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Hi there everyone,


I am wanting to get into a bit of tabletop just for fun, don't really have any interest in tournaments or anything like that; I am just casually looking to start playing something every now and then a couple times a month with my wife or a friend.
I don't really have any friends that play 40k or fantasy right now, and I don't really go to Comic book stores or anything like That. That being said, I am looking between starting a Man o War collection, or a Warhammer Fantasy Collection. I don't really plan on spending more than a couple 100$ right now, because at the moment It might just be me and my wife or a maybe a friend. I'm kinda looking for someone to bring up pro's and Con's about each, and maybe how much replayability a small collection of either one may have - especially if chances are I won't be playing with a lot of new people?? I know that Man o War is OOP, but I've seen models for sale, or alternative's that I would be happy to use too.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and hopefully writing a nice little reply too, I appreciate it a lot =)


TLDR; just a few people playing that haven't ever played any warhammer before, but want to know if I should buy into Man o War, or warhammer fantasy.

Man-O-War
Pros - You can find all the rules & templates for free as PDFs.
You don't need alot of ships per side. If I remember, my Dark Elf fleet only had 6 or 7 ships + 1 flight of mantecores.
Overall there's not that many units per faction. So it's possible to "have it all".
It doesn't take up much storage or play space.
It's fun.

Cons - All of the ships are long oop.
Being long oop, some of them might be expensive/hard to find & for some of them there might not be decent proxies. Maybe 3d prints?
MoW, fun as it is, is a fairly limited game with a finite # of options. So if you get bored there's not really any expansion room either in forces or custimization.
Now days there's also several equally fun historical navel games out there in this scale that fit your price range - Black Seas (sails) & Cruel Seas (WWII) by Warlord and Oak & Iron (sales) by Firelock

WHFB
Pros - There's 8 editions to choose from!
90% of everything you can use in WHFB can also be used in Age of Sigmar (it's current incarnation) - so two games in one modelwise. Most will also work with Kings of War by Mantic....
Models & books are plentiful & easy to find.
There's plenty of room for customization of models.
There are sooo many companies making compatible models.....
The Age of Sigmar rules are really easy to learn & teach at a casual level.
The current Start Collecting boxes are a great way to get a small force of whatever faction.
There's plenty of factions & plenty of ways to build each of them wether you play WHFB or AoS.
Both WHFB & AoS have great re-play value and can be expanded upon easily.
Once life resumes post Covid you'll find it's much easier to get games of either FB or Sigmar at the shop etc vs MoW.
It's fun - unless you find the magic system in your chosen edition to suck.

Cons - There's 8 editions of WHFB to decide upon & now two editions of AoS.
The magic system changes radically between the various FB editions. Sometimes for the much much worse experience.
Alot of the really cool current AoS stuff (and a few armies) don't exist in WHFB and don't have counterparts at all.
It'll take longer to assemble & paint than MoW.
It (and terrain) takes up more storage space.
It takes up considerably more play space.
WHFB is a rules heavy game. It's not terrible, but.... On the flip side some think AoS went too far in simplifying things.
With 8 editions sometimes it'll happen that the models you find you like are long oop & can be quite expensive.

ccs wrote:
Man-O-War
Pros - You can find all the rules & templates for free as PDFs.
You don't need alot of ships per side. If I remember, my Dark Elf fleet only had 6 or 7 ships + 1 flight of mantecores.
Overall there's not that many units per faction. So it's possible to "have it all".
It doesn't take up much storage or play space.
It's fun.

Cons - All of the ships are long oop.
Being long oop, some of them might be expensive/hard to find & for some of them there might not be decent proxies. Maybe 3d prints?
MoW, fun as it is, is a fairly limited game with a finite # of options. So if you get bored there's not really any expansion room either in forces or custimization.
Now days there's also several equally fun historical navel games out there in this scale that fit your price range - Black Seas (sails) & Cruel Seas (WWII) by Warlord and Oak & Iron (sales) by Firelock

WHFB
Pros - There's 8 editions to choose from!
90% of everything you can use in WHFB can also be used in Age of Sigmar (it's current incarnation) - so two games in one modelwise. Most will also work with Kings of War by Mantic....
Models & books are plentiful & easy to find.
There's plenty of room for customization of models.
There are sooo many companies making compatible models.....
The Age of Sigmar rules are really easy to learn & teach at a casual level.
The current Start Collecting boxes are a great way to get a small force of whatever faction.
There's plenty of factions & plenty of ways to build each of them wether you play WHFB or AoS.
Both WHFB & AoS have great re-play value and can be expanded upon easily.
Once life resumes post Covid you'll find it's much easier to get games of either FB or Sigmar at the shop etc vs MoW.
It's fun - unless you find the magic system in your chosen edition to suck.

Cons - There's 8 editions of WHFB to decide upon & now two editions of AoS.
The magic system changes radically between the various FB editions. Sometimes for the much much worse experience.
Alot of the really cool current AoS stuff (and a few armies) don't exist in WHFB and don't have counterparts at all.
It'll take longer to assemble & paint than MoW.
It (and terrain) takes up more storage space.
It takes up considerably more play space.
WHFB is a rules heavy game. It's not terrible, but.... On the flip side some think AoS went too far in simplifying things.
With 8 editions sometimes it'll happen that the models you find you like are long oop & can be quite expensive.

Hey, Thank you for the reply, and for all the things to consider - You really did help me come to terms with some of the things that I just needed to be told how it is haha. I just looked into Oak and Iron, and It looks awesome. With the price-point of what I see for them too, I think I can actually swing getting both Oak and Iron as well as WHFB/AOS. I will definitely be leaning to doing that now that I have a happy enough alternative. I kind of like the theme of Tomb Kings, but I heard that they are gone, and that they were bad from the start, but do they exist at all in either WHFB or AOS currently?

Once again, I appreciate your reply very much.

Yes Tomb Kings rules exist in WHFB 6th, 7th, & 8th editions & in AoS.

For WHFB 6th & 7th they use the same army book: https://www.ebay.com/i/183862400361?chn=ps
For 8th they got a new version & some spiffy sphinx & snake models: https://www.ebay.com/i/283813364909?chn=ps


AoS Rules: https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Compendiums/warhammer-aos-tomb-kings-en.pdf Not sure where their pts values are. I know they exist though. Maybe buried in Legends on the GW Community pages? Printed in one of the Generals Handbooks (2017/2018/2019)?

Whatever the edition though TK is one of those tricky armies to use. Thus many label it as being bad.
And GW didn't invest much effort into legacy forces that received the compendium treatment in AoS (because they want you to buy new stuff, but recognized that there's alot of people with old armies).

If you want to play WFB and Tomb Kings, check out Mantic. Their Kings of War is a fantastic WFB replacement, and they also do their own versions of Tomb Kings: Empire of Dust. The GW Tomb Kings will be very hard to come by, and will also be very expensive as GW no longer support that model line.

ccs wrote:
AoS Rules: https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Compendiums/warhammer-aos-tomb-kings-en.pdf Not sure where their pts values are. I know they exist though. Maybe buried in Legends on the GW Community pages? Printed in one of the Generals Handbooks (2017/2018/2019)?

GHB '19.

It's been hinted at already: a fantasy army will be much more versatile. There are a lot of fantasy games out there that allow you to plug in your minis of choice, from small gang skirmishes to mass battles with blocks of wheeling infantry. A lot of times, they'll have an unofficial nod towards the biggest ready source of fantasy minis: all those WFB armies out there.

Is there a free Age of Sail ruleset that is scale and manufacturer agnostic?

As it happens, I have tons of the old Pirates of the Spanish Main constructible card ships, that the prior owner glued togeather and now they cannot really be easily used for the original game

Barring piracy, not that I know of.

But Black Seas isn't very expensive for just the rules.

You want to start out with a skirmish game, and not break your bank. Just get a couple of boxes of your choice of starter set, and a box unit and start from there.

I play Warhammer fantasy, Frostgrave, mordhiem, Necromunda, and a couple of other skirmish that were just a paperwork change, Here is the rules for Age of Sigmar from the website. A small model count, and small play area work wonders to get you into a game. It also gets you inoculated to building these units and miniatures by the batch.
Here are the rules for Age of Sigmar, and Warhammer Fantasy skirmish and Mordhiem.

https://ageofsigmar.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2018/06/AoS_Rules-ENG.pdf

http://the-lost-and-the-damned.664610.n2.nabble.com/Warhammer-Skirmish-Rules-PDFs-td7580478.html

Pros and cons are easy-

PRICE PRICE PRICE- You can get into the game under $25.00- 50.00
Selection- You can use whatever minis from whatever range you want
Rules- Free, or free-ish.

And scenery can be stored in shoeboxes, as you acquire different types, made out of old scrap around the house, some paint, and some sand and sticks.


As to the Navy rules-
You can find something for any era here- http://www.navalwargamessociety.org/rulesonline.html

Thank you everyone for the Replies, and all the great help and guidance.

I tried to get Oak and Iron, but apparently they don't ship to my location, so I'm counting that out for now. Talked more to my wife about things, and she now is really really wanting to paint a AoS army LOL.
I ended up ordering a Seraphon Start Collecting for myself and a Fyreslayers army for her. We will see where things go from here, We're pretty excited.

I'll be looking into the Skirmish and Mordheim stuff maybe for what I got currently, and see where that takes me.

There is a ruleset that uses the Song of Blades and heroes (Ganesha Games) ruleset as it's core rules, called Galleys and Galleons. It's more of a skirmish-level age of sail game (typically 3-6 ships per side on a 3x3 foot play area) rather than big fleets, but it works well and is pretty inexpensive either in PDF or in Print from places like Amazon.

It also has a more fantasy-based expansion (Fay winds and Foul Tides), which deals with things like Undead ships, flying ships, basic rules for spellcasters fighting from ships (mostly work like special attacks) etc. I specifically bought it to make use of my old Pirates constructible ships that I had a pile of, and it works great!

As you were talking about free rulesets, if you are going the AoS route, you could always try One Page Rules. They have a pair of army-scale games (Grimdark Future and Age of Fantasy) that work off of one core ruleset and are meant to be used with GW and Mantic figures, where units are given generic names to avoid copyright but usually have all the weapon options of the actual GW or Mantic units. Each of the two games also has a skirmish-level game meant for forces of less than 20 figures (forces like Stormcast or Ogres might just field 4-6 multi-wound figures), even with campaign rules.

https://onepagerules.com/

rhinostopper wrote:

I tried to get Oak and Iron, but apparently they don't ship to my location, so I'm counting that out for now. Talked more to my wife about things, and she now is really really wanting to paint a AoS army LOL.

Maybe Firelock themselves, but I find it very hard to believe that Miniature Market & Amazon won't ship to your location.... But good call on the AoS stuff.