dbm
Savage!
I used to be fairly into wargaming, had a large Ultramarines army, a moderately sized Eldar army, and in fantasy I had a High Elf army. But is kind of fell out of it for two reasons. First, the painting aspect of the hobby is less interesting to me so I find it a bit of a chore and my gaming group are quite hot on painted minis when they do play. Second, we were playing mostly GW games and the rules balance and churn are both pretty off putting.
I do miss it some of the time still, and I’ve managed to find some of the same fun in board war games. Battle Lore 2e is a great board war game - it gives strong Fantasy Battle feels but in a much more compact way. Three different armies available, multiple generated battle scenarios, variable terrain, hidden deployment and objective based victory rather than just ‘kill them all’. The best bit - you can play a full battle including army design in about an hour. So a couple of battles can be fit into a single night of gaming. It uses the Command And Colours system for ‘fog of war’ and this is also great fun in my opinion.
I’m still looking for a comparable sci-fi game, but there isn’t really one out there that I have found yet.
I also recently picked up some new rules for ‘proper’ miniatures gaming and I’m reading them. It’s the Dragon Rampant and Xenos Rampant rule sets. These are both based on the Lion Rampant historic rules but for fantasy and sci-fi respectively. They were quite affordable from Osprey Games. As miniature-agnostic rules they have a system for creating your army list to fit whatever units you want to field, so I’m hoping this might give me a fun, slightly quicker playing rule system free from ‘codex creep’ and changes in the meta. I might even get my painted Eldar army out of storage and finish painting my revised Ultramarines.
This was my original Ultramarines before I sold them in 2012
I do miss it some of the time still, and I’ve managed to find some of the same fun in board war games. Battle Lore 2e is a great board war game - it gives strong Fantasy Battle feels but in a much more compact way. Three different armies available, multiple generated battle scenarios, variable terrain, hidden deployment and objective based victory rather than just ‘kill them all’. The best bit - you can play a full battle including army design in about an hour. So a couple of battles can be fit into a single night of gaming. It uses the Command And Colours system for ‘fog of war’ and this is also great fun in my opinion.
I’m still looking for a comparable sci-fi game, but there isn’t really one out there that I have found yet.
I also recently picked up some new rules for ‘proper’ miniatures gaming and I’m reading them. It’s the Dragon Rampant and Xenos Rampant rule sets. These are both based on the Lion Rampant historic rules but for fantasy and sci-fi respectively. They were quite affordable from Osprey Games. As miniature-agnostic rules they have a system for creating your army list to fit whatever units you want to field, so I’m hoping this might give me a fun, slightly quicker playing rule system free from ‘codex creep’ and changes in the meta. I might even get my painted Eldar army out of storage and finish painting my revised Ultramarines.
This was my original Ultramarines before I sold them in 2012
Last edited:
