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Our small group plays mainly non mainstream stuff and almost all of it is skirmish.
We’ve joked among ourselves that we could afford to stay current with 40k if the money we spent on indie pdf’s and garage miniature manufacturers was applied to one thing.

The games that have come closest to our grail goals are Pulp Alley and Song of Blades and Heroes (basic). Grim Dark Future Firefight and full GDF are next in line for larger games or when we’re trying to replicate necromunda or kill team 18 but with rules that we prefer.

What’s your grail quest look like?

I suppose
1) getting even a few local players to appreciate any of the Navel games I enjoy.
2) getting certain players to try certain games.

I bet among our group our Grail Games world very depending on the member. We formed around Song of Blades and Heroes around 2010 and it was either our main game or played often for around 5 years and several campaigns. At first it felt like the Grail to the majority of the members of the club who were mostly experienced gamers looking for a game that was easy to learn, fun, and let us go wild with whatever miniatures caught our fancy.

Here are the dream games of some of our members that are not necessarily fulfilled by the club.
-To play his favorite Historical Naval games, not just at conventions.
-A modern version of Full Thrust and players to play it.
-A finished version and players for the skirmish rules he's been writing for years
-15mm Fear and Faith.

In addition to Song of Blades I've had several of my Grails fulfilled over the past decade.
-Recently GDF had allowed me to get back into the 40k universe that first captured my imagination, to again use my old armies, to do so with my kind of ruleset, and best of all to play with my son!
-Kings of War is my Grail for large fantasy Battles. I've owned all versions but this is the first time I've played more than a few games of a version We've been playing it for a few months and a campaign starts on Monday!
-Mech Attack is my preferred Battletech replacement. It was a revelation when we discovered is about a decade ago We occasionally play at 10mm and a couple times a year I do massive Convention battles in 28mm.

Lastly, I've been very lucky so far with Grails but my forever Grail always-just-out-of-reach is probably a full campaign of classic Necromunda. I've got campaign size gangs of all but one original house painted up and enough catwalks to do it right. A few years ago we did a very brief campaign with Yaktribe's excellent NCE version of the original rules, but that just made me want to play more. We haven't touched it since and I have no real desire to get into NewCrowMunda which seems to have spawned the layers of rules and rulebooks common to GW flagship games.

Someday...

Agree that KoW pretty much ends the quest for rank and flank gaming, at least for me. It's darn near perfect.

Our larger area group managed to play maybe 5 games of necromunda with the 2018/19 update---after everybody had bought the 2017 boxed game that was replaced by the hard covers. The game just fizzled out after that. Fortunately, our sub-group has discovered hive gang rules for grimdark future firefight and it's got a really good campaign system to boot.

It is the search for the Grail that is more important than finding the Grail.

Agree. It’s also, sadly, the search that can prevent you from actually enjoying the good stuff you have discovered.

Space Hulk

I write my own games, and I still haven't found the "perfect" game yet!


LOL

> It is the search for the Grail that is more important than finding the Grail.

It's also more expensive!

At least for boardgamers. Dungeoncrawls are one of boardgaming's holy grails, and dungeoncrawl boardgamers keep buying another $100 boardgame that doesn't satisfy their needs. I'm backing DUN and just bought Descent 3, of course.

Naturally, I'm picking up the search for another grail namely solo miniature skirmish games. Got me a copy of Battle System's Core Space!

Cool! I bought one of their terrain sets but sadly chucked it after building it. It was definitely a nailed it meme moment. I could have done better assembling it if I had gotten a chimpanzee drunk and then locked it in a completely dark room with a window through which I would feed pieces of the kit covered in peanut butter over the course of a weekend.

 privateer4hire wrote:
What’s your grail quest look like?

A game I (and other local folks) can all be motivated to play and enjoy.

Recently I had a slight experience with it because of Marvel Crisis Protocol. There's a group of people who play, and enjoy it, and are pleasant. However, I started working 2nd shift so I was unable to continue playing with them. The game is really fun and thematic and well designed. The models are great, and while pricey, you only need 10. Low model count means you can get a force painted up relatively quickly. And on top of that it features an IP that I've LOVED for 30 years. I've 22 models fully painted for the game (which is good for me), and... uh...a pretty big backlog that I can draw from if I can get back on 1st shift and want some more options.

That being said, a grail for me would be to play, or find a new system that reasonably approximates, WHFB 5-7 or WH40K 2-5, with a group of folks. I know there are options out there, but need players to take advantage of them.

 bbb wrote:

 privateer4hire wrote:
What’s your grail quest look like?

A game I (and other local folks) can all be motivated to play and enjoy.

Recently I had a slight experience with it because of Marvel Crisis Protocol. There's a group of people who play, and enjoy it, and are pleasant. However, I started working 2nd shift so I was unable to continue playing with them. The game is really fun and thematic and well designed. The models are great, and while pricey, you only need 10. Low model count means you can get a force painted up relatively quickly. And on top of that it features an IP that I've LOVED for 30 years. I've 22 models fully painted for the game (which is good for me), and... uh...a pretty big backlog that I can draw from if I can get back on 1st shift and want some more options.

That being said, a grail for me would be to play, or find a new system that reasonably approximates, WHFB 5-7 or WH40K 2-5, with a group of folks. I know there are options out there, but need players to take advantage of them.

Have you tried Grimdark Future? It's alot more streamlined than 40k, but it has a very 40k feel and the low barrier of entry (cost and complexity) might make it more appealing to draw folks into. Anyone who has -or has access to- a 40k army, can jump right in. It's also constantly updated so as to include new/current releases.

It's been scratching my 40k itch for a few months now, but without the stresses of buying expensive books and keeping up with codex creep and rules overload.

Warmachine. Full stop.

 Eilif wrote:
Have you tried Grimdark Future? It's alot more streamlined than 40k, but it has a very 40k feel and the low barrier of entry (cost and complexity) might make it more appealing to draw folks into. Anyone who has -or has access to- a 40k army, can jump right in. It's also constantly updated so as to include new/current releases.

It's been scratching my 40k itch for a few months now, but without the stresses of buying expensive books and keeping up with codex creep and rules overload.

I need to check it out. There was a local guy asking about it recently, but I don't know if he ever delved too deep into it.

 bbb wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
Have you tried Grimdark Future? It's alot more streamlined than 40k, but it has a very 40k feel and the low barrier of entry (cost and complexity) might make it more appealing to draw folks into. Anyone who has -or has access to- a 40k army, can jump right in. It's also constantly updated so as to include new/current releases.

It's been scratching my 40k itch for a few months now, but without the stresses of buying expensive books and keeping up with codex creep and rules overload.

I need to check it out. There was a local guy asking about it recently, but I don't know if he ever delved too deep into it.

I highly recommend it. It doesn't have the RPG'ish layers of cruchy-fluff that 40k has, but it still seems to capture the "feel" of a game of 40k. Being able to sit down and just play out a game of "40k" without all the hassle/expense headaches has been a joy for my son and I.

There are how-to videos online, starter guides, etc, but it's a dead simple system, so if you've played 40k you probably won't need any of that.

It feels, to me, a lot like 8th edition before the codexes wrecked it. It also has-for the most part-honest to goodness universal special rules. So much easier than calling an extra fixed movement “fast” for everyone instead of space elf twinkle shoes, speedy bug feet, cavalry boost, etc.

AND knowing that the rules are either free or a whopping five bucks and pretty regularly updated if stuff gets too out of hand. So it feels at least as balanced as 40k with actual feedback considered and again without having to buy three power armor army books in a single edition