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I wanted to make this post because the discovery of a bunch of my old miniatures while cleaning my parents' place took me down a long trip down memory lane thinking about the games that have come and gone over the years. The ones that were amazing, and that I wish would come back, the ones whose ideas I still look at in the rulebook and go "nobody has quite done anything like this since" and the ones that I look at in the dustbin and think "yeah, you pretty much deserve to be there, in retrospect."

To keep things mostly positive, I want to focus on the good, the games that evoke that feeling of nostalgia, where you look at your old collection and go "man, if I could just get a group of people excited about this we'd have the best time." Why did you love it? Why would you still play it, and why should people nab a set on ebay if they get the chance?

I'd also be curious to know, about your pet old game love, what caused it to fall from grace? Was there a disastrous edition, an ill-advised marketing strategy, a gameplay flaw that caused the game to fail?

For me, that beloved game will always be Privateer Press' Monsterpocalypse. It was a Kaiju-style combat game, where each player controlled one giant building-sized monster, and a small assortment of expendable tiny supporting units which would get easily swatted away, eaten etc and then respawn. For most of its lifespan, the game featured 6 factions: Godzilla-esque Dinosaurs, Cthulu Elder Monsters, Martian invaders, Transformers styled Human Mechas, Giant Power-Ranger ninjas, and alien Comet-monsters.

Players would take their turn either as the monster, or the supporting units, both of which would fight towards different goals that would frequently overlap through the course of the game. The units could somewhat slightly hurt the monsters, especially if they combined their attacks (think a whole company of tanks opening fire on Godzilla, it'd probably make him roar and reel back a bit), and of course the monster could use his precious actions to easily stomp out the puny support troops, but principally it was monster v monster, troops v troops. The game only ended when one monster went down, and the player's whole roster of troops would generally die several times over, respawning on spawn points on the game grid that were one objective to fight over.

The biggest success of the game was the way it really captured the feel of an epic monster fight movie, and how it drove its players to creatively smash up their opponents. Most of the time, any basic attack could only cause a single point of damage to the monster, in order to gain an edge over an opponent, you needed to cause collateral damage by smashing the opposing monster through buildings, hurling them into radiation, or ramming them catastrophically through whole city blocks. Nearly every monster had access to an arsenal of special attacks - a charging ram, a throw, an area of effect stomp, a swinging slam - which they could use to displace the opposing monster and smash them into the buildings, which were also represented by miniatures and were set up prior to the game. This meant that battles tended to range through the city as each player sought to use all the terrain to their advantage, and gleefully demolishing the map was half the fun of the game.

Despite its somewhat silly theme, however, it was an incredibly tactically deep game. Every attack had very specific model positioning requirements. If you wanted to ram an opposing monster, for instance, you had to start your move directly aligned with them (monsters took up four squares on the grid map, units only one) and then move directly towards them, then the opposing monster would move a number of spaces back equal to the distance you charged, and smash through any buildings they moved through for an extra point of damage each. You could also gain a clutch ranged attack as a melee-focused monster by nabbing a nearby enemy unit and flinging it, dealing a point of damage and removing an enemy unit that was causing you trouble.

The game failed for two primary reasons. First, it was released at the wrong time, before the discovery of the joys of known Expansion Sets made popular through today's LCGs and expansion based miniature games. Instead it was released during the dark age of miniature gaming: The Blind Booster Era. Not only did you not know what was in each pack, the monsters were sold separately from the units and buildings, so you could spend 14 bucks on a monster box and (very, very frequently) get a duplicate, completely wasting your money. If it were marketed like modern miniature games, with each monster packaged with a ready-built team of minions all of the same faction, its sales would have been FAR more successful. Personally, I blame Mage Knight.

Secondly, the complexity of the game really clashed with the theme. This was a game that could've appealed very strongly to a younger audience as well as adults if it had dialed back the complexity just a little bit. Each monster boasted a full 8.5x11 page's worth of special effects and abilities, which of course due to the time it was released were displayed Mage Knight style as little tiny symbols all over its base with a single massive Key Card that players had to navigate to figure out what each one did. Until you memorized the abilities of your monster, it was a nightmare. There was also a convoluted double-dice as resource management aspect of the gameplay that could quickly overwhelm younger players. And as much as the laundry list of special attacks your monster could perform were awesome, it made explaining the game very difficult when you say "ok, now you can Slam, Ram, Throw, Toss, Double Hand Throw, Fling, Headbutt, Stomp, Shoot, or Attack."

Nonetheless, Monsterpocalypse is one of those few gems of game systems that both capture their source material flawlessly, and at the same time have incredibly creative mechanics that (mostly) I haven't seen used since. I adore it greatly, and will definitely be keeping this big plastic bin of miniatures, maps, dice, and books, to play with anyone who's willing for years to come.

I've kept hold of the big plastic bin of miniatures, maps, dice, and books, to play with anyone who's willing for years to come for the last 5 years, never had a game as it's just too complex for a pick up or break out game even for experienced gamers. There's a level of list building that really needs to be explored in depth that stops it being casual.
I'd happily sell it now for the right price as it really is just gathering dust these days.

Agreed on Monsterpocalypse, both the good and the bad (especially the random packaging).

For me, it's Car Wars. While the game recently came back into print, this is a game that screams for some slick redesigning with actual miniature cars instead of paper counters.

If you're not familiar with it, the game is set in a quasi-Mad Max future (and I'm talking the first Mad Max movie, not Fury Road), where everyone has put military-grade weapons on their cars, and gladitorial-like car duels are common.

Turns are broken down into 1/5 or 1/10th of second, depending on the version you are using, and while there's lots of shooting, movement is the real key to the game. Most of the game rules revolve around maneuvering - and failing to do so. Best wording in the entire game - "Car turns sideways and rolls, catching fire on a 1 or 2". So sweet when it happens to the car you just shot, so facepalmingly funny when you're on the receiving end.

Further, the allowable customization on vehicles - ranging from motorcycles, through cars and trucks, up to buses, semi's and even helicopters - is incredible. There's so many ways to evicerate your opponent that the game's big problem is also the best aspect of the game - designing your own vehicles.

With what I've learned from other games over the years, if I could get folks back into this game I'd highly recommend using prebuilt cars (via Combat Showcase) for this game, instead of building them yourselves. While the latter is great fun, as one of my friends best put it "two hours of design to watch the vehicle go up in smoke in less than two seconds in game" wasn't worth it. The game is truly best with grabbing a couple cars, and going right at it as quickly as possible.

Also, one of the best aspects of this game is it has a campaign mode, allowing you to improve and upgrade your car & crew. And if you don't want to go the autodueling route, there is enough background material to create a RPG sort of campaign, as you and your crew face the deadly roads outside the walled communities and armored truck stops of the post-gas crisis world.

Crimson Skies. It was an air combat game set in an alternate 1930's America which had split into smaller countries after the American Civil War. Lots of air pirates, goggles and scarves, and heroic pilots battling it out from floating zeppelin-based air fields. The game had a really wonderful setting with lots of gaming potential, but it came out in the last years of FASA's operations and didn't get "off the ground" so to speak.

I know the later Wizkids clicky-game gained some popularity, but I long for the older, FASA-era game that used metal models and hex maps. An updated version with plastic planes would be killer.

The metal minis can still be found at Iron Wind Metals, but the game has been dead for almost 2 decades except for some video game iterations that came out in the 2000's.

Battlefleet Gothic. I see fully painted fleets on various forums and I just wish I had spent an irresponsible amount of money on the game back in the day. I downloaded the Battlefleet Gothic: Leviathan app which plays exactly like the table top game but all that does is make me wish I had the real thing to push around an awesome star mat.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
Crimson Skies. It was an air combat game set in an alternate 1930's America which had split into smaller countries after the American Civil War. Lots of air pirates, goggles and scarves, and heroic pilots battling it out from floating zeppelin-based air fields. The game had a really wonderful setting with lots of gaming potential, but it came out in the last years of FASA's operations and didn't get "off the ground" so to speak.

I know the later Wizkids clicky-game gained some popularity, but I long for the older, FASA-era game that used metal models and hex maps. An updated version with plastic planes would be killer.

The metal minis can still be found at Iron Wind Metals, but the game has been dead for almost 2 decades except for some video game iterations that came out in the 2000's.

A new edition using the Wings of Glory system would be the business, I think. Plus, the Wings of Glory WW2 planes are the right size to be used alongside. I say "size", because the original Crimson Skies models were never in "scale" (or even correctly proportioned, if you compare the published dimensions with the actual miniatures). The planes added in Behind the Crimson Veil and the Aircraft Recognition Manual could do with being redesigned so they better match the style of the original 14, IMO. The Pride of the Republic and Airman's Gazeteer add what are basically upgunned, rear-winged versions of the Mustang and Spitfire, so there's scope for some conversion work there.

Vor

It's the game that brought me into miniature gaming, and also why I'm still trying to make a miniature game now.

Although it's honestly very 90s in a way that I'm not entirely sure I can recreate today with any success.

Monsterpocalypse is sadly dead by way of legal stupidity. In signing away the movie rights, they basically signed away their ability to make their own game since they can't make merchandise for it. I actually think MonPoc could make a comeback once the license expires as a non-collectible game.

Sisters of Battle.
They are so far out of style that it has been over 20 years since they last got a basic update. They are still solid one piece monopose casts in an age of multipose multipart plastics.
They need the update.

I was going to say Vor: The Maelstrom, as it had some good ideas. The setting was good, although I remember that the politics of the Earth in the game were a bit ... retro (the game itself is very 90s, but the Union-Neo Soviet antagonism is very 80s) and US-centric, which was a bit hard for me to get past. The alien races were mostly well described, although the artwork was generally vastly superior to the miniatures.

The "design your own units" was hyped as the USP of the game, but it never really worked all that well; the system in the rulebook was quite basic and rather unbalanced and open to abuse (saving points by giving melee-oriented models a shooting skill of 0 for example, which made such models cheaper than equivalents in the official army lists).

I still have a large Zykhee army and a mostly-converted Pharon army buried at the bottom of the leadpile. I ended up copying Agis Neugebauer's idea for a Pharon AMP Suit, using legs and weapons from the equally OOP Ronin from Cell Entertainment. I also managed to get about a dozen unique poses from the two Anubis Warriors hat were all that got released, and added some of the contemporary Tomb Kings models as priests and the like.

I know Mike Nelson tried to revive the game after FASA decided to shut down, but FASA had ownership of all the art assets, and nothing came of it.

I'd say urban war, but it's neither OOP or out of production.

(Scotia Grendel have many of the moulds and stock of the books - if not the pdf versions) still available.

Many of the miniature games I used to play didn't have "official" miniatures for them, and though the rules have gone OOP, they are still available on the net for download - and there's no shortage of SF miniatures makers nowadays.

Following that thread back a bit further, I'd quite like an updated Kryomek. As with Vor, some of the miniatures don't quite live up to the artwork, and the Hivestone supplement book is literally broken - missing stats and rules for some new unit types and army lists that I find very hard to decipher.

There was also apparently a draft of a second supplement that would move the timeline on further, introduce new human and alien factions and hopefully fix the cockups in Hivestone. I was friends with a guy who was involved with the development of the game and had a copy of said draft, but he sadly passed away before I could persuade him to dig it out of storage.

Kryomek was probably the game that inspired me to look outside of GW; the Virgin Megastore in Glasgow used to have a wargames / RPG section on the mezzanine floor, and had a few Kryomek minis in a display cabinet.

Davout wrote:
Battlefleet Gothic. I see fully painted fleets on various forums and I just wish I had spent an irresponsible amount of money on the game back in the day. I downloaded the Battlefleet Gothic: Leviathan app which plays exactly like the table top game but all that does is make me wish I had the real thing to push around an awesome star mat.

this.... so much this.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Sisters of Battle.
They are so far out of style that it has been over 20 years since they last got a basic update. They are still solid one piece monopose casts in an age of multipose multipart plastics.
They need the update.

Can SoB players not just shut up for one second?

 AndrewGPaul wrote:


I know Mike Nelson tried to revive the game after FASA decided to shut down, but FASA had ownership of all the art assets, and nothing came of it.

I remember backing the KS for this, but it was just so badly timed and I don't know why they have not tried again. It was done just before wargame stuff on KS exploded was a licence to print money.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
Crimson Skies. It was an air combat game set in an alternate 1930's America which had split into smaller countries after the American Civil War. Lots of air pirates, goggles and scarves, and heroic pilots battling it out from floating zeppelin-based air fields. The game had a really wonderful setting with lots of gaming potential, but it came out in the last years of FASA's operations and didn't get "off the ground" so to speak.

I know the later Wizkids clicky-game gained some popularity, but I long for the older, FASA-era game that used metal models and hex maps. An updated version with plastic planes would be killer.

The metal minis can still be found at Iron Wind Metals, but the game has been dead for almost 2 decades except for some video game iterations that came out in the 2000's.

A new edition using the Wings of Glory system would be the business, I think. Plus, the Wings of Glory WW2 planes are the right size to be used alongside. I say "size", because the original Crimson Skies models were never in "scale" (or even correctly proportioned, if you compare the published dimensions with the actual miniatures). The planes added in Behind the Crimson Veil and the Aircraft Recognition Manual could do with being redesigned so they better match the style of the original 14, IMO. The Pride of the Republic and Airman's Gazeteer add what are basically upgunned, rear-winged versions of the Mustang and Spitfire, so there's scope for some conversion work there.

I could definitely get involved with a Crimson Skies games that utilized the WoG system.

Agree too on the plane designs. The originals are still my favorite, with the later designs too cartoony for my tastes. Early 2000's FASA was generally a bit crap in the art department, in my opinion. A few artists aside (Plog being one of them) the artwork used in their various games during the last few years of operations was awful.

Gotta upvote on the Vor, Urban War (Void 1.?) and honorable mention to Celtos.....But I want most of all for Confrontation to come back *(followed by a very close second by Chronopia) I too have MonPoc collecting dust. But for me the story behind both confrontation and Chronopia really did it. Chronopia had a great set of rules, a great setting, some pretty ok minis and some great fluff to go with the setting. IT hurts my soul to see a trashpile like aos alive and relatively well while Chronopia is dead.
Confrontation I love every aspect of, from Cadwallon to the video games!

Hero Quest.

A fantastic game, and sadly the copy my uncle had which was left in my grandparents for me to find when I was 12 was destroyed by water when they had a boiler leak.
Great board, great cards, great artwork, everything was, and still is great. The minis? Very nicely done, even if they were all mono pose ones. The gargoyle has for a long time been one of the most recognizable miniatures from the late 80's early 90's.

Blind buys killed Monsterpocalypse for me. I was super psyched for that game and told everyone about it and how much the world needed a kaiju battle game. Bought a starter and three boxes and didn't get any of the monsters I wanted. Gave away what I had and never looked back. What a waste of potential.

AT-43
The core rules for that game are almost perfect, there is no rules set that come close.

Legions of Steel (think Space Hulk) and its tabletop version Planet Storm also have a special place in my heart.

AT-43
The core rules for that game are almost perfect, there is no rules set that come close.

AT-43 was good, it had some interesting ideas and even now the terrain that came with some of the sets is highly sought after. I think what let it down was the pre-painted infantry - they were bendy and not great. The pre-painted vehicles were nice though since they used actual hard plastic.

Heroscape. Yeah, the miniatures weren't that good, but the gameplay was very straitforward, and everyone of the children I have introduce to wargaming with that game have stayed.

Is just a perfect game to introduce new-comers to wargames/boardgames!

 master of ordinance wrote:
Sisters of Battle.
They are so far out of style that it has been over 20 years since they last got a basic update. They are still solid one piece monopose casts in an age of multipose multipart plastics.
They need the update.

Over 20 years? So they last got an update in 1996?

U sure about that?

The basic sister models today are the same models that appear in the 3rd edition rule book. The army got an update when the Witch Hunters codex came out but the basic sisters stayed the same.

A second vote for AT-43. I have the 4 main factions, and the game plays great. I love the mechanic of a Universal Table of Resolution. And I don't care who hates me for it, but I love the rules for Confrontation: Age of Ragnorok. If it wouldn't have been for the earlier editions of Confrontation, I think lots more people would have a positive image of it, for the same reasons as AT-43. Same solid rules, with some improvements (though the command system of AT-43 was great but not a part of Confrontation.)

I used to play the daylights out of the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Miniatures game. I've still got all my minis, like over 2000 of them. The game was somewhat simplistic, being aimed at least partly at kids, but I found it enjoyable anyway. I think the basic game could be expanded on and made into a viable tabletop wargame kind of like Warhammer 40k. The rules need to be fleshed out some is all. At one point I started brainstorming ideas to at least convert it to measured movement instead of being stuck on a map grid, but I never even got to the playtesting phase of that. I think there is a potential market for a Star Wars ground combat game like that if it was done right. The Star Wars name and IP should be enough to make it popular, if X-wing is anything to go by (of course X-wing is also a very well-designed game).

I am going to say Shadow War because my FLGS said today the reprint was a one and done release again...
Why does Games Workshop like to throw away money??

Davout wrote:
The basic sister models today are the same models that appear in the 3rd edition rule book. The army got an update when the Witch Hunters codex came out but the basic sisters stayed the same.

So the army hasn't had an update, except when it got updated. Seems legit. After that long with the same model, I think it's a clue that they aren't a main line.

Overlooked games - can I suggest LOTR?

 Freddy Kruger wrote:
Hero Quest.

A fantastic game, and sadly the copy my uncle had which was left in my grandparents for me to find when I was 12 was destroyed by water when they had a boiler leak.
Great board, great cards, great artwork, everything was, and still is great. The minis? Very nicely done, even if they were all mono pose ones. The gargoyle has for a long time been one of the most recognizable miniatures from the late 80's early 90's.

Heroquest is a game better remembered than played, I think. The worst aspect is that monsters only have 1 Body Point (even the Gargoyle) and there's only 1 evil Shield icon on the combat dice. Advanced Heroquest, on the other hand ...

I would like to see a DUNE table minature game. I am sure somone would have made one at some point.

Would also like to see Gothic come back

2 come to mind-

GWAR, https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12313/gwar-rumble-antarctica-miniatures-rules

Salvage Mogul, http://www.megaminis.com/MEGA/CATALOGS/SALVAGE-CREW-Star-Mogul-Game.pdf