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I've played all those systems, and now I play Infinity with renewed passion for wargaming.

It's really awesome to play a game where you don't want to check text messages on your opponents turn because you need to keep aware and take reactive shots. The game feels like real skirmish and tactics: you edge around corners, drop prone and crawl to the edge of a building to snipe people below, fill a room with smoke then have someone with a special visor pick off the now-blinded targets, etc. Warmachine and Hordes felt too gimicky, and wins weren't to be a game enjoyed by both sides - lots of assassination, real face punching style game play.

Entry to the game is cheap. Free rules, free factions, youtube rules videos to get into it, youtube fluff videos on each faction (sweet), fantastic models. Warmachine cost me a TON for playing with so few models, and in retrospect they weren't very clean sculpts.

Besides, it has a fantastic background. Space Punks, Knightly Orders defending an Artificial Intelligence, I Robot style factions, United Islam, a united Asia faction, Technologically inferior space explorers with a hint of werewolfism, and a combined army of alien factions... Soo good.

Heavy Gear has some rocking miniatures, with a decent set of rules. Typical games have a larger model count than Infinity, and pretty comparable to Battletech. Armor, infantry and Gears (mechs) all have a pretty integrated place on the battlefield, and the game plays pretty quick. You can do a 1000 point game - about 20-25 models per side - in about 3-4 hours. Checkout http://www.dp9.com for more details, if you're interested.

Going to be completely bias and throwing Brushfire out there.

Historical Parody Skirmish game that scales up and down rather well. Small games are around 4~6 Models, average games are 10~20 models, and it can easily scale up from there to a few hundred models if you really feel like it. Rulebook includes all the standard gameplay information along with campgain information, and unit information for eight factions (including base sizes for proxies).

Best of look no matter what you choose.

Warmachine is definitely a good choice, especially now that many warjacks are available in plastic (which gives you more options). Using the larger Warjacks also helps keep your model count low, too. I really like the rules, really like the models, but don't connect to it like the Warhammer/WH40K background. If that doesn't matter to you, and you like "dreadnoughts", it should be really good.

My gaming buddies got me interested in Legends of the Old West, from Warhammer Historicals. It's a skirmish level game, much like Mordheim, based in the American Old West. Your "'army" is a posse (Lawmen, or Cowboys, or Outlaws, with other options in the expanded rule books). Most posses start at 5-8 guys, and can't get bigger than 12-16. If you like Westerns, it's a great game for you, and definitely not one where you need lots of models. You can shop with Foundry, and get 6 guys for about $24 US, or someone like Artizan, and get 3 guys for about $8 US. Plus, it's basically the same scale as Warhammer, so your desert scenery can do double duty on Warhammer battlefields if you come back to the game!

Warmachine, the only other Miniature game i play, the transition seems to be smooth from Warhammer 40 K to Warmachine, the only gamebook you will need for a while is your is the rulebook itself, hell the battlebox comes with a quick start rule

IceRaptor wrote:Heavy Gear has some rocking miniatures, with a decent set of rules. Typical games have a larger model count than Infinity, and pretty comparable to Battletech. Armor, infantry and Gears (mechs) all have a pretty integrated place on the battlefield, and the game plays pretty quick. You can do a 1000 point game - about 20-25 models per side - in about 3-4 hours. Checkout http://www.dp9.com for more details, if you're interested.

In addition to this, Heavy Gear has a rich back story and a RPG element. So if you can get 3-5 people into it with you, you can create a good RPG that utilizes the minis, doubling your investment.
I would highly recomend it.

I will throw a vote towards BattleTech also, for the very same reasons.

I love Warmachine. Even if I didn't have fun people to play, I'd
buy collect and paint the models.

I still buy collect and paint GW models, just at a much slower rate.

Malifaux seems to hit the sweet spot of players + low model count.

I haven' made the time to play it, though.

Do space ships and/or steam stuff interest you? Then there's
Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars, but they seem like
super-niche games.

I second Brushfire as well. Solid game and fun minis selection.

also go with Infinity the game. Its squad based combat

http://www.infinitythegame.com/

Also by spartan games is Dystopian wars if you love naval combat that is set around WWI but is also a bit sci-fi.

Chess is nice lol. But otherwise I would recommend Flames of War.

Brother SRM wrote:I'd look into Battletech. A new starter box came out with 26 mechs, 2 multipart mechs, and everything you need to play for $50. You can pick up other mechs from Iron Wind Metals for around $10 a mech. It's been going strong for 25 years, and I've always enjoyed it.

Always a good choice.

Warmachine and Hordes are good. Mantic Games makes some nice looking fantasy Dwarf stuff, but i havent seen the rules so i cant comment on them.

Ill pop back and add some more when ive had some sleep and my brain is working better.


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malfred wrote:

I still buy collect and paint GW models

Same here. I like a lot of GWs minis, just dont care for their rules.

I will give another thumbs up for Heavy Gear. It has been around for ever and has been well supported the whole way through.

If you are less concerned about the viability of a game then one route to take is buying an oop game on the cheap. There are all kinds of options from Warzone to Starship Troopers. I was a big fan of Rail Wars rules. The miniatures are dated and not so cheap, but you could just as well use generic ones.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also wanted to mention Atomic Cafe by Bridage games, but had forgotten the name.

Dashofpepper wrote:I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and tell you to check out Malifaux. Models are scary nice, and there are fewer of them.

I'll also have to recommend Malifaux, great models, low cost of entry and and interesting system.

Hell Dorado also looks cool, if they ever release the english book in print.

I'll echo the pro-Malifaux sentiment, but with a caveat.
make sure you know what kind of group you're getting into.
Malifaux is becoming much like Warmachine in that you have to play to WIN or play to HAVE FUN. If you want to make a 'fun" list, but your opponent makes "Captain Uber-hard and the butt kickers" list, you're not going to enjoy watching your army get destroyed on the first or second turn, due to certain combos.
There's quite a bit of escalation that goes on with the lists, now that they've gotten their second HUGE expansion book out. Also, they've got all or most of the content for the 3rd book created and playtested already, so the next book that comes out will escalate things that much more.

Eric

Cadichan Support wrote:Chess is nice lol.

I found that the army customization and codex variety in Chess was rather lacking, and the hobby side almost nonexistent. It is nice to see that so many different companies support it, though.

AgeOfEgos wrote:Warmachine seems solid.


Most of all though, don't sell your GW stuff to fund this. Even if you are happy short term-----you'll probably be back. And then you'll regret selling your stuff.

Possibly, but I honestly would still sell them even if I do come in later. I play SW and Tau and have just kind of lost my taste for both armies. So if I do come back in I might want a completely different army.

Also...try explaining to the misses why I have a whole new game I am playing on top of 40k, Call of Cthulhu, video games, D&D, Gamma World...etc. Trust me, the trade off would be better justified not only to my wife but to myself.

thehod wrote: Also by spartan games is Dystopian wars if you love naval combat that is set around WWI but is also a bit sci-fi.

+1, although it is more like the Civil War eara (1870). The good thing about DW is that it is going to be land, sea, and air, so you could eventually do just one or some mix of two more! Model count is a lot smaller than 40k/Fantasy, too (1,000 point games are about 20 models or so), but I'm not sure how that compares to some of the other games being mentioned here.

Well, wives are a different story and I understand. Reminds me of when we were reorganizing my son's room. I couldn't believe the amount of toys that were in there and I said something to the affect of "I haven't seen you play with this stuff for some time son, maybe we should go through some of this and store it away?". My son reluctantly said "Ok, I'll pick some of them."

About 5 minutes later my son came down to the rec room and said "Mom said you haven't played with those one Death guys (My Death Guard) for awhile and maybe you should get rid of them". Point well taken....


Anyways, Warmachine has been solid every time we've dipped our toes into the rules set. The models are very hit/miss for me...quite literally I love a release or loathe it but there is a wide enough variety of factions/models I'm sure you can find a set. Another nice thing about WM is how radically a caster change affects the play style of your army. This helps keep your army fresh from game to game. Good luck!

ProtoClone wrote:

AgeOfEgos wrote:Warmachine seems solid.


Most of all though, don't sell your GW stuff to fund this. Even if you are happy short term-----you'll probably be back. And then you'll regret selling your stuff.

Possibly, but I honestly would still sell them even if I do come in later. I play SW and Tau and have just kind of lost my taste for both armies. So if I do come back in I might want a completely different army.

Also...try explaining to the misses why I have a whole new game I am playing on top of 40k, Call of Cthulhu, video games, D&D, Gamma World...etc. Trust me, the trade off would be better justified not only to my wife but to myself.

You could get into Mongoose's new rules sets... They have a starship game coming out now/soon, and a Vietnam system not (apparently) unlike 40k by their own admission.

Warmachine is a good bet if you want others to play with you but may be lacking in some regions.

Malfaux and Helldorado are both small scale and small player base games you might find people playing in your local area.

Spartan Games suffers from the most bought minis, least played game.

Historicals, well, if you find a group, if they play locally, if you don't mind the attitude, of WYSIWYG/Better be painted historically with the proper colors/banner/unit size etc... These groups tend to form in large cities.

Well, there's also Heroclix, they are back.

Oh and Ugio... Yougiou, whatever, have a thing for young boyz?


Sorry, maybe to much sarcasm.

There's always Magic: The Gathering.

There's no, you should play this answer, honestly all games are very much regional, from 40k to fantasy and Warmahordes and others, It really depends on what your local game groups play, if you're lucky you may find a group who plays some obscure OOP game despite lack of support. Maybe not, why has GW lasted for so long, the honest answer is, because people play it, so others buy it.

Dust always looks interesting to me, that new box came out with 2 factions for $100 and the models look sweet.

AgeOfEgos wrote:Well, wives are a different story and I understand. Reminds me of when we were reorganizing my son's room. I couldn't believe the amount of toys that were in there and I said something to the affect of "I haven't seen you play with this stuff for some time son, maybe we should go through some of this and store it away?". My son reluctantly said "Ok, I'll pick some of them."

About 5 minutes later my son came down to the rec room and said "Mom said you haven't played with those one Death guys (My Death Guard) for awhile and maybe you should get rid of them". Point well taken....


Anyways, Warmachine has been solid every time we've dipped our toes into the rules set. The models are very hit/miss for me...quite literally I love a release or loathe it but there is a wide enough variety of factions/models I'm sure you can find a set. Another nice thing about WM is how radically a caster change affects the play style of your army. This helps keep your army fresh from game to game. Good luck!

I am definitely intrigued by WM and like the looks of a lot of the models. Also, given how popular it is I think I might be more likely to find a game in my area. So WM is making it to the final rounds.

Battletech I have also been interested in, want more info though.

I would love to try out Infinity, Malifaux and Mercenaries but think I might be at a loss of opponents in my area.

Is there an interactive map of players for some of these games?

Warmachine and Hordes are well-designed games, from a rules standpoint, but they play hard. Just about every model has a dirty trick, and there's a ton going on in any given turn -- there's twin learning curves: the first is in getting your army's activation order right and not fething up your special, once-per-game activations; the other's in learning everyone else's nonsense and preparing for it. Neither game is forgiving of mistakes, and they can be rough on new players.

I haven't played Malifaux, but did pick up the rulebook. There's a lot to recommend it -- it's a lot more interactive and a much smaller scale than many games -- but there's also a ton of tables. The designers did a lot of contortions to fit the poker deck in the place of dice, and it shows. Maybe it's one of those things that flows better in practice, but it looks really clunky. I'd make sure to play a demo or watch a few games before buying into it. Similar to Warmahordes, each figure has a crazy number of abilities, too -- I'd bet new players get blindsided by nonsense quite often.

ProtoClone wrote:

I would love to try out Infinity, Malifaux and Mercenaries but think I might be at a loss of opponents in my area.

Is there an interactive map of players for some of these games?

I only wish there was a site that collected and stored data from players----directed to regional venues. I 'know' there must be more 40k players in my town----but good luck sniffing each other out.

AgeOfEgos wrote:
Most of all though, don't sell your GW stuff to fund this. Even if you are happy short term-----you'll probably be back. And then you'll regret selling your stuff.

LOL, maybe. Id vote for keeping the minis, but skeptical on the coming back to GW games...if its the rules he doesnt like then he may be gone for good...as I dont picture GWs rules getting any better...

I'd like to strongly suggest Song of Blades and Heroes by Ganesha games. It's more than just a cheap PDF. It's a fast moving fantasy skirmish ruleset with which you can use any of the miniatures you already have.

Our club has had alot of luck getting ex-GW players, former RPG'ers and folks from other games into it because of the low buy-in (most gamers already own appropriate miniatures) and fast play rules. It takes around an hour to play a game, so you can run campaigns very quickly. There's also a few expansions that take the game in interesting directions without over-complicating it. Best of all, you can buy any fantasy minatures that catch your fancy and have a use for them without having to learn a whole new set of rules every time!

http://www.ganeshagames.net/fantasy/

Also, as was mentioned before, check out the Two Hour Wargames series of games. They have alot of games based on their games engine, and they have free downloads of earlier editions so you can try before you buy. Their sci-fi ruleset is called 5150, but download the free "Chain Reaction 3" game first to see if you like the THW reaction system.

Oh, battletech.

Plastic Clix. Dead game.
Metal hex based. Think of it like historicals.

Check out Full Thrust from Ground Zero Games. It's free to download and not tied to a specific model line (although the official models are pretty nice).

Just stay away from the ship builder unless you like playing top trumps (you can build ships that make the standard ones look like toys).

Malifaux. Contrary to what one poster said, if you play Malifaux to its spirit (going with a Faction, not with a set army list), and play your crew to match your opponent, it can be a pretty fantastically balanced game that's fun at the same time as competitive.

More importantly, the card and fate cheating mechanic takes a significant component of frustrating bad luck dice rolling out of the equation. Fluff's freakin' cool too. Horror zombie western steampunk.

I've put an indefinate hold on my GW-ing myself, in favor of Cold War Commander. My print-on-demand copy arrived a couple of days ago and it seems -stunningly- easy to play.

The rules are much more streamlined than 40K. For example, saving rolls for infantry are removed in favor of a hitpoints/wounds system, and thanks to an orders system that functions like a 40K morale check, units can perform more than one move or firing action per turn with the presence of a nearby Command/HQ unit. "Ballistic skill" stat is nonexistant, and "To-wound" rolls are removed from infantry and replaced by a 'hit by cover type' system, where units in the open are hit on 4-6, units in soft/partial cover are hit on 5-6, and and units in hardpoints are hit on a 6. And it works with everything from 2mm to 28mm. I'm just waiting for my 15mm stuff to show up, and then I'm jumping right in.

Mewens wrote:Warmachine and Hordes are well-designed games, from a rules standpoint, but they play hard. Just about every model has a dirty trick, and there's a ton going on in any given turn -- there's twin learning curves: the first is in getting your army's activation order right and not fething up your special, once-per-game activations; the other's in learning everyone else's nonsense and preparing for it. Neither game is forgiving of mistakes, and they can be rough on new players.

I can't second this enough. I'm not incompetent in most games I play, but Warmahordes can be an exercise in frustration when you first get started playing. Especially if you hodge-podge your collection, based on what looks nice, rather than what synergizes together well. It's brutally unforgiving of mistakes, even down to the estimation of an inch or so. I'm currently 0-7 with my Cryx, who are apparently the 'cheaty' faction, because of the multitude of special rules I don't account for.

That said, it can be very satisfying to get a chain of rules going your way, and some of their models are pretty nice looking. So take the above only as advice to give the game time to grow on you, if you're interested.