"Rules for Massive battles" Topic

I'm looking for suggestions for rules for Massive (Gondor vs Mordor style) battles. Something that uses LOTS of figures but plays fast and has some chrome (something along the lines of Fire and Fury).

I have HotT and Fantasy Rules! as well as Battlesystem, Swords and Spells, Chainmail(TSR) and Perlious Encounters. Warmaster is not quite what I'm looking for either.

Which ones have I missed?

Hi

Have you tried the Battle of five army rules? They are
about 1/2 way to Warmaster ancients.

Armies of Arcanna?

FWIW I think that units of 12-48 figures are the size I'm looking for. I have LOTS of 15mm Fantasy and do not want to be tied to one source of figures

That's Armies of Arcana to a tee.

Have you seen Games Workshops mass rules designed for Lord of the Rings?
They are called War of the Ring and work well with lots of figures.

You might consider Pride of Lions. Feel free to shoot me an email for more information as my dad is the one who wrote it. You can see a battle report and the table full of figures we had for a game at link .

Here is the link to the report link

Age of Might and Steel is exactly for big battles. Incorporates magic without making the process a Wizard duel. Being the author I'm more than happy to answer any questions.

HOTT done big battle style?

How about Kings of war for free?

Another vote for Pride of Lions. Here's a link to a write-up of one of our games with pictures.

link

Dave

Armies of Arcana will handle big battles. There is also a fantasy variant for Black Powder that looks interesting.

Thanks,

John

I didn't know Splintered Light had a blog, sweet.
Mongo

If you want to go BIG then Armies of Arcana will slow down. It is designed for WHFB and slightly larger battles, assuming you want resolution in 2-3 hours.

WoTR is good from what I have seen and is the next level up.FR! is also very good.

If the battle is v big then most rules will go for stands rather than individual models like AoA and WHFB.

Thanks for the input. I have a 4x8 table and play lots of historicals. I'm looking for something that lets the fantasy games have the same look as Napoleonics or ACW.

Also this is geared to 15mm

Impetus Fantasy might be worth a look. The ammount of minis is very flexible – given your table is big enough, you can go HUGE. And there is lots of chrome without making it complicated.

Can you say what you are looking for more specifically, or what doesn't work about the games you mentioned that don't cut it?

thanks
andy

Saber6, we've done Mount Badon successfully several times, at Cons, with six players. The three Saxon players each had 10 units: 1 of huscarls, one of skirmishing javelineers, and 8 bondi HI. Each Saxon king also had a pack of war dogs, a one-time-only might-disorder-a-shield-wall attack (a la Cornwell's books).

Two of the Romano-Brit players had all-infantry forces, both heavy infantry and medium RB militia, plus some archers. The third was Arthur's panzer corps, his Companions plus several other HC units, plus some skirmishing LC.

HI units are 18 figures, so the Saxon horde had 27 x 18 plus 3 x 12 = 500+ minis on the table. The RBs were not quite as numerous, but had a hill fort and a fortified village crossroads.

It was a wild-and-wooly game, lots of maneuver but also BIG battle lines of close order infantry clashing and pushing each other back and forth.

PRIDE OF LIONS uses heroes effectively, as a basis for rerolls (with achance the hero dies), and commanders have an Exhort and Rally phase that gives them a chance to influence morale positively.

It is a simultaneous move system with blind order chits.

Impetus Fantasy (or Basic Impetus Fantasy for a simplified version)
Outstanding game (obviously based on Impetus so the combat and game mechanisms are superb), Monsters, MCharacters, Heroes, Wizards all the standard Fantasy elements are there. Magic is a bit limited but easy enough to add to. But that actually helps in a larger game.

The points lists/army builder allows you to use any figures you want in the armies you build. Has the flexibilty of HoTT but a much better game system.
Plus it is free to download so you get to try it out with no loss if you decide against.

Mind you I helped playtest Pride of Lions…but its hard to beat for a functional massive battle while retaining a degree of depth and still being "playable".

Another vote for Pride of Lions. They ran a MASSIVE game at this year's Millennium Con:

link

Rally Round the King

link

Each stand is a unit and we've played huge battles with it. Like 200 units per side and finished in a few hours with six newbies.

Can you say what you are looking for more specifically, or what doesn't work about the games you mentioned that don't cut it?

Most of the ones listed are really designed for 1-1 points style battles on small (2x2 or 4x4) tables. I don't need to pinch pennies and try to make 40 figures look and act like an army. When I play Napoleonics I can have 2-3 Corps on the table in Brigade units (16+ figures per unit). I'm looking for games that have an interaction between Cavalry, Infantry, Monsters and Magic that is not about "supertroops". I'm not looking for a game that acts like a skirmish but with lots of figures

Does that help?

"" interaction between Cavalry, Infantry, Monsters and Magic that is not about "supertroops". ""

Could you give an example of that?

So far it would look as if you could just scale HOTT up (by multiplying base and table size times three or so). That is is in case you can accept the pecularities of that game, which I find difficult (which is why I recommended Impetus Fantasy).

Anyway, my Impetus armies in 15mm do have 6 to 15 minis per base (one base being one unit). That is on the recommended 80mm front for 15mm minis. In 28mm, the recommended front is 120mm, which should allow for up to 30 or so minis per base. I would go for that, or possibly even go for 160mm (double the 15mm basing) and you should be able to get 50 or more minis per base.

interaction between Cavalry, Infantry, Monsters and Magic that is not about "supertroops"

Meaning that there are no "killer" armies. That you need to use a balance of these. FINDING that balance is part of the fun (an army of all Trolls might pound on Men, but be weak against something else).

I also don't want a game where it can be nearly won in the list making.

You might also check out Mighty Armies. I played a bunch of games this weekend trying out new armies with Rebel Mike. We had a great time and it is very hard to make "killer" units or over-balanced troop.

We've been playing Fantasy Impetus lately and, thanks to the large bases, tons of figures is very possible.

Here's some photos of a recent game. We only played 300 points. link

I'd try either Battle of Five Armies or Warmaster, or War of the Ring. The only reason that War of the Ring exists is that Bo5A was a different mini scale, so it hurt sales of the 28mm LotR minis. There's nothing that says you have to play WotR with 28mm minis. You could just as easily play with 10mm or 15mm figures.

Clash of Empires by Great Escape Games?

For myself it would really depend upon "how large of a miniature game that the parties want to play.. " I have used the rules A FIST FULL OF MINIATURES and its supplement and with a few opponents finished large battles in a few hours. We once staged a battle w/me deploying over 400 15mm cavalry/infantry per side and we were done in 6 hours. But it really depends what anyone wants to do w/there own game. I also like the Armies of Arcanna if you are a player who likes to throw buckets of dice for fun game system and the magic is also very quick and deadly. Well just dropping my two cents.. :)