Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As the title of of thread suggests, me and my dad are looking around at some Wargames to play as father and son time. Myself, I am the wargamer in the family but my dad has some experience with it with Axis and Allies (although we are moving away from that since it takes a little too much time). We kind of have a couple in mind, but a couple of major things we are looking for:

+Rulesets that are not too complex and can be played in a reasonable amount of time with a decent sized force
+Starter set is balanced and pretty much playable for a while out of the box

Other things that we are kind of looking for but not worried too much:
+Rather inexpensive to get the starter
+Failing that, a good deal for the cost of the box or the game
+Also as well, relatively inexpensive to build up and expand


Here are the games we were thinking:
+Flames of War (Open Fire starter box)
+Bolt Action (Assault on Normandy starter box)
+Hail Caesar! (Conquest of Gaul starter box)
+Wings of Glory (not sure which one me might get yet)
+Kings of War (We might get the Orcs vs Undead one)
+Dreadball (we used to play battleball a lot when I was younger)

Also as well, we kind of like Historical items (mostly World War II), but he is open to anything. Games I have experience with is 40k, Fantasy, Warmachine/Hordes, Infinity, and Necromunda but I mostly play the latter three now. We are not looking to be too competitive and mostly is going to be played casually between us.

Thank you!

Within those options Dreadball is cheap, easy, and immediate. It is, however, a sports game as opposed to a wargame. The miniatures are meh, but an entire team plus extra players is very light on your wallet, so you can expand without putting in a lot of extra money and the starter set is a decent deal. Mantic also generally provides a great deal of support for its products, and there's already a decent base of expansions.

I've heard lots of good stuff about Bolt Action, but I haven't played it.

Outside of that list, have you thought about a miniatures-heavy board game like Zombicide?

The Dropzone Commander two-player starter set is fantastic, if that's your thing. It comes with easy-to assemble, easy to paint miniatures and nice get-you-started-today terrain that you'll probably wind up using for a long while. At less than $100.00 the value is very good as well.

You could also consider a generic genre rule-set with which you can use whatever miniatures you like.

Kings of War can be played really well at 15mm, and there is a fantastic range of nice, well-designed 15mm fantasy miniatures on the market from companies like Khurasan Miniatures that are a whole lot easier on the wallet and a lot easier to get to a table-ready standard than 28mm miniatures. In the developing tradition of Mantic Games, the KOW rules are simple, well-designed, and play quickly, but the miniatures leave much to be desired. 15mm KOW gives you some of the best of both worlds.

If you like Axis and Allies, you might also like Memoir 44, which plays much more quickly, is perfect for two players, and has a wide range of expansions.

weeble1000 wrote:
Within those options Dreadball is cheap, easy, and immediate. It is, however, a sports game as opposed to a wargame. The miniatures are meh, but an entire team plus extra players is very light on your wallet, so you can expand without putting in a lot of extra money and the starter set is a decent deal. Mantic also generally provides a great deal of support for its products, and there's already a decent base of expansions.

I've heard lots of good stuff about Bolt Action, but I haven't played it.

Outside of that list, have you thought about a miniatures-heavy board game like Zombicide?

The Dropzone Commander two-player starter set is fantastic, if that's your thing. It comes with easy-to assemble, easy to paint miniatures and nice get-you-started-today terrain that you'll probably wind up using for a long while. At less than $100.00 the value is very good as well.

You could also consider a generic genre rule-set with which you can use whatever miniatures you like.

Kings of War can be played really well at 15mm, and there is a fantastic range of nice, well-designed 15mm fantasy miniatures on the market from companies like Khurasan Miniatures that are a whole lot easier on the wallet and a lot easier to get to a table-ready standard than 28mm miniatures.

If you like Axis and Allies, you might also like Memoir 44, which plays much more quickly, is perfect for two players, and has a wide range of expansions.

When I mean by a decent-sized force, I mean like the equivalent of a 1250-1500 pts Warhammer 40k army approximately in playtime and feel. I have seen Dropzone Commander before just with the starter set., but that is all I know on it.

Also, I can understand the sentiment on Dreadball. I was using the term 'wargame' as kind of a catch-all term for miniatures games so that is kind of my bad on my part.

I think Bolt Action fits your criteria best.

 Tanakosyke22 wrote:

When I mean by a decent-sized force, I mean like the equivalent of a 1250-1500 pts Warhammer 40k army approximately in playtime and feel.

Hail Caesar is quite a bit larger in size, and it might take a while to get the required or recommended number of minis ready for the table; though as per your specifications, the rules are pretty easy to take in and a fair bit quicker to play. It's also easy to houserule (in fact the authors highly recommend it) so that the fairly intimidating unit and division sizes can be skewed downwards a bit.

To be honest, I'm not so wowed by a lot of starter kits. Obviously very convenient, and great if the game is fantastic and just what you want, but at the same time they can be a bit limiting and overlook the range of independent mini ranges and rule sets out there. I'm with Weeble in that I think just a wee bit of fact-finding, question-asking and mix-matching will pay dividends. For instance, if you lean towards WWII, have you looked at the Too Fat Lardies' I Ain't Been Shot Mum or Chain of Command? They might be especially convenient to order as PDF or tablet downloads, and there's no shortage of 1/72 plastics (hard plastics, even - Plastic Soldier, Valiant, Zvesda) to go with them; and to be frank I'd rather play them than FoW or BA.

What I do play is Battlegroup Kursk. It has maybe a reference table too many and is a victim of 'big shiny expensive rulebook' syndrome, which might disqualify it according to two of your criteria, but the local club likes it well enough.

What kind of game are you looking for? Smaller skirmish game or larger battle game? If your looking for a larger game something like FOW, BA or Kings of War would probably be a good fit. Otherwise something like deadzone or the new Infinity starter set might be of interest to you.

While deadzones rules are meant to be quite fun I was dissapointed with the quality of their miniatures personally.

Playing games at smaller scales such as 6 15 or 20mm will be cheaper than playing in 28mm and might be worth looking into for larger games. I have heard of a few people having fun playing bolt action at 15mm.

Kings of War is a very good game, and the Orc vs. Undead features two of Mantic's best looking armies.

I am going to point out that the rules for Kings of War and Dreadball are available as free PDFs from the Mantic website - so you can take a look and see if they are what you want.

A friend of mine has started doing something... a bit odd... He uses paper undead miniatures on paper movement trays - so he can fold his entire undead army flat, and put it in his briefcase.

Lately he has even started carting around an Elf army - so he can teach folks how to play.

The Auld Grump

Out of those, I'd recommend going for:

Open Fire - if you like the idea of playing in 15mm - more tanks, more troops, just smaller.

Bolt Action - Skirmish gaming, WW2

- note, you can then use the 15mm or 28mm WW2 models with any other game, so they're not a bad option based on the starter set figure deals alone. Though I like both games.

Kings of War - if you prefer fantasy. As TAG has said, their undead are actually objectively nice figures, and while the orcs aren't personally my cup of tea, I know a lot of people really like them. Certainly miles better than their dwarves or elves or goblins.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think Bolt Action fits your criteria best.

Agree with this. Coincidentally, I think it's also the best game in your list by a considerable margin.

Do not buy the KoW orcs vs undead box if you like models. I got half a box of melted plastic. It's too bad, cuz the rules are stellar! Bolt Action seems to be the winner here. D-day, or DADs day?

Half a box of melted plastic? Que?

Bolt action is the way to go, you are not dependable on game universe specific miniatures, as there are many companies that make figures and vehicles for WW2 28mm scale.
Also the rules are easy to learn, tactical and fun (that last part was subjective on my part).

Alright, I'll see about Bolt Action with my Dad and see what he thinks about it.

I checked out the game via BeastsofWar, and I am rather intrigued by it....

 Tanakosyke22 wrote:
As the title of of thread suggests, me and my dad are looking around at some Wargames to play as father and son time. Myself, I am the wargamer in the family but my dad has some experience with it with Axis and Allies (although we are moving away from that since it takes a little too much time). We kind of have a couple in mind, but a couple of major things we are looking for:

+Rulesets that are not too complex and can be played in a reasonable amount of time with a decent sized force
+Starter set is balanced and pretty much playable for a while out of the box

Other things that we are kind of looking for but not worried too much:
+Rather inexpensive to get the starter
+Failing that, a good deal for the cost of the box or the game
+Also as well, relatively inexpensive to build up and expand

Here are the games we were thinking:
+Flames of War (Open Fire starter box)
+Bolt Action (Assault on Normandy starter box)
+Hail Caesar! (Conquest of Gaul starter box)
+Wings of Glory (not sure which one me might get yet)
+Kings of War (We might get the Orcs vs Undead one)
+Dreadball (we used to play battleball a lot when I was younger)

Most of these games are fine.

Bolt Action is a lot like "40k done right", it's quite easy if you've played 40k before. Just like any historical wargame, there are LOTS of manufacturers and scales out there. If you choose to play with 1/72 minis, you can build an entire force (1500+ pts) for 30€.

Hail Caesar is a bit like Warmaster. It's a very nice, elegant and streamlined ruleset for mass battles. The games puts some emphasis on manoeuvres and command, it looks a lot like Warmaster. Since the game can be used for several eras, there's more variety in Hail Caesar than Bolt Action. Furthermore, it's unit-based, allowing you to use smaller scales (for example, Baccus 6mm sells packs that are specifically designed for Hail Caesar).

Bolt Action and Hail Caesar being historical wargames, any army built for these two games can be used for other systems.

Kings of War is another nice game, it's a mass-battle game like Hail Caesar, but the ruleset is even more streamlined. The rules are very, very simple. The only drawback compared to the other two is the fact that you can (mostly) only play KoW with these minis.

Litcheur wrote:

 Tanakosyke22 wrote:
As the title of of thread suggests, me and my dad are looking around at some Wargames to play as father and son time. Myself, I am the wargamer in the family but my dad has some experience with it with Axis and Allies (although we are moving away from that since it takes a little too much time). We kind of have a couple in mind, but a couple of major things we are looking for:

+Rulesets that are not too complex and can be played in a reasonable amount of time with a decent sized force
+Starter set is balanced and pretty much playable for a while out of the box

Other things that we are kind of looking for but not worried too much:
+Rather inexpensive to get the starter
+Failing that, a good deal for the cost of the box or the game
+Also as well, relatively inexpensive to build up and expand

Here are the games we were thinking:
+Flames of War (Open Fire starter box)
+Bolt Action (Assault on Normandy starter box)
+Hail Caesar! (Conquest of Gaul starter box)
+Wings of Glory (not sure which one me might get yet)
+Kings of War (We might get the Orcs vs Undead one)
+Dreadball (we used to play battleball a lot when I was younger)

Most of these games are fine.

Bolt Action is a lot like "40k done right", it's quite easy if you've played 40k before. Just like any historical wargame, there are LOTS of manufacturers and scales out there. If you choose to play with 1/72 minis, you can build an entire force (1500+ pts) for 30€.

Hail Caesar is a bit like Warmaster. It's a very nice, elegant and streamlined ruleset for mass battles. The games puts some emphasis on manoeuvres and command, it looks a lot like Warmaster. Since the game can be used for several eras, there's more variety in Hail Caesar than Bolt Action. Furthermore, it's unit-based, allowing you to use smaller scales (for example, Baccus 6mm sells packs that are specifically designed for Hail Caesar).

Bolt Action and Hail Caesar being historical wargames, any army built for these two games can be used for other systems.

Kings of War is another nice game, it's a mass-battle game like Hail Caesar, but the ruleset is even more streamlined. The rules are very, very simple. The only drawback compared to the other two is the fact that you can (mostly) only play KoW with these minis.

Yeah, I have been hearing that as well. Would also makes sense since Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestly I think wrote the rules for it. And that is not a bad price for 1:72, but I think we are going for the 28mm scale to match what is in the box.

+1 to Bolt Action

If you have a kindle or tablet the bolt action rulebooks are pretty cheap in kindle format.

I'd actually recommend flames of war over bolt action. Flames can be just as cheap as Bolt Action, and has a more mature rules set.

Both are great games though.

 carlos13th wrote:
If you have a kindle or tablet the bolt action rulebooks are pretty cheap in kindle format.

I got a Tablet so I might check it out.

There's a newish Dystopian Legions starter set that could be worth checking out, "Codename: Iron Scorpion". It's a steampunk skirmish game with some heavy historical influences.

According to Spartan Games themselves it's designed to be a "self-contained game", which is a good thing in my book. Comes with a decent chunk of terrain as well. It's a bit pricey from Spartans website, but you can get it cheaper from other retailers.

I vote for Wings of War because.... reasons. It seems like neither of you have much experence with airplane games and they are very different from land-based wargames.

Then, FoW or Bolt Action are a second place toss up depending on your scale/scope preference. Or you could play Bolt Action in 15MM and have what you need fo rboth games!

De Bellis Antiquitatis is a good option for quick play Ancients battles that you can expand to larger and/or more complicated battles by buying more troops.

I know it wasn't on your list but it is worth a look even so.

 Easy E wrote:
I vote for Wings of War because.... reasons. It seems like neither of you have much experence with airplane games and they are very different from land-based wargames.

Then, FoW or Bolt Action are a second place toss up depending on your scale/scope preference. Or you could play Bolt Action in 15MM and have what you need fo rboth games!

The only real experience I have close to that is well....X-Wing, but then again I might see the point those are rather two different things.

Every game you listed is a good choice, but I think you're missing the most important factor. That is, Which would appeal to your dad most? Sure he says he's open to anything, but I bet you know which game most lines up with his own interests.

Since he's not really a wargamer yet, it would behove you to make his first foray into miniature wargaming something he will really enjoy. This will probably be as simple as which era or genre he's already most interested in outside of wargaming. If he takes to it, this could be the beginning of a hobby you mght enjoy for years together, but that's probably going to rest on how his first experience goes.

Best of luck!

 Eilif wrote:
Every game you listed is a good choice, but I think you're missing the most important factor. That is, Which would appeal to your dad most? Sure he says he's open to anything, but I bet you know which game most lines up with his own interests.

Since he's not really a wargamer yet, it would behove you to make his first foray into miniature wargaming something he will really enjoy. This will probably be as simple as which era or genre he's already most interested in outside of wargaming. If he takes to it, this could be the beginning of a hobby you mght enjoy for years together, but that's probably going to rest on how his first experience goes.

Best of luck!

That's a good point Eilif. Systems like wings of glory or x-wing are also easy-entry miniatures Wargames, as the models demand less attention. Same goes for Dust, which are all preassembled, primed, and can be played with out of the box.

Of course, the OP can also handle the heavy lifting with the modeling aspect of other games to lessen the impact.

That's true. I hadn't considered the potential value of pre-painted games. If Dad has no interested in modeling and painting then that might be the way to go.

If Dad does like the preparation of models, then it's probably best to go with whatever game best lines up with his general interests.

Our Wing of Glory group near me is all dads, and then sometimes two lesbians.

 Eilif wrote:
That's true. I hadn't considered the potential value of pre-painted games. If Dad has no interested in modeling and painting then that might be the way to go.

If Dad does like the preparation of models, then it's probably best to go with whatever game best lines up with his general interests.

He says he is interested in that, but the only downside is finding the time to do so.

 Tanakosyke22 wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
That's true. I hadn't considered the potential value of pre-painted games. If Dad has no interested in modeling and painting then that might be the way to go.

If Dad does like the preparation of models, then it's probably best to go with whatever game best lines up with his general interests.

He says he is interested in that, but the only downside is finding the time to do so.

That narrows it down considerably. If prep time is an issue, then your only 3 logical choices are Bolt Action, Dreadball or Wings of Glory. The other choices are all great games, but take ALOT more prep time.

With your stated interest in WW2, that further narrows it down to Wings or Bolt. I'd make my choice there based on whether you want to do any prep at all and whether you think he'd rather do ground combat or airplanes. Wings of Glory is reportedly easy to play, and with your experience with 40k and Necromunda, Bolt Action will feel rather familiar. If you've got the cash, there's no reason not to do both. You guys can wing your way to glory while you assemble and paint your Bolt Action forces.

Hope this helps!

Can I make a possible recommendation off your list? You said you have experience with necromunda: why not try deadzone? Game comes fully playable out of the box, includes modular terrain, and the rules are fairly easy (almost the same as dreadball).