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I'm not sure where to ask this, I think this is the right area

I'm thinking of trying to make my own fantasy skirmish based wargame. But I've came to the problem of not knowing what the races / factions should have

So far I Have Goblins and Humans. What race would you like to see in a fantasy wargame ?

Dwarves and gnomes maybe?

OGRES. God damn it, I want twenty model armies and I want them to be competitive.

Gnomes, pixies, bog monsters, fish men, ghouls, Banshees, spirit creatures, Satyr legged fawns.

Nagas, Beastmen, Dwarfs and gnomes, Fey folk and Ogres

Higher-tech factions always appealed to me. It'd be nice to have the technological faction not be inexplicably short, for once (Dwarves, Gnomes, Goblins, etc).

Well, humans aside, Orcs, Elves, Dwarves and Undead are pretty much the standard, and you would probably do well to include those at least in some form. It makes the game/setting accessible to people familiar with D&D/Warhammer/LotR/Elder Scrolls/WoW ect, the Fantasy settings that are big enough that most people are at least aware of them, and basically if you're going to omit them, you need a good reason.

That doesn't mean you need to stick to the tropes, though. Instead of Dwarves being master craftsmen, they could be a primitive/barbarian race. While the trend is that Elves are generally the force for Order/Good, you could take them back to their faerie/fey roots and make them more chaotic, more dangerous, and less moral. Orcs neednt be a slave race or mindless monster, why not give them a culture beyond 'the biggest are the best'? Undead, too, can be done in many ways; restless souls seeking solace, heroes from ages gone by, even integrated into living society if you want to really shake things up!

Beyond that, go wild, just keep in mind that, as this is a game as much as setting, each race needs to bring something to the table in terms of how they play ect. There's little point in offering fishmen, tree-people, golems and talking hamsters as playable factions if they are all functionally identical, or close enough.

As an aside, the other way round that is to be race-agnostic as Frostgrave (for example) is; instead of 'army lists' divided by race there is instead just a single list of Profiles for anything from generic humans to alien invaders (in theory), you just pick the ones that fit your chosen models best.

Kobolds!

Or orcs. I also like forest-y elves.

Naga and cervitaurs. And as few [animal]man races as possible.

I really like all the races found here:

http://www.microworldgames.com/

Heaps of mixed man beast style forces too.



Oh and MOLE PEOPLE.

Make the humans different from the "generic western europe" that dominates so much of fantasy. There's a whole world of cultures and societies to draw from.

Cannibalistic Elves.

An undead army that's not horde based. Instead, individual necromancers lead small forces of bone constructs and machines.

 toasteroven wrote:
Make the humans different from the "generic western europe" that dominates so much of fantasy. There's a whole world of cultures and societies to draw from.

Cannibalistic Elves.

An undead army that's not horde based. Instead, individual necromancers lead small forces of bone constructs and machines.

I was think of doing the humans as a Ottoman 'based' army so some Janissaries and maybe a cannon.
Cannibalistic Elves, Sounds like Dwarf Fortress
And The Undead Bone Constructs sound interesting.

Gnolls, Dark knights, armies of undead horrors, HP lovecraftian style demons / ones out of Conan. . over all another suggestion would be to look at the miniature board gaming market, miniature gaming is very difficult to break into ( and fund on kickstarter) were board games are some more investment for sure but a much larger and broader market to enter. However if you want to do a skirmish game still I would recommend starting out with a starter box with enough for two players to play and start from their.

Skaven or as I call them Chaos Vermin Legion

No Fantasy setting is complete without some kind of Undead.

 -Loki- wrote:
No Fantasy setting is complete without some kind of Undead.

In 40K they're called Plague Zombies.

I suppose the larger question really, in my mind is what is the setting like??

We all know that orcs, goblins, elves and dwarfs are all "par for the course" in fantasy settings. So, depending on the size of your "skirmishes" do you want humans to be the relative horde armies with a very small number of orcs/ogres? Are you going to have cavalry and the usual "warhammer fantasy" type stuff?

If so, I could see a naga race being pretty cool. You could easily have cobra type snakes being HQs, Rattle snake looking types as "cavalry" (give them cavalry stats) and things like Boas or Python types as the heavy hitters


Perhaps, instead of having armies represented by races, you have the HQs act similarly to a DnD character? By this I mean you have a race, which narrows or expands your army options. Plus, you have a "class" which narrows your options. In this way, you could have a "druid" army, where a central druid, through his magical control "raises" an army of forest creatures to fight for him/her (thinking in terms of like, horde TK here) A warrior type could have strong, disiplined troops, or a fast moving cavalry force, etc.

 Ironwolf123 wrote:
I'm thinking of trying to make my own fantasy skirmish based wargame. But I've came to the problem of not knowing what the races / factions should have

So far I Have Goblins and Humans. What race would you like to see in a fantasy wargame ?

Elfs, of course. They were in Star Trek, for pity's sake.

Humans, Elfs, Orcs at a minimum.

plus Undead and Beastmen.

Dwarves / Gnomes / Halflings seem not to add much (except for comedy, perpetual Little Man Syndrome).

 Ironwolf123 wrote:
I was think of doing the humans as a Ottoman 'based' army so some Janissaries and maybe a cannon.
Cannibalistic Elves, Sounds like Dwarf Fortress
And The Undead Bone Constructs sound interesting.

Heh, yeah, I was thinking of Dwarf Fortress.

Using the Ottoman's as a source sounds like an excellent idea, a lot of unique and characterful things to draw from.

Insectoids. Untapped market.