What mass battle games do people play, and why?

[redrevuk]

That army looks really great - there are photos of it on the Pendraken forum as well. While I think it changes the look of the game quite a bit, you are only going from a few  8 man units to a few 25-35 man unis. This is hardly mass battle territory.

I think this is very true. How individuals move and react is very different to how large groups move and react- so it is important that rules  are designed for a certain scale of game, and the players need to understand this scale too.

This isn’t to say that rules can’t work if the representative scale is flexed a little, as the Saga example above,  but few will work if written for 1 figure represents 1man, and you choose to replace that man with a battalion.

The article on playing Saga with 10mm came from our club here in Lancaster, UK. We tend to play multi-faction games (usually 2 per side), with larger points than a standard game (usually 8 points and sometimes 10) on a 4x6 foot table. With 10mm figures this does give a mass battle spectacle, but still with plenty of space for manoeuvre. Playing with more points has the effect of reducing the impact of warlords and priests relative to the army size, but still making them heroic as single bases. We also find the movement and shooting ranges feel much more realistic relative to the size  of the models. So a sweeping cavalry charge does feel like it, and the range of archery feels much better than in the 28mm game. We make no major changes to the rules, and the abstractions which many don't like in the 28mm game actually feel as if you are making 'general' level decisions rather than being sucked into the minutiae.

We used to play a lot of Warmaster until a couple of years ago. We preferred Warmaster Ancients as a set, and did some conversion work to use the original fantasy army lists, with some success. But we enjoy Saga better, on the whole.

But it really is horses for courses....

[fred]

I'm 'just' down the road in Southport, and our group plays loads of 10mm. We moved away from Warmaster a few years ago too, and now mainly play our home-brew mass fantasy rules.

We have played big battles of Saga, often with 3 players on a side, in 28mm, I forget what size of warband but 4 or 6pts. And these play really well, and do feel like a battle. As you say with 10mm figures a lot of the ranges in Saga will look a lot better, and with multiple figures per base it starts to look like a battle.

Just working through some unit & base counts and we probably have something similar between our games. With Saga and an 8pt force, you will average 8 units of 4, 8 or 12 bases so 40-80 bases, in 8 elements. In our mass battle game we tend to have 40 bases which will be under 6-8 commanders, though each can order more than one brigade (the brigades are not fixed).

As you say a lot of it is about the perception of what is a mass battle and what isn't.

[Luddite]

I play Warband.

The pdf: http://www.wargamevault.com/product_info.php?products_id=144517&src=newest_miniatures&site=&currency=GBP&products_id=144517

How to play: http://luddite1811.blogspot.com/2017/09/warband-how-to-play-videos.html

My Taurians: http://luddite1811.blogspot.com/2017/03/warband-taurians.html



One of my dwarf armies: http://luddite1811.blogspot.com/2015/09/warband-red-mountain-hill-dwarves-part-3.html



More dwarfs:

Dwarfs and Goblins fight it out: http://luddite1811.blogspot.com/2015/04/warband-find-prize-hill-dwarves-vs.html

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

Thanks for that.  I watched the videos an,d read the army lists for Lord of the Rings.  It gives me something to think about.  The game mechanics look good and easy to learn.  I always wonder how well command points work for solo games but I am sure there is a way around this so that the "other" army behaves in a way that is not entirely predictable.

[Pendrake]

I tried something called Alternative Armies once. Resembled Warhammer Fantasy, but with less OOT Magic. Army lists were included in the primary rule book, point balancing system, model-brand agnostic, most WFB armies had a generic cognate list, we were able to adapt it to 15mm figures which were based for DBM.

Nothing in those rules prevented having an Alliance of Goblins, Ogres, and Minotaurs. (Or Elves, Dwarves, and Men...if someone wanted to go with the tradition.)

[Red Kop]

I'll admit that I come from a Warhammer background - I've a particular fondness for 6th edition but fell out of love with the game by 8th edition - it got too large and money driven for me.

These days, when we play large scale fantasy games we play the new(ish) beta rules for 9th Age:

https://www.the-ninth-age.com/index.php?beta-page/

All of it is free to download and the units are based off Warhammer armies so if you have an existing army it suits well.

I'll be honest though, I'm personally not the biggest fan of 9th Age. Some of the other guys in my group absolutely love it (one of the guys actually contributes towards it in an official capacity) but I find it too serious and tournament list focused but I'm happy to play a few games of it a year.

Other than that I've got the Dragon Rampart rule set and had a couple of small games of that to test the rules and that seems to be quite fun. I'm looking towards playing that a bit more in the future in larger games to see how it goes.

[gibby64]

Dragon Rampant is my favorite... easily modifiable to whatever you want... I did just get the PDF of Fantasy Rules! from Chip... very responsive and sends the rules immediately... they look very complete and it has a million army lists... Interested to try it out with my new Kelt army.. 

[Aerendar Valandil]

Great post, thanks! I was immedialely thinkink DR and HC, but I do thing WM Revolution is interesting as well.

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

I play Warband.

The pdf: http://www.wargamevault.com/product_info.php?products_id=144517&src=newest_miniatures&site=&currency=GBP&products_id=144517

How to play: http://luddite1811.blogspot.com/2017/09/warband-how-to-play-videos.html

My Taurians: http://luddite1811.blogspot.com/2017/03/warband-taurians.html



One of my dwarf armies: http://luddite1811.blogspot.com/2015/09/warband-red-mountain-hill-dwarves-part-3.html



More dwarfs:

Dwarfs and Goblins fight it out: http://luddite1811.blogspot.com/2015/04/warband-find-prize-hill-dwarves-vs.html

I have done a bit of searching on the internet about these rules and looked at some of the posts on the Pendraken forum.  The upshot is I have downloaded the PDF.
I will need to do some modifying for making these solo playable in a way that won't make the game too predictable for "the player" when against the "non-player".
As much as I am part way into painting two 28mm projects (I have enough completed to make one project playable - for both Sellswords and Dragon Rampant) I thought I would get some 10mm Copplestone and Pendraken miniatures to test paint.  The plan will be to paint very quick "good-enough-from-a-distance-on-the-table" look.  I may use coloured sprays for base colours.