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currently thinking of using them for skeletons for kings of war/warhammer fantasy but I have a large collection of 1/72 miniatures from medieval, ancients and napoleon eras and was wondering what games can I use them for, what are the rule sets that allow massive battles?

Also I have a a lot of zombies and skeletons from mantic/GW is it possible use them historical battles as peasant rabble or such?

Can't you use the zombies and skeletons as skeletons for KoW/WHFB, and the 1/72 historicals for historical games...?

I have no idea how many historical mass battle rule sets there are. I've recently found out what kind of rabbit-hole it is, just looking for company+ level WWII rules. Some well-recieved ancients/medieval rules have been pointed at and linked to in the 6mm topic further down the board - Hail Caesar, Sword and Spear, In Death Ground, Impetus, DBA and DBM - but I've no doubt that's only scratching the surface of what might scratch your particular itch. I can tell you that all of those mentioned are element/unit based games like KoW, but with more command mechanics and differing levels of complexity; while the games War & Conquest and Clash of Empires are more Warhammer-like. (Taking their cues from the OOP Warhammer Ancient Battles) Good enough list to start with and google?

For Napoleonics I'd be even less help. The local club used Black Powder for an ACW Gettysburg game, and seemed to like it well enough, with a few movement houserules. (I liked it myself, though the movement rates seem designed for the humongous tables played on by Rick Preistly and the Perrys et al.) There are a number of Napoleonic supplements for the game, but I'd hazard Napoleonic rulesets are like beetle species: outnumbering almost everything else by a fair margin. The local club were dead-set on switching to the latest edition of Napoleon's Battles, at least, but it seemed a bit charty for my tastes.

Mantic is releasing a Historicals supplement for KoW early next year. You can then scratch your Historicals and Fantasy itch without learning a ton of different rulesets.

Also, KoW is married to base size, not really the model size, so you could make scenic battle scenes on your trays with the 1/72 models and it wouldn't impact the game play, using the models that are smaller than your opponenets.

Popular mass battle rules for Ancient and Mediaeval include:

De Bellis Antiquitatis
De Bellis Magistorum Militum
Hail Caesar
Field of Glory
Impetus

All of these can be used with the same base sizes so whichever one you start with, the figures will transfer to any of the others.

I recommend DBA to start, as it is the simplest, smallest army size and quickest playing rules. V3.0 is currently available and earlier editions OOP can be picked up on eBay.

Lots more information is available from the Fanaticus site.

http://www.fanaticus.org

where you will also find the very useful WADBAG explanation document for DBA.

If you want to play Fantasy games, the Hordes of The Things rules are a Fantasy variant of DBA.