"Beginner needs advice" Topic

Hi,

So I've painted a few random miniatures over the past couple years but have never actually played a game. I've read many posts about rule sets where you can use any miniatures you want but then I'm left wondering what to actually buy. I kind of like the idea of a miniatures game that has a line of models and rules specifically for those models, especially if there is a reasonably priced 2 player starter set. I'm open to any rules if I actually knew what to buy though. I find the Quar miniatures to be pretty cool looking.

I've considered buying two of the HoTT armies from the 15mm UK site but to be honest I find the HoTT rules to be rather confusing. I'm open to 15mm or 28mm as long as the game can be played in a maximum of a 3x3 space.

So really I'm kind of lost as to How to get started and not spend a fortune. My girlfriend wants to get into the hobby as well so I don't want to turn her off with overly complicated rules.

So I guess I'm asking what all inclusive games would you recommend or if there is a rule set that is not tied to a specific line of miniatures could you help me know what to buy?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

Oh and we're open to Scifi or Fantasy.

It sounds like you're looking at a skirmish type game. There are a number of them available in both Scifi or Fantasy, some have a line of miniatures, some don't.

Fantasy

Freeblades – DGS Games
Dungeon Saga – Mantic
Shatterlands – Kickstarter ongoing

SciFi
Deadzone – Mantic
Gruntz
Tomorrow's War
5150 Series (wide variety of things here)

The fantasy rulesets have miniatures tied to them, but you could use others. The scifi rules do not have specific miniatures except Deadzone. TW does have a few figs in 15mm.

My usual suggestion is Infinity. Rules are free to download from the corporate website (infinitythegame.com), and the game is designed for 8-20 models per player.

There is a bit of complication from two factors in the rules:

One complication is that there's a reaction mechanic. If someone can see your model act, or is affected by your model's action, they can react (dodge, shoot, throw smoke, etc). While it sounds pretty simple described that way, it can get a bit complex on the table with multiple models getting reactions to one active model.

The second complication is that instead of only activating a model once per turn, you get a pool of orders that you can spend. You can quite literally spend all the orders in one order pool on a single model if you want to. I don't recommend doing that, as you will usually get shot down by proper deployment and reactions. But spending 2-4 orders on a single model is pretty typical in a game.

Now, Infinity is actually designed for 4x4 tables, but can be played on a 3x3 if you make the terrain more vertical and use shallower deployment zones. Say, buildings with 3-5 stories each.

Infinity does also take a good bit of terrain. On a 4x4 table, the typical recommendation is 9x buildings roughly 8"x8", 4x buildings/vehicles roughly 4"x4", plus some scatter to hide behind.

Other options are Relic Knights and/or the Batman Minis game. Batman (and the Marvel game) are from Knight Models, and are officially licensed (which makes individual models pricey). Batman and the Marvel game are both written for 3x3 tables, and only need 4 buildings.

For Fantasy I'd recommend Dragon Rampant, very simple and easy to learn/understand.
If you used 15mm figs based individually and change inches to centimeters it would fit onto a 3x3 or even 3x2 table.

FUBAR is free, and there are several Sci-Fi variants for it, e.g. generic, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K-ish, etc., etc..

Can't beat that price, they're not tied to any miniatures ranges, and they're easy to learn and quick-playing. One, or two pages of rules/Quick Reference Sheet.

Doesn't get any simpler than that.

Lots of 15mm minis ranges to choose from.

Various 25mm – 28mm ranges available too.

Finally, the 32mm Clix, Star Wars figures come already pre-painted, and who doesn't want to run a boarding action or three, or a small firefight on a desert world, in or around an alien-filled cantina?

Mice & Mystics is a fantasy board game with miniatures. It's fairly simple to play and a good gateway to fantasy skirmishes

link

And you can paint the miniatures

HOTTS
Dragon Rampant

Dragon Rampant is a good choice, as an alternative I would suggest Frostgrave.

I suggest you find a wargames club or group. See what they play. Give the games they like a go.
if you turned up at our local club you could just join in games without buying anything.

Long time players often have a stack of miniatures and have tried many rule sets. You could well find local players already have strong opinions on rules, scales etc etc. You can find people all too ready to share their opinions with you.

For Fantasy skirmish that can be played in a small area I would recommend Frostgrave, Song of Blades and Heroes, or The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game.

Song of Blades and Heroes is very easy to get into, and learn. You can use any figures you have or want to get. You only need a few figures to get started, 3 to 5 per side. It does not come with a setting, so it can be anything you want it to be. In that sense it lacks atmosphere. Great author support.

Frostgrave is also a simple game to get into. You play a wizard with a band of hirelings exploring the frozen ruins of an ancient city, Frostgrave, to find treasure. You would need 2 warbands of about 8-12 figures. You can use any figures you want, but there is also an awesome line of official figures. Battlefield size at 28mm is 3'x3'. It has a strong atmosphere baked into the game, but it is easy to ignore, and you can use any terrain. I've seen people play the same game in Jungle or Desert settings as well.

One of the big strengths of Frostgrave is the built in campaign system. As you adventure, you level up your wizard and in turn hire better minions to aid you in your adventures. Great online support from the author on FB and other forums.

The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game is set in Middle-Earth and also a skirmish game focusing on the Heroic action. Again a small figure count and a small play area is needed for this game. There is a huge amount of figures available for this. All inspired by the Lord of the Ring and Hobbit movies.

Some people might tell you this is a dead system, i.e. no longer supported and models going out of production, but that is not true. Games Workshop just extended the license for the figures and is bringing back into production models that haven't been seen in years.

Hope this helps.

Xin/Jeff

I might suggest picking a universe, then look for models and rules. Having a developed "back story" can help orient you to forces and rules.

So you could so Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Both give you a nice packaged starting point, but plenty of room to indulge your own imagination (there are lots of kingdoms on the maps that aren't in the movies).

I have a few suggestions.

Fo fantasy, you can't go wrong with some of the suggestions above. Dragon Rampant, Frostgrave and Song of Blades and Heroes are all good choices. A couple of boxes of the Northstar plastic figures for Frostgrave could easily be used in all three rulesets

For Scifi my personal favourite is Gruntz. Ground Zero Games offer very good starter armies . You could also wait for the bout to be released Rogue Stars if you wanted to ease into it with just a few figures per side.

I'd second the idea of trying to find a local club and see what they are playing.

G.

HOTT looks intimidating but it plays rather easy once you get it on the table.

It's also one of those games where you can take pretty much any model you can think of and put it on the table.

Bear in mind that even if you change rules later, your figures are still good :-)

If you don't care about making terrain you could look at the Conan board game. It is a fantasy tactical miniatures game that happens to be played on a board (and is terrain friendly if you want to build your own).

Core game comes with 74 figures amd 8 scenarios to use them in. One (or more) player controls a group of heroes while another plays the "bad guys". Gameplay is bloody and very cinematic with different characters having vastly different abilities.

Game will be available at retail Nov 24th. You can see gameplay videos on Youtube or on the Conan Kickstarter page.

I agree with Extra Crispy, you should decide just what kind of game you are looking forward to playing before picking the rules. While the recommended rules above are a great selection, picking the rules first then hoping for the game you want is a bit backwards. Think a bit about the game first.

What is it you would like to play? Small numbers of troops or large battles? This will help determine what rules to use.

There may be ways to try before you buy.

Your local game store may have game space available for people to come and run games, and you may be able to get into a game.

There may be game conventions near you, and you can spend a weekend playing.

Welcome to the hobby!

If you like the Quar, I'd try "Songs of our ancestors" it's based on the popular "songs of…." series recommended above, and is designed for zombie smiths Quar line. It requires 5-15 miniatures per side tops, and plays on a 2x2 table. In 15mm that would be less then $20 USD bucks. In 28mm a little more, but still a good starting point. If you want bigger battles try "This Quars War", which I think is still free. He sells starters in both scales.
The best advice for the hobby is: find minis you like, find opponents that agree on the mini choice, just pick a rule set and play it. There are so many rules available these days you can always change if you don't like what you are using.

I will suggest Necromunda rules for sci-fi genre on a 3X3 table. Good set of rules, few figures to paint off the bat only draw back might be the scenery you'll need several levels on three or four structures.

Have you considered going for a tabletop boardgame with miniatures such as:
Imperial Assault link
Rune Wars
link

Lots of good suggestions guys, thank you. Not really looking for a boardgame as I have played many, including many with rule books twice the length of HoTT. Although one possibility that crossed my mind that is a boardgame, is the new version of Warhammer Quest. It'd give us cooperative boardgame to play as well as plenty of miniatures to try a rule set such as Somg of Blades

There is just something about the way HoTT is written that doesn't allow me to wrap my head around them. Maybe I'll try using some pieces of labeled card stock and try them out. The idea of being able to get really creative is really cool (even if they are generic types, we have good imaginations). Plus we might be able to recruit some friends to play if we make some light hearted armies with broad appeal.

Turns out my girlfriend wants something grittier than Quar so that's out. I always wanted to get into Warhammer Fantasy battles or Warhammer 40k when I was a kid because I loved the figures some friends had but that's not something my parents would spend any money on. Age of Sigmar, how is it and how much fun can you get out of the Starter? I noticed that figures aside from the starter are rather pricy but is it something we could have fun with and slowly add to over time? Would we need multiple expensive hardback books (I recall my friends having these back in the day)?

What is the state of 40k? I recall when I was a kid it was a game that cost hundreds of dollars for just one army. Is that still the case? I never actually played a game but the figures, especially the Orks and Space Marines were so damn cool looking when I was a kid (back in the 90's).

Frost Grave also looks really cool. If we were to each pick a wizard/apprentice and buy a box of soldiers to split, that would get us started? I assume we would also need to buy the rule book separately?

As far as venturing to the game store, that's a possibility but really we're just looking for something to play with the two of us right now, so what's being played locally isn't much of a concern. Although being able to try some different games would be cool depending on what is being played.

Thanks for all the great suggestions. You guys rock.

40K has the advantages of being widely played and readily available but it IS kind of expensive.

You can get things off ebay though and if it's just the two of you playing kind of casually, you don't have to start with big, full armies.

Bluenotebooks, Yes a wizard and apprentice each with a box of plastic soldiers will get you started. The box has 20 soldiers in it. For FG the warband size is capped at 10(a few magical exceptions) So Wiz, App plus 8 soldiers is your warband.

Cheers, Xin

Besides the games mentioned above, there are other sets of rules available for free download. StarGrunt II (from GZG) comes to mind, but there are many others, and I don't have a list.

I like stargrunt 2 and you should check out gzg miniatures.

Turns out my girlfriend wants something grittier than Quar so that's out.

The only thing whimsical about the Quar is their figures. The conflict itself is WW1. Crusaders are the Allies, Royalists are Krauts.

But OK. TQW is a bit non-crunchy. I will repeat my recommendation for Infinity.

How about maelstromsedge.com/medge , which has a boxed starter set.

There is also Warlord's Beyond the Gates of Antares link and Terminator Genisys the miniature game link , which both have boxed starter sets.

If you can find a cheap copy the battle for alabaster boardgame is also a good way to put together an army.

Mantic's Warpath will have a starter set once its re-launched.

I forgot the Mantic link manticgames.com they have starter sets in Sci-fi (Deadzone) and Fantasy (Kings of War).

bluenotebooks,
Take a good look at BladeStorm for fantasy games, and I can also recommend AD&D Battlesystem Skirmishes.
For science fiction,I can recommend WarEngine (free),F.A.D (fast and Dirty), 5150 Star Army or best of all.. if you can find a copy of Flashpoint by Virtual Fusion Publishing ( out of print and out of business) which is a truly excellent game in my humble opinion.