Questions About Three Skirmish Rulesets

[Mr. White]

Between painting the awesome new GW plastics for Underworlds and Blitz Bowl, I desire something a bit more...independent or agnostic. The two mentioned games are very board gamey using cardboard battlefields and spaces for movement, but I want something a bit more traditional minis wargame. Something in the skirmish scale ~20models a side.

I think I'm looking at three rule sets, so would love to hear experiences and comparisons across them:

Advanced Songs of Blades and Heroes - This seems to have a lot of favorable reviews and is the oldest system on my list. Perhaps the most proven. My concern here is I think I would need to build out the stats for any models I would use? I was hoping for prebaked stats. something I can get into as easy as possible. Also...what about scenarios? Are there any here? I'm no good on making my own.

Saga: Age of Magic - The production on this book looks awesome. The battleboards look like something I could easily explain to a casual gamer. I like that there's only six types and you just use whatever models you want. However, pics of games played I've seen online look to be a lot more than 20 models per side. Some pics even have the units in blocks like a RnF game. I'm less interested in that style of play atm. Am I wrong here?

Warlods of Erehwon - I've been a fan of some of Priestly's GW games in the past, so his name on the cover gives me some confidence as a buyer. But here too, I'm seeing more than 20 models per side. Can this scale smaller or is it also a RnF game and I'm misunderstanding it.

So, for a guy who wants to just happily throw some dice with any fantasy models he wants and play with very casual players over some beers...which of these three best fit the bill? Again, I'd love to hear of experiences and read some comparisons.

[Ogrob]

Don't know anything about the other two, but I do play a lot of Saga: Age of Magic and really like it. Is is unit level skirmish however, and like you say standard games are larger than 20 figures. About 40-50 figures is probably standard. The very lowest figure count you can have in a standard 8 pt game is 8 (but really 15-25 is more realistic for a low model count list) and the very highest is almost 100 if you make a silly spam list.

Models move independently, but have to stay in range of the first model to move so some people like to place their units in tighter formation to make this easier.

Would definitely recommend it if large skirmish is what you are looking for because it is a very nice game.

[randycarter]

I played some game with SOBH (and I think it's fairy similar to the advanced version): I think it's just perfect for casual play (just 2 statistics per model, plus some special rule). It works very well even with a dozen of model per band and you need just minutes to show the rules to neewbye!

Saga is also good: it needs some more model (20-30 per side) and mechanics are a bit more complex. And I think players need more time to get familiar with the army factions to enjoy the game.

I higly reccomend also Dragon Rampant: cheap, fast, easy and  you get started in minutes. And you can play with wathever number of models (due to the mighty "reduced model" rule) and it doesn't matter how your miniatures are based!

[Mr. White]

Ha! Adding another title to the mix (Dragon Rampant)...doesn't make the decision easier!

I thought DR was also RnF. It can do small skirmish...Mordheim/LotR Battle Company size? The pics I see online are generally blocks of troops RnF style. The blurb on the Ospry site says:

An army usually consists of 6-8 units comprised of 6-12 individually based figures.

^ That's a bit more than 20 per side.

Saga's ~40+ models per side is kind of ruling it out.

Maybe when I say 'skirmish' I think Mordhiem/Necromunda/Warcry modl count, but others think small army? I guess I've heard 40K and WFB described as skirmish games before too...

[Tim Haslam]

Warlords of Erehwon is a great fun game, it totally captures the feel of the good old days of Warhammer. The full nostalgia trip. Quick and easy to pick up.
We were playing with considerably more models than 20.

Rick Priestley even has his own blog with extra lists on.

Sadly, it appears to lack a lot of local players for me.
Which is a shame.

[randycarter]

DR rules hallow you to deploy single heroic characters in place of RnF units, or small units in place of bigger ones. Thechnically you can have a game of four knights against a horde of goblins and it doesn't even affect the mechanics.

Keep in mind that being thought for battles, you have no specific rules for buildings and so on. And the flavor is a bit more "battlefield-like".

[fred]

I think for what you are looking for; low model count and pick up games. Then SoBH is a good choice. It is typically around 5-12 models per side (possibly higher for low quality troops), each model moves independently. The rules are straight forward but not simple. My kids have enjoyed playing.

While basic profiles are given you probably want to spend a bit of time working out your characters / heroes.

There are a huge amount of supplements which cover all sorts of themes and genres. These aren’t needed but can give you more flavour / detail if you want.


Also within this model count range is Frostgrave. It’s probably less of a pickup game due to the magic rules which mean you need to understand how the game works to understand which spells to pick. It does have campaign rules if that is useful to you. One downside is that as the rules involve opposed d20 rolls results can be very swingy.

I would classify the other rules mention as small battle sets. For all of them you have a small number of units each of a fairly low model count 4-12 typically, which tends to around 50+ models for a warband. Saga Magic is a great game but the warband building rules, battle boards and magic are all fairly complex so not great for pickup games.

[madzerker]

with low model count I have enjoyed Mantic's Vanguard a lot this last year with about 10 models per side and I use whatever models I own, since their models are hit and miss (their new models are nice, older models not so much) and they have like 14 lists or so. I am just starting to play Ragnarok from Osprey with a buddy this week and it looks awesome where you are playing a small warband of vikings trying to become gods in Norse mythology after the Gods are dead and you can get monsters and demimortals and beasts to join your warbands after you subdue them. It is like 7-15 models per side. Both of these games have good campaign play as well.

[DivisMal]

SoBH is the skirmish system of my choice. 20 models per side would make for a very long battle, but are still possible. 5-10 are usual.
The game is easy, elegant and - most important fin!