The state of "bring what you have" rank and flank?

[DarkBlack]

If I'm not prepared to buy models specifically for a particular wargame and finding Kings of War a bit too technical and competative, then what is available for rank and flank?

Edit: I'm looking for games/rules that I can use my existing collection of miniatures.

[snitcythedog]

What army/race are you looking at?  There are multiple manufactures that do many different models. 
Wow did I read the question wrong. From what I hear, Dragons Rampant may be what you are looking for.  Sorry, I usually prefer skirmish games. 

[Old Hob]

Sounds like you want Fantastic Battles.

[gregmita]

The thing with Kings of War is that you don't have to play competitively. It's perfectly fine to have a laid-back game with friends. The newest edition's Ambush rules are meant for these smaller introductory types of games.

That said, basically every ranks-and-flanks historical game has a fantasy variant, whether official or fan-made. There's the old Hordes of The Things, the fantasy version of DBA. To The Strongest (which is an excellent historical game in its own right) has multiple fan-made variants, with M2 probably the most popular one, and an official ruleset is coming. Impetus/Basic Impetus, another excellent set of historical rules, has a free fantasy Basic Impetus add on. The older edition of Basic Impetus was also free, with the newer edition having a low token price on Wargame Vault.

One issue with ranks-and-flanks is the base size, which I always find can be side-stepped with sabot bases, or by adopting a standard basing system like DBA's. To The Strongest has no such consideration because it's grid-based.

Dragon Rampant is also an excellent game and a very popular one, but it's an individually based large skirmish game, rather than ranks-and-flanks, so I don't know if that's what you are looking for.

If I'm not prepared to buy models specifically for a particular wargame and finding Kings of War a bit too technical and competative, then what is available for rank and flank?

Edit: I'm looking for games/rules that I can use my existing collection of miniatures.

[DarkBlack]

Thanks for the recommendations everyone!

The thing with Kings of War is that you don't have to play competitively. It's perfectly fine to have a laid-back game with friends. The newest edition's Ambush rules are meant for these smaller introductory types of games.

I am quite familiar and have played loads of KoW.
I'm a little tired of moving to just the right distance at just the right angle though.
Not to mention charges out of combat and surge.

I'm looking for something that's more like ancients wargaming, with a bit of friction and not worrying about a few degrees of arc or mm of flank.

[zemjw]

Surprised nobody has mentioned Oathmark yet.

I can't say anything about it, as I'm still painting figures for it, but there are plenty of threads around here on it.

[fred]

I know what you mean about KoW - it can be a fun game, but it’s also more of a maths/chess puzzle game than a battle recreation.

Definitely have a look at TtS and its fantasy variants - the gridded nature takes away so many issues - and you can easily make temporary gridded tables - especially a the grid dosen't need to be perfect.

[Dean]

Bit like Ancients?  Sounds like SAGA Age of Magic to me, completely mini agnostic, but probably too skirmish for what you are after?

[Pattus Magnus]

One possibility to consider would be Fantastic Battles. It is open to any miniatures and scale and has a ‘sandbox’ approach that lets you easily develop new troop types and armies. It is originally designed around square element bases, but it includes rules for using rectangles instead. However, I suspect it would be easy to adapt to single-based figs by using trays, or just clumping the figures together. The main thing for game play is that the elements have a standard frontage width. (Even that could be a bit flexible when using clumps of single based figures, as long as the “base width” measurement distance is standardized and the players use some reasonableness when interpreting contact between “element” groups with slightly different widths - folks prone to very fine measurement and angles might struggle, though).

Another one for (hopefully) release soon is Midgard. It is also uses element bases, but single based figures on trays work well. You can check out the author’s description on his blog: https://mogsymakes.net/midgard/

[DarkBlack]

Bit like Ancients?  Sounds like SAGA Age of Magic to me, completely mini agnostic, but probably too skirmish for what you are after?

Finding a fantasy skirmish game is not a problem!
I would also like some battle games though.

[Dauntless]

Spears of Valour is free to download (pay what you want) and has 17 army lists + 8 more in an expansion. Tis certain to have many of your existing armies represented.

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/462440/Spears-of-Valour-Mass-fantasy-battles

Downside with a fresh new game is finding players to play it!

[Elbows]

I may have a game out by the end of the year which is very user-friendly...but it'll be a while.  All it requires is that opposing armies are similarly based (user preference).

It's rank-n-flank in style, but none of the geometry/arcs/angles, etc.  It addresses that stuff abstractly.

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

The forthcoming Hobgoblin should fill this niche. It’s been forthcoming for what seems like a very long long time and I don’t know when it’s due to be published but it’s currently on pre-order.

https://planetsmashergames.com/hobgoblin/

[Hobgoblin]

The forthcoming Hobgoblin should fill this niche. It’s been forthcoming for what seems like a very long long time and I don’t know when it’s due to be published but it’s currently on pre-order.

https://planetsmashergames.com/hobgoblin/

I was just going to say the same!

You can buy the PDF now. And there's a free quickstart version.

It's pretty good: Kings of War is probably the game it's closest to (parallel evolution rather than influence, I think), but it's much more relaxed and less fiddly. One great feature is that units can manoeuvre after contact, so you can get a sort of 'wheeling scrum' effect, which is quite realistic, I imagine. And you can design units however you want. We've only played a couple of games of it, and not with the very final rules (I hadn't realised they were out - must check all those updates!).

I'd echo others' recommendations of To the Strongest. You don't need any fantasy-specific rules for it, I think: we use the 'veteran' rule to represent things like ogres and trolls (and we give trolls the 'fanatic' rule to represent regeneration or general trollishmess). Mobile artillery pieces work well as wizards, and the hero rules are sufficiently abstract to represent heroes or wizards.

Hordes of the Things is brilliant; if you want more detail, there's the D3H2 expansion, which combines HOTT with DBA.

An interesting mass-battle game is Ganesha Games' Of Armies and Hordes. it's a grid-based game like To the Strongest, but is even easier to set up because the grid doesn't need to be regular. It's a little unheralded, possibly because it was eclipsed by the huge success of the publisher's dungeon-crawling game Four Against Darkness. But it's complete, and it has all kinds of interesting options, like dungeons on the table that the heroes can explore. Basing doesn't matter at all, as long as you can mark hits.

I think the magic of Oathmark is in its campaign system and its Dark Age stylings.

Sword and Spear Fantasy is another good game; I haven't played it for ages, but we enjoyed it when we last did.

I haven't played Impetus but plan to this year (along with Fantastic Battles). It looks pretty good. I'd argue that any decent ancients or medieval ruleset is a perfectly good basis for a fantasy game. With mass battles, size and numbers often average out. A hundred trolls, 500 orcs and 300 barbarians might all function pretty much the same, for example. And reskinning gets you a long way. It's really only flying creatures that pose a challenge; even then, you can often get the desired effect by selecting or tinkering with the appropriate profile.

One more: Mayhem from Bombshell Games. It's great - very innovative mechanics but an easy game to play. The one downside is that you construct your own units as you see fit, so it can suffer a little from a lack of 'baselines'. But there's a free download of Battlescribe files that has all the Warhammer/Warmaster troop types and some others. When we were playing it, I found Battlescribe infuriatingly hard to use on my antiquated phone, but you may have better luck!

[Byrthnoth]

Also in the ‘upcoming’ column is a fantasy supplement for Never Mind the Billhooks. I think it’s due to be published in Wargames Illustrated in the next few months. Also James Morris’ Midgard is supposed to be able to handle monsters, magic and heroes.

One page rules has ‘fantasy regiments’, which is simple and has profiles for store-brand versions of warhammer units, so it should be easy to find stats for anything you might want to use.