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I have been wanting to make smaller scale terrain and play more small scale games. If you were going to start a smaller scale game in 2023, what would it be?
I think that 15mm games for example, really make it easier to have more realistically scaled games (For example, a bolter or gun in 28mm would obviously easily be able to shoot off the table!

Steel rift or battletech any good?
I'm a big fan of tanks, so any game with tanks, as long as they are not in parking lots is a big plus!

Horizon Wars is a great rules set for anything between 6mm and 15mm. Lets you use mechs, tanks, infantry, aircraft, everything. Nice slick combat resolution and also has a single player mode.

I like battletech!
It’s very much absorbing my hobby time at the moment.
My desk has like 50 mechs on it in various stages of paint.

We also play gundam on the tabletop, does that count…
The ability to pose, mix and match, and get a unit on the table from the box in like 2 hours is great fun.
And our GM has been able to surprise us with a few crazy battles without any warning.

For Mech combat I like Alpha Strike and "Mech Attack".

Alpha Strike is a great way to play larger, faster games in the Battletech universe and quite accessible.

"Mech Attack" is an indie game on Wargames vault that captures much of what I like in BT (customizable loadouts, damage grid, heat ,etc) in an extremely streamlined package.

We play both games in 10mm using rebased Mechwarrior clix, but I also run convention games of Mech Attack at Adepticon each year in 28mm (1/56). which are alot of fun.

Battletech itself is an acquired taste, and not a game I enjoy, but it is in the midst of a bit of a renaissance with new plastic minis and regular releases and I encourage folks to at least give it a chance. The Starter rules, and a map counters and sheets For both Battletech and Alpha Strike are free here:
https://bg.battletech.com/downloads/

I like Horizon Wars as well.

2 votes for Horizon wars sounds good! Thanks I'll have a look!

I'll throw another vote in for Horizon Wars. Great little game, and flexible to let you do several kinds of things.

My group also recently got bit by the Battletech bug. Some of us are returning from 20+ year hiatus, some totally new to it. Either way, we're building up collections and painting rather quickly.

Battletech! You never really stop playing, you just sort of go into remission. The durability of a ruleset that has remained, essentially unchanged, for 30+ years is seductive.

If you find anyone that has ever played Battletech, you can get them going again in 30 minutes. It's quite amazing.

Gruntz is a great set of rules for 15mm, platoon level play.

You can design your own units; infantry, tanks, support vehicles, air support, and mechs. It's a fairly simple ruleset as well, with 2d6 dice for most mechanics.

15mm Laserburn

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Battletech! You never really stop playing, you just sort of go into remission. The durability of a ruleset that has remained, essentially unchanged, for 30+ years is seductive.

If you find anyone that has ever played Battletech, you can get them going again in 30 minutes. It's quite amazing.

Ooff, that's really appealing! I like the retro vibe too!

Horizon Wars.

It was one of the first books I bought when getting back into the tabletop hobby and has been a nice alternative for Epic 40K in it's abscence( well, kinda but I'll let Pacific spread the good word on that one .

I like playing mini or "travel" 40K with my brother where we have some AT knights each and simply switch inches for centimetres. Suddenly, 1,500 point 40K becomes more affordable than a regular combat patrol battle!

I like OGRE/GEV from Steve Jackson Games. The plastic miniatures they've released over the past several years are pretty nicely done. You can play on hexes or using 3D terrain. Their lite-miniatures rules used to be available for free if I remember correctly. The minis work for any generic 6mm rules too.

I always wanted to play Epic 40K in it's various forms, but right now Battletech is the 6mm game of choice for me. I am planning on getting the Alpha Strike box pretty soon.

I never got further than being "Battletech aware" for the last 25-30 years, but the latest Kickstarter finally drug me in further than just being interested n the universe. The mechs are just freaking awesome compared to the old metals, and there's just a ton of 3D printed models out there now. I can't wait to try Alpha Strike with a combined arms force of tanks and VTOLs.

One note with Combat Vehicles in Alpha Strike, every time they get hit, there is a second roll to see if it's Movement is affected. A little annoying, but not too bad.

I've gotten 10 Protomechs now. They are as fragile as heck in Alpha Strike (MAYBE 1 Armor and 1 Structure), but I wonder how effective they'll be. I am not confident unless I can convince people to focus on something else.

Dirtside II/Stargrunt

Tomorrow's War can also be played at 15mm/20mm easily.

brutalboi wrote:
I have been wanting to make smaller scale terrain and play more small scale games. If you were going to start a smaller scale game in 2023, what would it be?

The only one I've come to try out was Horizon Wars. The system is fine, even if balancing is off (vanilla tanks and artillery crush everything, dropping from airships with droptroops is technically meaningless, level 1 dropships may as well just not exist), and crits make it very luck dependant.