"Recommendations for a mass battle system" Topic

My group are after a new rules system, preferably one which has figure removal rather than whole units being lost ( usually from a moral type roll)

We have recently tried Oathmark and Kings of War and while fun we didn't really gel with some of the features.
We have played a few sets of rules ages ago, warmaster, fantasy warlord, fantasy warriors, possibly the 1st edition of warhammer??
Just looking for some suggestions please guys

Dragon Rampant is probably worth a look. The Rampant series is well regarded, and this one has Dragons.

Wait a bit longer for Warhammer the old world, basically a new edition of Warhammer fantasy battles.

A new update is about overdue, and there is expectations that it may be out for Christmas???

Was just over at Crocodile games, wargods are still going. Fantasy Egypt, Greek mythology. Another ex GW guy.

I take it from the options you have rejected that you are looking for a "rank and flank" ruleset with formed units of troops. Oathmark and Kings of War are certainly two of the leading contenders in this category. The other that seems to be gaining popularity at the moment is Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings. However that is a proprietary rule set with its own figure lines. If you are looking for something to use with your existing armies, it may not suit you.

Dragon Rampant is more of a large squad based skirmish system, similar in scale to Age of Sigmar. Ranks and unit facing do not matter. Having said that, many people do form up their figures in ranks when using rules in the Rampant family. It looks pretty effective and keeps things simple. You'll be able to adapt your existing fantasy armies. But if you like ranks and unit facings to mean something, you'll have to look elsewhere.
Other older fantasy rulesets that used to be very popular, and are suitable for adapting existing armies, include Armies of Arcana, and Fantasy Rules! Those are both out of print, but if you can find a copy they may be worth a try.

Try Erewhon.

Hi Palewarrior,

here another option "Fantastic Battles" from the author of "Irregular wars , conflict at the world's end" :

link

link

Try Erewhon.

I presume that he is referring to Warlords of Erehwon (published by Warlord Games).

One Page Rules Age of Fantasy: Regiments is worth a look…

link

I would recommend 2e BattleSystems (PDF available, hardcopies can be found on e-Bay and other resellers). It is loosely based on 2e AD&D RPG rules.

It covers about everything for fantasy mass battles: Regular, Irregular, Skirmish, flying creatures/Units; siege engine rules (Hobgoblins defending a wooden fort, wearing Bronze Plate Mail armor, attacked by Humans and Dwarves); mining; magic; rules for adapting your own stuff to the game system. It features stats for the majority of fantasy races: Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Giants, Centaurs, Treants, Dragons, you name it, the rules allow you to convert them, if they are not covered already.

It is not Magic-Hammer, nor is it Hero-Hammer. Magic has power to influence the game, as do heroes, but they won't make/break the game, by themselves.

It is a bucket-o-dice game: roll one Attack Die for each figure attacking. Surprisingly, d20's are the least used. Designed for 25-28mm figures, but can be adapted to other scales.

Morale is important, of course. Undead units have no Morale, and they play different from the Living.

I've been playing it since 1993. It covers just about everything you could want in a fantasy mass battles game. It has plenty of example races stat'ed out for you. Magic is present, but not required. Some units have particular nuances which make them unique (Lizardmen tend to become busy eating the dead, and must make a special Morale Check to pull themselves away from the feast to continue to attack…). Special rules can always be ignored, but they do add flavor (pun intended).

The rules can handle smaller forces, as well as larger forces. As long as you have people to manage and move the units, the game moves along nicely. My last game had 1,000+ figures on the tabletop, with 10 players pushing them into battle; Units consist of 5-50+ figures, as you deem appropriate to the type of troops. It was a blast for everyone, and many of the players had never played it before! Everyone asked to be invited to the next game, so I consider it a huge success. Cheers!

Chaos Wars back in print by Ral Partha Legacy:
link

Fantasy additions to the old Rules According To Ral freebie that has been my favourite figure-removal style game since it first came out in 1987.

Another vote for Age of Fantasy: Regiments

For my money, WoE and Dragon Rampant are more large skirmish than mass battle, although both great games. I guess I'd go along with The H Man and recommend Warhammer Fantasy, maybe in its forthcoming reincarnation. For something quick, though, OPR Age of Fantasy is fun.

I'll jump in and say try One Page Rules' game.
H-Man has a good point in checking out the new Warhammer when it does come out, but you can play others in the meantime.

@Sgt Slag- Wow! That set up looks great!

Age of Fantasy: Regiments is quick to learn, fun to play and adaptable for pretty much every warhammer army.

I can only vouch for Runestar D12 or the currently defunct Armies of Arcana.

Runestar D12 has some innovative ways of dealing with combat and magick. It has a different paradigm – a 'grinding combats' game rather than a 'break and chase them down' game.

Armies of Arcana is the most balanced fantasy wargame ever made IMO. It has a formula for statting up your own models – I have made entire army lists using it!

You can find Runestar here: link

Armies of Arcana: Good luck finding a copy!

For Armies of Arcana rules, visit this site, and ask them through their contact us form.

There may be other sites offering the rulebook: run an Internet search in your favorite search engine. Cheers!

I asked Lone Gunman Games, about Armies of Arcana: they are OOP, and he has no idea when/if they will be available again. Sorry. Cheers!

There's a new set out, very similar to Warhammer, but streamlined a bit, has figure removal. It's called On Bloody Ground.

There's a review for it with some playtesting of the mechanics, also.

link

Might be just the thing.

If you tell us the features you like / didn't like, then maybe we can be more specific. I rather like Kings of War as a very clean system that plays fast. Warhammer is, well, by GW ultimately. Same with their next iteration of Fantasy. Somehow, it will probly be a bit jacked up.

For free, you can download 2nd edition chainmail:
link

that blog with the On Bloody Ground review did some reviews an playtests of 3rd edition Chainmail. Plus, it's a classic!

TOW is due early next year.

While talking about Armies of Arcana, A number of years ago, I found someone who had some copies on the internet, Think I found him on this website, and got him to sell me a copy, cant remember who from though. Haven't played them yet.

But, Here is what I would do. Consider playing Battlesystem, as Sgt Slag mentioned, I like it quite a bit, it should be easy to find a copy on ebay, or its findable on the internet as a pdf, if a pdf is good enough for you, I have both.

I usually only get a few wargames in a year, usually near the holidays, but what I did last year was I think even better!

I did 1st edition AD&D with just a couple modifications.

1 Movement: just use the movement rate for the creatures in the Monster Manual. For formation movement, its quite easy, have you ever been in marching band or the military? How much movement does "About face" take? to the rear march? Column right, not much. Just use normal movement and make the action using the movement rate.

2 What I did for HP was just gave each figure in a unit, average HP then when combat happened I tried to different things, and I cant remember which way I liked best, so maybe you want to experiment.
A. when I unit took damage, add up the damage total, remove that many figures worth of damage, then either drop the remainder, or just keep track of it. This worked real good and has unit removal
B. Another option was add up all the hp of the unit, and when the take damage, subtract that from the units total HP. You can use the Units percentage of HP left as the Moral. but this does take a tiny bit of paper work when playing.

Of coarse, all units have their AC, HP, and any other D&D Stats.

Use initiative for movement, I did combat simultaneously, Magic worked great, and I did this with fairly large armies,

Up until I did this, I really liked Battlesystem, but this was even better. I have a write up here: TMP link

I had about 700 miniatures ( 15mm on the table). AD&D works good with 700 miniature and It works good with just a few. I used 1st edition, but it should do well with other editions, at least threw 3rd? ( I dont play the new editions)

Ad&d has almost all the rules you need, borrow from elsewhere any missing. I think when I played, We used the moral rules from Battle system, maybe the first edtion moral rules.

Of coarse, there is the Battlesystem Skirmish rules, (I havent played them), but they basicly just revert back to Hit Dice instead of using HP, which kind of nullifies different weapon damages, or makes things more difficult again.

The beauty of AD&D or Battlesystem is you can field anything. AD&D is easier, and faster though, Of coarse you do need to buy lots of 20 sided dice. and all the other sided dice also, but dice are cheap in bulk now days from China. I would recommend getting at least 20 of each dice size.

Note: I hate games based on the 6 sided dice, Hate, Hate, Hate! Hate the hit on a 5 or 6, and even hate worse the opposed roles that came up trying to partly nullify the effects of only 6 sides on a dice. A 20 sided dice has 5 percent increments, while a 6 sided has 16.6% increments, and almost all the game system are trying to use 6 sided dice, and then trying to mitigate the effect with opposed rolls. With AD&D, you roll to hit and you roll damage, both sided doing so at the same time in a wargame! The combat charts are easy, the AD&D combat charts were designed for this based on a 0 level foot soldier!!!!!

THe best fantasy/historical rules have been in existance since the 1970's, before Warhammer, before all the others that people have been play, be we have only been using them to play the RPG! We as kids did not have the money to buy the armies, but we did have money to buy us a mini for use as our characters so we all just did the RPG,

Now, I havent played Chainmail from which AD&D came from, ( want to give it a try) but Chainmail evolved into D&D/AD&D. there are rules for everything in that 1st edition DMG, everything from costs to hire men at armes, to costs for Magic items. Costs for weapons, and XP costs for fielding Monsters.

What I dont know yet, is balance issues, but who wants a exact balance anyways! You want fair? nothings fair in love or war! THere may be some tweeking that needs done for balance, but there is so much you can do with it.

Battlesystem has a good starting point for point values, but its not complete, and AD&D has a very thorough starting point using Gold piece values, and XP values, but imbalances can happen if the players dont have a agreement as to what can be used. Nowdays with 3d printing almost any monster could be fielded, and if 3d printing isnt you thing, most monster can be acquired from one of the many commercial manufacturers.

Try Battlesystem, then try AD&D or a homebrew variant of it, it will be quite enlightening. I always wanted to do this a a kid in the late 70's, wasnt really possible back then, but now with all the manufactures and or 3d printing its possible. Its possible to 3d print up ARMIES! for quite cheap. I wargame in 15mm fantasy and can easily supplement what I have with 3d printing!

So much of what Gary Gygax put into the DMG make sense one you look at it from the Wargame aspect, which is what AD&D was, and in the court battle between Arneson and Gygax, Gygax's claim that they were 2 different games now make sense! but everyone played AD&D as the RPG not as the Wargame! Arneson used Chainmail which Gygax created, added many of the RPG aspects then Gygax fixed it all and published them.

Of coarse there is another option, if you like warhammer, but Hate GW! One Page Rules is showing popularity, and has much flexibility , havent played it yet but figure I will have to sometime

"1st edition, but it should do well with other editions, at least threw 3rd?"

I can't see this working with 3rd edition in RPG terms we found the system started to creek at level 10, we changed over to Savage worlds and never looked back.

1st edition was set up to work as the wargame in the DMG, Second edition elminiated from the DMG much of what was needed, but then re-added via the various add-on books. I bought the 3rd ed books when they came out also, but our group decided that we didnt want to go there. I know it would work well, with either 1st or 2nd, and the 3rd was questionable hence the ? mark.

So part of the problem Battlesystem had was 1st edition came out during the take over of TSR, and it was never really supported. People were playing the RPG and most teens didnt have lots of money for non-existing miniatures anyways. Later on the 2nd edition Battlesystem came out, and while they temporarily try to support it, they also sort of tried to copy warhammer, which warhammer was originally a copy of Chainmail. they were to late to the party, and it wasnt really promoted even though a few miniatures were produced for it in 15mm ( wish I had bought some back then). I bought the 1st edition of Battlesystem when I came out, but could not get anyone I knew to want to try it. everyone wanted the RPG of DnD.

Any way the games I play using the slightly modified AD&D rules worked real well for me, it was smother and faster to play then even the Battlesystem rules, which I like.

One of the great things with either is the abiliby to play just about anything, from strictly historicals to fantasy, and using the (breif) rules in the DMG, you could even add Scifi to it.

quick verbal example,
take the front rank of troops, Lets say they are 10 men level one fighters, with AC 4 (chain/shield) Aver HP of 6ho each using long swords. fighting the front rank of 12 goblins which are AC6 aver hp of 3 each and do d6 damage.

the combat chart works out that 20 – AC6 of the goblin means they need a 14 to hit. 20 – 6 is real easy math.

for the goblins, they need a 20 – 4 = 16 to hit – easy math

Level 0 men at arms are at -1 to hit, and orcs which fight on the monster combat chart get a +1 to their hit

the Human player roles his 10 D20 dice and the goblin player rolls his 12 d20 dice, each knows what they need to hit, for each hit, they grab a damage dice, roll to hit, add them together and eliminate figures that would add up to the total damage done. Pull the figures off, then into the next round, look at the amount of figures in the front row, and repeat!

Fast and VERY easy!
In a standard battle most troops will be on the same combat column, but lets say you have some higher level troops, then they simply have a plus one or something based on their combat chart

I love 6 sided dice, love, love, love.

I love the fact Felix the cat can roll 13 with two of them.

I love their curves.

I love the fact the molten lead doesn't run down a sloping face while loading them.

I love that they can be stacked.

So on…

Page 38 1st edition Players Handbook, the page that everyone is baffled about, (AND HAVE HEARD SO MANY COMPLAINTS OVER THE YEARS ABOUT) ie, weapon adjustments for different armor classes! ABSOLUTELY Worthless in playing the RPG….But in the WarGame… using Ad&d! Totally usable and it makes what you arm your troops with have some meaning. Havent used it yet, but sure intend to give it a try!