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Im a bit disillisioned by gw sci fi skirmish game designs.

I enjoy warcry a great deal as it allows me to push around sweet dollies while shootin the poop with buddys without being so cumbersome that it overshadows the social aspect.

Id love an model agnostic sci fi skirmish game on a similar level to use my fave 40k models in.

My experience with such is rather limited. Necromunda is okay and i like the setting, but its a bit more rules heavy than i want to keep up with.

I have played and enjoyed frostgrave, and was told stargrave is essentially just a retheme of that, for good or ill. I think i played a game from the designer of "a song of blades" that is pretty good, but is just a bit too basic, even compared to warcry.

Kill team 2018 was ok, even if it wasnt a short game, but killteam 2021 is just not my cup of tea. I just cant get on board after trying it several times. Just too restrictive for me.

So what say you? Im sure there are a lot of folks out there with more experience who would be happy to promote their fave sci fi skirmisher. I look forward to ypur suggestions and why you feel the designs are notable.

Thanks

Are you looking for a versus or solo game? I've heard good things about Five Parsecs from Home as a solo game but haven't actually played it myself/by myself.

This video popped up yesterday on my youtube feed and it was the first I heard about the game. It kind of reminds me of the old Demonblade Shockforce system I played back in the mid 90s from his description.

I found Rogue Stars to be a very enjoyable micro skirmish game. Played quite a bit of it with my buddy.

It is kind of like Infinity in the aspect that... guns freaking hurt. Really bad. So you are always hugging cover, trying to create lanes where your fighters can support each other.

The initiative system is quite neat, you pick how many actions you would like to do with a fighter (between 1-3 actions), and make activation test rolls. Failures can allow your opponent potential reactions during your turn, or allow them to try and steal the initiative.

You can continually activate a fighter until it is too fatigued to be of any use, your opponent steals the turn, or you pass.

It is from the same designer who did A Song of Blades And Heroes, but far more in depth with hacking, various equipment, lots of terrain interaction and skills.

I can second Stargrave. It’s a nice fast paced game. The combat can be super swingy as it’s all based on a single opposed dice roll. There is currently one excellent expansion enabling zombies and xemomorphs in solo, coop and competitive modes. There is an upcoming expansion which is supposed to scratch the firefly itch, and another planned one that seems very much Star Wars rebellion last ditch effort against the evil pirate empires.

You can also easily mod in other campaign systems like Necromunda or 5 Parsecs with minimal effort.

One Page Rules - Grimdark Future Firefight might be it

For a warband skirmish that is slightly more detailed than Song of Blades, but still simple and flavorful and miniatures agnostic, Planet 28 might be up your alley. Some of my friends played it recently and blogged it.
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2021/12/aar-planet28-why-are-there-so-many-planets/
Worth a visit just for the hand painted terrain.

Also, I'll second the suggestion to check out the various One Page Rules selections. There's a couple different Grimdark rulesets available representing different game sizes but with a similar rules engine.

I can recommend Horizon Wars: Zero Dark which is solo / coop or versus, as you wish.

https://www.precinctomega.co.uk/zero-dark

It’s d12 based so not as swingy as Stargrave.

Zona Alfa is more post-apoc than sci-fi but it would work here as well.

5 Parsecs has been mentioned but it’s very story driven (an rpg) and the tactical layer is a bit meh IMHO. However if you like story than the Ironsworn successor Starforge might be a thing. Not sure you play it with minis though.

Absolutely try out Grimdark Future from One Page rules. Not only is their game Grimdark Future a minis agnostic sci fi skirmisher with a core ruleset that is free (the full rules are 5 dollars, which include extra supplemental material), and that has an analogue for every 40K faction plus several others, there is an expansion you can buy (for something like 5 bucks, and it's worth it) called Gang Wars that expands the basic game into a Necromunda-esque skirmisher with a full campaign ruleset where members of your force can gain skills, suffer lasting wounds, etc. But much more casual than Necromunda, which you said was too heavy.


I feel it can be a bit basic with just the core rules, but sets somewhere between Song of Blades and Heroes, and Warcy in complexity, especially when you add in the campaign and supplemental materials.

As said above, there is also a fantasy version of the skirmish rules, which includes a "codex" for all the warbands from Warcry, in addition to the normal Age of Sigmar forces, as well as some generic forces, like Halflings. And both the rulesets I have spoken of have full army-scale rulesets, which use 95% of the same core rules.

Go to the Wargame Vault and you will find hundreds of titles that meet these criteria.

Rogue Stars
Restless Stars (Restless Sun)
Xenos Rampant
Spaceport Scum
Planet28
Stargrave
5 Parsecs from Home
Squadhammer
Space Weirdos
Blasters and Bulkheads
Stargrunt
Tomorrow's War

That is just off the top of my head. There are literally thousands.

I haven't played Stargrave personally, but several of my acquaintances responded very positively about it.

Zona Alfa can be theoretically adopted for sci-fi. Great skirmish system, but poor balance and will probably require additional house ruling to fit new theme.

There is also Brutality Skirmish wargame. It is technically (is using the core setting) a RIFTS-styled "all settings at once in a pocket dimension" game, but I personally have had great fun just using it to play games in the Mortal Realms of Age of Sigmar.

You could just as easily play every game in a sci-fi setting, as the archetypes for each fighter role are generic.

Also:

Rogue Planet
Fistful of Lead- Galactic Heroes

I have not played all of these, but here are some reviews and thoughts on a few that may help you out.

Rogue Stars:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/02/review-rogue-stars-osprey-wargame-series.html

Rogue Planet:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2020/07/review-rogue-planet-bombshell.html

Stargrave:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2021/07/review-stargrave-osprey-games.html

Tomorrow's War:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/03/review-tomorrows-warforce-on-force.html

Those are the ones I have personally played and written about. However, there is a large list of games out there that fill this need.

Rogue Planet is really cool, too. Especially trippy in the use of no measuring whatsoever.

Sounds like me, love a nice skirmish game but necromunda and killteam are just to bogged down by GWisms.

I'm loving Mantic's Deadzone at the moment - doubly so as it is clearly the GW faction list skinned differently!

Here's another vote for Stargrave. Fun game and pretty easy to learn. Seems quite balanced as well.

STargrave is great, though I am a Void fanatic myself (love me some warzone as well)

I got an early access playtest version of "Enderain" to give feedback to the developers on.

If you're looking for something *totally* different to GW then I would check it out.

The NPC rules for example, are incredible and not like any I've ever seen in a miniature wargame before.

Makes Stargrave feel very generic and dull IMHO.

Core Space is everything in a box and harks back to Rogue Trader in some ways but with a neat mechanic to ensure games conclude reasonably quickly.


But really, what do you want? It could be something like blood bowl would be better! Do you want very customisable models, a reactive gameplay system, vs or co-op, deadly shooting and hugging cover, or realistic combat which can be swingy? Etc.

Also recommending Grimdark: FF from One Page Rules!

ecaroth wrote:
Also recommending Grimdark: FF from One Page Rules!

We're playing this in a few weeks! Excited to try it. We'll snap some pics.

I've been looking at GunCrawl, specifically version 1. Pretty generic, you can design your troops/weapons, etc. But seems mainly to be oriented towards indoors action, though there seem to be some houserules out there for outdoors/vehicles.

Version 2 seems to be more of a solo random generated dungeon game.

http://www.genetmodels.com/fun-stuff/

Have you considered Star Breach, now hosted by Slow Death Games?

Really good rule set.

As I've posted before, my leading faves for Sci-fi Skirmish wargaming are:

-Star Breach-lots of lists to handle all sorts of forces, and a fun activation mechanism

-Brutality: Skirmish Wargame -it is time-period agnostic. You can do multiverse, Age of Sigmar, or Sci-Fi with the same profiles.

-Grimdark Future: Skirmish. has army lists for nearly everything Sci-fi that Mantic and GW put out. Super Rules light and easy to get into.

Someday I also want to try out Rogue Planet, but it's got enough detail that I need another wargamer for me to play it with (most of my games are with very casual gamers). The movement and shooting is completely without measuring, which is unique.

Pulp Alley

A game I haven't played, but is intriguing is Galactic Heroes. A Pulp Sci-fi sort of aimed at Star Wars and 40k'ish. I've read over the rules and they look good and the battle reports I've read look really cool.
https://wiley-games.myshopify.com/collections/galactic-heroes/products/copy-of-galactic-heroes-2nd-edition-downloadable-pdf

Picked up the rules for Galactic heroes after playing a game of fistful of lead: bigger battles. Love the system’s use of playing cards for initiative order. The trade off between going earlier and getting the perks is really interesting.

Since my last post on this thread, I had a chance to try Space Weirdos.

I really enjoyed it. The double dice, dice bumping mechanic is great and the combat testing system is quite cinematic while maintaining simplicity. Really nails being streamlined yet engaging with a slightly RT zany quality.

Here's our battle report.
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2023/01/aar-first-try-with-space-wierdos/
A second post is in the works reviewing the rules and some number crunching.