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So what's the best? Which one has the best models with good detail and quality - good diversity - good rules and good fantasy (ergo not just rank and file troops with 1 magical beasty on the table).

With Warmaster dead what fills its shoes currently? I've seen a few though honestly a lot seem to be garage style companies with photos that leave much to be desired and make it hard to judge if the models really look good or if they just have poor detailing.

Most of your 15mm games are not going to be rules and figs in one package. You're going to most likely choose your minis and figs from different makers based on what you like best. I'm not as in-tune with the current rules situation, here are some options.

-Mighty Armies is almost a mainstream'ish package that has figs and rules, but is in no way limited to their own figs

-HoTT is still a well played system that uses whatever minis you want. I think that HoTT and Mighty Armies use the same basing conventions. If that's true, making up a couple of armies of fantasy elements for these two games is probably the best way to get playing.

-Splintered light minis are nicely done. Many of their scupts are done by Bob Olley. No official rules, but…

-Pride of Lions is a ruleset published by Ganesha that seems to be designed for splintered light minis

-Ral Partha Europe should still be making the well-regarded "Demon World" line.

-Khurasan has a 15mm fantasy section and they are known to make very nice figures.

-15mm.uk sells a whole range of rulesets and minis. Some are old and it shows, but don't judge the entire company based on a few stinkers

-More here: https://sites.google.com/site/15mmfantasy/15mmfantasyranges

You're right about it sometimes being hard to find pictures. I wouldn't disregard these one-man companies however. Many of them are doing really good work and some are hiring famous sculptors. Just do a google search for better pics of whatever line you happen to be interested in.

For 10mm, I'd go for Dropzone commander by hawk wargames.

Eilif nailed it. Figures are not tied to rules- you can use whatever figures with whatever rules you like.

HoTT is a great element based wargame and will probably fill the itch if you are looking for something in the vein of Warmaster. And Mighty armies does use the same basing conventions (MA seems heavily inspired by HOTT/DBA).

For more skirmish based, try Two Hour Wargames Warrior Hero Legends or Two Hour Dungeon Crawl. Ganesha Games does SOBH, another great skirmish ruleset.

For fantasy figs, I would add Magister Militum s they carry the old Blood Dawn line (the dwarves are very large, though!), and Eureka if you are looking for LOTR style orcs. Historical 15mm are also great for human factions. Essex, Peter Pig, Altuous, Xyston, etc.

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
For 10mm, I'd go for Dropzone commander by hawk wargames.

OP was looking for a Warmaster replacement, DZC doesn't really cut the mustard for that.

In terms of rules, what would you guys say is a good rules set for a group that liked both Warhammer Fantasy and Hail Caesar?

My group comes from a Warhammer background, but is now taking big steps into Hail Caesar and its related rules sets. We also play flames of war, so that's a another point of reference.

I have a real desire to play a mass battle fantasy game, and 15mm always seemed like a good scale ever since I saw the Demonworld miniatures. They're cheap enough that I could build two small armies assuming I find a good enough rules set that my friends will play.

 Vertrucio wrote:
In terms of rules, what would you guys say is a good rules set for a group that liked both Warhammer Fantasy and Hail Caesar?

My group comes from a Warhammer background, but is now taking big steps into Hail Caesar and its related rules sets. We also play flames of war, so that's a another point of reference.

I have a real desire to play a mass battle fantasy game, and 15mm always seemed like a good scale ever since I saw the Demonworld miniatures. They're cheap enough that I could build two small armies assuming I find a good enough rules set that my friends will play.

Have you considered the "Hail Sauron" (also known as Hail Caesar Fantasy) fan mod of Hail Caesar? I think the documents for it are free at the yahoo group described here: http://scottswargaming.blogspot.com/2011/11/hail-sauron.html
I don't see why Hail Caesar couldn't be easily run in 15mm. It's not too rules-heavy is it?

Alternatively, Kings of War is a 28mm game, but it's written like a 15mm game with streamlined rules and no casualty removal. The only complicating factor is the diversity of element sizes (a result of KoW basing their sizes off of warhammer bases), but that's fixable. KoW allows you to play an extremely fast game in very little time.

Of course you could always play Warmaster with different figures. All the rules, supplements and many articles are available here:
http://www.darkagepress.com/WarmasterDownloads.html
Should appeal to your Warhammer-fan friends, and it's easy to find affordable non-GW miniatures to represent all the appropriate Warhammer/Warmaster factions in 15mm.

 Vertrucio wrote:
In terms of rules, what would you guys say is a good rules set for a group that liked both Warhammer Fantasy and Hail Caesar?

My group comes from a Warhammer background, but is now taking big steps into Hail Caesar and its related rules sets. We also play flames of war, so that's a another point of reference.

I have a real desire to play a mass battle fantasy game, and 15mm always seemed like a good scale ever since I saw the Demonworld miniatures. They're cheap enough that I could build two small armies assuming I find a good enough rules set that my friends will play.

That would depend.

We have written fantasy rules, based off Historical Rules Sets for both Fields of Glory and for a DBx/HotT based rules set called "Hoplon" (it is like HotT, but has larger armies, of 50 - 200 elements, as opposed to the 12 in DBA or HotT, and uses units, and has an actual morale system).

But what you are looking for sounds like a Historical Rules System that allows for Fantasy elements to be used.

Iron Wind Metals/Ral Partha's Chaos Wars is one such rules set. I have not played them since the early 1990's, but they were decent rules.

There is an earlier set of rules, based upon the DBx standard, by the name of De Bellis Fantasticus which is pretty good.

All of these are "element based" rather than the Individual Figure Based of Warhammer. For 15mm, you are better off going the route of element-based rather than the individual figure-based, due to the fiddle nature of individual 15mm figures.

But, REALLY, you can take ANY historical rules and add Fantasy Elements to them EASILY.

At least as long as you do not make the magic in the game too much like technology. Then the games start to deviate significantly from what a historical ancient or medieval army would behave as, and instead approach more modern mechanized warfare unless the rules are filled with kludges to prevent that very thing (D&D like magic is actually a proxy for technology, and mechanization. The same consequences to warfare would apply where even a small percentage of a population was capable of "magic").

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looking at the link for it.

IF you like Hail Caesar, then I would simply go for the Hail Sauron rules (apparently now called Hail Caesar Fantasy).

They seem to have taken into account exactly what I warned of (trying to make magic a substitute for mechanization and technology).

But then I am hugely biased toward Middle-earth and Hyborian themes (Hyboria having essentially the same properties as Middle-earth, just different nation states and technologies used).

MB

Give Mayhem a look. It can be played with any miniatures in your collection and at any scale. There are free BattleScribe army builder files available in the form of the Armies of Mayhem supplement. Some of the specialty army lists found in the builder files would probably be of interest to your group as you said they are fans of Warhammer.

Below are some battle reports, in no particular order, that you can check out to get an idea of how the game plays:

Battle for Harrison's Ford
Thursday Night Mayhem - The Baron's Blog
Mayhem 2.0 - The Baron's Blog
Drums in the Deep - various Mayhem posts
Ten and Fifteen Mil - the battle begins
Ten and Fifteen Mil - the battle continues
Ten and Fifteen Mil - denouement
Ten and Fifteen Mil - Mayhem tags and other battles
Tactical Command - several reports in this thread

Personally, I'd just stick with Warmaster. True, its OOP but the rulebook isn't that hard to find, and if it comes down to it you only need one copy for your group. There are plenty of good 10mm figures available from non-GW sources so that should not be a problem, and if you are really stuck on GW figures their is always eBay.

I like to peruse Rebel Minis from time to time and I have been interested in Mighty Empires for quite a while, which is 15mm scale. I don't know anything about the rules, but the variety of armies is a nice thing to see, even if there aren't many options for each of them beyond the initial starter army.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I like to peruse Rebel Minis from time to time and I have been interested in Mighty Empires for quite a while, which is 15mm scale. I don't know anything about the rules, but the variety of armies is a nice thing to see, even if there aren't many options for each of them beyond the initial starter army.

Mighty empire's has some similarities to HoTT, but is more contemporary in style, MUCH better written and easy to understand. Since it shares the same basing conventions with HOTT, you can use the same army in both games. I think you're more likely to convince your friends to play MA, but you're probably slightly more likely to find folks (often more experienced gamers) who know how to play HOTT already.

As for adding to your armies, you've got a wealth of other companies to choose from. Mighty Armies is entirely compatible with other brands of figures.

If you want to expand your Mighty Armies/HoTT forces, check out the Eiliff's post. Splintered Light can bulk out just about any 15mm fantasy force from orcs and elves to hyenamen and hobgoblins.

Khurasan miniatures produces some of the best Fantasy 15mm stuff at the moment, in their "Great Enemy" range (which is basically 1st Age Middle-earth). Tom Meier has sculpted a great deal of the miniatures.

MB

BeAfraid wrote:
Khurasan miniatures produces some of the best Fantasy 15mm stuff at the moment, in their "Great Enemy" range (which is basically 1st Age Middle-earth). Tom Meier has sculpted a great deal of the miniatures.

MB

There's alot of good 15mm stuff out there, but the Tom Meier stuff is some of the best I've seen.

Yep, these are 15mm and are probably displaying at 3x bigger!

I am probably going to do the fantasy stuff I am working on in 15mm as well (since they are digital sculpts, all I need to do is hit "w" (scale) in maya (or is scale "r"??? - anyway, it's just a single hotkey command), and then a mouse drag next to a 15mm scale-bar to get the right size.

And my stuff is very close to Tom Meier's in proportion and detail.

Had it not been for the 1990s (my wife - dead now, thankfully), I would have produced all kinds of stuff. But my wife hated my miniatures (and the people with whom they were associated).

But then my wife turned out to be evil. Sort of like Fire Ants. They don't mean to kill you when they sting you to death after stepping in their ant-pile.... It's just what they do.

MB

I've heard good things about Warband by Penraken. They also do very good 10mm miniatures as well.

http://pendraken.co.uk/Warband-Fantasy-Rules-p7177/

Honestly while I was originally thinking of getting into Mighty Armies as a fantasy sub-25mm scale game to get me back into painting, I am actually thinking of taking a different path. Because what I really want is a set of rules that's faster to play than 40K or Warhammer Fantasy-level rules crunch (though those are my first loves), because I'll be playing mainly with the wife and an occasional buddy and we have a 5-month old to work around the schedule of.

Soo....what if I use the Kings of War 2.0 rules and army lists, with 15mm scale fantasy? Just halve all the distances of movement, ranged, etc.

A large variety of armies like this Elven one below can be had from a company called Splintered Light Miniatures for a measily 25 bucks, which other than making a couple of smaller individually 20mm-based characters by pulling apart the central command unit, would all fit perfectly with selections from the KoW Elf army list, even the tree-kin in the back:



Splintered Light also has lots of other choices for other unit types, like these that would reinforce the elves:



Because KoW is just blocks of troops that gain wound markers rather than remove troops, each cavalry-sized base above could count as the smallest kind of KoW element for that unit type, so a base of 3x15mm spearmen would be the equivalent of a unit of individual 28mm spearmen ranked 5 wide and two ranks deep. It would play mechanically the same, you would just have the "feel" of slightly smaller battles, as there wouldn't be hundreds of troops on the battlefield, just dozens.

For times you want the larger types of unit, several 15mm bases of each type could be ranked on a movement tray.

Think it'd work? Even sticking to Splintered Light stuff, you have everything for just about every KoW unit but Basileans. Which is ok, as I would have my game be set in the Warhammer Fantasy Old World, anyway, so I really just need WHFB analogues.

Great thing about 15mm is you can play a lot of different rules. Do it. Remember too that MA and DBA/Hott use the same element frontage, so I would base them with that in mind so you can use it for 3 games easily! Or, mount individually and use drop in movement trays. Lots of options!

 jmurph wrote:
Great thing about 15mm is you can play a lot of different rules. Do it. Remember too that MA and DBA/Hott use the same element frontage, so I would base them with that in mind so you can use it for 3 games easily! Or, mount individually and use drop in movement trays. Lots of options!

True.

This is one nice thing about 15mm armies.

The DBx standard for 15mm basically stuck, because so far you can even get 20mm miniatures based on the base-sizes used for 15mm miniatures without trouble.

I think this is one reason why we have not seen the similar DBx standard stick for 25/28/30mm miniatures: Because that standard REALLY only worked for 25mm miniatures, and began to break-down and get too crowded with 28mm miniatures (many of which just won't fit on a 60mm frontage as described), only to totally fail with 30mm.

Which is a pity, because as you get older, you begin to have trouble painting 15mm miniatures to the level you would like, compared to 28mm/30mm miniatures...

But, yeah, almost all of the more popular 15mm systems use the DBx (DBA/DBMM/HotT) basing standard. so it is WAY easier to find players than for 28mm/30mm miniatures.

MB

Ernie and the crew at Alien Dungeon are working on something cool, but we don't know much yet ...

http://robotpeanutstudios.proboards.com/attachment/download/1205

Armies of Arcana has a strong 15mm community as far as I know. It plays really smoothly, and will disappoint only if you want lots of detail and special rules.

As for smaller scale, hhhhhm. If you'd like to try my 10mm 'command and control' system, send me a PM!

Mindstone