Skirmish Wargames (fantasy and scifi)

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
Five Parsecs would be easy enough to play as coop. Just split the crew between the players. It's even easier because generation is random rather than point buy.
 
Black Ops.

Solid enough modern skirmish warfare game. It uses card driven activation (I'm fine with that but some people hate it as a system). It covers everything you need in a short rulebook - suppressive fire, cover, calling in air strikes (!).

Probably its most impressive feature is the introduction of "blinds" to cover where people don't know where the area are and the stealth rules. This would handle infiltration well from what I can see.

A really good variety of scenarios, 3 standard and 6 stealth missions. It also gives six play boards from terminals to villages.

It'll do almost any faction you could want from the SAS to the Red Army Faction. (It also adds ninjas because fuck you that's why).

Writing is fine but if I'm honest it's a bit dry.

The campaign rules are only two pages and pretty basic. They feel like a bit of an afterthought. This is much more of a game for single battles.

Sample Squad:
Thanks for the review, this sounds right up my alley.
 
I like Thud & Blunder by the Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare. It's a fantasy skirmish toolkit.
 
I've had Stargrave pretty much since it released but only got my first game in just before xmas. My eldest was playing Xcom and said she wanted to play something similar. I suggested Stargrave and away we went.

Crew creation was fast and little consideration given to any kind of optimising. Terrain was a kludge of Deadzone bits and some 3d printed stuff.
Her crew was a bunch of 40k and Necromunda minis. Mine a mix of Copplestone future wars, Combat zone troopers and Imperial guard.

We barely used powers. There were no creatures or pirates involved. Just 2 crews squabbling over a small map.

It was great fun! Seriously. I can't say we got all the rules right or had the best map but the tide of battle swung back and forth. Soldiers felt both capable and fragile. No one went out in one hit (always one of my pet peeves) and every member of the ten strong crew felt necessary.

She won by the way. Judicious use of grenades and sticking the boot in when my troops went down secured her victory. But my captain survived and we got some loot so I called it a draw.
 
I've recently got Stargrave and 5 Parsecs with the intention of building up a set of 15mm figures and terrain. I suspect that I will use 5 Parsecs first until I have enough table top stuff to introduce to my fellow gamers.

I've started by making a 15mm per unit ruler from some long lolly sticks to use as my standard ground scale. Simply colour 15mm blocks with a permanent marker or leave blank between the coloured blocks.
I also have searched through my print and use flat figures files for stuff to rescale and proxy until I have painted up some lead. Yes, this is a bit of a budget project.
 
I'm thinking of doing Stargrave, and adding a corrupt faction (the Dominion of Man, basically racist Christian fundamentalists who took over a chunk of the galaxy and believe no aliens/cyborgs/AI/Robots are made in God's image so much be purged) the fact that the Earth is full of all those things puts it high on the list of "burn this" but its a bit too powerful and opposes the Dominators by fielding I.O.N (Interstellar Operators Network) basically salvagers and scavengers who can and will risk their lives to gain loot (tech, data, etc) from Precursors to gain an upper hand on the Dominion. Of course if the Dominion gets there it will lead to fights, this allows me to turn the game semi-cooperative from time to time, and maybe build things as competitive in a "ha I got it first, losers" mocking at bars for the player teams.

Does anyone know a good source of human/grimdarkish marines that aren't that other game? Standups for cheapness preferred but cheap mini's are cool.
 
I'm looking for a solid gladiator ruleset which supports campaigns. Any recommendations?
 
Most of them support the notion of running your own schola as a ludus. Habet, Hoc Habet is a pretty good all-round choice. Rudis and AH's Colosseum is also all right. My issue with a lot of gladiator minis games is that I always feel there's not enough detail for one-on-one fights. I've been toying with the idea of just using GURPS Man-to-Man for it.
 
Most of them support the notion of running your own schola as a ludus. Habet, Hoc Habet is a pretty good all-round choice. Rudis and AH's Colosseum is also all right. My issue with a lot of gladiator minis games is that I always feel there's not enough detail for one-on-one fights. I've been toying with the idea of just using GURPS Man-to-Man for it.
Thanks! I picked up Habet, Hoc Habet on your recommendation and it seems really decent. I also found Sons of Mars which looks solid. That has lots of individual gladiator types with a choice of skills which might give you what you're looking for with one to one.
 
Does anyone know a good source of human/grimdarkish marines that aren't that other game? Standups for cheapness preferred but cheap mini's are cool.

Wargames Atlantic have *really* been crushing it with their amazing bang-for-the-buck minis releases:

 
Thanks! I picked up Habet, Hoc Habet on your recommendation and it seems really decent.

Most gladiator games tend to really lean in on the historical accuracy, which is fine for what it is but Roman gladiator matches were formalized as entertainment: there were specific pairings that had to be observed (retiarius vs. secutor, hoplomachus vs. murmillo), the armor was designed to protect the critical areas but also deflect blows towards areas that were likely to bleed without being debilitating, the arena was flat so the spectators could see, and so on.

I find that what most gamers really want is a kind of classier pit fighting game where they can try whatever matchup they want, or make use of some terrain to liven up the fight, and so on. Hence why I've been looking more at Man-to-Man.
 
On the main topic: it's a bit hard to find these days, but Salvage Crew: Star Mogul is an interesting little Mordheim-esque SF skirmish game. Two teams fight over salvage sites and you have to get as much loot back to your LZ as possible. It's got a neat twist; you can bug out completely at any time and score your loot, but then the other guy gets all the loot left on the table. Since it's campaign-y in the way Mordheim/Necromunda is, let this happen too often and you're going to get slaughtered as you fall behind the other teams.
 
A normal card deck edited down only to the characters in the game.

There was a guy in my local club that had access to some kind of card printer closer than China and he would print up custom cards for all the games with card activation. Very sexy.

I just bought a ridiculously cheap 3D printer than can do 9" x 9" x 9"; I'll never have to scratch build terrain again. It's a crazy time we live in.
 
Five Parsecs from Home is on sale at miniaturemarket.com for $19 each. I just ordered 2 extras for guys I game with.
 
Hey guys I caught 15mm fever and picked up Gruntz. I am looking for rules that lend themselves to making sci fi skirmish scenarios to host for my players. Any more suggestions?

Edit: I would also appreciate links for buying 15mm sci miniatures and terrain.
 
Last edited:
I've been working on a list but haven't added any links. I might code a sorter of some sort.

15mm
Alternative Armies: Ion Age large sf range with vehicles, Hordes of the Things fantasy
Battlefront: Flames of War (WWII), Team Yankee, Galeforce 9 lots of plastic
Battle Valor: large fantasy range, post apocalyptic apes with M-16s
Brigade Miniatures: Near future vehicles and troops
Blue Moon: 15mm historical, horror, fantasy, and pulp sf range including a wide range of grav vehicles
Ground Zero Games: Stargrunt, a massive range of troops and vehicles
Khurasan Miniatures: Science Fiction troops and vehicles, fantasy, history, pulp
Mirlton: classic Grenadier fantasy
Old Glory: Command Decision WWII, Blue Moon sf
RAFM: classic Citadel Traveller sf figures and vehicles
Ralpartha Europe: Critical Mass sf and classic Metal Magic Demon Ground Fantasy
Rebel Miniatures: Large 15mm Fantasy Range, 15mm sf troops and some vehicles (earlier 3d prints and a bit jaggy)
Scotia/Grendal: Xyston ancients
The Plastic Soldier Company: 15mm WWII and Ancients
 
They're not TECHNICALLY minis (but easy enough to use with 15/10mm), but if you can find them for reasonable prices, the old Standard games Cry Havoc/Seige/Outremer are a solid choice for medieval man-man combat. It even has some fan support and fan games being made today. They did an edition using pre-Sengoku samurai too, but it sadly didn't get any other entries.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top