"What rules for Ion Age?" Topic

So I have taken advantage of Noble Knight's sale and picked up a gaggle of the excellent 15mm Ion Age series of miniatures. I am thinking of using them for something vaguely Rogue Trader meets hard science fiction platoon wargaming, using the generic "space orcs" vs "space knights" setting of Ion Age. The only problem is that I am not a terribly big fan of the different Ion Age rulesets, which leaves me in search of new rules.

So what is out there? At this point, I think I only have two hard requirements:

• Models should be individually based (I just think the Ion Age stuff looks better this way, and I bought these models primarily because they looked so neat)
• No rolling attack dice for each individual model (something where you roll two or three dice for the entire squad would be ideal).

Use of polyhedrals (i.e. D8's, D12's) is a plus, but not necessary.

So what would you recommend? What resources are out there for using Ion Age models specifically? Are there any games that already have conversion rules to use Nox, Malig and Retained Knights?

So you are not interested in the Ion Age rules sets? I can honestly say that Firefight is one of the best skirmish games I've played.

Actung Minen said,

"… The only problem is that I am not a terribly big fan of the different Ion Age rulesets, which leaves me in search of new rules…"

nnascati,

I think he answered your question before you asked.

Have you looked at: Gruntz 15mm rules?
Ability to make just about any force you want and I know that people have been using the minis…

link

Yep, I answered before I finished reading!

I rather liked the rules but if you want squad based shooting with polyhedral dice and individual basing, that all screams STARGRUNT.

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

I should be perfectly honest: I haven't actually *played* Firefight before. It just seems that everything I read about it makes me think that it would not be my cup of tea. That being said, I have NOT found a tremendous amount written about it to go by… just the free rules introduction on the Ion Age blog and a few comments on forums here or there. I've certainly never read a detailed review of Firefight 2.0 (although I found a rather negative review of the old 1990's edition of Firefight—however, I don't know how similar it is).

Either Moth or Firefight (or both?) seem to be tile-based games, which I don't like. Normally, I would happily mod away and convert the tiles to inches. However, the rest of the rules seem wonky and weird enough that it doesn't appear to be worth the effort. The action system seems to involve rolling D10's, hoping for 1's or 10's (a strange way to read dice… something which nearly turned me off AK-47 Republic). Other than that, the rules did not appear to do anything that other games hadn't already covered.

For the proponents of Firefight (or the unreleased Angis rules), could you describe the system more fully and why it's great? As far as I can tell, there is still no full description of the game online and it's hard to tell if the game is decent from the bits and scraps that are available.

Firefight 2.0 is a very fast plating skirmish game. Players command forces of 4 to 16 figures generally, though larger games are possible (I've done it). It is meant to be a tile based game, but playing "off the grid" is very easy. The game uses D6 exclusively. Each type of soldier has stats indicating how many D6 are rolled in different circumstances. Firing for instance would have the figure's shoot dice (lets say 2), +1 die for closer range, so the figure would roll 3 D6 for effect. the movement phase hold them as dodges for the turn, and can use them to cancel out hits. A roll of "6" indicates a hit. Figures who have rolled "1s" in There used to be a free version of the rules. Take a look at the Orcs in the Webbe website, it might be there. If not, write to Gavin Syme, he is the author. I started out playing the original version years ago, and still enjoy it. I hope this helps. EMail if you want to discuss more fully.

Nick
nnascati@gmail.com

MOTH is not a grid based game. It's mechanics are very similar to USEME, but with additional layers of complexity and IIRC it also uses different dice. I bought it and read it and it looked good. Never got a chance to play it though and I sold off my figs shortly after.

Have you considered Mantic's Warpath? It's a fast playing squad based ruleset. The "Maurader Orx" army list already cover space orks and the "Forgefather" (heavily armored space Dwarfs) or "Enforcer" Power armored humans would certainly cover most of the Retained knights. It's even got the "corporation" list that would cover Muster troops.

It does differ from what you asked for in that it uses lots of D6's. You don't roll per-figure, but each squad has a certain number of dice that go into the bucket. Also, it's made for 28mm, though you can easily chop it to cm's for 15mm or keep the original inches measurements.

Above all it's free! So you can give it a try with no risk.
link

Also, I'm always a fan of the ultra-flexible WarEngine, which can be had for free from the Warengine/Shockforce yahoo group. link

Rogue Planet ;)

Here is the link that gets you to the free download of hte sample rules -

link

Believe it or not you could use Infinity for that. Count every group of four models as a linked Fireteam and you could reasonably field 40 or 50 models a side.

BeamStrike

Ahh, I've decided to go with Stargrunt after all! It was probably floating in the back of my head when I was thinking about how to use the Ion Age minis, since I quite adore that ruleset.

I believe I will use the scenario generator in the back of the old Rogue Trader hardback as well—should make for an interesting combination!

Thank you all for the comments. I always welcome further advice, of course! This thread led me to pickup a few extra rulesets to peruse and potentially break out for a game now and then. I'll also be keeping my eye in the new Ion Age game, Patrol Angis, due out in the future.