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 heartserenade wrote:
They just need to release "official" Game of Thrones rules for people to be interested in historical hahahahaha.

Buy the rights for GoT, get a good historical rules set and reskin it and ride the wave of fad like a Targaryen on a dragon. Boom. I mean, there are already myriads of people making GoT armies and using historical rules.

I'm not sure if your are joking or not, because your post is kind of unreadable, but you do understand that a historical game is classified as such because of its setting and not its rules, right?

And that GoT is a Fantasy setting and its not historical, right?

And so, by its very definition, any game based on the GoT universe would not be historical, right?

I think the general gist was that GoT is very "low" fantasy, and a ruleset developed for a historical setting would require only a small amount of tweaking to accommodate the odd fantastical unit (such as Dragons and Giants) the majority of warfare being blokes with swords, spears and shields.

I'd love Bolt Action, in theory, if it had a supernatural addition to it. It's why I like Fantasy and Sci-Fi but historicals not so much. I'm sure it's a great game, along with Flames of War, but I just don't resonate with it.

 TheKbob wrote:
I'd love Bolt Action, in theory, if it had a supernatural addition to it. It's why I like Fantasy and Sci-Fi but historicals not so much. I'm sure it's a great game, along with Flames of War, but I just don't resonate with it.

Maybe Dust then? It's got mecha and I think I saw zombies?

Introduce Psychic rules and ludicrous armour and weapons into Bolt Action, and you'd have some sort of weird glimpse of what 40K would be if Alessio and Rick had stayed with GW.

Yeah but 40K has psychic and ludicrous stuff now so why do you need to change?

Because the bones of Bolt Action strike me as a much better system for rewarding player decision making and much less random nonsense?

Not a player, just a rulebook owner, so I could be wrong! In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of Space Marine/Epic 40K in Bolt Action's DNA too.

Your impressions are pretty accurate. It takes some doing to properly set up an assault on an enemy position and the turn structure and pinning mechanics definitely mean you can make a plan and try to carry it out and have meaningful decisions.

Not to mention that (in a fairly realistic turn) assaults are either wildly successful or a devastating failure. There is no in between. Once you launch as assault one unit or the other is going to be gone.

That makes them a useful tool, but not one approached lightly.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 TheKbob wrote:
I'd love Bolt Action, in theory, if it had a supernatural addition to it. It's why I like Fantasy and Sci-Fi but historicals not so much. I'm sure it's a great game, along with Flames of War, but I just don't resonate with it.

Maybe Dust then? It's got mecha and I think I saw zombies?

It does and it's interesting, but I'd like to have a community to step into. One of the problems with buying too many wargames...

So... someone is looking for a World War 2 game like Bolt Action, but with a supernatural bent?

Secrets of the Third Reich 1949. http://www.westwindproductions.co.uk/catalog/secrets_of_the_third_reich.php

Skirmish to platoon level game. Set in 1949, WW2 is still going on.
It has Chemical weapon zombies, lycanthropes, Vampires rising from ye olde Transylvania, Occult power groups, and alien tech. That's from the Germans.

Force lists for US, UK, Resistance fighters, USSR, Germans.

Rules are pretty good. They need some tightening up, which will happen next year when the rules are revamped in anew edition.

You can play with completely mundane forces using existing Bolt Action/ generic WW2 armies, or add any amount of Weird you want. Mecha, supersoldiers, arcane/occult specialists.

ski2060 wrote:
So... someone is looking for a World War 2 game like Bolt Action, but with a supernatural bent?

Secrets of the Third Reich 1949. http://www.westwindproductions.co.uk/catalog/secrets_of_the_third_reich.php

Skirmish to platoon level game. Set in 1949, WW2 is still going on.
It has Chemical weapon zombies, lycanthropes, Vampires rising from ye olde Transylvania, Occult power groups, and alien tech. That's from the Germans.

Force lists for US, UK, Resistance fighters, USSR, Germans.

Rules are pretty good. They need some tightening up, which will happen next year when the rules are revamped in anew edition.

You can play with completely mundane forces using existing Bolt Action/ generic WW2 armies, or add any amount of Weird you want. Mecha, supersoldiers, arcane/occult specialists.

So it's a tabletop Wolfenstein? Pretty cool

I just looked at Bolt Action for the first time and realized that the reason I was convinced to start playing 40k was the cover of the 2nd edition guard codex.... oh yeah, I like miniature army men!

Are the rules for Bolt Action as tight as for Warmahordes? Cuz I could totally get into that.

 slowthar wrote:
I just looked at Bolt Action for the first time and realized that the reason I was convinced to start playing 40k was the cover of the 2nd edition guard codex.... oh yeah, I like miniature army men!

Are the rules for Bolt Action as tight as for Warmahordes? Cuz I could totally get into that.

If you don't mind a little trip, contact TechNoir in Oneonta, NY. My friend owns the store, and he has a very large following for Bolt Action. They love it there. Tell him "Brian" sent you on Dakka. That's all the introduction you'll need.

Yeah, Bolt Action is pretty tight as far as rules go. But it's more like 40k than WM/H and the strength of the rules comes from the turn structure and pinning mechanic combined with very familiar shooting mechanics. Bad match ups are still possible, but mostly only occur when people intentionally try their best to deviate from the core concept of a reinforced infantry platoon.

I ended up getting the rules from like Amazon or Chapters or something for really cheap.

From what I hear, New England, New York and Jersey are crawling with Bolt Action players.

PhantomViper wrote:

 heartserenade wrote:
They just need to release "official" Game of Thrones rules for people to be interested in historical hahahahaha.

Buy the rights for GoT, get a good historical rules set and reskin it and ride the wave of fad like a Targaryen on a dragon. Boom. I mean, there are already myriads of people making GoT armies and using historical rules.

I'm not sure if your are joking or not, because your post is kind of unreadable, but you do understand that a historical game is classified as such because of its setting and not its rules, right?

And that GoT is a Fantasy setting and its not historical, right?

And so, by its very definition, any game based on the GoT universe would not be historical, right?

I wasn't talking about making a historical game. I was talking about tweaking a historical rulesset, because that's what people are doing anyway.

Well I was joking (because they would never ever do it, in my opinion) but it's true that a lot of people are playing their GoT armies with historical rulessets (Hail Caesar, Saga, even a variant of KoW that's made for medieval combat). It's because in GoT, most battles are just normal dudes poking each other with pointed things. Dragons and giants are considered super rare and some people don't even believe in their existence in that universe.

Kings of War would also work well - magic plays a supporting role, rather than being the be all and end all.

Works well with massive armies, and resolution is quick.

The Auld Grump

I'm very high on the KoW rules. Just wish they'd fleshed out the magic rules with a bit more chrome. Not much, but enough to make it seem like more than just variants of zap or heal. But the figures? Not so much, but great looking rules to use if you want to us your GW figs in a less cumbersome and unbalanced game.

Valete,

JohnS

 cygnnus wrote:
I'm very high on the KoW rules. Just wish they'd fleshed out the magic rules with a bit more chrome. Not much, but enough to make it seem like more than just variants of zap or heal. But the figures? Not so much, but great looking rules to use if you want to us your GW figs in a less cumbersome and unbalanced game.

Valete,

JohnS

Eh to each their own, I kinda like the figures, but only because when you're looking at 20 of them from a typical view on a tabletop, they look nice no matter the individual quality. I've long adhered to the notion that the look of the regiment is more important than the look of any one model (something I learned from Rick Priestly and Nigel Stillman in old issues of White Dwarf ). Even the loathed Basilean Men-at-arms don't look terrible if you are looking down at a regiment of 20 painted to a tabletop standard.

KoW rules would likely work very well for Game of Thrones; I think I once saw a Kingdom of Men army someone posted on the Mantic forums that was done up as Stannis Baratheon's army, with Stannis as a hero and Melisandre or whatever her name is as a wizard. You also have Undead, and the Wildlings could probably use most of the Orc rules fairly well. Danaerys could likely be done with Elves, since their spearmen get Elite which would be good for the Unsullied, and they have dragons (well, dragon riders), and I believe light skirmishing cavalry that would be the Dothraki.

IMO it is a fundamental problem or perhaps I should say limitation of magic or SF themes that if incorporated into tactical warfare they tend to end up either being a slight tweak on conventional historical warfare or something that makes conventional tactics and troops irrelevant in which case you are left wondering why you bothered.

I have no problem with a dragon for instance but if you allow a dragon to have the effect in an otherwise mediaeval game that an attack helicopter could there would be no point in the mediaeval army so why would you be playing the game in the first place? So the dragon has to be expressed in terms that allow it to be incorporated within the mediaeval framework and give the "conventional" mediaeval troops some chance to fight it. (E.g. Bard the Bowman.)

This is not to say that fantasy and SF are useless. Far from it! I play and have enjoyed plenty of such games over the years as well as historical.

My point is that truly different F/SF themes require some very different kind of framework in order to be fully expressed. Otherwise to some degree playing Fantasy is like a Napoleonics player playing ACW for a change of pace. Nothing wrong with it at all and of course historical players often change genres or periods for exactly that reason.

 cygnnus wrote:
I'm very high on the KoW rules. Just wish they'd fleshed out the magic rules with a bit more chrome. Not much, but enough to make it seem like more than just variants of zap or heal. But the figures? Not so much, but great looking rules to use if you want to us your GW figs in a less cumbersome and unbalanced game.

Valete,

JohnS

The magic rules get fleshed out a bit in The Basilean Legacy - Zap! is used to cover a wide range of combat spells - so Fireball, as an example, gets a short 6" range, hits on a 5+, and has Blast (dD6). So it has a wicked short range, is less likely to hit... but each hit that it does get will do a d6 of damage to the target. (I have wiped a unit of trolls off the map with fireball....)

The variant Zap! rules can be found in the Tournament rules.

The Auld Grump