The Wargaming Thread

[David Johansen]

Hex and counter folks are welcome.  I'd like to know more about what's out there.  Really, a lot of stuff like Memoir 44 is essentially hex and counter but with miniatures instead of counters.

[Tod13]

Hex and counter folks are welcome.  I'd like to know more about what's out there.  Really, a lot of stuff like Memoir 44 is essentially hex and counter but with miniatures instead of counters.

LOL I guess I wanted a hex and counter game with neat miniatures. My thought on the Ogre minis was "Now I need to make little counter bases for the minis with the move, attack, and defense information."

[Madprofessor]

I'd love to get into miniature wargaming, especially historical and modern wargaming.

Any suggestions for a newcomer to the hobby?

First, I think you need to ask yourself if you are remotely interested in the modeling/collecting aspect of the hobby.

If the answer is yes then the best thing you can do to get started is to find a group of people who play and join in with some of their games.  Seems simple, but there are some challenges.

If you think this site is full of jaded grognards, go and hang out with some historical miniatures gamers!  Miniatures games take a large commitment, and wargamers are apt to look down their nose at card floppers, video gamers, board gamers, and less committed hobbyists (though most mini gamers I've known both play and respect RPGs). Miniatures games are spectacular to look at (if they are done well), so we old school wargamers are used to casual observers looking over our shoulders saying "ooh, ahh, do they move? did you paint them? can you sign my butt and teach me to read? etc." but it is very rare for new players to take a serious interest and make the commitment.  We are used to seeing enthusiasm fade and players flake out once a new player realizes there is more to the hobby than just sitting down and pushing lead on the table.  

So, I am just warning you that old hands may be skeptical or even put off by your interest at first. However, because new players are like unobtanium, most established groups will be thrilled to have you - if you can show genuine interest, and a little humility at the tremendous amount of time and money that mini games require.  New players are as good as gold, and probably more rare.

Once you get into a group things will progress naturally.  Most old hands have a mountain of lead that they will never have time to paint, and they will offer it freely to help you get started on your first armies.  I've donated painting supplies, unpainted armies, time to teach new players how to get started, even painted figs on many occasions - because... I'm sick of playing Carrhae with Alvin, or Waterloo with Dan.  New players means new games, new armies, new perspectives, new stratagies, and campaigns!

Bottom line is: if you are serious about getting started, people will be overjoyed to help you, if you are lukewarm you will likely get a cold shoulder.

[Gronan of Simmerya]

LOL I guess I wanted a hex and counter game with neat miniatures. My thought on the Ogre minis was "Now I need to make little counter bases for the minis with the move, attack, and defense information."

If you're interested in World War 2 that approach works with Squad Leader and 1/300 miniatures also.

[Gronan of Simmerya]

I'd love to get into miniature wargaming, especially historical and modern wargaming.

Any suggestions for a newcomer to the hobby?

Go to Gary Con, or HistoriCon out on the east coast.  Play some games to see if you like it first.  Very likely googling "historical miniatures wargame conventions" will turn up SOMETHING near you.

But definitely "try before you buy."

[Mordred Pendragon]

Go to Gary Con, or HistoriCon out on the east coast.  Play some games to see if you like it first.  Very likely googling "historical miniatures wargame conventions" will turn up SOMETHING near you.

But definitely "try before you buy."

I will definitely check out HistoriCon as I'm out on the East Coast. I'd love to go to GaryCon one day though.

I'm not all that interested in WH40K, which is the predominant wargame here in Roanoke as far as I can tell, I'm more interested in historical wargaming of all types.

Flames of War looks cool to me, I've been watching a few YouTube videos of it lately and I think I might enjoy miniature wargaming. I am interested in the collectible aspect of it as well.

[War Rocket Ajax]

I played a lot of 40K in the 90's. Leagues, tournaments, and drunken garage games. I started playing D&D again this summer and have been buying many miniatures, a lot of them wargaming figs. While the GW prices were shocking, it was nice to see so many alternatives out there. I've got the rules for Hail Caesar and Kings of War, and both seem decent. For mass troops I like the Perry figures the most, and I find the price very reasonable.

There are also a lot of smaller skirmish games that look like they might be good and lack the sort of investment a big army entails.

There is a dedicated wargame store in my area and Bolt Action is very popular there. I've been thinking of giving it a shot.

For those that asked about getting into it, I would say to take a look at The War Store and Beasts of War to see what you might like. And even more importantly, find out what is being played in your area before committing to anything.

[Voros]

In terms of minatures Bolt Action does seem to have really nice quality WWII sets.

What about fantasy and sf war games? In terms of board games I've heard good things about the Battle of Five Armies and even the recent Assault of the Giants D&D board game.

How much fun are Napoleon at Waterloo and Hold the Line? I've seen them mentioned as good intros to the heavier or 'real' side of war games. The components for Hold the Line look a little uninspired. I don't mind minimal but it's better if it looks nice laid out on the table to me.

Silent Victory, a solo US subs game looks promising but it OOP. The same company has released semi-sequels called The Hunters and The Hunted but they don't seem available through Amazon.

[David Johansen]

Bolt Action is a fun little game.  Not super detailed but fast and fun.  It's also dead cheap to get into.  Two boxes of infantry gives you two platoons which is enough for a good game.  There's a decent starter set too.  It's an awful lot like Warhammer 40000 but with order dice that you draw out of a hat to see who gets to move a unit.  A mechanic that's great in a small game and slow in a big one.  Beyond the Gates of Antares is similar but it's a d10 roll under game.

[Gronan of Simmerya]

Also note... 20mm plastics are BIG in Europe.  They've solved the "paint won't stick" problem, they're very nice figures, and they're way cheap.

[Madprofessor]

Well, we could discuss mini rules for ever, and I have played most of them, but as long as we have people talking WWII, I am going to put a plug in for Battlegroup by the Plastic Soldier Company.  Flames of war and bolt action are popular, but their both pretty far off the mark in represnting WWII combat.  FoW devolves to parking lots of tanks lining up and firing at point blank range, and blot action would give you a good sim of star wars without jedi.  Battlegroup has simple rules that are very believable and recreate WWII ground combat extremely well.  The books are beautiful full color hardbacks with modeling advice, army lists and scenarios. The rules are a bit expensive and the game changes considerably by year and theater. The games are tense and fun, and it is designed for 20mm plastics which are dirt cheap.  Each fig equals 1 man or 1 vehicle/gun. It plays well from reinforced squad to battalion level, but bogs down beyond that.  

If you are looking for smaller scale games, I recommend Chain of Command by Two Fat Lardies.  Crossfire by Arty Conlife is out of print, but is a remarkable game for infantry combat.  

IMO, the only thing FOW or BA have going for them is that they are popular so it is easier to find opponents.  That can be a pretty big factor if you are just starting out, but there are much better games out there.  That said, WWII is not really my era.  I am an ancients guy, but head over to TMP and I think you'll hear much the same story.

[David Johansen]

I have Battle Group and have played it a couple times.  I like it okay and I'll agree it's a better simulation than Bolt Action or Flames of War.  Flames of War's rules certainly produce weird formations at times and Bolt Action is a touch too generic and simple while slowing down oddly and making unified offensives pretty much impossible.  Part of it is the whole gamist approach, Bolt Action  and Flames of War try pretty hard to fit the ranges to the table top rather than representing them realistically, they also lean to the Warhammer style of army building which can give you some odd armies at times.  Everything's a little too tough in Flames of War and everything dies a bit too easily in Bolt Action.

So, science fiction and fantasy are pretty widely supported these days from Clash of Kings to Kings of War.  There's a new FFG game, Rune Wars coming out next month that applies a lot of the stuff from X-wing to big regiment fantasy battles.  There are just tons of medieval, ancient, and fantasy games that overlap each other.  There are also Warhammer retroclones like 9th Age and Core Hammer.

Osprey books have dozens of niche games like Frostgrave, Rogue Stars, and Tomorrow's War, ranging from skirmishes to mass battles.

[K Peterson]

So anyhow, what's your wargaming look like these days.

Pretty stagnant these days.

I last got some serious wargaming in 5 years ago, when I strong-armed some friends into buying into the prepainted, discontinued, and affordable AT-43. I guided them into finding great deals through eBay and private parties, helped them construct army lists, and wrote up battle reports on a blog. We got in about 5 months of intense campaign play, before the group stalled and I couldn't get it going again. Friends started making babies and it was all downhill from there.

A few years before that, I played a little bit of Flames of War with a good friend and some of his buddies. But I didn't buy into it that heavily. Which ended up a good thing, because that friend moved out of the country within a year, and no one else was interested in keeping that fire going.

A decade prior to that, around 2000, I bought into WFB 6th edition, and had a blast modelling and painting a Dwarf army. Purchased about 2500 points worth, and really enjoyed the process, but I didn't put any effort into building army lists or getting a fundamental understanding of the rules. I just really like painting the beardy bastards and their siege engines. So, when I finally got an army together, and went down to play a few times at a local GW store, I got pummeled in a few battles. That took some of the wind out of my sails. And within 6 months I packed everything up and eBay'd it.

These days, I'm not sure if I want to put forth the effort, or have the time, to construct some armies and get some people together. My attention has been a lot more focused on miniature-boardgames because I can find more of an audience for them. Lately, I've bought into the latest edition of BloodBowl, and it's my Spring/Summer project to paint up a number of teams, and get a lot of games in. Maybe I'll give it a go of either joining a league or putting one together myself.

[Tod13]

What is considered "cheap" for "wargames"?

(All prices are USD.) I backed the Ogre Miniatures Set 1 Kickstarter because for $150 I could get the Ogre Miniatures Set 1 in three different colors, a copy of Ogre 6th Edition (box set), a copy of Ogre Reinforcement (box set) when it ships, and an Ogre card game. This is about 150 miniatures, with several being double sized (Ogre tanks).

So it comes out to, lets say $50 each for 3 different armies. (They even include a copy of Ogre Miniatures Lite, so it can even be a "real" (ruler) wargame if you want.)

When I looked at Bolt Action, it seemed really expensive. $40 for the core PDF. $40 for an eBook (is that ePub?). $20 for individual army PDFs. And "starter kits" at $150 each. It looks like 500 pt armies are sometimes available for around $75.

Not trying to pick on Bolt Action--it seems somewhat close to a lot of other miniatures games, except for the rule books. Most games that I've looked at, usually sci-fi or fantasy, offer their rule books for free as PDFs, which is probably due to the dependence on concept-specific minis rather than historical miniatures which are theoretically available from alternative sources.

[Tristram Evans]

Price is relative. A decent starting army in Warhammer Fantasy circa 8th edition would set one back $300-500, and thats before paints and supplies.