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I browsed through the alternative games thread and was mildly surprised at the lack of fantasy games around these days. wondering if any could reccomend any still in print as I no longer have my bladestorm and fantasy warriors rules and not overly keen on KOW's set unit size.

Hi Vermillion.
Have you looked at Armies Of Arcana?
An excelent rules set by Thane Games with a provable level of balance suitable for competative play.(Their are 23 army lists available to down load for FREE!)

War Gods by Crocodile games. More of a skirmish sized game. 4-5 units including Harbinger.

Since I'm fond of my imaginitive settings as opposed to the more real life setting armies of arcana is looking quite appealing, what is the rules system like?

One older alternative is Hordes of the Things by Wargames Research Group. It is not in print, but is available as a free download from their website. http://www.wrg.me.uk/

Reaper's Warlord if you want a skirmish-oriented fantasy game.

Here is what the Thane Morgan says about AoA.(Its better than I can explain it!)

Armies of Arcana plays at a good pace. It plays just as well with 20 models as it does with 200, and allows plenty of scope for players to think tactically during the battle. It works very well with bigger battles as the simple mechanisms are able to comfortably carry a heavy workload and still play smoothly without bogging down. Magic is powerful, but localised and controllable; morale is important, but not unpredictable; combat is realistic, but not complex. Armies and battles are not limited by the imagination of those who wrote the rules – you, the player, are given the tools to embody your own conception of your fantasy armies in metal and plastic, and set them to battle with myriad foes in a world of your imagination.

What makes Armies of Arcana different from the rest?

The game was designed with the follow objectives
■to play differently from the standard rule sets that were around;
■to try and recreate as much as possible the real to life actions found on a battlefield so that the outcomes of his games were more realistic and logical;
■to keep the focus on strategy and retaining a real need for tactical skill;
■to ensure that the player was the General of his army and played the opposing General, rather than the system playing itself;
■to design a points allocation formula that ensured a high level of balance between every army and creature in the system, to encourage diversity and choice, not artificial limitations and restrictions;
■to include historical, ancient and medieval armies within the framework of a fantasy construct to allow a genuine cross-over between fantasy and historical army lists and miniatures;
■to be scale friendly (most notably to 25-28mm and 15mm models) and open to all figure manufacturers;
■to move away from game mechanics that allowed overly powerful individual characters, monsters and units, often further enhanced with increasingly fantastic magical items and spells, from dominating and even pre-determining the outcome of a tabletop encounter.

Each turn of Armies of Arcana has 6 phases. The phases are designed to give a sense of simultaneity between the actions of each player. Each phase is completed by all players before the next phase begins. The order of phases in a turn is:

I.Fleeing Units Phase
II.Movement Phase
III.Magic Phase
IV.Missile Phase
V.Melee Phase
VI.Morale Phase

I hope this helps!

If you don't mind smaller model counts, there's always Hordes. [/obligatoryPPplug]

For smaller model counts there are more skirmish games than you can shake a hot meal at.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:For smaller model counts there are more skirmish games than you can shake a hot meal at.

This.

Was considering hordes, the werewolf models really appeal to me. But overall I like the larger scale regiment/squad based stuff and really enjoyed epic and the like so might nose around and look into AoA some more. Just really wish mantic had done their dwarves 28mm right now looking over armies!