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Mantic makes a range of games. Their skirmish games are generally very good: Vanguard for fantasy, Deadzone for SF, The Walking Dead for modern horror.

They also tend to use the newer, better miniatures.

Osprey will sell you PDFs or eBooks as well as paper copies. The miniatures lines are sold by North Star Figures in the UK - not sure if they ship to Europe?

I'm going to suggest a couple of more unusual companies.

Nordic Weasel sell PDFs cheaply on Wargame Vault. He has a huge range of SF, Fantasy and historical games. Some can be played solo or co-operative, others are more traditional. They are ALL full of ideas.

Stargrunt II by Ground Zero Games is a free SF ruleset for platoon combat with a vehicle or two. It's very different from 40k, and the rules may take a while to "click" in place in your mind. It's about manoeuvre to concentrate fire. Casualties don't just vanish, but have to be coped with. The company sells a huge range of 15mm figures - cheap to buy, build and paint a platoon.

Too Fat Lardies is a historical games company. Their games concentrate on how leaders give orders and maintain troop morale. In the "fog of war", plans fall apart. Activation is driven by cards turning up, and the deck also includes special events and flags you can accumulate for extra or exceptional actions.

I'd recommend Sharpe Practice, which covers 18th and 19th century warfare. It covers the French-Indian War, the Seven Years War, Napoleonics and a bit of Colonial action, and the army lists hold period flavour well.

Dux Britanniarum (Romano-British vs Saxon invaders - campaign play is very strong). The game is strongly themed - challenges, speeches and getting the troops drunk before battle, and generally weaker but better-drilled British troops trying to hold shieldwalls against tougher but undisciplined Saxons. There is a LotR-themed fan version of DB called Dux Arda.

Their WWII game, Chain of Command is exceptional. Dominance can swing rapidly, and several times in a game. You don't deploy everything immediately - there's a patrol phase where scouts push forward and lock down both sides' furthest probes. Troops then come onto the table behind those points as they activate. It's supported by some amazing historical campaign supplement books too.

A force is usually 35-70 figures, in units of 6-8 with separate leaders.

Two Hour Wargames make games for... everything! Their rules focus on reactions - your leader figure represents you, and you choose how to respond to events. Your troops roll on a reaction table - they may prefer to hide rather than fight, or they get frustrated and charge.

Their modern games have different reaction tables for civilians vs cops and soldiers. Their SF games have different tables for each alien race. Big battle games have different reactions for differing army tactical styles.

Their games have strong campaign elements, and sometimes it's wiser to run away than fight to the death. In their Vietnam campaign game FNG, US troops get more cautious the closer they get to the end of their tour!

You're welcome.....


https://www.wargamevault.com/

 Grimtuff wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
What's tricky about WW2?

As he said, it's a sensitive topic.

I know a fair few people round here (myself included) who won't touch historicals with a barge pole as (one of my friends puts it) "You're no longer playing pretend, as this gak really happened.". He, and I both certainly won't touch WW2 games in particular for that reason as we are both of the age where we had grandparents fight in that conflict, so it hits far too close to home for us.

Some people are okay with it, we have an RAF base quite close by and loads of the RAF guys play Bolt Action; but for some it is just to on the nose.

Would you also be offended by the boardgame Axis & Allies?

+1 Zona Alfa and Frostgrave

Cheap/use any models

Wonderful game

Gets your creativity flowing with all of the terrain building!

These days we are enjoying the gw renaissance.

Most fun we've had in a long time is newcromunda, shadespire and Blackstone fortress. I'm a big fan of warcry as well. Need to try out titanicus too.

In terms of other games, We really enjoyed warlords 'test of honor' game. Samurai and ashigaru. Its a small game skirmish, and while the models aren't the best, We found it lent itself very easily to a narrative focus and the rules are very simple yet elegant and immersive.

Another great game we use for 'not quite historicals' is gws old lots of the rings sbg game. Simple, immersive intuitive and elegant. Go easy on the movie characters and big Boyz and the game works very reasonably well.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Would you also be offended by the boardgame Axis & Allies?

In general, I suspect that the more stylised (ie:less realistic) a game gets, the easier people would find it to gloss over the subject matter. That being said, while not being 'offended' by it, I'll play Risk over A&A.

Yeah can't speak for anyone else, I'm not offended by historical games that take place in living memory or close to it, but I'd rather play something else.