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I bought Horizon Wars almost five years ago, when it first came out, with no plan or even inkling of whether or how I was going to actually try it. At the time, I had basically nothing in the way of miniatures smaller than 28mm scale. Well, Anno Domini 2021 is The Year of the Mech for me. Already since January, I have painted 30 mechs for BattleTech and 12 more in 28mm scale for Gamma Wolves. For whatever reason, the time is finally ripe, too, for Horizon Wars.

For those who don’t know, Horizon Wars was published by Osprey Games — not as part of its super affordable if quite modestly produced “blue series” but rather in prestige hardcover format with a beautiful layout and some evocative original art. If you’d like to get a copy yourself, it can be a little difficult to find the Osprey version for a reasonable price. But never fear. Designer Robey Jenkins (of Precinct Omega fame) has gone on to revise and expand the game as “Over the Horizon”, which is available as a full-color hardcover POD via Wargame Vault.

So what is Horizon Wars? The basic idea is, it’s a combined arms game with conventional forces like infantry and tanks but also flyers and ... of course ... mechs! As in BattleTech, mechs are the Kings of the Battlefield in Horizon Wars. The game is minis-agnostic and I selected some eminently affordable CAV plastics from Reaper, just perusing the online shop for whatever I liked. I now have enough for two sizable forces, which at this time (in the classic spirit of Advance Wars) are simply Team Blue and Team Red.

In Horizon Wars, elements across all types come in three categories defined by having a Presence Value of 1, 2, or 3. There is no given basing convention for the game, as it is also scale agnostic, but I think the assumption is using the same base size for everything ... which is a bit too boring for me. After painting BattleTech stuff for the last couple of months, these 10mm CAV models feel truly epic and I wanted the bases to help convey that.

So I made up my own basing convention related to Presence: P1 elements go on 30mm, P2 ones go on 40mm, and the mighty P3 titans go on 50mm. Here’s a pic of some WIP elements for Blue Team, featuring three elements of P1 light infantry, two P2 medium mechs, and a hulking P3 heavy mech.

I look forward to seeing more. I really liked the idea of this game as it used relatively "small forces" for large feeling games.

If you do not mind, I have a review and a test battle on my blog:

Review:
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/01/review-horizon-wars-osprey-games.html

Test Battle:
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/01/horizon-wars-battle-report-battle-of.html

Like you, I wanted to do more but did not have the models for it. I still don't! I have been too busy trying to get stuff for my own systems and this fell to the way side.

I am really interested in watching what you do with this. It might finally get me the excuse to get the CAV Dictator as I have always really liked that model!

Thanks for posting those E, I just re-read them for inspiration at the outset of pulling together these minis.

Here are the rest of the conventional elements for my Blue Team army, posed with the Mechs and Infantry to give a good sense of relative size. What we have here are 2x Heavy Cav (P3), 2x Armored Artillery (P3), 2x Light Cav (P2), and 2x Mobile Infantry (P1).

Love to see the progress. This has really helped me get the size of these CAV models.

I have all the 1st edition rule books and love some of the CAV designs, but never pulled the trigger on any of the mechs.

Just note that I corrected my base sizes in the OP: they are actually 40mm, 50mm, and 60mm. I am considering doing a scenario-specific “super mech” that will be on a 75mm base!

It's cool that you get to use such an eclectic set of minis in a single game.

Yes, that’s the big draw for me.

Today, I added three more units to Blue Team: a Light Mech, a third Medium Mech, and an element of Heavy Infantry.

Light Infantry is P1 and so, in my system, uses a 40mm base. As you can see from the pics above, I put three 10mm figs on each Light Infantry Base. Heavy Infantry is P2, which would be 50mm for me. So I used five figs.

In my games, Heavy (and even Light) Infantry was surprisingly tough to dig out.

Looking forward to seeing more of this!

 Easy E wrote:
Like you, I wanted to do more but did not have the models for it. I still don't! I have been too busy trying to get stuff for my own systems and this fell to the way side.

I am really interested in watching what you do with this. It might finally get me the excuse to get the CAV Dictator as I have always really liked that model!

That's not anywhere near as bad as me. I had two fully painted, themed armies that in a fit of what I can only describe as hobby insanity, I ended up selling the whole project instead of just storing it away.

Very cool! I like that it is miniature agnostic. Also that it looks fairly small model count?

Is there any kind of link depository of the different minis that can be used for the game, any suggestions or is it literally just a free-for-all?

 Pacific wrote:
Very cool! I like that it is miniature agnostic. Also that it looks fairly small model count?

Is there any kind of link depository of the different minis that can be used for the game, any suggestions or is it literally just a free-for-all?

The book has a list of manufacturers, but it really is a free-for-all of whatever you want.

You could use Brigade's Hammers Slammers with Old Glory at 15mm, or Vanguard at 3mm or 6mm, or whatever odds and ends you find. You could probably even use 28mm with a few mods.

Yeah, it's pretty open (and a good system to boot; I really enjoy it). I mostly was using a bunch of Firestorm Planetfall stuff, with some Dropzone Commander stuff, and even some Heavy Gear stuff. Probably will use some Battletech stuff too.

I did think that some 28mm would still make good looking mechs, like the Tau stealth suits, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.

Here is a WIP shot of the Blue Team mechs. Very simple, very blue. I am unsure if I want to use a secondary/trim color but if Idid it would probably be light gray. If I only had mechs to paint (to the tune of 5-7 on each side) I might just go for it but each team also has conventional forces to paint.

Simple yet effective.

Perhaps a white spec or arc on the canopies would be helpful?

I hope.you dont mind me joining in. I too bought the rules a couple of years back.and have just gotten around to playing a game. I also picked up the expansion Over the Horizon for the single player mode to play coop with my son. It's mostly a modelling project to be honest, but I found the game to be super slick and fast to play. I may have been doing it wrong, though.

It looks like a polish outfit have bought rights to.supply "official" models, but these are based on STLs apparently mostly purchased from Antenocitis Workshop.

https://stratominis.com/2020/01/01/hardwar-horizon-wars/

I know this because I have some of them.and have been printing them to play Horizon Wars with

I've also gone for a 10mm-ish scale.to.play with. I think it gives a good compromise between overall size.and available detail.

Some of my Blue force:

Medium and heavy tanks as heavy cavalry and a light cavalry tester as well. Alongside some AA tanks and a radar tank that I'm ot sure I can use, but they looked so.awesome I had to print them.

Some P1 elements of my single player Red force:


The P2 elements


And I couldn't resist stompy mechs as p3.elements.for.the single player mode




And then there is the supermech



The single.player game.has a breakout type.scenarion included which I played a.few.days ago. Am excuse also.to breakout all the scenery ive been churning out.

Lovely stuff Flinty! Looks like you are getting some very crisp prints.

As to the current state of Horizon Wars, I recently chatted with Robey about this on Facebook and this appears to be the lay of the land:

- Osprey’s HW is OOP in hardcover
- you can still get a PDF copy from Warehouse 23
- Robey is working with Strato on a version called Hardwars for which the latter’s models will be the official miniatures line
- Beyond the Horizon will on no way be compatible with Hardwars
- Robey has plans for a second edition of HW but this is planned for 2023

Thanks for the Info Manchu.

Thanks Manchu - good to see something about what happens next.

Given the ultimate flexibility of Horizon wars though, I think "not compatible" is probably a bit of an overstatement

Sure, the points values and reference to specific rules might not be relevant any more, but most of the expansion are well thought out concepts and recommendations anyway

I think that analysis is spot-on, Flinty. Plus, if one already has HW and Beyond, the need for a second edition seems a bit, well, theoretical. It’s mostly n issue for those who cannot find a reasonably priced copy of the OOP rulebook.

 Pacific wrote:
Very cool! I like that it is miniature agnostic. Also that it looks fairly small model count?

Is there any kind of link depository of the different minis that can be used for the game, any suggestions or is it literally just a free-for-all?

It’s a free for all. The only difficulty is figuring out which profile you want to use for which mini.

The nasty bad guys of Red Force continue their preparations, with the Presence 1 mob getting their disruptive pattern. Its crude, but then they are also supposed to be cruder than my green force, so I'll probably not try to tidy up the lines any. Just need to colout tracks, guns and maybe a few spot colours on lenses and they're done.

I love ‘em! They look absolutely dastardly!

Very cool.

Good to see others enjoying this most excellent game. Cool pictures too!

Its a shame this wasn't continued with Osprey as with Frostgrave, but it seems like its working out well for Robey which is the important thing. I just have a super fondness for Osprey books, thats all.

Me too, but Robey has been doing a great job going ahead without their help.

Thanks for the kind words, folks! The foundation of all of my work has very much been giving people (myself included) games that give you an excuse to play with the miniatures you love and want to own, rather than the ones you are told to use.

Quick correction: the supplementary material which is available from Wargame Vault is Over the Horizon.

Hardwar is basically a crunchier version of Horizon Wars with a softer military foundation. So if you really want battlefield taxis and atmospheric laser weapons, with a lot more options for customizing, it's a great choice (but you will never see those things in a Precinct Omega game*).

Meanwhile, I'm just starting work on Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark, which is the third in the Horizon Wars trilogy... and also the first, kind of, because it's a re-write of the original game but with everything I've learned since I wrote it built back in.

If you have the current Horizon Wars rules, do make sure to grab the FAQ & Errata from my website: https://www.precinctomega.co.uk/downloads

And if you like the miniatures-agnostic, use-the-minis-you-love concept, and the dice mechanics of Horizon Wars you might also like its sister games, Horizon Wars: Zero Dark (15-35mm special forces hard SF skirmishing) and Horizon Wars: Infinite Dark (far future spaceship combat at fighter, adventure or battleship scale). Both include Solo and Versus rules and lots of options for customization.

And if you're interested in following along with the development process of any of these (and with my haphazard journey as a full-time professional wargames designer/publisher) then do consider backing the Patreon campaign.

*Actually, you will see lasers in the new Midnight Dark, but they will work like, y'know, actual lasers - destroying instruments and intercepting missiles, not punching through armour.

DIgging this thread up since I can't find answer to my question anywhere.

If anybody playing this game is still on Dakka, enlighten me - what's the point of aircraft transports loaded with airborne infantry? They can disembark by using Deep Deployment and attaching their markers to the dropship, yes, but what's the point of that if they can use Deep Deployment anywhere on the table in the same manner anyway? Isn't that even worse option, since you can't put Deep Deplyment tokens independently and have to connect them to the flyer's base?

The point is to have fun. Perhaps a player really wants to play ride or the Valkyries as they deploy. Perhaps they want to go for a super hero team entrance. Whatever is fun.

I understand you mean what is the game advantage to this kind of deployment, and I think you just described that there isn’t one. So, if fun for you means playing like you have a care…don’t.

Really, this rule set seems like anything other than a serious match game between titans of strategy. I can’t even imagine playing this game without vroom-vroom-pew-pew-kaboom noises. And house rules to incentivize lots of big kaboom noises.

I don't want to turn this into competitive nightmare, but I find rules that essentially read "this thing actually does nothing" offputting and badly thought out. I will houserule it in some way when I get to playing this system on the table.