Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: mictator on July 19, 2019, 05:36:44 AM
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Hello,
I'm searching for a Rule Set for Fantasy Mass Battles.
I want lots of Detail in Army Bulding for Equipment.
It must be lots of Differences with Weapons like your Unity have Dagger and Shield Vs Fullplate and Sword.
Not the modern Rules with lots of abstraction.
Rank and File with individual Miniature Casulties, please.
Any ideas?
Cheers Michael
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we use our own home grown rules. If this is the size of battle you are looking for
(http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/Battle_Hosts/BH%2002.jpg)
Then look at our website: http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/ (http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/)
specifically http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/me_brief_history.htm (http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/me_brief_history.htm)
Simplified version of rules but enough for a big battle (PM me for a full set if interested) http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/me_simple_abridged_rules.htm (http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/me_simple_abridged_rules.htm)
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I'd ask first what you do and do not like. I mean it sounds like any older edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, etc. What kinds of mechanics do you like/enjoy?
If you wanted a simpler, less...silly basis to start with you could also look up the old Warhammer Historicals rule sets. They shared the basic components of something like Warhammer Fantasy but included some more grit/detail/realism in maneuvering and equipment/fighting/units, etc.
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Warhammer?
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Especially 3rd ed. is pretty detailed.
If the later editions of WH are detailed enough, you could try 9th age. Free.
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"Knights and Magick" is still available on Lulu. It has individual weapon types, but only about 3 different armor types.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/arnold-hendrick/knights-and-magick-soft-cover/paperback/product-20689377.html
It's an oldie, from 1981.
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I echo a previous comment - 3rd Edition Warhammer sound like it would fit your bill. It's as detailed as you could wish for, has rank and files and individual casualty removal.
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Are you aware of 9th Age? It's Warhammer fantasy reworked by tournament players who didn't want Age of Sigmar, free online on their website. Not quite my cup of tea, but it might be just what you are looking for. Also free. Just google 9th Age and you will find it.
Personally I'm looking forward to the release of Oathmark late this year, but I'm not sure it fits your brief as well as 9th Age does.
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1st edition Battlesystem. It meets your criteria in spades. Figure rations and ground scales defined, etc. The math behind the resolution table is the same as for 1:1 in AD&D, scaled up in the correct manner, i.e. you have less deviation from the mean the more figures. I.e., a "real" wargame. :D Since it's built on D&D, you have the largest selection of non-human creatures already statted, the largest selection of spells, the largest variety of equipment, etc. It has many other great qualities. I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone, but it has my endorsement, and I recommend it to you.
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As others have said, Warhammer is the obvious candidate. I reckon second edition was the best iteration (it certainly had the best scenarios); third is a bit more cumbersome. And second edition has the points formula that allows you to create a profile for that badger-man riding a terror bird or whatever.
One thing which might be worth bearing in mind, though, is that some of the things you want seem to arise specifically from Warhammer's odd combination of a skirmish game (detailed weapons, etc.) and a massed-battle game (with implicit figure scale): this is something that Rick Priestley has discussed in some interesting interviews.
Distinguishing between individual weapons (beyond spears/pikes and different missile weapons) rather than fighting style is very much an RPG/skirmish thing (and first-edition Warhammer was primarily a set of RPG and skirmish rules, with the massed-battle element secondary to that).
For massed battles, the role of fighters tends to be more important than the actual weapons they carry; if your horde of orcs is sweeping down the slopes towards the enemy, does it really matter that some have two-handed axes, some have scimitars and shields and some have spears? Warhammer actually recognises that by allowing varied weapons to 'average out' across a unit - but it's really just another sort of abstraction. I think that's why most massed-battle systems don't pay much attention to melee weapons beyond long spears/pikes, but do pay a lot of attention to armour and battlefield role.
Beyond Warhammer, obvious candidates might be Chainmail and its retroclones (notably The Book of War (http://www.lulu.com/shop/daniel-collins/original-edition-delta-book-of-war/paperback/product-17158134.html)). Those games have more detailed armour breakdown than Warhammer, though less attention is paid to non-missile weapons. They're explicit (or honest!) about the figure scale (1:10 or whatever), but they're designed to integrate skirmish/RPG-level heroics with figure-scaled mass battle. So, while they might not be that bothered about whether your heavy infantryman is using a poleaxe or a sword, they will drill down into whether he's wearing leather or chain or plate (vs Warhammer's "light" and "heavy" armour), or whether your light infantry are using slings, short bows, long bows, composite bows, light crossbows or heavy crossbows (slightly more detailed than Warhammer again).
I don't know Battlesystem, which Spooktalker has mentioned above, but I'd imagine it probably has some elements in common with the Chainmail lineage, given the D&D origins and compatibility.
Then there's Nick Lund's Fantasy Warriors, which is supposed to be very good (I haven't played it). It uses singly based figures and has roughly the same sort of weapons and armour distinctions as in Warhammer. It's a rank-and-file game; from reading the rules, I think it's a bit more genuinely "mass battle" than Warhammer, in that it pays more attention to command structures. And it's free (https://em4miniatures.com/collections/fantasy-warriors-game/products/fantasy-warriors-core-rule-pdf)!
Fantasy Warriors seems to have lots of devotees who are still playing decades after the rules came out, despite the lack of any further publications. That always strikes me as a very good recommendation (Hordes of the Things is another example, although it doesn't fit your criteria). If a game can last on its own merits without further marketing, it's almost certainly got something to recommend it.
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Oh, and I almost forgot! Ganesha Games' Of Armies and Hordes (http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?cPath=1_6&products_id=357). It's brilliant, and the massed-battle system I've played most recently.
It was just published this year. You can use multiply or singly based figures, or both, and any scale. It's got huge army lists, a very detailed army-building system and rules for designing your own profiles (though there must be thousands in the existing lists).
It also has magic, monsters and the best set of rules for interaction with terrain elements that I've seen. For example, a village on the table isn't just something that can be defended, but a potential source of levies.
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I'm a little surprised that Fantasy Warriors was mentioned so far down the thread. It has pretty detailed rules and even keeps track of ammo, IIRC.
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Our group (and basically scene) switched to 9th Age - which is an incredibly fun rules set. It's free, all units now have a playable rule-set, there are new units to play, and the background is shaping up atm.
The guys from Creator Consortium did a nice two-piece blog on it - see here https://creatorconsortium.com/2019/07/05/the-9th-age-a-new-warhammer-fantasy-battles/ and here https://creatorconsortium.com/2019/07/12/the-9th-age-part-2-a-world-of-story-a-world-of-war/
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I actually preferred Ral Partha's Chaos Wars to Grenadier's Fantasy Warriors. I then started playing 3rd edition Warhammer, and never looked back.
Now? I actually prefer simpler systems like Dragon Rampant.
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Here is another fan of Fantasy Warriors! The system has its flaws. Mainly the idea that different weapons affect a unit‘s combat strength (as Hobgoblin has eloquently explained, this is mostly nonsense), but the system of orders and morale checks is still pretty unique. A warning though: it is a late 80s/early 90s system that uses lots of modifiers for the d6.
I grew up with this and kinda miss it in modern games, but others think it’s too complicated.
Anyway: Warhammer Historical is also great, but lacks magick, which you would need to add from somewhere else.
Ganesha Games Of Armies and Hordes. I haven’t played it, bit the rules read very nice, and have a lot of unique ideas.
Warmaster. While not as detailed as Warhammer, I consider it the better mass battle system. Plus it has a very interesting activation system and still differentiates models according to speed, combat and armor plus special abilities.
Demonworld. A highly underrated gem of a wargame. Ral Partha has been translating the German rules into English, but I haven’t had the chance to read them. The original rules however, were among the best, I have ever seen.
You could set terrain into fire (even with flame arrow, like in Braveheart), you had magick items, heroes, a very good artillery system that might result in friendly fire (better than contemporary 40k and WHF), and there were rules for formations and many other things.
Only drawback: you needed hex maps and the game had a rather high model count.
It was played with 15mm, but since the game unit is a base, it could easily be played with other scales.
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I disagree with the statements that weapons used is not important. Especially when they then go on to pick out some specific weapons types they want to distinguish! lol
I agree that you don't have to distinguish between an ordinary axe and a broadsword, say. OTOH, I think allowing a distinction between 2-handed and 1-handed weapons - sometimes grouped as "Heavy Weapons" makes sense. I think it also makes sense to give long weapons an initial advantage which they then use if their opponents are able to press their advantage. Missum, a set of rules for Tekumel gaming, gave the long weapons an advantage on the first round but then the order reversing strike order in subsequent rounds. In Kerdu, a set I am working on, I allow the unit with the advantage to maintain it if they do well in the round.
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I disagree with the statements that weapons used is not important. Especially when they then go on to pick out some specific weapons types they want to distinguish! lol
But isn't that exactly the point - especially in a massed-battle game? The actual weapons used only matter with reference to certain units. Long spears and pikes, used in formation, should certainly be distinguished from other types. But most fantasy games have historical analogues of troops that weren't distinguishable by weapon type so much as by battlefield role: e.g. Celts, Vikings, and late-medieval foot knights.
And while those warriors may have used one-handed and two-handed weapons, they don't generally seem to have been organised into units according to weapon type. Some Thracian falxes were two-handed, but most were one-handed; I don't think there's any indication that those with two-handed variants were grouped separately on the battlefield.
Similarly, Vikings with two-handed axes don't seem to have formed specific units; indeed, the saga evidence is of warriors with highly individual preferences for weapons fighting alongside each other.
So in those contexts, distinctions like "light infantry" and "heavy infantry" or the Hordes of the Things-style "warband" and "blades" seem to make more sense than worrying about whether this unit of viking huscarls has a significantly higher proportion of Dane-axe users than that one.
I agree that you don't have to distinguish between an ordinary axe and a broadsword, say. OTOH, I think allowing a distinction between 2-handed and 1-handed weapons - sometimes grouped as "Heavy Weapons" makes sense.
Yes, I don't think we're actually that much in disagreement. In my earlier comments, I was thinking about systems like Mayhem. It's an excellent game, but the thing I like about it least is that it distinguishes between the battlefield roles of axes, blunt weapons and swords as well as "spears" and "great weapons" (which make much more sense). The game, I reckon, is much better if you ignore most of the fiddly distinctions.
I think it makes sense to distinguish two-handed weapons in some circumstances: billmen or halberdiers fighting in units of the same, for example. But in other contexts - foot knights, for example - it's the armour that matters more: those guys are going to keep coming and are going to get you, and whether they do that with a poleaxe or a sword-and-dagger combo won't matter much.
That's where I think Hordes of the Things gets it right with its balance of "quick kills" and combat ratings. So blades will usually beat warbands - but when warbands win, they'll destroy the blades rather than just push them back. That sort of thing, I think, makes for a more interesting and dramatic game than worrying about what proportion of those orcs have two-handed axes.
I also feel that the distinctions can often seem a bit ridiculous in games with different sorts of humanoid troops. Many Warhammer orcs wield one-handed weapons that are bigger and heavier than the two-handed weapons used by dwarfs and humans!
Oddly, I think skirmish games can add a lot of interest with different weapon types, even when the effects of those weapons aren't even remotely accurate. A good example is Steve Jackson's Melee. Its strength requirements for certain weapons don't really make any sense (in real life, you don't need to be stronger to use a two-handed sword than you need to be to use a sword and shield), but they do make for an excellent game, because they force the players to make hard choices between their Strength and Dexterity stats. It really builds on the retarius vs secutor distinction that the Romans cottoned onto all those centuries ago ...
You could make the same "gameplay" argument for massed battles, I suppose, but the ebb and flow of lines and the breaking of units seems much more important there. And that's where I think the HotT approach - essentially a sophisticated sort of rock/paper/scissors - works best.
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Fantasy Warriors is brill. And free for the downloading. Wooooooop!!!
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Fantasy Warriors is brill. And free for the downloading. Wooooooop!!!
Yep. And it’s always a pleasure to hear that our friends in England still play this little gem.
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Kings of War work well in 15mm
Storm of Shadow, a free fantasy addition to Warlords Hail Caesar look very good as well
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Fantasy Warriors is brill. And free for the downloading. Wooooooop!!!
This......
http://www.grenadier.it/fantasy-warriors-ruleset.php
Grimm
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Another belated vote for Fantasy Warriors.