What mass battle games do people play, and why?

[Irregular Wars Nic]

I've just written a fairly lengthy blog post about my search for a fantasy mass battle game. In short, I have player 4.5 different systems, and none of them really sit well with me. I'm interested to know what other people are playing, and why they like them.

For those with too much time on their hands, here is the post: http://irregularwars.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/the-search-for-fantastic-rule-set.html
I freely admit that these are just personal thoughts and not everyone will agree. Horses for courses and all that.

It seems that what I am after is a game that keeps both players engaged throughout. I don't want individual figure removal. It needs to have some sort of command friction that forces the player to make hard decisions, and have a well thought out and balanced points system, but not have army lists that are too prescriptive. If it fits within my fantasy world, why shouldn’t I have a halfling sorcerer riding a giant bunny?!

[Hobgoblin]

Hordes of the Things and Mayhem for me. I play HotT more often, because its "time to table" is very short indeed. I think it has plenty of nuance, despite having only 20 or so troop types. A good point that someone on the HotT forum made is that HotT armies derive their flavour not only from the qualities of the troop types, but how those troop types interact on the table. So, an army that's half hordes supported by warbands and beasts plays very differently from one that's half hordes supported by knights and blades.

I also think that HotT armies do a really good job of recreating the armies of fantasy literature. The narratives that games produce tend to be interesting and "make sense" in a way that other games sometimes fail to.

Finally, HotT scales up really well. Games with 36 points a side are a lot of fun, and on a 6' x 3' dinner table, you can easily play a 72-point-a-side 28mm game, with each side having two commands of 36 AP.

Mayhem is great, but does suffer slightly from not having (a) a list of sample units in the book and (b) not having a quick online unit generator (like Song of Blades and Heroes). As a result, getting a game going is more of a challenge.

I like Sword and Spear Fantasy too, but haven't played it as much as the other two.

[Eric the Shed]

You should certainly consider Warmaster Fantasy before charging into Hail Caesar

[warlord frod]

I agree with Eric. Warmaster is an excellent mass battle ruleset that fits your description of what you would like to see pretty well.

[jon_1066]

I would say give Dragon Rampant a go.

It is not on the face of it a mass battle game but... it could be.

It will work fine with 10 mm figures.  Just mark the casualties in some way (eg little rings around the figures or use a dice)

It has command friction in the activation rolls.  Whilst the troop types may seem limited there are actually a lot of different options available and nothing to stop you making up more.

For your halflings you have figures for 2 units of scouts, two units of light riders and three units of light infantry.  You could make your leader a single model unit of Heavy Foot.

For flavour you could make you cook pot unit able to use the heal spell or give it a ranged attack or a venomous weapon.

[Dentatus]

Dragon Rampant doesn't count? Oh...

I recently purchased it, wanting a change from my regular 28mm skirmish games. So only huge, combined arms sort of frays count as 'mass battles'?

[Gabbi]

I usually prefer skirmish sized games, so no big help from me, I think. Unless you'll want to consider Battleground: Fantasy Warfare. It's an odd wargame played with cards instead of miniatures. But cards (that depict a top-down image of the troops represented) are moved around just like trays of miniatures. The ruleset is very interesting and has a twist in the order system that force you to assign orders and then see them executed in automatic by the troops. Each turn you have a handful of command points to change an order to a card or to take direct control of one card (without changing its order). The system is very interesting, and looking at BGG gallery for the game it seems that someone plays it with miniatures on top of the cards.

https://www.yourmovegames.com/battleground
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18985/battleground

[fred]

Very interesting to read you blog post Nic, sounds very like my groups journey through fantasy rules over the last few years. We played the games mentioned, and Warmaster and Hail Caesar (with fantasy mods, which where available on Yahoo groups, and might still be). We also played quite a lot of a game you might know of, Irregular Wars

Ultimately we wrote our own rules.

A comment on a few of the published rule sets
KoW - agree with your comments, I and some of our group quite liked it, once we got into the way it played, its almost chess like, and can play really fast. But several of our group really disliked it. We tried both sides fighting, and random activation, and probably other things before moving on.

Mayhem - played with this a bit, liked the command mechanisms, agree with some of the WIP comments on the blog, haven't tried the updated version. We also tried a set based around the Normans which used different polyhedral dice for combat strength.

Warmaster - as a group we have played huge amounts of WM, and all of us own multiple huge painted WM armies (and several unpainted ones). Ultimately several of us got fed up with the rules, problem areas were, command system, which is just too random, too many units do nothing, some do loads; combats that went on forever; dominance of knights; lack of skirmishers; quite random magic, where power is limited by dice rolls, so you end up having pairs of wizards attempting the same spell, and sometimes you get lucky. We thought about patching the rules, but the list of changes was too long.

Hail Caesar - I really enjoyed playing this for a couple of years with 10mm fantasy figures. But we struggled to get the rest of the group into it. Can't really remember why we moved away, might have been some of the movement rules being very generous, and the orders system can be a bit problematic when you declare a broad order, then don't have as much success as you want, and this leads to some interpretation of where you troops would end up.

Irregular Wars - really enjoyed this as a game. Quick to play, lots of cool ideas. But we couldn't get it to scale to big battles. Stuff that worked well in smaller games, with 4x the number of units on the table kind of bogged down.

Ultimately we took bits of all the above and mashed them up to make our own set - we want a big battle that could be played in an evening, by big we mean 30-50 units a side. We have some command friction, but not too much. Combat seems to work. Magic is still a work in progress but seems to be getting somewhere now. Army lists are on going. 

[Lowtardog]

In the last year or so only just moved back into mass battles, Picketts Charge for ACW. Sword and Spear for Ancients and Fantasy and DITDC for colonial (though not played this as yet). For me it is the rule mechanisms that do the trick, feel right and look right and suit my game play at a local club. Also they aren`t really competition focused with no real killer armies that can destroy a set of rules.

I did play Shako and Spearhead routinely in the past and loved them for similar reasons.

[nic-e]

I've been searching for a system i like and have tried a few. I always end up liking ELEMENTs of a system but never enjoying the whole playing experience, So i've just written my own that I will at the very least not have to learn and can house rule for added fun.

Perhaps might Mighty armies a try? It reads very well and its often used as a contrast to HOTT.

(Or message me for a rough PDF of my diceless mass combat system.)

[splinteredlightminis]

Feel free to take a look at our rules--Pride of Lions.  http://www.splinteredlightminis.com/proflipdf.html

It is simultaneous movement with a fun and unique magic system and plenty of room to create your own units.

[ZeroTwentythree]

I enjoyed Warmaster when it was young (and I was a bit younger too), but from my one game of Hail Caesar, I feel like it's a more developed evolution of many of the same concepts/mechanics. I plan on revisiting HC as a fantasy game using the Shadow Storm (page doesn't seem to be working at the moment) fan rules as a starting point.

I've been very curious about Hostile Realms for a while, too. I've never played any Piquet rules, but the love-or-hate reactions the system seems to generate and the authors design notes (on the Piquet web site) have only fueled my curiosity.

[Too Bo Coo]

There is also Mortem Et Gloriam...

[The Bibliophile]

I’m going to try Battle Valor. I pciked up two armies from their recent Kickstarter. Anybody with any experience with this system?

[jon_1066]

Dragon Rampant doesn't count? Oh...

I recently purchased it, wanting a change from my regular 28mm skirmish games. So only huge, combined arms sort of frays count as 'mass battles'?

Dragon Rampant sort of falls between mass battle and skirmish.  It is fleixble enough that it can be either.  So you could have a force that is only five models or you could play in teams of three with a retinue each and field 200 models.