamforged stopped selling them, your only hope is either trawling through smaller retailers in the hopes they still have some in stock or the second-hand market. There's a very active group on FB for GB that I'm in and I see a lot of singles being sold and traded.

I like Guildball, I just wish a 6 model box didn't cost £50 and come with no tokens or anything, whereas the new PVC ones come with a bunch of shit but are pre-assembled boardgame tier minis.

Set number, there's a reason why. I've already taken into account special weapons on that end.

I've taken a lot of that into account already, actually. The system so far is alt activation, each unit has the models each complete an action or move, then when all have gone, they complete their second one. Resolution right now is looking like a varation of Deadzone's with a few differences. Using a different die, so the math is a little different, models in units can combine attacks, hence what I meant with the fixed unit size, and AP is extra successes to the roll, instead of just modifying the armor. Mainly the reason behind it is that unlike Deadzone, there's a cap of 1 damage per attack, to avoid combined attack bloat, and so defense rolls can negate those extra successes, so rolling really good on the defense isn't wasted.

I'd been working the system for a fantasy game, with some differences, but when I was playtesting, the game felt like it could easily be worked into an urban setting. Also why I want to avoid tank spam, the setting focuses a lot on recapturing cities and population centers. Tanks are powerful, but most armies are limited on resources and tanks would have to navigate city ruins.

LotRSBG uses it. It still is broken into phases; movement, shooting, etc., but each side goes in the phase. So instead of my turn, move-shoot-combat, your turn, move-shoot-combat, its I move, you move, I shoot, you shoot, so on.

Yeah, this one.
I really like it for games with more stuff on the table because it's a nice compromise between speed and interactivity.

I did like that. I mean, if you're deadset on a pahse system that's the best way to go about it in my opinion.

Still, I'd rather not see any sort of phase systenlm if thebgame can function fine without it.

And why not just use alternating activation there? Why do people think different army scales need different activation methods? Elements are elements.

That method still forces a specific action order - first you move, then you shoot. No shooting then moving allowed. You still end up with a lot of actions being dictated at once with no reactions allowed from the opponent (even if it's less now).

Still ends up feeling awkward for no apparent gain.

LotRSBG was an awkward and strange game. It feels like the dumping ground for ideas GW wanted to try out.

And, weirdly, ended up being one of their best games. Although when the other options were 40k and WHFB that wasn't too high a bar.

Wasn't a bad game. Had some issues, like the mess that was fight skill in close combat, and it took essentially 5 editions to get to where it is now. But it was still pretty good at what it was trying to do, which was to capture the feel of the movies.

So with this info, would anyone be interested in a game set in more or less Hellgate: London? Humanity armed with power armored knights, magic, and dangerous experimental weapons trying to reclaim earth from demonic hordes, insane cultists, and mutant infestations?

I think it's a bit overhyped. It's not bad, but it's not really a particularly good game either.

I quite enjoyed LotR when I played it. It worked better than anything else GW had. The Fight stat did feel sorta worthless 98% of the time, though.

Try doing alternating activation with no order to actions when you have to keep track of 10+ units per side.

Stat cards and order tokens help with that quite a bit.

I also can't remember the last platoon sized game I played where had 10+ units on the field. That's a big ass game.

I've solo done various games with more than 10 units on the field, without unit tokens.

It is literally not a problem.

GB stopped selling individual minis?

Holy shit, this looks amazing. Anyone here plat BtGoA?

Holy shit, that would make me consider playing it.

Their tank looks amazing.

What's the average force size for this game? Not points, but actual model counts.

Well I play bolt action and it's similiar but

A little outside my comfort zone, but not too bad.

~20 per side tends to be more my style. Still, will have to check into Antares.

You could play ghar and get that.

...

I want do, but I'm torn what army I would play. Algoryn have some awesome looking stuff, the Freeborn give me Dune flashbacks and the Ghar have sweet tri-pod battlesuits.

Isorians are cool too, but I know my sub-par painting skills would ruin the cool biomechanical style.

Honestly if I got into it'd be freeborn for precisely that reason.

Fucking Dune. They are adding awoken rogue drones this year as well supposedly before the centipede scorpion aliens.

That seems high to me. The starter boxes are around 500 points, aren't they? And those only have maybe 20 guys.

What are we talking as average points? I figured 1000 would be the norm.

Ya bolt action is different so probably yeah sub 40 dudes. My aussie list has around 50 or so.

>50 dudes
Holy shit, man. My 1000 point army has like 30 dudes, notbincluding the gun teams and the tank.

>Going to ask again in this thread; what kind of things do you look for/want in a sci-fi platoon-style game?

Don't even bother trying, 40k murders sci-fi there's no market slice you can slide into desu

>Antares
Dead game desu, the rules are really clunky and are mostly comprised of "not 40k rules" some of which 40k blatantly stole

the game is doing very well in bongland.

What do you think is clunky about it?

I know the army lists are free on their site, but didn't they put up a lite version of their rules for free, too?

I'd love to see the aliens. Warlords been a bit slow on the releases, though. Hoping it picks up since the holidays are over.

>the game is doing very well in bongland.
I'm glad to hear that because I've seen nothing in NA besides negative reviews, I'd be surprised if we have 1000 copies sold on this continent.

Doesn't help that 40k shat out a new edition and eclipsed literally everything

>"not 40k rules"
Like what

>I know the army lists are free on their site, but didn't they put up a lite version of their rules for free, too?
store.warlordgames.com/products/gates-of-antares-base-one-nexus-goa-light-rules

>I'd love to see the aliens. Warlords been a bit slow on the releases, though. Hoping it picks up since the holidays are over.
so far there are only descriptions from various lifestreams and q&a sessions.
From what I remember they were supposed to be centaurs like, with the torso portion of them basically being the actual alien and the body below a kind of battlesuit. Some weird hybrid alien/machine type of deal.

You know, not shit rules.

I think it's a bit more popular than you're giving it credit for. Ia it as popular as 40k? Of course not, but 40k will always be popular because old grogs refuse to try new things.

Just because it isn't a top seller doesn't mean it's dead or nobody in North America plays it.

I dunno man I travel a fair bit around NY state because of my job and not a single hobby shop I've popped in on has had antares or people who know what antares is

I think there's one local store near me that has it, but they stock literally anything they can find. Pretty much an /awg/ wet dream store.

But that's still only one state. It might be super popular in the mid-west.

The people with judging a game's popularity based on one area is that it just speaks for your area. There's a store here in SLC that carries it, and people who play it, but that doesn't mean in Denver there's a scene for it.

We just have to be careful with hyperbole.

>We just have to be careful with hyperbole.
Ok well where are the favourable reviews?

That's a good point. Now I'll admit I've seen basically no reviews of the game as a whole: good or bad. Then I don't know where to look for those reviews that will be given by someone other than some guy on his blog.

This is why we need more legit gaming news sites/magazines here in the States.

yea they've repackaged almost everything into 75 or 50 dollar 6 man boxes. Its technically cheaper, but does make finding certain older minis harder. (theres a reasonable stock of most dudes lying around tho)

I haven't seen a single one that was overly negative either (when I read the beta rules I was sceptical, but the finished book is a different story).
Maybe your sample just size wasn't very big.
I looked up a few battlereports on youtube when I thought about buying in and they were all pretty favorable.
Unless you speak German that probably won't help you specifically though.

If you care to join the facebook group there is a list of players I think or at the very least Tim Bancroft, the resident Warlord guy, usually puts people in contact with local gaming groups. They also had rumble at some point but I'm not sure if that's still a thing.

Didn't warlord basically discontinue the game?

Err...No?
They continue to bring out new models for the game all the time. At the moment they are doing the tanks and transports, which sparked this whole chain of conversation.
this was in the newsletter two days ago.

Got the right thread this time.

Anyone had any experience with the old Grenadier Fantasy Warriors system?

This tank looks damn cool.

This algoryn tank has a fat ass.

What's some good underwater terrain that looks decent and is cheap? Some aquarium stuff might work. Rock is cheap.

Go to a pet store. Buy Shit for your Aquarian along with an underwater game mat and poof. You have a deep wars board .

I plan to modify the rules based on eBob's Rebellion and see how it works out. Basically the bigger your fight value, the better die you roll, and you can pair the dies. I. e.: you roll 3, 5, 6, your opponent rolls 4, 6, you pair your 5 with his 4, he pairs his 6 with your 3, 5 goes unopposed, 2 hits from you, 1 hit from your opponent.

Samefag pls. go.

Would.

I know frothers had some die-hards, and there are a bunch of italians who play it with house rules. It looked a bit clunky for me last time I checked the PDFs.

grenadier.it/fantasy-warriors-ruleset.php?tipo=dwn

One thing I don't like is how many of their vehicles are just big drones, no obvious hatches or crew compartments. I mean, they're mostly designed as drones, fair enough, but I prefer people in my tanks.

Would?

user plz. Also to be fair most are self operable but they can have a crew.

I like that, actually. Big ponderous drones with big guns.

But I can totally get where you're coming from on that.

...

What the fuck, why would they do that?

So one question is there like a stone age skirmish game? With ape men, mammoths, and maybe other gribblies?

Seems like it'd be a perfect alternative to say frostgrave.

Ikea has some adequate plastic plants too. Also clamshells and other such things can be use as gigantic versions of themselves.

>using hobby stored as indicator what's played and what's not
Wew.

My USMC have 38 including teams and 3 vehicles but I've been having trouble with them recently, more infantry might be the answer.

Does anyone play Konflikt 47? I've been playing recently and while I'm enjoying it I'm having trouble dealing with the german monster units. Shreckwolfen and Nachtjager are so tough and fast you can't stop them before they charge you and Zombies are so cheap and numerous it's the same issue.

They just seem far too cheap for what they do.

You have one solution.

Play japs and out meme them in close combat through power armor and force of will alone.

I believe there’s one called Tusk. Various companies do models, never seen it played though