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Hi all.

First up, AoS braught me back heavily from SF settings to fantasy. Since then I read a lot of fantasy books and backed mutiple fantasy-themed kickstarters. A lot of miniatures are interesting to me and I found myself buying various kits from different AoS armies. The plastic Frostgrave kits are on my to-buy list without the intention of starting Frostgrave.

I like game boards packed with scenery, but that isn't something you can use in AoS or other 'traditional' wargames, as there a simply a lot of miniatures on the baord, even in small games.

So my question is, which good fantasy wargame rules are out there that allow a huge variety of creatures (or a rule set for creating stats for own monsters) and has a relativly small model count (5-20 miniatures).
Bonus points if you can play it solo vs AI monsters.

Frostgrave fits the bill pretty well, and I'm sure you could play it solitaire as well.

Song of Blades & Heroes (somebody currently has info on that one topic below this one) is really good. It includes a force list in the back for lizardmen, elves, dwarves, goblins, halflings, humans, cat-people, minotaurs, and a selection of monsters and undead. It also includes the formula for building your own stats to match your model collection.

Also, another vote for FG but it's a little less adaptable. It still has a lot of model options but, to my knowledge, doesn't flat out give you the formula for creating your unique stuff.

Advanced Song of Blades & Heroes is pretty much perfect for what you want, for a generic fantasy skirmish game.

Like the previous posts, Frostgrave and Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes are great options. I would also add Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish. It is made by Crooked Dice Games. It is intended to be used with Otherworld miniatures, but you can easily use any brand you like. I mean an orc is an orc. An elf is an elf. It has some customization in it. You have to search a bit, but the PDF for it is like $12. It doesn't have leveling up on individual models within a campaign. Instead it takes a different approach to campaigns and make them more narrative. It also has an interesting treasure token aspect that the person designated as the defender can make use of.

Thanks to you all, I will look into Song of Blades & Heroes and Otherworld.

consider "carnage" or even better "dark heaven: Apocalypse"

Of Gods and Mortals would work as well, but it is a simple re-write of Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes.

Also, maybe try the Free Wargames Wikia. You will find a lot of interesting things there.

Dragon Rampant is similar in model count to Saga, and is an excellent Fantasy Skirmish System. It can also be adapted for even smaller model counts, and indeed lays out rules for doing this to create heroic characters. Cav is usually 6 models and infantry is usually 12, but again that can be adjusted to suit what you have.

En Garde has an appendix for fantasy games, and it is very low model count, 4-10 per side for most games. It has ideas for Solomon Kane, Conan, and the like.

Both are cheap, open to any base or mini, and have simple, solid rules that flow well.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

En Garde has an appendix for fantasy games, ... It has ideas for Solomon Kane, Conan, and the like.

I did not know that. Bought the rules but have not even read them, may have to do so in the near future.

Just posted an AAR for Advanced Song of Blades & Heroes.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/715377.page

I'd really recommend the "Advanced" version of the game over the Revised edition. They share a mechanic of attempting to activate a figure on your choice of one, two, or three dice. If the active player fails on two or more dice rolls, he loses initiative. The Advanced rules add reactions: for each failed dice roll the active player makes, the reactive player may attempt to activate one of his figures - or, if the active player has failed on two or more dice, the reactive player can choose to seize initiative.

The reaction mechanic really makes the game work for me.

Blood Raven is fantasy Vikings, but you don't have to limit yourself to that. It is based on In Her Majesties Name which is a decent system. That would also fit the bill.

The free rules from Gangfight Games, who share this forum (just below this section of the forums) has a fantasy supplement included in the free download. Really easy to make gangs of unique figures from any range. I'm actually working on two right now, a Stormcast one and a Skaven one, for an Age of Sigmar skirmish setting I made up for some home games.

Not a whole ton more complicated than Song of Blades and Heroes, just more individual stats and some simple skills versus SoBH's 2 basic stats/plethora of skills.

Still on the fence of which I like better, though I like the different weapons/spells stats from Gangfight Games, where in SoBH weapons are really just specially-named skills.


http://skirmishgames.com

 CptJake wrote:

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

En Garde has an appendix for fantasy games, ... It has ideas for Solomon Kane, Conan, and the like.

I did not know that. Bought the rules but have not even read them, may have to do so in the near future.

Also, since it is the same system as Ronin, you can use the Ronin monster generator and ideas:

https://ospreypublishing.com/gaming-resources#OWG4

https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B2UGzFKyUbhOVlF4WGVlRnptVE0

I've used En Garde for the Dark Ages and for Ancient Greeks, and it works great. I would love to adapt it and play a campaign series with Jason and the Argonauts. I need to make some harpies, Talos, skeletons, etc though for that, and I'm up to my eyeballs in other stuff right now.

These are a LOT of suggestions! Thank you!

I looked into Advanced Song of Blades & Heroes so far and didn't like it at first glance when flipping through it. Maybe I will give it another chance.

I also found Sword Play 2015 while googling, which could be nice for solo play, but was totally not my thing. But I liked the idea of joining models together to a unit and splitting them again when needed. Any other games with a similiar mechanic?

Gangfight Games Fantasy looks really good, I will also give this a try.

@spect_spidey mentioned Otherworld, but I could only find reviews of it, no links to buy a PDF. Can anyone point me in the right direction? (or provide a link so I can view it before buying the printed version)

On the other hand, I backed Relicblade on KS at the end of last year and just read the rulebook. After contacting the creator, he gave me some hints for creating my own characters with point costs. It's a really simple game which is a ton of fun.


I've seen Dragon Rampart mentioned, which uses small units. Any other games like this to choose from, for when I want 10-30 models per side?

For Otherworld, https://gumroad.com/l/asobK#
It was pretty well hidden, but I found it in a review I read. Apparently Crooked Dice Games sells all their PDFs through gumroad

Thank you.

I would recommend you check out Two Hour Wargames Swordplay and Sword and Sorcery, both free: http://www.twohourwargames.com/free.html

THW uses a pretty unique activation and action system.

 jmurph wrote:
I would recommend you check out Two Hour Wargames Swordplay and Sword and Sorcery, both free: http://www.twohourwargames.com/free.html

THW uses a pretty unique activation and action system.

Thanks for the suggestion, I already looked into Swordplay. Not my thing.

Again, En Garde!/Ronin is small model count with rules for incorporating fantasy. Check out their reviews in the Historical forum.

Saga could easily be adapted, and if you look online I am sure folks have done this. The Battleboards, dice mechanic, and Fatigue are all good and unique concepts.

I can recommend open Combat by Second Thunder publishing.

Just flipped through Dragon Rampant.
I like it a lot, looks incredibly flexible in unit sizes and very adaptive to nearly anything I can imagine.

Thanks to everyone who suggested it!

 Maniac_nmt wrote:
Again, En Garde!/Ronin is small model count with rules for incorporating fantasy. Check out their reviews in the Historical forum.

Saga could easily be adapted, and if you look online I am sure folks have done this. The Battleboards, dice mechanic, and Fatigue are all good and unique concepts.

So you said there is an appendix for Conan, Solomon Kane, etc. Is this appendix directly in the book or up for download somewhere? The reviews I read make it sound pretty focused on combat, are there ideas for scenarios and objectives in the book?

The appendix is in the book. There is a chapter on scenarios and a brief section on campaigns/progression.

Thanks, I will look into it next.

I have a review on this site of En Garde here:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/684503.page#8535728

 Hanskrampf wrote:
So you said there is an appendix for Conan...

Oh, that reminds me.

CROM

http://matakishi.com/conanhub.htm

http://www.matakishi.com/apps/webstore/products/show/3525005

En Garde! looks pretty awesome but with lots of combat modifiers. It borrows heavily from Confrontation, if I'm not mistaken? Which is certainly a good thing and making profiles for Confrontation miniatures seems pretty easy.

One question arose, when I read the book (partly): is a shield useless in melee combat? The description looks like it, but I think this would be pretty stupid.

As written, that is true. I have tended to house rule them as adding to armor