Care to share any of those better written games (At least table top war or skirmish)? Our group plays some killteam and I and my son (I am the guy who sucked his son into playing with the toy soldiers) both have small armies, but I think you are right with the rules bloat. I think we will stick to 8th, but I am entertaining other stuff as well.
A Song of Ice & Fire by CMON - A surprisingly easy-to-learn, hard-to-master rank-and-file game with alternating activations. Surprisingly cheap to get started with as each faction's starter set (or the Stark vs Lannister boxset if you're playing those) includes the rulebook, dice, 2D terrain, rulers, etc that you'll need to play, as well as models that're almost enough to get you up to standard point matches (especially the Night's Watch box). It also introduces the Tactics Board which represents the "plots going on behind the scenes" where you claim one of several points on the board, which provide instantaneous effects in addition to what those characters do anyway. There's also a card game element with the Tactics Dead, though a few people dislike it for the more "Gotcha!" moments it provides, even though that's fitting to the narrative. The big downside is Asmodee's historically ability to keep things in stock. The models also come pre-assembled but whether that's a plus or minus is personal preference.
Kings of War - The replacement to Warhammer Fantasy for a lot of people. It's essentially the same game with much tighter balance, more streamlined rules without falling into the trap of casualisation. There's not much to really say about this as if you enjoyed Warhammer Fantasy, you'd enjoy this. Mantic's models aren't great but they are much cheaper than GW's offerings and are improving, as well as not restricting you to their stuff at events (though I guess that might only be relevant in the UK).
Star Wars: Legion - I've not played it myself but it seems to have replaced Warmahordes for the runner up to GW's crown, which considering the popularity of the IP (even these days) doesn't hurt. It suffers from the ASOI&F problem of Asmodee's atrocious unreliability of getting models to stores but it's more popular and although launches are a mess, you can usually pick up new stuff sooner rather than later. My understanding is that it's a fun, quite tight ruleset, but not without its issues (as with any wargame).