The title says it all. I'd love to try to get involved in wargaming, but looking at the absurd prices for warhammer 40k and such I'm maybe thinking a skirmish game is better suited for me? Any ideas?
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The title says it all. I'd love to try to get involved in wargaming, but looking at the absurd prices for warhammer 40k and such I'm maybe thinking a skirmish game is better suited for me? Any ideas?
Do you like very high prices and not the best balance on rules?
Yeah these things are not for you. Heck you haven't even included the price of tools, maintenance, transport, and assembly!
A personal favourite of mine is Dust: Tactics (And as of July, Dust: Battlefield). It's basically "Second World War with B-Movie-style technology", so you have hard bitten Soviet foot soldiers marching to war alongside giant bipedal Mecha, fighting against an AXIS army of Zombies and Super-Intelligent Gorillas and jetpack-propelled forces of the Allies. :smalltongue:
The main rulebook is free to download and use, and the models for the game are amongst the cheapest that I know of, for miniatures of this scale (and certainly of this detail) - the boxed army sets, which includes a decent sized (pre-assembled and primed) battle force, dice, play mat, scenery and rulebook, can be found for as little as $40.
Mantic Games has Deadzone, which I haven't played but I have been told is very easy to learn, is a lot of fun and is quite reasonably priced. The boxed set comes with everything that you need to play except glue and paint, which can be acquired cheaply enough at various places.
If even THAT is too expensive for you, there are Games Workshop's older 'Specialist' Games like Necromunda and Mordheim: City of the Damned, the rules for both of which are free to download. If you're canny and have some decent Google-fu skills, you can look around at any number of generic models (particularly for Mordheim; the amount of generic Fantasy stuff out there is staggering) and make up an appropriate little collection for a pittance.
What do you prefer, may I ask? Fantasy or Sci-fi? Or modern day? Straight or 'wacky'? Cowboys? Samurai?
The most relevant question isn't what's cheapest or what has the best rules. Its 'what will you actually be able to play?' Find if there are any clubs in your local area and go to them. The opinion of people thousands of miles from you may just lead you to spend money on a game nobody will join you in playing.
There are non-skirmish games that are quite cheap because the biggest battles need far smaller figures than the standard 28mm scale Warhammer uses. If there's a club near you that mainly plays Fields of Glory or other historical games then they're likely to be more snooty about sci fi stuff like Warhammer any.
Hobbies are expensive. A tabletop wargaming army is going to cost as much as a decent gaming computer anyway.
My recommendations for an actually cheap game would be Spartan Game's Uncharted Seas. Its a naval combat game that works a lot like most similar ones (including a space game from the same company, but Uncharted Seas works better partly due to the space game being a dodgy transfer of nautical concepts). The rules are pretty complex so playing with more than the starter set is problematic, which means you really don't need much of a navy to compete. Its not cheap and you might have to buy two fleets to get an actual game if no one else wants to invest but it isn't a money sink like Warhammer where you can just keep buying new units.
Hmmmm... Well, first off, I really appreciate the advice: the forum members never let me down :smallbiggrin:
Second, I'm a sucker for anything, if it's presented well. Historic Fantasy, and Magitech are weaknesses of mine, as are Westerns, and Steampunk style anything. Then again, I also enjoy world war 1 and 2 history and the renaissance immensely. :smalltongue:
As for the money sink, I don't mind that so much, (I do try to play CCG's, and buy mobile games :smalltongue:) it's just that I'd appreciate a game that I can start without blowing all my cash. After that, buying individual figures or supplements doesn't bother me too much.
Malifaux. :smallwink:Quote:
Originally Posted by D20ragon
Small-scale, steampunk cowboy fantasy mashup. It's got a pretty low price barrier for entry (mostly due to the small scale).
Though I just want to echo what Closet Skeleton said: we can steer you in the right direction, but none of that matters if no one around you is playing these games. It's one of the reasons people stick with 40K: finding other players is pretty easy all things considered.
I count myself lucky in that I have both friends and siblings who are at least willing to take a shot at whatever my newest games are. Some of them in fact wholeheartedly support me buying a skirmish game, as they became infatuated with the concept from Xcom, but didn't feel like coughing up the cash.
Alright, I'll check out malifaux. Any ideas of what to buy first? I'm a complete rookie at this sort of thing.
Definitely take a look at Malifaux then. Getting two starters for it is probably going to have the lowest cost, barring the games where you can get the rules for free like GW's old Specialist line.Quote:
Originally Posted by D20ragon
I haven't played it, but the Shut Up & Sit Down review of the X-Wing Minatures Game made it look pretty good.
And a possible hint for if you do go into Warhammer, there's a 40k Orks variant army called Speed Freeks that is mostly scrapped together vehicles. If you want to save a bit of money on an army, you can buy a bunch of toy cars, stick pieces of card and toothpicks to them until they look orky enough, and only have to buy a few orks to go in them. Orks are definitely have the most fun out of any of the 40k races too. :smallbiggrin:
You should look into Saga, too. The balance is good, and the it has the best core mechanic I've ever seen. Each player gets a "battle board" with a set of abilities determined by their army. At the start of each turn players role a set of dice and assign the dice to abilities, which they use whenever appropriate. The cool thing is that those dice are also used to activate units, so using more abilities means taking less actions.
The downside is weak army building. You have three types of units, that may or may not have equipment options depending on your army. A point gets you four of the best, eight of the middle, or twelve of the worst. You can spend a point to upgrade your free warlord into a hero, but those are the least balanced part of the game and a lot of them are very obviously designed to work with a single army composition, so they don't add much.
It's set in the dark ages, although there's a crusades supplement coming out soon. Plastic historical miniatures tend to be way cheaper than GW or anywhere else that has its own setting, so that's a plus. If you buy the plastic miniatures from Gripping Beast (who make the rules) you can make a small army out of one box. Two boxes should have you covered for pretty much any size army you'd ever want to use.
Mobile Frame Zero: Mecha made out of Lego are your units. The rules seem pretty straight forward from skimming them, haven't actually tried it yet, because Lego Mechs :smallbiggrin:
Holy ****!
Lego mechs.
Best game EVAR!
In that same vein, there's Brick Wars.Quote:
Originally Posted by D20ragon
Alright, so unless I'm counting wrong, I've got three games I'd like to check out: Lego game, Malifuax and Saga.
It is very impressive how detailed the people at Mobile Frame Zero can make mechs out of Lego. It does take a lot of the more obscure parts for some of the frames, so that could cost a bit to pick up, but when is an excuse to buy Lego items a bad thing?Quote:
Originally Posted by D20ragon
If you don't mind going with something that's out of print, Heroscape is also a good bet. Definitely on the skirmish / squad level of things, but it mashes up basically every genre. If you can find a Rise of the Valkyrie Master set, you can get evil robots, aliens, samurai, vikings, and a dragon in just that. Most expansions are pretty expensive these days, though, and it was always hard for me to resist the urge to collect more.
I had fun with Arcane Legions the one time I played it, if you don't mind historical fantasy (basic plot: magic has warped the 1st-century BC world, so China, Rome, and Egypt under Marc Antony and Cleopatra are at war).
The main trouble with Arcane Legions (because I really like the system behind it) is finding people to play with...though, it is very inexpensive. On my palette of "things to do next year" is painting my AL armies, just to gain experience with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivellius
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Originally Posted by D20ragon
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Originally Posted by D20ragon
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Originally Posted by D20ragon
Can I interest you in Domains at War: Battles? It's a wargame that takes historically-accurate themes (Morale and facing are critical factors to any battle) and applies them to D&D. I haven't gotten to playtest it extensively with my group, but our trial battles have been very promising. It's neat to see one of my players sally forth with cavalry for a daring flanking maneuver, cheering when my orc crossbows fail their morale test and retreat backwards, only to see their spirits fail when next turn my ogre warchief beats their heavy infantry for initiative and moves in to give the cavalry a pounding before the spearmen can move in to cover them...
Re: "Applies them to D&D": It was designed so that if your Paladin ends up in charge of a church with a hundred-odd clerics, sixty paladins, and several hundred vassal-knights, you have the mechanical resources to switch to a macro-scale for big battles. It's got stats for a wide variety of basic units, and if you want to make, say, a regiment of werewolves, the math is there for converting a werewolf into a Unit of 60 Werewolves.
The price is certainly right- it costs as much as any other splatbook, and can be played quite comfortably using paper printouts.
I'd second Dust: Tactics. I don't even particularly like Weird World War II as an idea, but the rules are good, and the miniatures are really fantastic. Plus, I think they're generic enough that you can kinda ignore the alt WWII stuff if you want, and just think of them as general sci-fi.
Golem Arcana is coming out next week and all the rules are in the companion mobile app, so it's designed to be *super* accessable to newbies like us.
Plus, y'know, Battletech with with Golems instead of Mech by the guy who invented Battletech.