"Dungeon Warfare" Topic

My friend and I have been playing Warhammer lately and he's got Skaven and Goblin armies.
We were looking for rules for fighting big battles in Skaven tunnels and Dwarf strongholds… but not seeing a whole lot… it seems like not a lot of folks are playing out scenarios like that.
There was a Ral Partha quickie game we played a bit in High School that had Dwarves fighting off a goblin invasion… we'd like something like that but with bigger armies… on a table that had some large caverns/halls but also smaller rooms and tunnels. (also I think the Ral Partha game took place in one big cavern…)
If it were skirmish we'd use SOBH… but we're thinking bigger than that (he's got a lot of Skaven!).
Lots of guys on the table moving in smaller groups in isolated areas… rules for traps that could take out several guys at once… rules for the Skaven/Goblins to create new tunnels… maybe some sort of 3D element for burrowing up/down at opponents.

Kind of like a big multi-player game of Space Hulk… but fantasy.
How would you do that?
Or should it really just be done as a series of skirmish games?

How about the GW Lord of the Rings rules? Just need to come up with stats for Skaven.

Rob

Why the LOTR rules? Are they set up for that sort of thing?

Would Mordheim work?

Why the LOTR rules? Are they set up for that sort of thing?

The Moria book (unsurprisingly) has rules for underground combat (climbing, jumping chasms, darknes, etc) and the game can handle fairly large battles even in confined spaces since it doesn't oblige troops to walk around in massed ranks. Not a bad choice at all for what you're after.

@VenusBoy3 -- are you talking about "Ral's Rules" (""Rules According To Ral")? Fantasy battle rules for armies?

Have a look: ironwindmetals.com/d/node/52

My understanding is that they're pretty close / same thing as Ral's Rules. I only played Ral's Rules once, a very long time ago, but I remember it being really fun and easy to pick up.

I second the GW Lord of the Rings rules. It plays well and would be a piece of cake to convert the figures from one game to the other.

My memeroy could be a bit hazy but doesn't one of the Felix and Gortek warhammer novels have a big battle underground between dwarfs and Skaven? I seem to remember them just finding a vast underground cavern to hold the battle in.

I would just use Warhammer with a few house rules (like no flyers) for flavour.

Hmmm… sounds like the LOTR rules are worth a look. I know nothing about them except for some demos I've watched on Youtube.
Which book do I want to look at? Is it the one that comes in the boxed Moria set? Is that the only way to get it?
IIRC there is a skirmish game and a big battles game… yes?

If nothing else they might give us ideas that we can pull over in to WFB.

Thanks

@ Dantes Cellar, no, not 'Rules According To Ral'… never played those, though I've been looking for a copy of 'Chaos Wars' (similar but more detailed?). The game I was thinking of is 'Cavern's Deep'… that is a small skirmish game that came with some dwarf and goblin minis. The map is of a dwarf mine/fortress and the goblins pop up from under the floor tiles. It was simple and limited in scope, but we had fun with it.

For the sort of space-hulk-but-fantasy idea in the original post LoTR would probably work well, since it's set up for easy movement, man to man combat, and some rules for different weapons (like, for example, spears being able to reach past a warrior in front, allowing both to fight in the combat – valuable in confined tunnels…). It's a very stripped down system, so it plays quickly, but you could bolt on rules for flavour.

That would work well for small focused battles.

Alternatively, if you wanted to game a battle for an entire complex (rather than for a small section of it), how about taking the abstraction up a few levels.

Take the map of the tunnel complex and split it into sections (quarters, sectors, whatever best fits the terminology for the setting…) on a hex or square grid. Then they become the zones (each representing an area with multiple tunnels and chambers) that the armies fight to control. Depending on how the tunnels connect the sections, some adjacent zones will not connect to each other (unless your sappers dig a new connecting tunnel during the game….). You could even make several levels and mark where the levels interconnect, giving you the vertical aspect you mentioned in the original post.

That would become sort of like a "square bashing" sort of game.

The figures would represent warbands or battlegroups rather than individual troops, and you could use an element-based combat system. I won't recommend any system in particular, as that's a matter of taste, but something like HoTT would work. Actually Warmaster would work, too, come to think of it, and it already has stats for the Skaven (I think).

The main tweak would probably be to reduce or remove distance firing, since ranges would be irrelevant except in the very largest chambers…

I think it totally depends on what sort of battle you're looking for. I expect whatever approach you take, you'll end up haaving to tweak a bit to get the right flavour.

Cool idea in general though…

Yeah, we were thinking of running the battle over the whole complex at once…
I was looking at the Warhammer Siege book (the 3e version) and that has some ideas for the invasion of a fortress that might be useful… taken up to a larger area.
Gonna have to have more of a sit-down on this about exactly what we expect out of it.
Warmaster is an interesting thought, we'd been mulling over giving that a try with 15mm anyway.

Thanks!

For what it's worth, Song of Blades & Heroes could handle this sort of game up to about 20 models per side. I realize that might be smaller than you've got in mind, but still worth considering. SBH is a great system for recreating extremely specific game scenarios like this.

Just got an emai from CoolStuffInc that the first 2 Dungeon Command sets are in stock and taking pre-orders on 3. Never saw the game before, but could be what you're looking for: link

Hmm, the rules system may have potential to use with the Super Dungeon Explore minis…..

And just a BGG found review here: link