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Just wondering what folks into 10mm fantasy wargaming were using as their main rules these days. I recently picked up Fantastic Battles, and so far rather like the system. Now I'm on the hunt for great 3d printing resources for 10mm fantasy stuffs. I've already subbed to Forest Dragon, and seriously considering Greenskin Miniatures. What other minis and terrain sources do folks use with their 10mm fantasy wargaming? And anyone who has played Fantastic Battles care to share any custom army lists, or other resources?

I love 10mm fantasy gaming. We dabbled in Warmaster last year, but it didn't really stick. I don't know much about Fantastic battles. Does it play similar to Kings of War in that scale?

 Shrapnelsmile wrote:
I love 10mm fantasy gaming. We dabbled in Warmaster last year, but it didn't really stick. I don't know much about Fantastic battles. Does it play similar to Kings of War in that scale?

I've never played Kings of War (read through the rules, and they just didn't "grab" me), so can't really compare. I can say that after one test game with cardboard chits, I liked the emphasis it seems to have on command (you only ever activate your characters, which are Warlord, captains, and so on), and they issue orders to nearby units within their radius. Units can be composed of one or more companies (bases) of duders of the same type, and can have a couple formations (line, column, turtle, and horde for irregulars).

Fairly straightforward rules that way, but turns are broken down into Shooting (yes, you do that first), Movement, then Melee. Initiative is done via drawing colored tokens/dice from a bag, and each player has a number of tokens equal to their characters plus one. The first token drawn requires you to activate any "Impetuous" units (those out of command). Combat is pretty simple, with each unit having X melee dice, and needing to roll equal to or better than their target's Defense value. Damage is done is recorded as reducing a unit's Resolve, no model removal.

Companies are on a standard 40 mm square base (for 15mm scale or less), or 60 mm square if you want to be silly and use 25mm scale or bigger. Nothing terribly "ground breaking," but it seems well put together and unit/army customization is available, but not terribly open for too much abuse.

Mainly, it got me back into scratch building terrain which I haven't done in years, and hunting for STLs of cool fantasy armies.

We got some folks here simply playing One Page Age of Fantasy at half scale using solo based Warmaster prints

I have used Dux Bellorum, Dragon Rampant, Warmaster, and Restless Hordes for my small-scale "fantasy" wargaming. I normally use 6mm though.

3D printing has revolutionized this space, but there are some great providers out there too. I think Pendraken and Baccus are good websites to start on if you are "small scale" curious.

I will have to check these rules out.

Microworld has 3mm fantasy (I think on 40mm wide strips) that would work with this - Orcs, Goblins, Dwarves, Elves, Dark Elves, and soon not-Empire. And each base/"company" would actually look like an independent warband of troops.

 infinite_array wrote:
I will have to check these rules out.

Microworld has 3mm fantasy (I think on 40mm wide strips) that would work with this - Orcs, Goblins, Dwarves, Elves, Dark Elves, and soon not-Empire. And each base/"company" would actually look like an independent warband of troops.

Even if they happen to be smaller, you'd still be ok to go so long as everything is uniform in width (there's more leeway with length), as all measurements are done in "Base Widths". So, if a unit has a Move of 3, that's 3 BW; 120mm if bases are 40mm wide, 90mm if they were say 30, etc.

It's not got a ton of crazy special rules (there are some special abilities, of course), and it felt like maneuver was actually important (you only get a charge bonus, for example, if you lined it up just right and can make full contact with the front of your unit along a base edge of the target; if not, you can still conform and attack, but just no charge bonus).

I may have to go poke around at Microworld, though dipping into another scale would be silly of me...

Bumping this thread instead of making a new one.

My friend and I have been itching for some big battle gaming for years. We tried Warmaster and bounced pretty hard off of it.

After a few years of on-and-off tinkering with designing a pike and shot ruleset of my own (being the history nerd), I've come to sad realization I have no interest in affixing the sheer number of pikes to 10mm figures such a project would require.

I've recent stumbled into Fantastic Battles and am really enamoured with the figure agnostic, highly customizably nature of the rules.

May slowly start to put together some companies as a proof of concept.

I'd love to hear what's wrong with Warmaster, people have been saying it's great for 20 years and it's the grandfather of half the modern historical rulesets.

It somewhat depends on which version of warmaster they're all trying. The original version had great bones but had some issues and was rough in certain places. 2nd edition was a great improvement, but also still had some issues. I never played Ancients but my understanding is that they resolved many of the issues there and that was the best "official" iteration of the rules. Since then its been further refined into many other rulesets not named warmaster that vastly improved on it.

As far as "warmaster" is concerned, most warmaster fans these days are playing one of a handful of fanmade updates to the game. I'm not sure which is the best or most popular overall, but Warmaster Revolution is my current go-to and seems to be the one with the most interest and support. It incorporates many of the fixes from Warmaster Ancients and some of the other updates and common houserules people implemented over the years to patch the game up and deliver what I think is the most solid warmaster fantasy experience to date.

Cheers. I barely managed to talk myself out of jumping on a Revolutions group buy for hardcovers this year. But I've never played and it was an easy cut from my 2024 plans as there's too many other things going on.

I'm painting Man o War right now tho.

chaos0xomega wrote:
It somewhat depends on which version of warmaster they're all trying.

Agreed. We play WM Revolution occassionally; it is a tight and well managed system in our experience.
you still feel its age, but regardless -- really fun.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I'd love to hear what's wrong with Warmaster, people have been saying it's great for 20 years and it's the grandfather of half the modern historical rulesets.

This was a few year's back, so forgive me if my recollection is light on our impressions.

We were playing as-printed Warmaster, not the community-maintained Revolutions.

We found the rules hard to parse, that was the primary point.

Also it reminded us more of a Warhammer Fantasy at small size, rather than the impression of a "big" battle.

More power to all the guys who have enjoyed the rules. It's not a knock. Just not every ruleset is for every person.

I'm looking forward to trying out Fantastic Battles. I like the basing more, and I really like the figure and faction-agnostic nature of the rules. That's super appealing to me, and one of the reasons I've enjoyed Frostgrave so much.

I played some fantastic battles 1st print with a friend. My army is orks from magister militum. But I would also recommend pendraken.

Will_Power wrote:
Bumping this thread instead of making a new one.

My friend and I have been itching for some big battle gaming for years...

...am really enamoured with the figure agnostic, highly customizably nature of the rules.

Let me recommend Mayhem by Brent Spivey.
https://www.wargamevault.com/product/110359/Mayhem?manufacturers_id=3556

I haven't played it extensively, as my miniatures group is small and mostly gone, but I did really enjoy it.

I'll also be checking out Oathmark and Hobgoblin as well.

I tried:

Fantastic Battles: very nice faction/army creation rules, well thought activation system. But if feels a bit too abstracted...

Warmaster (Revolution): outdated, archaic mechanics, I go you go is obsolete in my book. Flavorless units and troops.

Oathmark: nice alternating activactions, but overall I felt dissapointed in how the fights are done. It is just a small old WHFB.

Wartorn: designed to use the microworld fantasy line. Amazing, based on Epic Armageddon. I added the mechanics I liked from WM to archieve the ultimate 10mm Fantasy wargame.