"Collecting Reaper Figures for Fantasy" Topic

On my way to and from work I usually pass a Games Workshop store. My experience is with WAB so I'm somewhat familiar with their system. For the past few weeks my interest in fantasy has grown which led me to unearth 20 or so Reaper figures which I had bought a while ago.

So, while the price of GW army books are outrageous I'm looking for a similar system with 28mm individual based figures in a large unit setting like GW but I could go with Skirmishers if I really wanted to.

Also what is your opinion on collecting an entire force or two based on Reaper or even Reaper like figures?

Reaper is a leading manufacture of fantasy figures. I think the Bones range would allow you to build up units quickly and less expensively. Maybe have your leaders be from the metal ranges.

They also have a free PDF version of their skirmish fantasy rules for their Warlord range, called Warlord.

Reaper has a lot of great fantasy figures. Another company you might want to peruse is Dark Sword Miniatures. They have a lot of very unique figures sculpted by a wide range of artists over the last couple of years. They also have the Game of Thrones line if your a fan of that series.

darkswordminiatures.com

Reaper figures are great, but they're not a whole heck of alot cheaper than GW in many cases.

As for games, Warlord is their game and it's a fairly small skirmish game.

Kings of War is Mantic's large battle game. It's about the same size armies as Warhammer, but it's a much faster playing game. It uses individually based or unit based miniatures. It's up to you. There is no casualty removal though. Units take damage and then break or waver, but they don't progressively degrade.

If you use the Bones range from Reaper, then I think it would be very cost-effective to raise armies.

-Will

Good Point. There are a couple of reaper figure types that are both in bones and in several different sculpts that would be good options for unit building.

"I'm looking for a similar system with 28mm individual based figures in a large unit setting"

Fantasy Warriors is all downloadable for free from various sites; including my archives at link

Red boxes are things you need, yellow are army lists, brown are ally/mercenary armies, green are files we've create for our use from various sources.

The one major difference between it and most other 28mm games is that FW figures should all be on 25mm bases not 20mm.

Armies of Arcana, if you can find it, is a good WFB simulacrum (similar system but tweaked for improvements).

Kings of War is a good system, and simple. Uses "units" rather than individual-based combat and casualty rules. Maybe too simple for some, however.

WFB, in its 8th edition, is a decent fantasy system if played in the spirit of the Perry Bros and their Hail Caesar/Black Powder family of rules. WFB is too complex and bloated to be the tournament-gaming style set many of its players want it to be, so you can get turned off by killer army lists and trick plays, though the base rules and army book rules are not that bad and give great flavor.

I have some new Armies of Arcana books for sale if anybody's interested. I sell them from home in Canada. Sorry for the ad but I know some people are having trouble finding them.

I have ork and lizard man armies enitirely made up of reaper. I also have a pretty large castle guard force using their men at arms with the kettle helmets.

I usually use the LOTR rules for my fantasy skirmishes.

LOTR, and now updated to be The Hobbit rules, is a great skirmish system, and is to be differentiated from the War of the Ring rulebook by GW for mass battles.

LOTR/Hobbit plays just a bit more complex than Song of Blade and Heroes, but is in the same ballpark--two key differences are the activation system for each and that in LOTR/Hobbit you roll to hit, then to wound, whereas in SOBH you do a roll contest with either a pushback or destroyed result. If you want a simple but enjoyable skirmish game, these two are the ones to go with, IMHO.

Thank you for all your suggestions. However, I have a few observations.

1) While Skirmish is something partial of what I'm looking for. I prefer large scale battles like WAB.

2) I'm looking for mainly metal models instead of the Bones miniatures since there is a question of the quality at least that is what I read.

I thank you for the suggestions. I shall look into the rulesets that you guys have suggestions so far.