"Is anyone else sick of skirmish gaming?" Topic

I am fan of gaming, period. Skirmish, alas, cover my wargaming needs nicely.

My favourite is something in between, though. A couple of brigades per side, and I am perfectly satisfied. Big battles I find them boring.

I have recently gone the other way – i used to love grand tactical wargames – loved the idea of commanding the armies of the 19th century. But after a while I realised how un-realistic, convoluted, and abstracted all the rules were for these types of game. Typically in grand tactical games mean you are the battalion commander, the regimental commander, the brigade commander, the division commander, the corps commander and the army commander, and the general staff if applicable.

Now I game on a 1 to 1 skirmish basis using the excellent FiveCorps rules – at the moment the Five Men At Kursk variant. I am just setting up a new campaign for the first time ever using these RPG style rules that gets you to invest in the men you are commanding – the rules system can easily be used for platoon sized forces on each side and bigger if you have plenty of time. I find it alot more rewarding doing it this way than a stand alone battle played outside of the overall campaign and therefore no understanding of the units or pressures being exerted on all command echelons with completely abstracted rules.

A Lot of people seem to be following the trend of deriding the preference and fashion for skirmish rules and their prevalence at the moment. However, I think the reason for this fashion is time, space, budgets but also, the realism of commanding realistic forces at a realistic level and being able to engage with your figures as characters to a greater or lesser extent.

I can't recommend Nordic Weasel Games rules highly enough – all available on Wargames Vault. There is something for everyone from Nordic Weasel Games!

I even do my modern battles at the Army Level, and use 20mm .

I remember most skirmish games and their incidents. Most of the big battles have merged into a collage of slow drawn out unfinished slog matches. Been playing a long time with a lot of rules.
Originally nearly all big battles now more and more skirmishing, I like to be able to finish a game.

Funny we had this exact conversation in the club after a couple of really fun big battles games we had of late. I am considering dumping all of my World War II as a result as it is always 1-1 and I am not enjoying it like I used to.

I like skirmish games as a way to get my club-mates working on something we can all play together but in the end it is the big battle I like to arrive at. Saga has made large scale Dark Ages gaming possible for us.

I have been doing a lot of 28s of late which is a big commitment in time and money. I love playing them but they need a lot of space to do well.

The desire to play some larger battles has me looking at 6s again – likely a kickstart of a small WOSS project we had a few years back.

One thing I'll give you about skimrish gaming – it does allow you to game a little of a period while you build up the forces.

Start with a "Sharpe" style raid, build up to a small battle with a few battalions, then on to Talavera….

Variety is the spice of life, so skirmish games are definitely part of the mix for me, but I also play divisional and corps sized games. I think factors which have encouraged the rise of skirmish games, certainly in UK, are limited space at home, so you often need to play a game which will fit on a small dining table; limited time for painting and gaming and most skirmish games need few figures and can be played in an hour or two; and finally the fact that many people are finding their disposable income squeezed, so rule sets that cost less than a tenner and only need a few figures are more attractive than those which cost £40.00 GBP or more (plus the obligatory suplements at £25.00 GBP a time) and need several hundreds, if not thousands, of figures for a decent game.

I haven't played any large battles with miniatures. I think the biggest was a game of Epic with maybe 100 figures on the table. I'm not at all tired of 20 or so years of frequent skirmish gaming.

I haven't played any large battles with miniatures. I think the biggest was a game of Epic with maybe 100 figures on the table. I'm not at all tired of 20 or so years of frequent skirmish gaming.

I like both. Prefer big battles, but skirmish and it's ease of getting a game up dominate my play opportunities.

@otto,

Army level moderns? What figure ratio and time/ground scale? I am a bit incredulous about putting an army on the table if you mean more than two corps on one side iin tactical situations. Divisions maybe and definitely brigades might make an interesting game but if you are deploying an army you might as well use a board game with cardboard.

I like skirmish gaming because of the narrative; I like big battles too but I also look for rules where a narrative can be generated, rather than "everybody advanced and some dice were rolled". So realistic random events and forces of friction acting on command and control.

I just ordered over £500.00 GBP of Perry Napoleonics, so I guess I'm a big battle man.

My ancient armies are also in the hunderds (figs) per army, and keep expanding. Will it ever stop? No, as long as I have space for more I'll keep just doing that.

In a word, no…

Done my share of BIG games.

Would do epic again, but nothing historical.

I'll say this for skirmish games: you can do an interesting, either side can win skirmish game in almost any period, while often the tactics are too limited or the battles too one-sided for full-scale warfare.

But my personal preference is a really small army--something at the Henry Havelock, Lord Cornwallis, or Daniel Morgan level. In modern times, a WWII Combat Command might be about right. It's a level at which the commander can see the battle, know the troops and be rightly concerned with the tactics.

Not sick of skimishes as I really like being able to dabble in different games and genres. It helps that even our skirmishes are often on great big well terrained tables.
Last week's Walking Dead game is a good example of this. link
Aside from the assistant GM's hordes of zombies, no player controlled more than 3 or 4 minis.

That said, I do yearn for bigger battles. For me it's about the specatcle and the toys and I think I'm happiest when I've got a ridiculously huge KoW army on the table.

For me everything has a season. DBA has it's place. Skirmish does too. But my preferred genre, I love big battles. But skirmish allows for quick evening games that are low stress. But when it comes time to game properly, big battles are so much more fun. But skirmish is a great intro to miniatures gaming as well. I have found many haven't the concept of big battles for various eras and tgese folks can benefit starting small and reading up on historical big battle tactics. Most GW players, other than fantasy are really lost in ACW, Napoleonics and ore ginpowder settings with big battles.

I can not only still tell the story, I can still sing the song about "Heinrich Ubermann" and his heroics, or tell the stories of the indestructible Commisar Dotski, or the time we all got eaten by giant ants JUST before we could have escaped the police station for good.

And the sad tale of my subordinate in a TSATF game who charged his Redcoat cavalry, fresh from Blighty, right up to the edge of the gulley and stopped to dress their line, only to find THREE impi resting and waiting to jump up and slay them horribly…

Big battles, sir? They make boardgames for that, to handle moving all the bits and bobs. I got so bored doing big battles early in my gaming career I used to play a skirmish off to the side of the big battle to pass the time waiting as the Big Battle turns resolved.

Hate skirmish level games, not interested in squads and platoons, I like moving battalions or larger around, "Tell Murat to commit the Cavalry Reserve now … flank those guns and ride them down sir!"

My Army level game works on a different idea and concept.

Now days I play modern 1 to 1 in figures. Some I would call skirmish and some bigger. In earlier time I would play ancients at say 1:20 figures.

Only in WW2 and after does skirmish appeal. Very lage battle games (i tank is a platoon) are mostly unrealistic. The higher up you go the more logistics counts and the overall strategy, not the battles. My own preference is a hybrid on say a 10km board that a battalion or more has to advance along but its a multi eveing game. It needs the commander to scedule re-inforcements, have rear defence in case of a reverse and ration and allocate scarce resource. More than that and it becomes too complex, imagine the situation at army level.

The other thing about skirmish in the smallest sence is that it covers a very small area. If your board is barely above infantry weapon range across its no place for tanks. They need to keep 250m or more out of infantrys way to be at their best. Tanks work tacticaly at least in companies and a tank company with alternate positions can be more than a kilometer across. Not suitable for 1 to 1 infantry, they need to be at team or squad level to stand a chance of playability.

I like gaming period, no matter the scale of the engagement. Skirmish games are the easiest/cheapest for people to get started in, and if they want to move to bigger games later on, it's easy to do.

Metalsmith

If your interested, I'll be putting on a game at Cold Wars. It's going to be a pick up game. I usually hang around with the Liebl's and I wear white pants and a shirt. Can't miss me.

Thanks for the invite but cold wars is out of my reach. I am intrigued about how you can play an army level game with figs which wasn't much more than something like MB's axis and allies. 1 fig equals a brigade or Corp level asset perhaps?

Late to the party.

Both for me. I really enjoy personalities, so skirmish for that, with figures developing their own history as they appear in a series of games. Then, when the same figures are with a unit in a big battle, you tend to notice where they are and what happens to them. They usually end up with names, of course.

I don't want to be General Lee or Sergeant York. I want to be the military industial complex. I win no matter what.

Dear Metalsmith OOPS SORRY. I meant Fall in in just two days, not Cold Wars..

Quite simple, scale is completely meaningless. (it is in any game anyway). The table top does not represent a stretch of ground like in a stop action movie or a battlefield. It represents, in fact, a table top, somewhere in a chateux 25 miles behind the lines where the only connection you have to the muddy, bloody, gassed over hell you have committed your armies to is the gentle tinkling of the crystal chandelier as the barrage reaches its dramatic crescendo. The table top is in a room where the players are all field marshals and generals and the only colonel takes the coffee order. You must imagine that the tanks and stands of troops are moved by nattily dressed WACS with croupier sticks. It is in fact a table in that chateau meant to figuratively show the progress of the armies across the battlefield of your forces drving the enemy back and attempting the strategic breakthrough over the opposite edge. The game is run on hexes, but each hex is about 8 inches across and the terrain is made in the spare printed way to suggest a map with simple geoforms like hills (stacked contours) and mountains, lakes and rivers. The game represents about two weeks of combat, and lasts for 10 turns. It uses several innovative systems to represent combat at that level.

The game is always a part of the campaign and can combine land, air, and naval elements. Players may have reserves off table and commit them as needed, but committing reserves costs you victory points. All battles are thus contests between huge forces, and the strategic effects are paramount.

Of course the whole thing is run on Imagi-Nations, but you can guess who they represent by the names. For example The 7 3/4 reich of Fahrvergnuggen, the Workers Winter Wonderland of Freeland, the Empire of Terra masu, and Bandrika.

After the battle you all punch out and go to your world dominating table at the local nightclub with your ravishing beautiful intelligence officer.

So for example, assume you have the Battle of Sheboygen. Your forces are holding the front with a single division, which is 100 pts of troops. It's not really a points game, but each country has a few stock divisions which take up 100 pts of troops. These divisions cost 1 note a piece. A note is the "campaign monopoly money" If you are the defender you get one note's worth of troops free. If you are the attacker you may pay up to three notes to get say three divisions. Note these aren't real divisions in the sense of sub components of corps, simply large bundles of troops. So assume the enemy buys three divisions.

Note each country gets 12 notes at the start of the game. That's it, no more, nada, zip, that's it. You may also have "divisions" you get from the victory deck which you get for winning a battle. These may be placed directly on the table top or held in the reserve area. If you use a single stand from a division after the battle it is sent back to the discard pile. If you don't use a division it can be taken up after the battle and returned to your hand.

Now… depending on how deep a penetration the attacker makes determines victory points. There are four lines, the attacker Initial, Intermediate, and final victory line. You get one point if he manages to push a supplied unit to the initial, two for the intermediate, three for the final and four if he manages manage a strategic breakthrough off the other table edge. For each point he gets one draw draw from the Victory deck. So let's go back to Sheboygan. You have one division which yo got for free. But you have Victory cards for a second division, and a motorized brigade. You place these in your reserve area. On the other hand your attacker places the Paratroop division, a Heavy Tank division, a motorized division and the 443rd Air forces in his reserve area. You conduct a brilliant defense and hold the enemy at the Intermediate defensive line (2/3 the way across the table) That gives him two points. However in the game your defense was so masterful, he committed all four of his reserve divisions. These now go back to the discard, and totaling in the three hundred points or 1 note for his purchased attackers, that's the equivalent of 7 notes he has spent, and gained only two Victory points. The offensive was highly costly and though he made a decent dent in your lines, it was hardly worth the expenditure. You on the other hand got the single division for free and didn't have to commit your two reserve divisions. He has committed all his reserves, all four of the divisions now go o the discard pile and he draws only two cards. He has expended about 7 points worth of troops and gotten back only two. You on the other hand by your brilliant defense get no points, but you do get to take up the two divisions you had in reserve and did not use.

Also in the victory deck are victory cards. These do not give you troops but they give you victory points which can never be lost. The game is over when all players have used their 12 notes. At that time they must vote to end the campaign. If they have no notes they must vote yes to end it. At that time victory point cards are totaled (you get no points for troop cards) an the person with the most points has won the war.

There is no map.

Instead there are "areas of conflict" such as "The Kalamari, Tropicna, Macarina. etc" You may ONLY attack an enemy if you have an area of conflict with him Thus if Fahrvergnuggen and the 443rd (and counting) Flounce Republic have an area of Conflict in The Putzish Corridor they may attack each other AND use local forces supporting them with their own troops.

Of course the troops on the field are very simple but quite varied. There is infantry, shock troops, militia, marchine guns, mortars combat engineers, cavalry commandos, heavy, medium, light and siege artillery, and three types of tank, light medium and heavy, trucks etc. Then there are the barrages. Ah… the barrages.

I thought you were discussing modern, these rules have ww2 or interwar feel, but I get your point. I have played something similar.

Sorry Mick

I have no interest in anything afer WWII. That I guess means modern. My lack of interest in modern is simple. It is a game where if you are seen, you are dead.

I never got sick of it because I never really got into it.
Nearly all skirmish games are more or less identical…there's very little difference between a skirmish game set in say, 100AD and one set in 1400. Even when you get past the advent of firearms, there is little difference between a skirmish set in 1800 and one set in 1940, just a bit of weaponry chrome.
There will be a leader(s), and a bunch of figures who run around the table doing anything the player feels like doing, usually with virtually no attention being paid to any period tactical considerations. Firepower and accuracy will be WAY above what it was (is) in reality, and soldiers will continuously expose themselves to danger that is, frankly, suicidal.
Having said all that, I've recently got into Chain of Command which is a rare jewel of a skirmish game, in which the decisions you take and the problems you face actually resemble WWII infantry combat, something I've never encountered before in tens of other WWII rulesets.
So, skirmish wargames are a great place to visit..but I wouldn't want to live there.

I like both but tend to prefer skirmish gaming for several reasons.

#1 A skirmish game is likely to be completed in one evening of game play.

#2 Skirmish games tend to have a lot of maneuver on the tabletop. In my experience movement is critical for an entertaining game. The problem with big battles on the table top is hordes of miniatures packed on the table top with no room to maneuver or conduct flanking attacks. Big battles equal line up and shoot at each other and no matter what the period is that is boring.

#3 The cost for skirmish games is relatively low and what I save on not buying miniatures I can invest in terrain for nice layouts.

#4 Skirmish games have less miniatures to paint something I find tedious if I have to paint hundreds of figures.

What I like about big battles that I cannot get in a skirmish game is combined arms tactics.

I like games with the smallest side is at least a platoon (35 men min) and based in teams. Less to me lacks scope for tactics and without artificial means are to brittle to be satisfying. Larger scale, up to a battalion on table in attack is my upper limit.

My passion is for games that have scope in depth, the size above game, but over a series of evenings advanceing/reterateing counter attacking. This brings in higher level decision levels even with just a platoon on table. When do you give them support like artillery. Support now may mean none for a counter attack. The evening then is ab it more than a platon on table due to the wider ramifications of time and space. Is it still a skirmish gamee.