What's on the horizon?

[Elbows]

Using your painted collection is nice, but who's excited by every faction being near identical and then 1 universal rule for the whole army? Maybe dwarves lack a mounted unit while orcs lack a light mounted unit type of thing has become so common it's hard to see any personality to the armies. I'm all for supporting models, but make people fit their models to your rules rather than your rules to everyone's lead pile. The appeal to fantasy games to me isn't taking Historics very similar armies approach and adding a unit of ogres on one flank. Historics already cover those "generic" era armies very well and has many great rule sets. If fantasy wants to be as samey as historic is people would be better off making historic rule sets instead.

There are perhaps hundreds of fantasy skirmish games out there - but digging through the pile may take a while.  A lot of those skirmish games probably have a great amount of flexibility and interest, but you've yet to read them.  While you're tired of miniature agnostic games, there's not much greener grass on the other side.  With a dedicated game you have the following:

-Exorbitant prices if we're talking about something like a GW product
-18 months of success or support before the game fails (read: almost every miniatures game from Fantasy Flight games, or Warlord, etc.)
-An inevitable "arms race" where new models are more powerful, making your previous purchases pointless
-Limiting the number of people you can find the play that precise game (not a problem if you're doing, say, Warhammer...but almost anything else, you'll struggle)
-Games with vast edition changes, where the community ceases to play the game after it's been replaced by a new book every 18-24 months, etc.
-Units and terrain become limited because they're often intrinsically tied to what the company can or cannot produce.
-Many of the big supported games inevitably end up in the competitive/tournament market and the rules are abused/destroyed in the process, making it more difficult for gamers to find someone willing to play the game without beating them in six minutes.
etc.

Now, on the face of it, I agree with some of what you've said.  I don't personally love Dragon's Rampant, or Oathmark, etc.  They fill a neat little niche, but they are definitely on the bland side.  So find another game.  I just don't think you're going to find some magical game that everyone is going to be playing.  With any game, you're probably stuck collecting and painting both sides and then finding some buddies who'll play the game with you.

I think The Legend of Fabled Realms looked cool, but then that KS failed...and as best I understand everyone got jipped out of their money with nothing produced?

I think Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings looked, aesthetically, pretty damn cool...and I've seen not one person post a thread about playing or collecting it.

Otherworld Miniatures put out an old school dungeon crawl and I never saw a single person mention/play it?

Mantic picked up the old community from Warhammer Fantasy with their Kings of War revamp.  That's probably popular - along with The 9th Age(?) which is a community made continuation of Warhammer Fantasy.

Warcry from Games Workshop came out with cool, expensive miniatures and a dreadful looking game.

Underworlds from Games Workshop is a tournament-aimed small cohesive competitive game...but it's adopted the computer game notion of seasons where your purchases become obsolete within 12-18 months...so that sucks.

Games Workshop is still beating the WHQ name to death with Cursed City, a mediocre game with some nice miniatures....but it's already out of print so tough to pick up.

Games Workshop did re-release their Lord of the Rings game a while back, but that's heavily dependent on shitty and expensive Forgeworld resin miniatures for bulking out your forces.

What kind of game are you looking for?  If you can't find one that suits you, adapt one to your needs.

[Hobgoblin]

Using your painted collection is nice, but who's excited by every faction being near identical and then 1 universal rule for the whole army? Maybe dwarves lack a mounted unit while orcs lack a light mounted unit type of thing has become so common it's hard to see any personality to the armies. I'm all for supporting models, but make people fit their models to your rules rather than your rules to everyone's lead pile. The appeal to fantasy games to me isn't taking Historics very similar armies approach and adding a unit of ogres on one flank. Historics already cover those "generic" era armies very well and has many great rule sets. If fantasy wants to be as samey as historic is people would be better off making historic rule sets instead.

The answer to this, surely, is the wealth of games that don't prescribe how creatures of a given species should perform on the table - which means all the 'design your own profile' games. Rogue Planet is one example; Mayhem is another. All the Song of Blades stable work like this, and while Of Armies and Hordes does have (hundreds of) set profiles, it also allows you to build and cost your own.

Even Dragon Rampant allows for a fair degree of unit customisation (one man's orcs might be Bellicose Foot in Shiny Armour; another's might be Heavy Foot or Light Foot with Mixed Weapons) and complete freedom as to how you build your army.

A game of Rogue Planet or Of Gods and Mortals doesn't play anything like a historical battle, and you could structure your orc or dwarf army entirely as you see fit in either.

[Elk101]

Again, personal opinion only, but I do prefer the games that offer customisation and are less strictly prescriptive about things like 'no dwarf cavalry' and so on. I like more open systems but I'm aware that other people don't. For every person that likes Rule Set A because of X, there will be another that hates Rule Set A because of the same X. There's plenty of room for lots of different rules.

[dadlamassu]

Some interesting views here. In our little group we started fantasy games in the late 1960s and my friend (John "Slim" Mumford) and long term wargaming opponent wrote a set of rules that we still use.  (Those who have played our games at the shows in Scotland will know them).  We use any figures we like from any range.  As we got more involved Slim designed a whole continent of Morval Earth and we have had decades of fun in various wars, expeditions, dungeon crawls, raids, intrigue and more.  We have families, dynasties and scope to add anyone and anything.  Imagination is the only limit, well maybe time too.  http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/me_brief_history.htm

Everyone to his/her own - we have the time, imagination and interest for our fantasy setting and love putting things together for it.  This has carried over into our zombie games in Dedburgh, Colonial Morvalistan, Pulp Morvalonesia, 1960s - 80s  Morvalonga (Independent Morvalistan) and so on where our imaginations run riot!

Not everyone has the time or inclination for this.  Slim and I are from the Tony Bath, Donal Featherstone era where nothing much commercial existed so we did it ourselves. 

So to answer the question - for us there is a battle set up on Slim's table that has been there since 20 March 2020 as part of the Belmanian Civil War.  http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/Whatnew.htm

Whatever is on the horizon go straight ahead to fun, games and social interaction (but go safely!)

[Bloggard]

the real character in a game comes from the interaction and attitude of the players to a large degree I would have thought.

in other words just about any game out there can be the vehicle for an enjoyable experience that needn't be at all bland (but then one man's bland is another ... etc).

House rules ftw 

* although reading the OP again, what I say above is a pretty pointless, entirely self-evident, utterly vague, statement. apologies.