Favorite Skirmish Games

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I'm largely out of the loop nowadays but I've played around with the solo skirmish games Five Parsecs from Home, Five Leagues from the Borderland, etc. I'm not sure how many in the series there are, I know there's Five Men at Kursk and maybe a zombie one.
 
Stan said:
I'm largely out of the loop nowadays but I've played around with the solo skirmish games Five Parsecs from Home, Five Leagues from the Borderland, etc. I'm not sure how many in the series there are, I know there's Five Men at Kursk and maybe a zombie one.
Click to expand...
There's Five Klicks from the Zone, too. Ivan does good stuff.
 
I think Battletech is technically a skirmish game. At least the Lance level. Everything past ~3049 in the setting and game is best ignored in my view.

Heavy Gear always looked fun, but I never played it (Closest I got was playing Tribe 8)

Mekton tended towards fun, though it was more RPG focused and I tried to move a couple groups to it for Solaris 7 in our Mechwarrior games without luck.

I enjoyed the first incarnations of Necromunda and Mordheim a lot but I wouldn't recommend anything GW these days. Though buying used or hoisting the jolly roger are always options.

Stargrave looks interesting but I haven't played it yet.

I run Savage Worlds, it can do skirmish trivially (and there was Showdown which was a skirmish game).

I never got a chance to play Stargrunt which could do skirmish and I don't think Jon Tuffley (Ground Zero Games) has ever released Full Metal Anorak (which was supposed to be a skirmish level game). Though I seem to recall some playtest stuff at some point.

I tend towards mecha and science fantasy, though Mordheim was fun.
 
Simlasa said:
I like all the old Goalsystem games, like Chaos in Carpathia/Chaos in Cairo, Supersystem, etc.
.45 Adventures and its spinoffs...
Newer stuff like the Osprey games... and Space Weirdos... are fun too.
Click to expand...
I like the Chaos games and Space Weirdos a lot.
 
Brander said:
I never got a chance to play Stargrunt which could do skirmish and I don't think Jon Tuffley (Ground Zero Games) has ever released Full Metal Anorak (which was supposed to be a skirmish level game).
Click to expand...
Stargrunt is great... but larger skirmish/platoon sized. When I think 'skirmish' I usually think a dozen or so figures, which might be smaller than most folks assume.
 
Is Star Wars Legion a "skirmish game"? My son loves it and I'm frequently recruited to play the Separatists. It's pretty fun.
 
A Fiery Flying Roll said:
I'm getting massively into Howard Whitehouse's stuff currently. His Robin Hood game is an absolute joy.
Click to expand...
If you're okay with a Loose approach one step more complex than Dealer's Choice FK, Astounding Tales is pretty great too.

Mad Dogs with Guns is like Gangbusters, minus the lawman PCs, a miniatures-using, bootleg-empire building, campaign Braunstein framework.
 
Parkaboy said:
There's Five Klicks from the Zone, too. Ivan does good stuff.
Click to expand...
On a slightly different mechanical track, there's also Where Sten Guns Dare for all your vintage mid-20th century WW2 Spec Ops movie action.

(And, while they were made for a game called 0200 Hours which covers similar ground, Wargames Atlantic now makes some tasty looking commandoes and garrison/guard/searching Germans in multi-pose plastic, as well as Resistance partisans. 2-3 sprues of each and you're pretty much covered for everything other than terrain)
 
DeadBob said:
On a slightly different mechanical track, there's also Where Sten Guns Dare for all your vintage mid-20th century WW2 Spec Ops movie action.

(And, while they were made for a game called 0200 Hours which covers similar ground, Wargames Atlantic now makes some tasty looking commandoes and garrison/guard/searching Germans in multi-pose plastic, as well as Resistance partisans. 2-3 sprues of each and you're pretty much covered for everything other than terrain)
Click to expand...
I have 0200 Hours. Reads well but not played it. There was just a KS for a similar game with tokens and tiles called Rogue Regiment. I played the demo and it was very fun.

Sten Guns Dare is also good.

I also high recommend Patrick Todoroff's games. Most are solo and a lot of fun. One is a cyberpunk game that was called Hardwired until he got a cease and desist from Walter Jon Williams.
 
I like most of what Ivan Sorensen does (Five Parsecs, Five Leagues, Shoot People in Space, etc.).
I'm halfway through assembling and painting my dudes for Ravenfeast (or some other dark ages skirmish game if I end up not liking Ravenfeast enough).
I really want to try Skirmish Sangin and Spectre Operations, but I need to get some figures first. Same thing with The Silver Bayonet and whatever game I'll end up picking for western (What a Cowboy? Fistful of Lead? Legends of the Old West?).
 
I really dig Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish. The company has fantastic miniatures as well.
1694035797648.png
(And Pulp Alley!)
 
Parkaboy said:
I have 0200 Hours. Reads well but not played it. There was just a KS for a similar game with tokens and tiles called Rogue Regiment. I played the demo and it was very fun.

Sten Guns Dare is also good.

I also high recommend Patrick Todoroff's games. Most are solo and a lot of fun. One is a cyberpunk game that was called Hardwired until he got a cease and desist from Walter Jon Williams.
Click to expand...
Hardwired is great. What is it now, Exploit Zero?
 
WillPhillips said:
Not familiar with Otherworld. What's the basic gist of the game and mechanics?
Click to expand...
Its pretty straightforward. Typical fantasy classes with variable player powers. Tiers of the minis are Legend(leader), companions and minions. D6 with fate points. Has skill tests too. Heres a good review.

swordsofminaria.blogspot.com

Review: Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish

Since the untimely demise this year of the Warhammer Fantasy setting, and thus the three decades of games that it spawned, one might have ex...
swordsofminaria.blogspot.com swordsofminaria.blogspot.com
 
Self Saboteur said:
Its pretty straightforward. Typical fantasy classes with variable player powers. Tiers of the minis are Legend(leader), companions and minions. D6 with fate points. Has skill tests too. Heres a good review.

swordsofminaria.blogspot.com

Review: Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish

Since the untimely demise this year of the Warhammer Fantasy setting, and thus the three decades of games that it spawned, one might have ex...
swordsofminaria.blogspot.com swordsofminaria.blogspot.com
Click to expand...
Nice. Thanks for the link!
 
Song of Blades and Heroes and it's horror themed sister Faith and Fear immediately comes to mind. Can't recommend them enough for quick casual play.

If you can find them for a reasonable price, the Cry Havoc series of games are all pretty neat.

For 20th century military action, Hell by Daylight really impressed me. Simple, feels real, very tense.

Mordheim is def one of the evil empire's better specialty games, still has good fan support to this day.
 
Oakbound has a very interesting diceless narrative skirmish system based heavily on Celtic folklore: Into The Woods

I've not gotten to play it (and looks like Kingdom Death & The Old World are going to be dominating my miniature/wargame hobby time this year, so may be a while, but I like the lore and aesthetic (which is very Oldhammer, as the creator is an active mainstay of the Oldhammer community online). There's some helpful videos explaining how the game works:

 
As for my favourite? Probably 1st edition of the new version of Kill Team. It was fantastic, really played on the strengths of a system that was originally designed for role-playing hybrid skirmish miniature games. It provided pretty balanced options for every army that were limited but captured their distinct character. The Command system minigame was fun, adding a strategic layer to the game that didn't feel as distracting as they did in 40K with large armies. The campaign system is fun, allowing your characters to grow and improve, and providing tangible benefits for winning without unbalancing the next game (so it doesn't put anyone behind to the point they can't catch up regardless of wins).

Just a really nice, streamlined and fun game that encourages heavily customizing a squad of 5 distinct miniatures.

Then they fucked it all up. 2nd ed was awful.

Mordheim comes a close second, as the lore/aesthetic is unparallelled. I've played with ironing out a few of Mordheim's kinks and porting in elements from Kill Team.
 
I enjoyed the few games of Mantic's Walking Dead: All Out War that I have played. If you make too much noise the zombies all start to swarm in your direction. And they are brutal in herds. So you have to sneak around and try to not actually fight your opponant at times, grab the last tin of beans and get the hell outta there.

Middle Earth Strategy Battles is fun ruleset for fantasy. The rules seem pretty well ironed out at this point and it plays fast. Scales all the way from just 4 hobbits to large skirmishes. It is a GW game, but its been spared the curse of never-ending army codex updates. Grab the most recent core book and one of the Army books are you are good to go. Can also save money by using many 3rd party minis instead of the official GW ones.

Was surprised at how simple Killteam was at its core. But I would suggest that if you are going with the latest version you make sure you ignore any team list printed in any book and just download the latest updated ones from GW's website. Do NOT waste money on that Compendium which is still for sale in GW stores.

Star Wars Legion is fun. If I am doing Imps I like to have Vader walk straight down the middle of the table flanked on either side by his Stormtroopers like he owns the place. Enemy fire be damned. My last opponant decided to turn Vader into Waldo and kept hiding him in the shrubbery! It was comical... I would move Luke towards him and he would run away. "I don't want him to die", he kept saying.
 
TristramEvans said:
As for my favourite? Probably 1st edition of the new version of Kill Team. It was fantastic, really played on the strengths of a system that was originally designed for role-playing hybrid skirmish miniature games. It provided pretty balanced options for every army that were limited but captured the character of their distinct character. The Command system minigame was fun, adding a strategic layer to the game that didn't feel as distracting as they did in 40K with large armies. The campaign system is fun, allowing your characters to grow and improve, and providing tangible benefits for winning without unbalancing the next game (so it doesn't put anyone behind to the point they can't catch up regardless of wins).

Just a really nice, streamlined and fun game that encourages heavily customizing a squad of 5 distinct miniatures.

Then they fucked it all up. 2nd ed was awful.

Mordheim comes a close second, as the lore/aesthetic is unparallelled. I've played with ironing out a few of Mordheim's kinks and porting in elements from Kill Team.
Click to expand...
1st Ed Killteam was near perfect then GW GW’ed it.
 
Self Saboteur said:
1st Ed Killteam was near perfect then GW GW’ed it.
Click to expand...
I mainly got into Killteam right as 2nd dropped. Wasn't 1st ed infamous for "Field Terminators, Win."?

And yea F the compendium. Embrace Wahapedia.
 
I don’t remember coming across Terminators in any games. If I recall correctly no models fielded could have 2+ saves.
 
Self Saboteur said:
I don’t remember coming across Terminators in any games. If I recall correctly no models fielded could have 2+ saves.
Click to expand...
I found an older edition of KT in my portable drive and looked. The core book doesn't have Termies, but the Elite sourcebook does and yes, they did have 2+ saves. Grey Knights too.
 
Smithnikov said:
I found an older edition of KT in my portable drive and looked. The core book doesn't have Termies, but the Elite sourcebook does and yes, they did have 2+ saves. Grey Knights too.
Click to expand...
So the core rules were solid and then the power creep set in with the source books. Sounds about right.
 
Smithnikov said:
And yea F the compendium. Embrace Wahapedia.
Click to expand...

I would be laughing if I hadn't spent good money on it. And in an actual Warhammer shop. TBH I kind of suspected this would be the way going into it. GW gonna GW. Lesson learned I suppose. Don't spend money on any GW product without doing your homework first!

Anybody played Stargrave or Deadzone from Mantic?
 
StonesThree said:
I would be laughing if I hadn't spent good money on it. And in an actual Warhammer shop. TBH I kind of suspected this would be the way going into it. GW gonna GW. Lesson learned I suppose. Don't spend money on any GW product without doing your homework first!

Anybody played Stargrave or Deadzone from Mantic?
Click to expand...
I've played about 11 games of Deadzone, mostly all in 2022. 7 games were part of a narrative campaign, and the rest were just random scenarios.

It's a really solid game. Lot of fun.
My only criticism is that faction choice can have an impact. Some are just more difficult to play than others - and those difficult factions can take some real roster-crafting to have any chance of competing.

All of the Deadzone games I've played have been with the GCPS. And despite my efforts, I only won a single game with them - and that came off a technicality. It's not really a satisfying win when you get tabled, yet - in the same final round - your opponent gets wiped out, due to zombie horde NPCs roaming the board. And you win because the opponent's forces had some higher value VP targets.

(On that note: I have some weird obsession with human factions in both fantasy and scifi wargaming. I always like playing the "common man" facing up against the xeno (or monster) threat. Sometimes it's seems that the common man can be designed to suck in wargames).
 
Friend and I played Deadzone and, holy cow, its so much better then Kill Team. By a country mile. Not delved into all the rules, but we both agreed to drop KT and move forward with this one instead. The starter set actually feels more like a complete game.

Initially I thought the use of squares on the mat for movement would suck, but no I prefer it. No messing around with those measuring sticks GW supply that use symbols instead of numbers. It just speeds the whole game up. Area attacks just impact everything in the square so theres no need for templates etc. No arguments about your mini only having his left pinky finger in the blast zone so it doesn't count... The battle mat is paper so I expect if we play this a lot it will get ripped at some point.

The command dice worked well. Gave you options without over-whelming you. Plus everybody enjoys rolling more dice.

Cover rules seemed to make sense. Unlike KT's which feel counter-intuitive.

The supplied plastic terrain looks kinda funky and can be assembled to create a 3d battlefield. By contrast the stuff I got in the KT box were just lumps of plastic that get plopped down and then never really interacted with beyond using them as cover. With this stuff you can make 2-story buildings and walkways between them.

It uses the much neglected D8. Nice to see. It feels nice rolling a palm full of them. The core mechanic was pretty simple.

I got the Starter Set for £70 off ebay. Thats about the same price as the Kill Team starter (if you buy from GW themselves) but much better value for money IMHO. Shame I didnt find this first. KT books will all be going in the "get rid" pile.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top