"Armies of Arcana battle size" Topic

i am mightily pleased with the AoA rules

i wonder what size of battle people normally play?

i find that 2k makes up for a nice quick game, while 3k is also ok for armies heavy on characters and monsters.

is there a skirmish option too or something like that?

Since I'm looking for a fantasy mass battle system for 25/28mm miniatures,I'm highly interested.
It should be able to handle between a 100 and 200 miniatures,the more the better.And such a game shouldn't last longer than 2-3 hours.
I'm thinking about a balanced,heavily cut down and streamlined version of Warhammer Fantasy Battles.Without IGOYGO,if possible.

For 15mm my club has its own one.
If you are interested,you can find it here: kriegeriii.de

If I had the time and the help from a native English speaker,I would translate it to English,but its a lot of work.

Do you play AoA with 15mm?
Did you order from Thanesgames directly or is there an European retailer?

i did buy my copy used privately. i do not think there is aneuropean retailer. but if you attend Rheindahlen it should be a small problem to get it there (ask a retailer who does business there before the convention to bring it, should be possible i suppose).

i play with 15mm but do also have two 28mm armies based for warhammer that would work.

AoA plays like an extremely streamlined and cleared up version of warhammer, so this should fit your needs quite nicely.
also AoA is not purely igougo.

i had a look at krieger3 but this is certainly not my cup of tea. i do not really like HOTT or FA! style games. the WH/AoA style is just more appealing to me for fantasy.

just found out there is an italian retailer:

hovistocose.it

hope that helps.

My first game of AoA was huge. It was 4K per side. The Dwarves vs. the Goblins. The player and I had never played before but we read up on the rules and gave it a shot. We liked it a lot. There were over 250 minis on the battlefield but the game took only a little more than 3 hours. By tun 3 we had the hang of it and by turn five we hardly ever consulted the rule book. Great game. We played using 28mm GW Gobbos and Dwarves. No need to change movement distances.

My games have been 2000-2500 point fights. Pretty fast, but still a decent range of troop types. Big games probably make the larger monsters more attractive...hard to sink a quarter of your points in one figure and feel good about life.

Rich

My last battle was 10,000 points+ per side in 15mm. Three armies per side. Orcs, Graccans, and Marr versus Elves, Lyonnese, and Samurai. Since 40% of the points were spent on characters, the amount of figures was not overly cumbersome; perhaps 60-100 per army. Great fun was had by all.

5,000 points per side seems about right to me for a 2-3 hour game.

Coming to the skirmish question: I think that Thane has a skirmish version with build in "light magic" on his web site.

With these rules we once played a dungeonbash. Good fun, although the heroes turned out to be a bit to hard to kill!

I'm a heavy fan of these rules and since buying them, have not played Warhammer again. To me the most brilliant fact of these rules is: you can create your own troop types and monsters get the play they deserve.

Boduognat, king of Nervii

Personally, I feel that the 'average' weekly (or daily??) Atcana game ought to be somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 points, anything over that gives me a headache and tends to drag on forever, especually if there are more than 2 players involved.

As far as the developer and 'hard core' of the game are concerned, 20,000 points per side over 7 hours is a 'small, quick game' .....

I've only played a dozen battles with AoA, but 2500 to 4000 seems to be a good range. 2500 is a bit short (2 or so hours), so for a good afternoon 4000 might be better.

I usually play dwarves and Barons of Lyoneese. I've begun work on a mind-flayer army, with slaves and intellect devourers, grimlocks and 1/2 illithids. I doubt it will ever be as big as my Baron or Dwarven army, but its fun!

I know in the last version Thane had the Warband variant for allowing folks to use figs on multibase stands. I couldn't find that in the new version. Does it still apply?

Thanks,

John

I'll have to see what happened to the warband rules I though they were on the site still.

The "skirmish" set on the website limits units to 200 points, characters are bought seperate from regular units, and magic is reduced by doubling the level of spells. In this form, it suits 500 - 2000 points very well.

I think our "typical" saturday afternoon game is 3000-6000 points per side - these typically last 1.5 - 2 hours. Sometimes we'll do a larger game of 8,000-12,000 points per side (normally 2 or 3 players per side), which will last 2 - 4 hours.

My friend Guy Benson and I used to be able to do 8,000 point games in about 2 hours as single generals, but we were both really decisive in what we wanted to do, so turns were still quick. Sadly, he moved back east.

I've been involved in maybe ten 18,000 - 24,000 point per side battles, these have taken anywhere from 5 to 8 hours. I know one of the 24,000 point games had over 1000 figures on the table.

A few local players have far surpassed my armies in size - Justin's Orcs, Rob's High Elves and Micah's Undead have all gone over 15,000 points; I think both Rob's and Micah's armies go over 24,000. Todd is probably going to get into the 20,000's with his orcs (though he will never paint them because of Worlds of Warcraft :).

Most of my 15mm armies are about 5000-8000 points, and my 25's are about 3000-5000 points.

I've worked out that it is approximately 1 hour of playing for every 6 units fielded per side. Naturally, this can get modified by lots of things - some players think a lot about moving and some talk a lot or are otherwise easily distracted :). Playing the low magic LotR variant sped up the game greatly - apparently the decision time of spell casting can be significant, even if the resolution is quick. And fast armies end games quickly - the Wolfen tend to end their battles in about half the time the way they are played locally, as will cavalry heavy armies that usually engage on turn 2 instead of turn 3 or 4. that's not to say they win all those, but that the battle is joined and resolved :)

I appreciate you looking Thane. My figs are Dbs based so I'd need the conversion to play AoA.

Thanks,

John

There are several people locally who use Armati based historicals in AoA. Its pretty simple to figure out base alignments if your opponent uses single based figures. A guy with a huge greek army has made sub-bases to help make frontages clear. If you are both using DBA bases, you can use the same base standard and not worry about it.

But I will find where I've got the "warbands" rules, and ry to figure out why I took them down, lol.

DBA basing is 4 wide by 2 deep on a 40mmX20mm element?

Hey Thane.

40x20 has 3 figs per base for warbands and 2 for skirmishers.

40x15mm is for Pikes, Blades and spears. 4 figs per stand.

Cavalry is 40x30 (3 figs for everything except Lt Cav which has 2).

Elephants and Chariots are 40x40mm.

Thanks,

John