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3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.


What are Historicals?
Historicals are miniature wargames in various scales that over actual historical armies. Anything ranging from Visigoths invading Rome, to the American Revolution, to Napoleon, to the World Wars, to the Great War on Terror (yes there are rules for modern combat).

I'm pretty sure there are even some caveman rules out there. Which brings us to....



How many rulesets are there?
There are an endless number, especially now with the internet. Many of them are adaptations of other rulesets, making games more accurate, faster to play, or anything else.

We'll likely be discussing the more common rulesets here, but any and all historical rulesets are open for discussion. Likewise, I'll edit the beginning posts with any major ruleset writeups anyone would like to add. I, myself, only have a few rulesets and I haven't played in a long while.

Why would anyone play historicals?
Largely because we're all nerds, but I'm sure there are as many reasons as there are historical players. I, myself, have always been a big fan of history, and after playing Warhammer for about 12 years, I decided it was time to move on to something more in line with my other hobbies.

What are some common/popular rulesets?
The biggest right now is probably Flames of War, a WWII wargame. For the age of musket, Black Powder has just been released. Warhammer Ancient Battles is great for almost any era, especially pre-gunpowder, but De Bellis Antiquitatis also fits that bill.

As I said, there are a large number of different rulesets.



Those are some tiny little men. How small are they?
I have seen rulesets and miniatures for 1mm, 6mm, 10mm, 15mm, 28mm, and 54mm. There are probably others out there. And, contrary to popular belief, the smaller scales are not necessarily lacking in detail.

Scale is essentially up to the players, and most rulesets offer options to adjust for different scales. I started with 28mm, because of Warhammer, but I'm moving to 15mm (for Flames of War) and 10mm (for Black Powder, which is written for 28mm). Smaller scales can often be cheaper, but that doesn't always hold true.

Where can I buy this little men and their rulebooks?
Most local game stores carry Flames of War. The Warstore carries almost everything else, and they have a decent discount (for the US - I'm not sure where to buy elsewhere).

Scale Creep Miniatures are also good for the miniatures, or Baccus in Europe. There's also Perry Miniatures, and Wargames Foundry. Then there's
Gripping Beast, Artizan Design, Victrix, and WarModelling.

There's also Peter Pig, who hold a special place in my heart because they make rules and minis for everything, including things like 20th century African conflicts.

Are there other places to get information?

lilljonas posted:

I think a link to The Miniatures Page in the OP is in order. TMP is the Internet Hub of historicals. It has links to current auctions on e-bay, news from pretty much all rules and miniature makers and several discussion boards for every period. Many rules writers, sculpters and store owners post there. It is also a perfect symbol for the 13 year lag in webdesign that the historical hobby is plagued with. It is ugly and the discussion pages are very often down for maintenance. But beneath that veneer of crappiness there are dozens of history nerds for each period who can answer pretty much any question, no matter if it is a scale comparison between two manufacturers or a question about proper uniforms for your selected Soviet tank company on September 17th 1942.

Also, you can talk to most of us on IRC. irc.synirc.net #tinypewtermen

Goon Sites
liljonas' club:
http://krigetkommer.weebly.com/

liljonas' very own Samurai minis website:
http://www.muraminiatures.com

muggin's club:
https://freshcoastgaming.com

3 Action Economist fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Jan 26, 2016

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3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
Thanks to liljonas for the following:

De Bellis Antiquitatis



How small and fast paced can you make a wargame and still keep the feel of two armies meeting on the field of battle? The answer is quite likely DBA. The rules, while sometimes written in a maddeningly technical manner, are just a handful of pages. Each army list can be covered in a single line of text and numbers. Combat is decided by each player rolling a single die. An army is composed of just 24 to 48 miniatures. And it is fast. The table is small, only 2’x2’. Most games, even between beginners, are over in an hour. So how does DBA work and why should you try it?



The simplicity of DBA comes from boiling everything down to elements. All armies have 12 elements, and each element have a standardized rule. Roman legionnaires, Samurai swordmen and Viking huscarls are all Blades. The only values you need to keep track of is melee vs. mounted, melee vs. foot and move distance, and it is the same no matter what army they represent. Some of these types are more common like Spears or Bows while others are very rare like Litter or Scythed Chariots, but once even if you include every element available there’s just 20 to keep track of, and many of them are similar for most purposes. By figuring out 10 elements and three values you can now field almost all armies from Biblical to Medieval times without breaking a sweat.

The actual game is fast and decisive. Each turn you roll a die, and that is how many PIPs you have. Moving either an entire formation or a single element usually cost one PIP, more if they are far from the general or include elephants. I go you go, and once you are in combat you roll a single die, adding your melee bonus. While the rest of the rules are deceptively simple, the complexity comes in a type of rock-paper-scissor mechanic, where certain elements are better at killing other kinds of elements. So while Light Horse are incredibly difficult for most infantry to kill, Bows can make them into pincushions. Much of the game resolves around arranging favourable lineups. Killing an element gives you one point, a general element two, and raiding the enemy camp gives you two. First to four point wins.

DBA is written for 15mm miniatures, but it is easily used for other scales as well. One version that looks great is using 6mm miniatures on 15mm bases, which really give you an army look. You can also double the size of the bases and use 28mm miniatures.


6mm Macedon DBA army

You might see the term “DBx” sometimes, which means other games with the same rules as DBA. DBM is one popular version, with much larger armies. BBDBA or “Big Battle DBA” fields 36 elements, either from a single army or from allied armies. Ordinary DBA cuts off the army lists at 1500, but there’s alternative DBx rules that covers up to 1900. Basically it is a very simple rule system that many people have tweaked to fit their interests.

Pros:

Very fast, and sometimes feels more like chess than a “proper” wargame. I have arranged beginner tournaments within an afternoon, with most games being decided within an hour even with first time players. You won’t feel like a game drags on and on.

Cheap and convenient to collect. Many armies have choices, for example you might switch some spear element for bows elements, but even if you want to buy every available option you will rarely have more than 20 elements for an army. This makes DBA by far the cheapest wargame I know of, and many manufacturers sell readily assembled DBA packs, making shopping a breeze compared to other systems. A small army from a cheap manufacturer might put you back as little as 15-20 bucks, a large cavalry and elephant force by an expensive manufacturer might be as much as 50 bucks.

Easy to paint. The limited amount of miniatures means that an army is still a small painting project. With 15mm it is even faster, and I’ve cranked out an entire Gallic army in two weeks.

It’s beginner friendly. The rules are a bit difficult to read if you are new to it and can’t find a mentor, but explaining it with models on a board is very easy. This combined with the low cost of your first army makes it less daunting for a beginner to pick up. And if the other players don’t have their own armies, you can easily bring two armies in a single cookie box, so they have something to borrow.

It’s a good tournament game. The rounds are very fast, and there are few points to count. While all lists are not equally good IMHO, it is not possibly to really make cheesy armies. A list is twelve elements, no more no less, so there’s no way to cheat with your army list. The small table size means it takes very little room compared to other wargames.

Incredible variety. There’s 576 different armies in the rule book, and that is not counting fan made ones. Almost every army from 3000 BC to 1500 AD can be represented, be it Sassanid Persian, Hawaiian or Rshtuni Armenian. And it’s all in the rulebook so there’s no need to buy lots of sourcebooks.

It’s a good starting project for an army. DBA uses the same basing system as FoG, and many other larger systems can easily be used with DBA basing too. So once you have a DBA army it is easy to just keep expanding it until it is large enough to use in those systems. If you find out you really hate painting Persian horse archers you are probably close to finish your army anyway, instead of sitting with 200 unpainted miniatures on your table. So if you just want to try something out for fun, making a DBA army is a good way of doing it.

Cons:

Since all units of the same element type are exactly the same, the “historical feel” is more up to the painted miniatures than the rule set. Someone used to Warhammer stats can balk at the thought of Jewish revolutionaries being identical to a frenzied Gothic warband. The variety of 500 lists is deceptive when the actual army lists can be very similar.

Scope. The person who is into collecting huge armies will find DBA small. I can feel this at times, and for that scratch you really need a more impressive system.

Resources:

The first thing you do, don’t read the rulebook. It is legendarily difficult to grasp during your first attempt at the game. Thankfully there’s a very good, easy to understand and free Unofficial rulebook called WADBAG. It has everything except the army lists.

PRINT OUT THE REFERENCE SHEETS AT THE END! They include almost everything you will need, ever, and having them available during play is such a nice thing. You like nice things, don’t you?

http://www.wadbag.com/DBAGuide/

Fanaticus is the biggest collection of resources for DBA, with guides, forums, pictures etc.

http://fanaticus.org/

DBA Online is sort of Vassal for DBA. I have never tried it, and I don’t care. However, the nice thing they have is a section with all the armies, including images of each element for that army. It is a very good way to become inspired or to check out the army lists if you don’t have the book and are just using WADBAG. The army lists are from DBA 1.0 (2.3 is current), but they are mostly the same.

http://www.dbaol.com/armies.htm

--------------------------------------------
Warhammer Historicals: Trafalgar



Trafalgar is a naval ruleset in the Napoleonic era, 1775-1815. The rules cover naval conflicts in the Great Lakes between Britain and the USA, between the Barbary pirates and the USA, Baltic warfare between Russia and Sweden and finally the main theater: the Napoleonic War, culminating at the Battle of Trafalgar where British naval superiority was secured for a century.

The system is very much a Warhammer system so if you have played 40K or Fantasy you will quickly figure things out. The main difference from the mainstream warhammer rules, what gives it that naval feel, are the restricted movements and the fact that you attack with broadsides. This truly makes it a game about manouvering and planning ahead. Battlefleet Gothic veterans will immediately know what I am talking about, even thought I would say that it is even more important in Trafalgar due to your armament being limited to broadsides. When you can't shoot forwards you better get good at turning around at the right time.


Trafalgar in 1/2400 scale

The rules are, IMHO, best suited for skirmishes with 2-6 ships per side, especially when fielding the hardier ships of the line. The order in which you move and shoot is depending on your position in relation to the wind. By manouvering into a favourable wind you gain the initiative. However, this is made difficult by many factors: first of all you have to move your full movement rate every turn, even if you can try to break or speed up by changing sails. You have a very limited ability to turn, and even before attempting a turn you will move straight forward due to inertia. And you better bring your lucky dice if you ever end up sailing straight into the wind, because that can tear your masts off...

The second big difference from a IGOYOUGO system is that you can always pause either your own move or the enemy's move to fire reaction fire. The penalty for not waiting to the shooting phase is a -1 to hit on a D6, where you are usually at 4+ or 5+ to hit. This makes all kinds of nasty things like a driveby by angry French sailors possible.


Crossing the T

If there is anything to complain about, it is that criticals (sixes on to hit roll) really are the way that you win games. A big ship might be able to take 20 ordinary hits before being disabled, while a lucky critical can take it out. It is also extremly easy to make the other ship start burning, which unable them from shooting next turn. So sometimes you get an annoying battle of attrition where the burning ship keep on putting out the fire just to be turned on fire again. There are also some minor rules that you are better off adjusting such as making the degrees of raking shots (shots coming in from the front or back, which do extra critical damage) less generous. The British are also REALLY overpowered.

But aside from that, I think it is a very good start for someone who is new to naval wargaming. I say that as a person who never played naval wargames before, and who always considered Napoleonics to be one of the less interesting periods. The book is very well laid out lots of historical notes, including a long bit on the naval part of the Napoleonic War, and of course a campaign on Trafalgar itself. There are full army lists for Netherlands, Portugal, Spanish, British, French, USA, Privateers, Russians and Swedes. The book is full colour with lots of pictures with guides for how to paint the ships, how to do rigging and how ships worked during this era. The book pretty much assumes you know nothing about the topic, but not in a condescending way, which makes me think that it is a perfect starting point for a sweetwater landcrab Admiral like me.



The rules are made with 1/1200 scale in mind, but there is nothing stopping you from using 1/2400 ships either. Remember though that the relatively complex movement rules means that large navy combat would take a long time to resolve. Even an engagement with just 6-8 ships can take two hours or more, especially if you put out a small island or two to hunt each other around in a Benny Hill manner.

For miniatures, I can recommend Langton Miniatures and GHQ. Langton is a bit more expensive, but have by far the largest range with everything from the biggest ship-of-the-line to tiny cannonboats and even dockside scenery. Langton also have starter sets of four ships which is plenty enough for an entertaining game.

GHQ on the other hand is cheaper with a smaller range, but have far from bad miniatures.

Finally, putting together ships with full rigging and ratlines is extremely fidgety business. Don't attempt this is you get puzzled by plastic sets of space marines. Also, each ship can be pretty expensive, especially if you include bells and whistles like resin bases, banners and ratlines. On the other hand you can do well with just 4-5 ships, which means that you can put more effort into each one.


---------------------------------------

Sails of Glory



If you've played Wings of War Glory you already understand the basics of this game. You have your ships, they have specific stats on their cards, and they use a specific deck. You use that deck to plan your movements and get in to a good firing position, meanwhile trying to avoid getting shot up yourself.

Where it differs is in the complexity of damage, because ships are stronger than biplanes.

There's also musketry fire and, as you play more and get used to the rules, more advanced things like chain shot, fires, rudder damage, and the like.

The other big difference is the wind. Ship movement differs based on where the wind is blowing, and of course how you set your sails (which is a more advanced rule than the beginner set we played with).

---------------------------------------

Field of Glory (Again, from liljonas)



Field of Glory is a game of historical battles, currently ranging from biblical era to the age of early firearms. Field of Glory Renaissance is in beta stage, and will start to cover a couple of centuries after that.

FoG is one of the most discussed releases of historical games the last couple of years, for two reasons. First of all, it is backed by Osprey Publishing, universally known amongst historical geeks for their gazillion books on military history. The other reason is that it is a points based system with much in common to what you see in Fantasy and Sci-Fi games, a design choice that Flames of War has shown to be effective in today's market.

Army lists are released in sourcebooks with a major theme, like "armies around Middle East during the Crusades" or "Dark Age armies in North-West Europe". Even if the ruleset is pretty new these books have been released with an impressive speed, and by now most of the popular historical armies (and quite a few less popular) are covered.



Armies in FoG are made out of Battlegroups, which are usually 4 to 8 bases, with 2 to 4 miniatures on most bases. A starter army can easily be 100 miniatures or more. The basing system is the same as for DBx. The game system can be used with any scale, though 15mm seems to be the most popular followed by 25/28mm.


FoG in 28mm can require some space

If you read my DBA writeup, you should know that units are far more detailed in FoG. You have your unit type, such as Medium Foot, Heavy Foot or Light Cavalry. This affects how you deal with terrain and such. Then you are either Drilled or Undrilled, affecting how disciplined your troops are at doing complicated manouvers such as turning while marching. Then you have the quality of troops: are your awesome knights just bragging Poor or are they actually Superior? Superior quality troops gets rerolls and just generally gets the job done better. Then you have a value for how armoured they are (armoured, protected etc) and finally armament (heavy weapons, swordsmen, light spear, offensive spear etc.). So while a DBA unit can be summed up with "Spearman", a FoG unit can be Medium Foot, Drilled, Average, Protected Light Spears. This means that there are more stats to keep track of, but also helps making the different armies feel different even if they might all be carrying sticks and spears.

The second big difference is the point values. Army building is actually very easy compared to say, Warhammer. Your army will have a certain required core troops, and then a bunch of extra choices. A base will vary in price depending on how much bling you add to them: knock your knights down from Drilled to Undrilled might save you a point but cause problems when you want them to do anything but charge straight forward, while giving your Gallic Warbands some more armour will make them last better in a fight but also cost more points. Battlegroups also comes in variable sizes, like 6-12 bases, and your army will usually have a maximum amount of every troop type. So you pick your Battlegroups, you kit them out like you want, and you choose the quality of your commanders.

If you want to add some colour to your army you can usually add allies from other related lists. Allies, and even some troop choices, will be based on historical dates. So your Crusader army might or might not be able to have Saracen allies depending on what year you play. And you might or might not have access to unit choices depending on dates. A typical example is a Carthaginian army that can have Elephants at first, but once Hannibal has been rampaging around Rome for a while he loses that choice but gets access to imitation legionnaires and heavily armoured gauls instead.



Manouvers in the game are also more complicated than DBA. Moves have a level of complication that are dependent on what unit type you have and whether they are drilled or not: everyone can walk forward without problem, but while drilled skirmishers have no problem waltzing in eights in difficult terrain, just trying to wheel twice can be tough on undrilled pikemen or elephants. You'll need to roll command rolls to do difficult things, and here it makes a difference if you have an Inspired Commander like Julius Caesar or Hannibal babysitting your troops or if you just picked up some backwater bum of a sargeant.

Combat is also more complicated, and is all about bonuses and maluses. Everything that tips the combat in your favour adds to your dice rolls on the attack: outnumbering your opponent, flanking them, having better armour or having a preferable choice of weaponry. Unlike Warhammer a winning result will usually not kill enemy bases. Instead you are more likely to just make them disrupted, which makes them even worse at fighting, then fragmented, and finally broken. Thus you are usually involved in slow drag-out battles of attrition between big infantry blocks, which is very true to the Ancient battlefield.



What I like with FoG:

The points based system for making armies is very helpful for people like me who started out playing Warhammer. Lots of historical systems will just say "oh, 12 500 spearmen attended this battle, figure it out", while making FoG armies is simple.

The backing from Osprey makes these books way better designed than your average historical rulebook. The only books I've seen that are better are IMHO the Flames of War books. FoG rules are clearly written and easy to grasp.

It's accessible to buy. Many 15mm makers and even some 28mm makers have FoG starter armies for sale, and sometimes even Battlegroup sets. FoG has become one of the really big sets in the UK for Ancients, maybe even the biggest, and the miniature producers are happy to sell big-rear end sets to people. The sourcebooks are widely available at all online stores with miniature rules.

It's accessible to collect. Say I play a DBA army with Byzantines. That's just about 20-30 bucks and a dozen bases to paint. Then I get a Crusader army to set up fights between them. Another 20-30 bucks, a dozen bases to paint, and now I have two entire armies for DBA. From here it's not a far step to add to my Byzantines to beef them up into some battlegroups, and I can use the Crusaders as allies. So while getting enough miniatures to play a game of FoG can be 70-100 dollars and 50 bases to paint, you can make it into sizeable bites through DBA.

Units are more detailed than DBA which gives armies more of a soul. Disorganized but powerful barbaric spearmen fight very different from disciplined ranks of Greek hoplites in FoG, without having as long a statline as Warhammer.

FoG armies have the bulk where it actually starts to look like an army.

Stuff I don't like:

It takes time and money to collect a FoG army, even in 15mm. After a year I still lack two bases of light cavalry and two bases of heavy cavalry for my Carthaginian starter army.

It takes time to play. Sometimes it is fun to sit down and just play a long, high tension game, but I find that I rarely have the time. I usually play on work days when I just have a few hours of game time available. FoG can easily take 2-3 hours, not to mention setup time. In that time I can get in two DBA matches and still have time to paint and talk bullshit with my club mates.



All in all, I think it is a game that is worth checking out if you are into big battles in the Ancient or Medieval eras. The basing means that you'll probably need to make a bunch of movement trays if you usually play with WAB 28mm miniatures, and if you are starting out I would highly recommend 15mm instead of 28mm unless you go with plastics because it will get expensive. The frequency of releases means that there's already a better coverage of armies lists than WAB. But if you just want to chuck loads of dice, you might want to look elsewhere.

Thanks to No Pun Intended for this write up:



Why don't I give a brief run-down on the mechanics :hist101: JUGULA :hist101:.

The game is played on a 8x8 square board and each player has a total of 4 unique Gladiator types on the board.

To manipulate the minis on the board you use your Jugula cards; you have a deck 12 Jugula cards and 12 prima Jugula cards at your disposal.

Each card has 7 different actions to choose from, you can only use one action per card per turn.

To activate the card you discard it and announce the ability you are using:

Move (x) - Use this ability to activate (x) gladiators for the move (1 move = 1 square) value on their card

Vox Populi (x) - Use this ability to increase your vox pop rating by (x). This is your popularity with the crowd, this gives you a bonus to your attack and allows you to hold more cards in your hand.

Attack (x) - Use this ability to attack (x) number of times with one or more gladiators.

Draw (x) - Draw (x) number of cards.

A dice value (0 - 6); used as a baseline number in combat

A star with a value (1-3) used to buy Prima Jugula cards (better numbers etc).

And finally an ability - do what the card says

You reshuffle your discard pile whenever your run out of cards. You cannot end your turn with a single card in your hand; so you are forced to play the draw ability on your last card. If you have a single card in your hand in combat, you are forced to draw off the top of your deck and use the dice number on the bottom of that card.

Combat is simple compare your attack (dice value on card used + bonuses) vs the opponents defence (dice + bonuses). When the ATT exceeds DEF, the blow has been struck and it will either knock the opponent back, wound them or take them out of the game depending on how much the ATT exceeds the DEF.

Gladiators come in two categories: Lights and Heavies. Each individual type of Gladiator has different ATT and DEF bonuses against light and heavy opponents.

From what I have gather so far from the rules is that Jugula is very tactical - the positioning of your gladiators and the synergy between the different types is important to winning the game. Your hand does play an important role in being able to achieve this but I wouldn't necessarily say it is a deck management game.
[/quote]

3 Action Economist fucked around with this message at 13:00 on Jun 5, 2014

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
Thanks to Serotonin for the following:

http://www.blitzkrieg-commander.com/default.aspx

Blitzkrieg Commander (BKC) and Cold War Commander (CWC) are two fast play rule sets loosely based on Games Workshops Warmaster. BKC covers the period from the Spanish Civil War through to the end of WW2, with army lists for pretty much every force you can think of on every front. CWC takes the next step and covers post WW2 through to the modern day, allowing you to recreate everything from huge tank battles in the Arab Israeli War, jungle fighting in Vietnam, fictional Cold War battles on the Fulda Gap to Mujahideen ambushing Soviet forces in Afghanistan. As said already its fast play with the emphasis being on result rather than 100s of statistics for different weapons and armour variations. An average game with around 40 units a side should last around 2-3 hours. A unit, or base of figures represents a platoon. For some examples check out my blog entries for both games.

http://serotonins.blogspot.com/search/label/Blitzkrieg%20Commander

http://serotonins.blogspot.com/search/label/Cold%20War%20Commander

Both rules allow you to play from a few companies of troops through to a whole division, and unlike many rule sets you can pretty much use any scale of figures based in anyway you like. Most popular seems to be 6mm and 10mm but Ive seen it played with 2mm and even 28mm.


Like Warmaster the game attempts to simulate the ebb and flow of battle through the use of its command system. Its essentially a IGOUGO system but due to the command system you can find your units racing across the board laying waste to the enemy or faltering and hesitating at the first sign of trouble. The rules cover all sorts of warfare: artillery strikes, ambushes, IEDs, minefields, helicopter attacks, anti tank missiles and chemical warfare. Nothing makes me cackle (then feel strangely guilty and wrong) like when my Iraqi forces unleash chemical weapon attacks on my opponents Iranian troops, or my Russkies drop a few ton of thermobarics on entrenched West German positions.

--------------------------
OK heres something we havent covered yet- moderns.


Ambush Alley

http://www.ambushalleygames.com/



Ambush Alley is a wargame 'simulating' asymetrical warfare in a modern setting. Ive played it mainly for Iraq and Afghanistan. I know a few wargamers find ultra moderns a little distasteful and thats fair enough.

Ambush Alley has a fantasticly clever system all based on reactions, which means its a perfect game for solo play.

Again like some other systems it eschews loads of gun stats etc in favour of keeping it simple. The designers premise is that most modern assault rifles are fairly similar in effect and the most important factor is the ability of the troops using them.

In ambush alley the 'to hit roll or morale check is always a 4+, but what idfferentiaites forces ability is the dice used to roll for it. So a untrained militia/jihadist type in somalia firing from the hip (weve all seen the photos!) may well roll a d6 for his shooting, but the Delta Force operative holed up in his downed black hawk (yes they have a whole campaign book for playing Black Hawk Down) may well roll a d12.
The other clever mechanic is the Trained player (thats the player in charge of what is called Trained forces- ie regular soldiers) never know exactly what he is facing. The board is set up with 6 hot spots on, which the insurgent player places where he likes or as dictated by the scenario. He is then given a pool of maybe a dozen insurgents to set up as he sees fit around these hot spots.

Now every end of turn he dices randomly to see what reinforcements he gets and where they appear from- weve had games where the poor insurgents going against a squad or 2 of USMC (which is the usual amount of troops for the trained player) have ended up with no more than a handful of reifnrocements the entire game and have quickly been neutralised (a trained player only has to move into contact with a hotspot to remove it from the board- if the enemy dices their reinforcements appear at a neutralised hotspot- tough you lose them) but on the other hand we have had them recieving dozens and dozens of troops a turn.

The rules are fairly simple, but give a real feel for modern combat. The regular troops are hard(ish) to kill but generally have to check causalites and try and evac when a man goes down (they can leave them but they then lose morale dice- ie they might start on d10 morale biut for every casualty they leave they lose a quality of dice - ie go down to a d8) whereas the insurgents die in droves to the superior fire power of the soldiers.

Things also get tasty when random events happen, and you get to turn a card. This can be anything from improved morale or firepower of the inrugents through to a M1 Abrams turning up to support the beleagured soldiers. More than likely in my experience you find yourself on the end of a Technical or the car you were all hiding behind turns out to be a IED.

Its a fantastic system and no 2 games are ever the same. We have played one of the starter scenarios in the book a good 5 times now and its never been close to the same game twice. Weve gone from USMC wiping out inurgents like something from a Michael Bay film through to 3 USMC holed up in a building with loads of their colleagues dying on the floor round them surrounded by 40 angry insurgents).

The game is written for 15mm, but will work with any scale. For 15mm you only need a 2ftx2ft table which means its a nice easy set up for most dining room tables.


------------------------------
:black101:Saga:black101:





What is Saga? Isn't that an old persons holiday tour company?

Saga is a skirmish game for 28mm (although of course I've seen people doing it in every other scale) that covers the Dark Ages. Its for warbands of between 20 and 50 minis and uses a very clever yet simple system called Battleboards to pull off cool moves, powerful attacks and combos and also covers a command and morale system. Players who have played skirmish games such as Warmachine or Malifaux will feel right at home with the idea of units and characters with special abilities they can pull off if you use the right resources at the right time.

So Dark Ages? Whats that about then?


The game covers Europe (mostly although there is a lot of fan made unofficial mods) from roughly the 10th C through to the early early 12th C.

There are currently a lot of official armies available and as well as the rule book there are 3 supplements with new forces in.

The forces in the original rule book are :

Vikings: Super attacky beserker types
Anglo Danes: Solid defensive types with a nice counter attack punch
Normans: Mounted knights and nasty crossbow men
Welsh: Super skirmishy hidey types with ponies and javelins.

The expansions cover all sorts of stuff from the more obvious Anglo Saxons (hordey infantry fun) and Franks through to the more obscure such as Rus, Jomsvikings (super tricksy elite), and Bretons.


So is this some super obscure game that's going to take me months of painful research to source figures and make army lists?

Oh no, not at all. Historicals are starting to grasp that people want an easy in, and Saga has very much gone along with this. Gripping Beast are a very good company who are the official partner of Studio Tomahawk (the writers of Saga) and they produce starter forces for each faction available.

http://www.grippingbeast.com/shop.php?CatID=2397

(yes I know the website is a bit 2005, but its all there)

They also sell expansion packs where you can buy blisters that will provide you with entire units you will need to expand your forces.

Heres my (mostly finished) Jomsviking starter box. It doesn't look very many because Joms can only have Hearthguard and Warriors being elite merc types, and my force is all hearthguards, so super small and tough.




And here's some of my Breton's- Warlord and Hearthguard (using plastic minis from Conquest Minis Norman range with some minor conversion- lances changed to javelins and round shields from the Gripping Beast plastic boxsets I had)



Failing that there are other cheap options, especially if you are going in with a friend. Gripping Beast and Wargames Factory both make plastic multi part Dark Age figures. You can get Anglo Saxon/Danes and Vikings both in armoured and unarmoured variety. For my money the Gripping Beast ones are far superior and take less work to put together, but I know Americans can pick up the Wargames Factory figures much much cheaper. My gaming group has a mix of both and once they are painted and on the table they look fine. We started out by buying a box each of viking and Anglo Saxon armoured types, and a box of generic Dark Age levy type. We managed to make pretty much 4 starter four point warbands out of that lot which came to under £60.

So you talked about units- how do I make a force, is it again grognardy and takes a lot of research.

Nope, its dead simple. Its a points based system that most wargamers will understand, but instead of buying individual troops you pay by unit. Games are usually played between 4 and 6 points (6 points seems to be the normal tournament level).

Your Warlord, the leader of your force is free. You then spend your points, within the provision/field allowance of your force to buy units.
1 point buys you either:
4 Hearthguard- elite, usually heavily armoured and armed body guards to your warlord types
8 Warriors- Professional soldier types, usually with some armour
12 Levy- peasants and farm types, usually no armour, and often skirmishy type weapons- bows, javelins etc.

Your army lists may also allow you different options to arm your units. For example Viking hearthguards can chose to beserkers instead of regular hearthguard; they lose a bit of armour but have multiple attacks, or Anglo Danes can add in Dane Axes instead of shields and swords, to again reduce defence but give a lot more hitting power.

So how does the game actually work?

The core mechanics are very simple, anyone familiar with things such as WFB or 40k wont be lost here. Roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save etc. Nothing difficult. It does give you a bit more control as you can allocate dice to attack or defence as needed but its very straight forward. Movement is even easier, you have measuring sticks, and movement is basically all infantry have Medium move and Cavalry Long move. The game comes with range rulers, or loads of companies make lovely MDF/plastic ones. The measurements in game are consistent and no matter if its missile fire, movement or unit coherency it uses the same system: Very Short (VS, that equals to 2″), Short (S, that equals to 4″), Medium (M, that equals to 6″) and Long (L, that equals to 12″)

You mentioned Battleboards. Explain.

Yep while the core mechanics are dead simple, the meat of the game is the battleboards and Saga dice.


(Welsh Saga Dice)

Saga Dice are unique to each faction (well not totally true, many share the same dice) and are d6's with 3 symbol types on. I symbol will be common and appear on the dice 4 times, 1 symbol will appear twice and one will be like rolling a 6 and appear obviously once!
Your army generates a number of these dice a turn. You get 1 dice for your warlord and 1 dice for each unit of Hearthguard or Warriors. Levy generate no saga dice. However you can never generate more than 6 dice via your troops.

The dice are rolled at the start of your turn and are used on the battleboards.

Let me explain the battleboards.
Each army has a unique “battleboard”, that is a page filled with 3 columns of boxes, where are described the unique abilities of that army.



Each ability requires a certain die (or combination of dice) to be activated. Obviously the more powerful the ability the more difficult the combo of dice needed- a really powerful ability might need the equivalent of a double 6 to pull off. Obviously you never have enough dice to pull off every abilty you want to activate, but there's a further tension too. The Saga dice are also used to activate your troops.
The Battleboards have 3 columns, the last 2 columns are abilities, but the first column is the activation column. The clever part here is the better your troop type, the easier it is to activate. For example Hearthguard can usually be activated on any dice face. Warriors however would need to be activated on either the most common dice face, or the next common, ie like rolling 1-5 on a d6. Levy, being untrained and undisciplined rabble will activate on the least common face and the middle one, ie like rolling 4,5,6 on a d6. Hope that makes sense.
Your Warlord can also activate 1 nearby unit for free.


The fun in the game is trying to balance activating troops at the right time with pulling off some vicious and clever combos of abilities on the battleboards. Its a simple mechanic that captures activation, morale (as in as your units die/break, you have less Saga dice to roll each turn) and special abilities.

The last important mechanic to mention is fatigue.
A unit can be activated more than once a turn (which will strike a chord with any Infinity players), but every time they are activated after the first, they generate Fatigue tokens. If they get into a combat, they also generate a fatigue token afterwards. Your Fatigue tokens can be spent by your opponent to make any attempt done by that unit more difficult, like making it harder for an Fatigued enemy archer unit to hit your infantry, for example, or reduce the distance you move with that unit. If an unit accumulates more Fatigue than it is allowed, it becomes Exhausted, and cannot do anything on that turn besides resting. You can get rid of Fatigue tokens by spending actions to make your units rest as well. Some factions can use their battleboards to also remove fatigue or even add it to other units. The Anglo Danes are especially good at this and can even convert fatigue tokens into opponents casualties. You really have to think ahead in this game.

So tell me about the expansions
Other than 3 expansions covering the same period as already mentioned, last week Studio Tomahawk released a stand alone product called Saga: The Crescent and the Cross



This is a stand alone product that covers the early Medieval period concentrating on the Crusades and Spain/ El Cid. The core rules are the same as the original Saga although its more of a 1.5 version, the errate and FAQ have been addressed within the rule book and its all laid out in a much clearer way.
Of course Gripping Beast are releasing starter forces of Crusaders, Moors,Saracens etc and there are lots of other options, including plastics out there.
I think the forces are compatible with the original Saga releases, but not 100% sure on that. I haven't got my copy of C&C yet but will update when I've got it.

So basically what you are saying is that Saga is easy and reasonably cheap to get into, hugely fun, has a tournament scene for those who like that sort of thing, wont terrify people new to Historicals, has simple but very clever mechanics and is all about hairy blokes smacking the poo poo out of each other.

Pretty much, yes.

3 Action Economist fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Aug 16, 2014

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
Flames of War



Flames of War is a 15mm WWII miniature game, now in its 3rd Edition. It's built more for speed than accuracy, I think, but that's made it popular. I'd wager that, in the US anyway, it's probably the most popular historical wargame out there. It's certainly the most mainstream.

The new rulebook is really a 3-book set with the rules in one book, painting in another, and actual army lists in the other (this harks back to first edition). If you own the second edition big rulebook (as opposed to the mini-rulebook from Open Fire!), you can get a free mini-rulebook by going to your LGS and slapping them around with it, at least during February.

For second edition players: What's changed in FoW V3

After that, you need to decide what era to play: Early War (1939-41 - a lot of releases from last year, and more coming), Mid War (1942-3), or Late War (1944-5). It's all Europe/Africa at the moment, as the company decided to start up a Viet Nam ruleset instead of delving in to the Pacific :(

Finally, you should buy one (or more) of the "Intelligence Handbooks". These contain the actual army lists and point costs for various nations at specific times during the war, as well as what's available for each different type of force (e.g., Airborne won't get a lot of tanks, but a Tank Battalion will).

Third edition does have the lists from Fortress Europe to get you started, and there are free PDFs online, should you rather use those. I find the briefings books to have a lot more information and rounder lists, but it's up to you.

And no, most people who play Nazis are not Nazis themselves.

So how does each force play out?

DeceasedHorse posted:

I play a lot of Flames of War, and while it is a bit difficult to come up with a general description on any given nations armed forces because of the huge variety of available forces and the time period covered (you can play human-wave style horde Germans or elite Russians, for example) but this is a write-up I made for my club's site a while back, focusing mostly on Late War:

United States of America :911: - Arguably some of the best artillery special rules in the game. Lots of manpower means big platoons, second largest after the Soviets. Weak Anti-tank guns mean they rely on aircraft, artillery, and bazookas to defeat tanks, although tank destroyers can also be effective In the Mid-war period the Sherman and Lee tanks are adequate main-battle tanks; in Late War they are totally outclassed in a head-to-head fight and have to use manuverability and smoke bombardments to have any chance at defeating the big German tanks. This can be hard to do but is also tons of fun. Maybe when American players' dreams come true and they get Pershing tanks they will have the ability to go head-to-head with the Germans... (Spoiler: No they won't, Panthers will still kill everything, hahaha)

United Kingdom: Average size platoons, also use a lot of artillery-the other contender for best artillery nation-Americans are better in the short term, the British have the advantage over time, generally speaking. Foot soldiers are reliable and preform well. Tanks and AT guns are generally similar to American ones (most of them are in fact lend-lease shermans, especially by Late War) but the availability of the 17-pounder AT gun, towed or shoehorned into a Sherman, gives them more punch than the yanks. Their special tank rules are a bit schizophrenic, since they re-roll hits over 16" but only the fireflies can really hurt anything when slugging it out at long range like that. They have a couple of terrifying special weapons, such as the Churchill Crocodile, a big flame-thrower tank that is totally invulnerable from the front to anything short of the heaviest German and Russian guns and can easily toast whole infantry platoons. The various dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and so on) are generally the same with some different special rules for flavor.

Germany: Manpower shortages mean they generally have the smallest platoons in the game, but they tend to have more shooting dice (lots of MG-42's) in an attempt to make up for this. Generally speaking, they are mobile and hit hard, but can't afford to take losses. Panzershreck and Panzerfaust launchers are expensive but can make them very dangerous for tanks to assault. Artillery isn't anything special, although they have the best and most cost-effective rocket artillery in the game. Probably have the most variety of any nation, in terms of formations and weapons they can take because of all the ad-hoc stuff they resorted to and the fact that they looted all of continental Europe for weapons, and the game hasn't even reached the really goofy stuff like Volksturm and the like. They have the best tanks in the game hands down, at least when it comes to head-to-head armor duels-every tournament list needs to have a plan to deal with Panther tanks, which pretty much dominate everything on wheels but will take up a nearly a third of your points if you take them.

Soviet Union: Biggest 'platoons' (actually companies) in the game, although by Late War the millions of casaulties they've taken means that formations are a lot smaller than they used to be. Cannot fire smoke bombardments, mostly for balance reasons. Unlike other nations, they take units in company-sized formations, which can make them difficult to manuver, but can be unstoppable once they get going. Artillery is pretty average at best with few spotters, although they can take very large batteries if they really want too (up to 20 artillery pieces in a standard game). Tanks are generally not very agile due to their command and control problems, but you can get a lot of them-21 Guards T-34/85's is a deadly force, albeit one that will struggle with the really big German stuff. Big tanks like the Stalin and its tank destroyer versions are extremely good versus infantry as their huge guns ignore infantry saves but have issues with getting blinded with smoke and outmanuvered by Panthers, or just straight-up killed by King Tigers or other German tanks with scary animal names.

This doesn't even cover the minor nations like Finland and Romania or all the wacky variants like the 270 billion kinds of SS or the Japanese-American battalion or what have you, but hopefully it gives a good idea of the basics of the four major powers.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Chain of Command Effort Post
Courtesy lilljonas

Chain of Command (CoC) is a platoon level World War 2 skirmish game by Too Fat Lardies. It is quite good. It is growing in popularity. In this effort post I will try to give you a short introduction as to why.

First, for people like me who don't know WW2 by the back of their hands, this is a platoon:


A Finnish platoon. Not featuring: their sauna

CoC will let you command a single platoon, which is usually 3-4 groups of 10-14 men. It can vary depending on army list, but you'll need around 30-40 miniatures per side. There's a large number of army lists available for free, and both fan-made and official lists are released continuously on the CoC forums.

Much of CoC is similar to what you expect from a modern skirmish game: you take turns, you move units around the board, you shoot at your opponents units. You roll to hit, you roll to kill or shock your opponent. Units can be pinned or even routed if they get a lot of shock and casualties. This is nothing to be amazed at: the basics work, but it's not why people are picking up this game instead of other WW2 games. So I will deal with the areas that are more fundamental to the flavour of the game.


A nefarious German squad sneaking about

The Patrol Phase

Now. You and your opponent each have a platoon of nicely painted miniatures before you. You choose a scenario, and you start to scoop up your minis to pour them on to the table. Not so fast! First we'll going to mess with your brain a bit.

The game starts out with the first of several agonizing part: the patrol phase. Basically this represents your troops scouting out the area, moving nearer and nearer to contact with the enemy. Instead of a set deployment zone, you're going to take turns to move patrol markers, starting at your table-edge. A patrol marker can be moved 12" every turn, but all your markers must at all times be within 12" of another one of your patrol markers. Once a marker gets within 12" of an enemy marker, both are locked in place. Once one side has all their markers locked in placed, the patrol phase ends.

Now here's the worst (and best) part. The patrol markers are not your deployment area either. That would be too simple. Instead, you have to place jump-off points. A jump-off point can be placed at least 6" behind one of your patrol markers, within a cone defined by the two closest enemy patrol markers. And it has to be directly behind cover. And they can not be in line of sight of the enemy. URRRRRH! Do you start to see how many ways you can gently caress up your opponents (and your own!) patrol phase?


Soviet and Russians, messing up each other's patrol phase

The beauty of this is that you start the game without any troops on the table. In your turn you'll get opportunities to place your units on the table, but not necessarily all of them at the same time. It can even be advantageous not to place all your troops, as a unit that is still in reserves can turn up at any of your jump-off points. Which is good if you played the patrol phase well, and not so good if you suck and all your jump-off points are equally lovely. This way of deploying your troops is the first major advantage of the ruleset IMHO, since it is a game in itself and can have drastic effects on how the game plays out.

Force composition

Next, you want to have troops to deploy. It looks like a complete miss that I described the deployment phase before choosing your army, but you actually don't even know how much support you will get when you do your scouting patrol. Did your scouts work out this really good lane for a tank to drive into your opponents flank? Tough poo poo soldier you rolled low, you each get jack poo poo! Now adapt!


The right choice is always more vehicles

Each army list consists of a basic platoon, a rating, and a list of available support options. Here is an example of an army list. "Army creation" consists of buying support options which gets gradually more expensive as you go from a minefield or a medic to a tank or an entire extra squad. You roll a die for how many support points you'll each get, and adjust it depending on how badly rated your troops are. So if a German regular platoon with +4 meets a Soviet green platoon with -3, the Soviet player will get 7 bonus points to buy support with. The Soviet troops themselves might be horrible excuses for soldiers, but they can be supported by a nice T-34 tank or two.

To add fun to the mix, your support options are bought in secret. And your troops don't all deploy at the same time, and can turn up at any of the deployment areas. Do you dare approach that house, knowing that the bushes next to it could suddenly be populated by a flamethrower team? And can you keep your poker face when you realize that you forgot to buy any anti-tank weapons, and your opponent casually place a Sherman tank on his table edge? You also have a perfect excuse to buy way too many toys when you have to scrounge up something from the list on the fly every game instead of building a single army to field. Serious magpie points here.

Once you start playing, the final major game component is the command dice.



Command dice

Most armies have five. You roll them, you curse at them, and you try to use the options they provide you carefully. Each result on the die has a specific effect:

1: you can deploy or activate a single team. This can be a mortar team, the machine gun in a squad, etc.

2: you can deploy or activate an entire squad.

3: you can activate a junior leader (normally a squad leader, but could be a tank driver!), who can get his squad to do 2 things. Like, both fire and remove shock markers, since they get yelled at a lot.

4: you can activate or deploy a senior leader (normally your platoon leader), who can get a ton of stuff done. He can order several squads to act, remove shock, etc.

5: A SPECIAL DICE! Keep saving these up, and when you have a whole bunch of them you can spend them on funky special moves. Ambush with a bazooka team far from your jump-off points! Maintain your morale even though you don't deserve it at all because your troops die like flies! Interrupt your opponents turn whenever you feel like it!

6: The even more special dice! If you roll a single 6 it is a big waste of your time. If you roll double 6 you get to use up the dice you rolled and roll again, killing your opponents with ruthless efficiency while you cackle like a madman. If you roll three 6s the "turn" (which is more like a bunch of "traditional" turns in a row) ends, and some stuff like gas clouds and artillery barrages can end and routed units dissapear. But you get to act and roll the dice again anyway! Yay for you!

Basically this means that it is very hard to predict with certainty how much your opponent will get done during his turn. You can assume that he'll get to do some things, as even a bad roll of the dice will usually end up with a possible squad activation or two. But it's a huge difference between that and a series of double turns. So you don't get the common situation of being able to move around with impunity since you know that your opponents troops are 8" away from seeing your troops. You just don't know. So you have to think more carefully.

The bad side of this is that yes, you can get completely shafted by the dice. We've had two games this far where one side has been on fire, and there haven't been anything hat the other player could reasonably do about the final result. If you can't live with that occasional game, chances are you will hate Chain of Command. This far even most of the uneven games have, in the end, been quite close affairs. But if you can live with it, it makes every turn a lot more of a nailbiter than what you get in more predictable tabletop games

These dice also makes all kinds of tuning of the platoon's quality possible. A crack platoon of specialist veterans can start with 6 dice, which will make them extremely efficient on the table, able to do almost whatever they want most of the time, and rolling a lot of double turns. A green platoon of new recruits can start with 4 dice, and spend much of the time picking their noses. As your morale starts to deteriorate as casualties starts to pile up, you also start to lose your command dice. In this way you feel the panic when your command over your troops starts to slip out of your fingers as they run deeper and deeper into trouble.


My ingenious German attack runs into unsuspected trouble as the Soviet player quickly redeploys his flank with a double turn

If you want to expand the game you can download Big Chain of Command, which is an expansion where you use pretty much exactly the same rules but with more than one platoon. And they also have campaign expansions. And tons of new army lists posted on their website and forums. Did I mention that the army lists are free and you can play at any scale? So my recommendation is that you should give it a go if you have individually based minis for any other WW2 game.

Except from the mechanics there are also a lot of other reasons why I personally prefer Chain of Command to say, Bolt Action. It is generally a but more realistic, and you don't get outright silly things such as heavy artillery standing 30 meter behind a squad, shelling the opponent. The relative efficiency of say, LMG compared to rifles seem better than in Bolt Action, and troops simply behave more like they'd do in reality. For example, an engineering team will do the job they are designed for (cutting barbed wire, blow up a fortification, fire their flamethrowers) and then pull back off the table instead of becoming some kind of commando troops that will crawl around and fire at the opponent.

Chain of Command. A good WW2 skirmish game. You should try it if you like good WW2 skirmish games.

-----------------------------------------
I Ain't Been Shot Mum 3
(Courtesy Serotonin)

http://toofatlardies.co.uk/index.ph...9c6912dfd73a030

First the title, as it seems to lose a few grognards (and Americans). Its a pun on a very popular but now terribly un PC British comedy from the late 1970s called I Aint Half Hot Mum, about soldiers in India in WW2. Too Fat Lardies are notorious for the silly titles they give their games. I think its part of their charm personally.

IABSM3 is the latest and much streamlined and improved version of their company sized WW2 skirmish rules. It has no set or recommended scale or basing convention, although apparently the ground scale of the game makes it absolutely perfect for 6mm. I am using 15mm as seemingly are many of the players due to many people already having Flames Of War forces that work perfectly for IABSM3.

So what makes IABSM different from say FOW? Well the TooFatLardies (TFL) have a clever mechanic that runs through many of their games. IABSM3 is not a IGOUGO game, but instead it has a card driven mechanic. Instead of me explaining badly, let me link you to a blog article written by Rich, one of the games designers. He puts it very well.

http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=672

The idea behind the card system is that it simulates command, control and communication. It also adds what TFL call friction. It works really well and sets up all sorts of interesting situations. Do you move your bazooka team into line of sight of the Panzer IV knowing that its already been activated, taking the risk that next turn it will be your card that's pulled first from the deck, or do you play it safe?

The other clever system they use is Blinds. Often in IABSM3 forces are not deployed on the board at all. Instead large counters called blinds are deployed. Your opponent does not know what the blind represents. Is it a platoon of infantry, tanks or even a dummy- the better organised and skilled your forces the more dummy blinds they get. This becomes even more fun in a attack/defend game, because often the defender doesn't even need to deploy any blind cards- every piece of hedge, wood, and building suddenly becomes a blind and your opponent needs to think carefully about his tactics. Of course there are very simple but effective rules for spotting, and much of the early game is about manoeuvre and spotting, trying to work out what your opponent is moving and where. Its very tense.

So is this a complicated grognardy system that will leave me and my mates, all FOW players cold?

No. In fact its a very simple system. Yes it does benefit from having a GM< although we have played some less complex scenarios without one perfectly well. The game does come alive with a GM and a more scenario driven set up rather than just a 'heres X number of your force V mine, first one to all die loses' sort of affair, but that can still work.
What we have found as well, is that for less experienced wargamers this is actually a very intuitive system. A member of our gaming group whos fairly new to wargaming put it best. He said that often when he wargames in more traditional IGOUGO systems, he looks at his side of the board, looks at the 20 odd units, and thinks where the gently caress do I start? He found the card driven mechanic which dictates the order you activate your units removed that difficulty for him and allowed him to concentrate on what he wanted to do. Interesting perspective, but it made sense to me.

Check out a battle report to get more a flavour of the rules.

http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=622

Lots more battle reports here

http://www.vislardica.com/

and here

http://www.fat-wally.com/IABSM.html (with some lovely eye candy)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Black Powder



Black Powder covers roughly 200 years of history with generic-enough rules to handle most of the conflicts between 1700 and 1900. It was written by Rick Priestly and Jervis Johnson, of Warhammer fame, but it's much cleaner and concise than those rules (they go out of their way to patch any possible hole sin the rules).

The rules are made for 28mm, and the assumption that you have a 14 foot table. That's what they wrote the rules for, though. However, they offer some alternate ways to play with smaller scale models (I will likely be using 10mm and use centimeters where the book says inches).

Honestly, I have yet to see a better put-together ruleset, and I've been looking for some time for something great in this era (as AWI is my war of preference). The fact that I can also use these rules for Napoleon, ACW, and just about anything else with a musket is just a bonus.

They now also have an official FAQ: http://www.warlordgames.co.uk/neo/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/BP-FAQ_1st_Feb_2010.pdf

Although the rules are pretty clear and this is more just some minor clarifications.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Hail Caesar



#tinypewtermen posted:

pre:
13:06:22	Serotonin	whats to say about hail caesar
13:06:27	Serotonin	other than its very veyr like black powder
13:06:29	Serotonin	but ancients

3 Action Economist fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Oct 16, 2014

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
FAQ

So what -is- the proper green for German tanks in July of 1942?
Osprey sells books for every unit ever commissioned, with details down to how many threads were stitched in to the waistband of a soldier's underwear (ok not really, but they're VERY detailed). They also include common tactics.

Are there any publications for this sort of thing?
Wargames Illustrated
Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy

What about free/cheap rules?
Sure! It's a good way to get started, and make sure you enjoy historicals. Of course, it helps to have friends who also play with these rulesets.

Wargame Vault
American War of Independence Rules
RPGNow.com

What's all this millimeter talk? I build 1/48 models, how big is that in millimeters?
Wikiepedia actually has a chart on this (I know we're all shocked). Keep in mind the part that lists "mm" is for one foot, and miniatures are measured as being about 6 feet (since that's an average human height). The common wargame scales are:

code:
2mm:  ~1:1000
6mm:  1:285 or 1:300 (typically interchangable)
10mm: ~1:183
15mm: 1:100 or ~1:122
25mm: 1:87
28mm: ~1:72 (or ~1:60 if it's 28mm Heroic)
54mm: 1:9
Where the hell are all the pictures? Don't these guys want me to buy their miniatures!?

Yeah, about that. See, most of these guys work out of their garage, and have probably since the late 70s at the latest. You're lucky they even have websites with online ordering systems (some still don't and require you to send in a hand-written form via mail).

Your best bet it to use Google image search, or check TMP. You can also ask here for recommendations.

3 Action Economist fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Mar 12, 2013

lilljonas
May 6, 2007

We got crabs? We got crabs!
Nice. I'm on a DBA high as I'm planning my Multi-Mongol Madness: I'm planning to pick up a Timurid DBA army, and then add enough elements to also cover Ilkhanid and Mongol Conquest. So I'll get three armies of blood crazy Central Asian warriors in one.

I'm getting them to have a historical enemy to my Late Crusaders, an army shock full of Hospitallers:






For people unsure about the size of 15mm, there's some average sized 15mm (Mirliton) next to one of the older, smallish space orks.

I also have a Gallic army that I don't really like that much. Armies with mostly Warbands are difficult to use against most enemies. They were easy to paint though.





My first army was Late Carthaginian. It's actually a really nice army with tons of choices and many different elements. And you got to love an army with elephants.





One interesting part of DBA is that every army has a camp, but you are free to make it however you want. I made some quick generic camps for our first tournament, but for my Mongols I plan on doing something specific to the army. There's some really cool camps out there, but this is what I came up with on a limited time schedule:







I'll happily answer questions about manifacturers of ancient and medieval miniatures since I browse miniatures far too much on my spare time.

No Pun Intended
Jul 23, 2007

DWARVEN SEX OFFENDER

ASK ME ABOUT TONING MY FINE ASS DWARVEN BOOTY BY RUNNING FROM THE COPS OUTSIDE THAT ELF KINDERGARTEN

BEHOLD THE DONG OF THE DWARVES! THE DWARVEN DONG IS COMING!
More Manufacturers/suppliers:

Gripping Beast
Artizan Design
Victrix
Wargames Factory
Warlord games
WarModelling


Wargames Illustrated is a monthly magazine dedicated to all things historical. Worth a look if you are interested in starting some form of historical wargame.

Wargame Vault Has a whole slew of different PDF rule books for purchase and download. Not all on offer there are for historical wargaming, but there are some available.

PaintVagrant
Apr 13, 2007

~ the ultimate driving machine ~
Sweet thread, even though Im not a huge historicals guy I definitely will check in regularly to see what you gents are up to :clint:

Especially liljonas, holy crap your models are cool

FirstCongoWar
Aug 21, 2002

It feels so 80's or early 90's to be political.
So tell me more about 15mm historical manufacturers!

I see that Corvus Belli makes a bunch of DBA boxed armies, but they're all early era stuff. Who makes your crusaders?

Edit: lol black powder

Black Powder is a game for the militarily inclined gentlemen with straight backs, bristling beards and rheumy eyes that have seen a thing or two. If tales of battle and glory in days-gone-by stir nothing in your breast, if the roar of cannon does not quicken the pulse and set fire in the belly, then this is not the rule set for you.

Set during the horse & musket period of 1700-1900, Black Powder is very much a game for gentlemen gamers. Gamers who cherish the finer things in life such as wonderfully painted armies, fighting over luxurious terrain, and doing so in the company of friends. No need for the use of protractors to wheel a unit and arguments over whether a charge is 2mm out of range or not are things you’ll no longer have to worry about. In essence it’s a very relaxing game that can produce stunning conflicts – conflicts that can see one side appear doomed only for them to pull victory from the icy grasp of Mistress Defeat!

FirstCongoWar fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jan 2, 2010

lilljonas
May 6, 2007

We got crabs? We got crabs!

FirstCongoWar posted:

So tell me more about 15mm historical manufacturers!

I see that Corvus Belli makes a bunch of DBA boxed armies, but they're all early era stuff. Who makes your crusaders?

EDIT; now with corresponding images



Actually, both my Gauls and my Carthaginians were Corvus Belli boxed DBA armies. I found them to be a good and cheap way to get started, since a local supplier had them. Corvus Belli have great detail but they can be a bitch to work with because they are made from a very hard metal and have quite a lot of flash. I always pin my cavalry and using a pin vice to drill in Corvus Belli metal is a bitch. But they look nice.



My Crusaders are from Mirliton. I have only good things to say about them: almost no flash, and they were a breeze to paint. Mirliton have mostly Italian medieval armies, but medieval european miniatures are incredibly versatile. I've been eyeing their Russians too, they are super nice.



My Mongols will be mostly from Alain Touller. Bring your French, because the site is only very partially translated. I can't vouch for quality yet, but this far the only bad things I have heard about them is that they used to have lovely response time before they went online and that their horses were kinda lovely before they resculpted them.



I'm planning to get some artillery for my Mongols and some camp items from Museum Miniatures. Yes, the homepage is pretty... retro and the miniatures are hit-or-miss, but I think their extra stuff like tents and carts are good and their trebuchets are excellent. Some monks and pilgrims will make for a nice camp for my Crusaders, too.



My main opponent have bought his first armies (Greek hoplites and Alexander Macedonian) from Xyston. Xyston sculps are just excellent, though they sort of cheat since their miniatures are much bigger than most 15mm brands. So be careful if you plan on mixing them in your own army. Xyston are very heavily focused on Classical Greek armies.



Now he is picking up some Arabs to kill my crusaders from Khurasan Miniatures. They started as a company doing uncommon armies from the Caucasus area, so if you are tired of Romans fighting Greeks they are worth a look. Can't say anything about quality since I haven't seen them in person yet, but they have a good reputation as far as I know.

All of these manufacturers put out DBA packs so they are "beginner friendly".

lilljonas fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Jan 2, 2010

Barry the Sprout
Jan 12, 2001

Excellent thread.

I'm just getting into historicals. My mate got me a box of Victrix Napoleonic French Infantry for Christmas which I'm itching to start assembling and painting. I'm hoping to have some skirmish games using the Sharp Practice rules (http://toofatlardies.co.uk/), which look quite fun.

He also gave me some 15 mm Polish infantry from the same era, which is a different scale to what I'm used to. Should be interesting to paint.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

Barry the Sprout posted:

Excellent thread.

I'm just getting into historicals. My mate got me a box of Victrix Napoleonic French Infantry for Christmas which I'm itching to start assembling and painting. I'm hoping to have some skirmish games using the Sharp Practice rules (http://toofatlardies.co.uk/), which look quite fun.

28mm Victrix or the new 54mm?



I'd probably never play 54mm, because that's HUGE, but I wouldn't mind getting some to paint up. Hopefully I can get some 95th Rifles to paint up as Sean Bean.

Barry the Sprout
Jan 12, 2001

Lord Commissar posted:

28mm Victrix or the new 54mm?

I'd probably never play 54mm, because that's HUGE, but I wouldn't mind getting some to paint up. Hopefully I can get some 95th Rifles to paint up as Sean Bean.

The 28mm ones. I'd be a bit intimidated by the 54 mm ones, I imagine they're not too forgiving in terms of painting.

But I'm definitely going get around to painting up some 28mm Riflemen as Sharp, Harper and the rest!

No Pun Intended
Jul 23, 2007

DWARVEN SEX OFFENDER

ASK ME ABOUT TONING MY FINE ASS DWARVEN BOOTY BY RUNNING FROM THE COPS OUTSIDE THAT ELF KINDERGARTEN

BEHOLD THE DONG OF THE DWARVES! THE DWARVEN DONG IS COMING!

Barry the Sprout posted:


I'm hoping to have some skirmish games using the Sharp Practice rules (http://toofatlardies.co.uk/), which look quite fun.


I forgot I had a copy of Sharp Practice flitting around. Do tell us how it plays as it looks interesting.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

Barry the Sprout posted:

The 28mm ones. I'd be a bit intimidated by the 54 mm ones, I imagine they're not too forgiving in terms of painting.

But I'm definitely going get around to painting up some 28mm Riflemen as Sharp, Harper and the rest!

I made some Shakos and Berets for my "95th Ratlings" in my IG (for that other game). One of these days I'll paint them nice and green and take photos.

No Pun Intended
Jul 23, 2007

DWARVEN SEX OFFENDER

ASK ME ABOUT TONING MY FINE ASS DWARVEN BOOTY BY RUNNING FROM THE COPS OUTSIDE THAT ELF KINDERGARTEN

BEHOLD THE DONG OF THE DWARVES! THE DWARVEN DONG IS COMING!
Osprey produce military reference books that pretty much cover every subject imaginable, from tactics to uniforms, equipment and vehicles.

Worth a look if you really want to get the amount of buttons on a coat or what shade of green that tank really should be right. Or if you are interested in reading up on the particular force you have chosen I guess.

Keeku
Jun 3, 2005

I'm considering getting into Flames of War, and plan to purchase the 'Open Fire' box set soon. Unfortunately none of my friends play it and I doubt I could pull them away from 40k.

Is there any other box sets which contain two small armies for Flames of War (kind of like a FoW equivalent of 40k's 'Assault on Black Reach' in terms of amount of miniatures) which I could use to learn the rules and have battles with friends using my minis? Or is 'Open Fire' the closest there is to this? (it just seems 'Open Fire!' would be good to learn the rules, but would get dull after 1 or 2 battles with only 5 tanks.)

Thanks. Great thread too. I don't post much, but I'll definitely be reading this one.

lilljonas
May 6, 2007

We got crabs? We got crabs!

No Pun Intended posted:

Osprey produce military reference books that pretty much cover every subject imaginable, from tactics to uniforms, equipment and vehicles.

Worth a look if you really want to get the amount of buttons on a coat or what shade of green that tank really should be right. Or if you are interested in reading up on the particular force you have chosen I guess.

Osprey is like historical player crack. I have 9 Osprey books on my samurai alone. :commissar:

Osprey books are a perfect substitute for 40K Codexes, with all the background and how to paint the army in a reasonably sized and priced book. Perfect when you want to know just enough about an army without slugging through something with an academic scope.

S.J.
May 19, 2008

Just who the hell do you think we are?

I'm really interested in FoW. And I like to dive in head-first with an army that's gonna kick my rear end and force me to learn the game, so I'm thinking Rangers or something like that.

Danger - Octopus!
Apr 20, 2008


Nap Ghost


Gettin some cold war all up in this piece.

I really need to finish the rest of them, and then actually buy Cold War Commander.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
Osprey added under the FAQ section.

Danger - Octopus! posted:



Gettin some cold war all up in this piece.

I really need to finish the rest of them, and then actually buy Cold War Commander.

How do battles in CWC work? I mean, what's the context? Is it all What-if?

lilljonas
May 6, 2007

We got crabs? We got crabs!

Danger - Octopus! posted:



Gettin some cold war all up in this piece.

I really need to finish the rest of them, and then actually buy Cold War Commander.

Nice tanks, are they from GHQ? I'd love to try CWC sometimes since T-72 and T-55 are my favourite tanks. :3:

FirstCongoWar
Aug 21, 2002

It feels so 80's or early 90's to be political.

S.J. posted:

I'm really interested in FoW. And I like to dive in head-first with an army that's gonna kick my rear end and force me to learn the game, so I'm thinking Rangers or something like that.

Paratroopers!

They're elite infantry and relatively cheap (in a $$$ sense). Plus you can support them with all sorts of tanks, plans, and artillery once you decide to branch out.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
I can't believe I'd forgotten about Peter Pig! These are the guys my friends back in SoCal used to buy from (via Brookhurst Hobbies). There were rules for just about everything (although I don't know if they were Peter Pig's rules, or just someone else's rules) include things like African Diamond Conflict combat.

FirstCongoWar posted:

Paratroopers!

They're elite infantry and relatively cheap (in a $$$ sense). Plus you can support them with all sorts of tanks, plans, and artillery once you decide to branch out.

Yeah, get D Minus 1.

Nude Bog Lurker
Jan 2, 2007
Fun Shoe

FirstCongoWar posted:

Paratroopers!

They're elite infantry and relatively cheap (in a $$$ sense). Plus you can support them with all sorts of tanks, plans, and artillery once you decide to branch out.

If you go with British or American paratroopers, you also get lots of funky deployment options and stuff to play with.

S.J.
May 19, 2008

Just who the hell do you think we are?

FirstCongoWar posted:

Paratroopers!

They're elite infantry and relatively cheap (in a $$$ sense). Plus you can support them with all sorts of tanks, plans, and artillery once you decide to branch out.

Yeah, that's the other thing I was considering actually. Paratroopers and Rangers are fuckawesome.

Danger - Octopus!
Apr 20, 2008


Nap Ghost

lilljonas posted:

Nice tanks, are they from GHQ? I'd love to try CWC sometimes since T-72 and T-55 are my favourite tanks. :3:

Yeah, I've got a big pile of mostly unpainted GHQ soviet stuff. It's not the cheapest though, but you can sometimes find really great deals with people selling off badly painted forces on Ebay that you can strip. I just love the BTR-70 and 80, which is what sold me on Soviets. I picked up some from Magister Militum, and a fairly large chunk of it from Ebay which had been painted (horribly) as Iraqi army.

I wish the metal wasn't so soft though, so the gun barrels on the tanks bend every which way if you so much as touch them.

djfooboo
Oct 16, 2004




Bookmarked! I'd like to do something like this after I get my current grey-tide completed.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
I've added a writeup on Black Powder, added some more miniature manufacturers to the OP (Thanks No Pun Intended), and updated the FAQ.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
Ok, so, Warstore sells Pendraken, and they have an army deal that says it include a certain amount of other kits, but it doesn't say how many total soldiers that is. If I'm reading this right, though, each foot kit is 30 dudes, and it includes like 6 of those.

Is that right!?

EDIT: They don't have cavalry though. Where does one get 10mm AWI Cav?

EDIT2: Beyond that, I may need scenery, although I could probably build my own at that scale fairly easily. I'm hesitant to purchase this 10mm stuff if I can't find any cavalry. I know I could get it in 6mm. Someone, somewhere, must make 10mm AWI cavalry, though.

3 Action Economist fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jan 2, 2010

No Pun Intended
Jul 23, 2007

DWARVEN SEX OFFENDER

ASK ME ABOUT TONING MY FINE ASS DWARVEN BOOTY BY RUNNING FROM THE COPS OUTSIDE THAT ELF KINDERGARTEN

BEHOLD THE DONG OF THE DWARVES! THE DWARVEN DONG IS COMING!

Lord Commissar posted:

Yeah, get D Minus 1.

Do this.

children overboard
Apr 3, 2009

Lord Commissar posted:

Those are some tiny little men. How small are they?
I have seen rulesets and miniatures for 1mm, 6mm, 10mm, 15mm, 28mm, and 54mm. There are probably others out there. And, contrary to popular belief, the smaller scales are not necessarily lacking in detail.

Woah. Could you post some pictures of 1mm miniatures??! That sounds hilarious. Do you move them around the board with tweezers?

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

children overboard posted:

Woah. Could you post some pictures of 1mm miniatures??! That sounds hilarious. Do you move them around the board with tweezers?

I tried finding some but I couldn't. I've only heard of references to them, I've never seen them myself. 6mm is the smallest I've personally witnessed.

MasterSlowPoke
Oct 9, 2005

Our courage will pull us through
I really like the Wargames Foundry Zulu line. I'd try to build up an army of them, but no one I know plays historicals, and even if they did the racist comments I'd hear from other people in the store would probably result in a multiple homicide.

children overboard posted:

Woah. Could you post some pictures of 1mm miniatures??! That sounds hilarious. Do you move them around the board with tweezers?

It's probably a ship combat game or something. BFG is probably around 1nm scale.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
The key to playing wargames when no one around you plays is to buy two sides in a conflict, and then just find people who want to play. They'll start their own armies eventually.

That's what I'm doing for Black Powder, and another reason I'm going 10mm.

PaintVagrant
Apr 13, 2007

~ the ultimate driving machine ~
What is the company that makes all the plastic multipart historicals? Ive wondered about them, they look like nice quality, sort of GW-ized plastics.

FirstCongoWar
Aug 21, 2002

It feels so 80's or early 90's to be political.
There are several. I like the Perry Bros, though. I got a few boxes of their ACW plastics to make a gift for my dad and they're all very nice.

No Pun Intended
Jul 23, 2007

DWARVEN SEX OFFENDER

ASK ME ABOUT TONING MY FINE ASS DWARVEN BOOTY BY RUNNING FROM THE COPS OUTSIDE THAT ELF KINDERGARTEN

BEHOLD THE DONG OF THE DWARVES! THE DWARVEN DONG IS COMING!

PaintVagrant posted:

What is the company that makes all the plastic multipart historicals? Ive wondered about them, they look like nice quality, sort of GW-ized plastics.


Also Victrix and Wargames Factory.

PaintVagrant
Apr 13, 2007

~ the ultimate driving machine ~
I think it might be wargames factory that Im thinking of. I always wanted to do a barbarian horde in warhammer historical battles...does that system even exist anymore?

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Bufkhan
Jul 23, 2007
I've got a Flames of War question.

While I was at my mother's for Christmas, I found a box in the attic full of my old miniatures. I did lots of historicals with my dad when I was younger, ACW and Napoleonics in 15mm mostly, but we did some WWII with some wierdo set that this guy wrote in his basement and sold at conventions (yeah, we went to a few). Well, I found the few 15mm WWII models we had, Germans in fact.

I found three Mk IVs, three Mk IIIs, one Tiger, and exactly 19 German soldiers armed with a mix of rifles and submachine guns. Is that enough for a small FOW army, or will I need to guy a lot more crap? I'm probably going to the store tomorrow to get the starter set that was mentioned earlier.

I'll most likely get two armies, since I've got a couple of friends I might pull into this, since historical battles are more interesting to them than giant mutant football players with death lasers and rocket guns.

Also, I'll see if over the weekend if I can contribute to this thread and get a few pictures of the ACW stuff we had. My dad painted most of them, but I got a few of them, and, well, you can tell which ones they are.

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