Fantasy RPG/Warband/Skirmish type rules?

[TheBlackCrane]

Thanks all! Having been fairly sure the responses I'd get would all point me to SBH, I'm now thinking I'll have to investigate several sets instead! Quite tempted by Brink of Battle, I'd read about them but it hadn't occurred to use them for fantasy. Shall be downloading the various free sets suggested over the weekend and having a look, and shall see where that leads

[Black Sheep]

Happy to help. 

[Viper]

Hmm I think I'll go take a little look at Brink of Battle too.

I've played mordheim on and off for many years but something more flexible sounds pretty interesting. After being used to games with a lot of stats I'm not sure how I feel about there being only 3 (SBH just seemed too restrictive for me having only 2 of them) but I've always been a sucker for d10s for some reason so that's a bonus.

The Horde, Standard, and Elite thing sounds very similar to AE Bounty which was something I liked about that game.

[blacksmith]

Two Hour Wargames has just released Warrior Heroes Legends: http://2hourblog.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/warrior-heroes-legends-now-shipping.html

[Faust23]

Hmm I think I'll go take a little look at Brink of Battle too.

I've played mordheim on and off for many years but something more flexible sounds pretty interesting. After being used to games with a lot of stats I'm not sure how I feel about there being only 3 (SBH just seemed too restrictive for me having only 2 of them) but I've always been a sucker for d10s for some reason so that's a bonus.

The Horde, Standard, and Elite thing sounds very similar to AE Bounty which was something I liked about that game.

Don't let 3 Ratings fool you, they are modified by over 60 available Traits and 90 weapon traits.  No two forces are ever the same.    The Ratings are Combat, Command, & Constitution.  Combat represents your model's skill at war/soldiering, fieldcraft, fighting in Close or Ranged combat.  Command represents the ability to take and give orders, resist Panic, and influence others.  Constitution is a combo of stamina, toughness, strength, and grit.

We will probably have over 200 more Traits for our Fantasy supplement Epic Heroes that will allow you to make pretty much anything you can think of.  It will also allow you to step into Weird War 2, Weird West, Gothic Horror, Pulp, and other genres that incorporate monsters & magic. 

You can read the short list of new Traits on our Brink of Battle Blog here http://brinkofbattle.blogspot.com/2012/11/sneak-peek-at-epic-heroes.html

Hope that helps clarify things a bit.

[phreedh]

I'd like to chime in that Brink of Battle is indeed a fine rule set! I haven't played it in a fantasy setting so can't comment on that, but the game flowed nicely when we played french indian wars with it.

[maxxev]

Just to settle the point, Mordheim doesn't just have stats for Ratmen and Humans (plus undead). However that is all that is in the main rulebook. There are however a mass of warbands released for the game that can be found on the net including; dwarves (Chaos and normal), orcs, undead, Lizardmen, elves(Dark, high and shadow) there are also a ton of different varieties of humans including warbands with werewolves and demons and various different types of undead warbands.

I love Mordheim for a number of reasons but primarily for the campaign system I have tried SoB&H but I hate randomness in games and SoB&H is loaded with it. Obviously there has to be some randomness in games, but rolling for every action really didn't do it for me it's also what instantly turned me of shadowsea and deepwars, especially after watching the demo game where the equal pointed lists (3 lizards vs 2 mariners) ended with all the lizards dead and the mariners un-touched (and little else different the lizard player could have done). That reeked of a game where tactics means little over the dice rolls and listbuilding.

Anyway before I hit full blown Rant i'll just say that Mordheim is one of the best GW games ever produced and the latest expansion on the way "Mutiny in Marienburg" looks to be a damned good addition to the game (and the last one "Border town Burning" was damned good too).

[Sangennaru]

For SoBH, i've to say that the prime TRAGICAL defect is the point system, that is working VERY bad. I had the same feeling with Flying Lead (the modern-scifi version): looks like the developers totally forgot to "complete" the game, and apparently the point system is quite random and naive.

Mordheim is a complete game with loads and loads of warbands (and a warband editor as well, which is pretty handy!)

Didn't try Brink of Battle, but the 22$ cost for the PDF ediction really turned me down,... expecially if i can't even try a demo edition!

I'll try betatesting now Savage Worlds, since Swords and Wizardry was quite TERRIBLE. totally unbalanced, slow, boring. I hoped that the "restauration" of the 1st edition was something better. That was so accurate that it kept all the huge bug of the first manual from Gygax!

[phreedh]

That reeked of a game where tactics means little over the dice rolls and listbuilding.

That is true to some extent, apart from the list building thing... SBH has no meta. You're not supposed to min-max. It's not that type of game, and it's easy to break the points system if you're coming from an ultra-competitive GW background. You're completely right that a single dice roll can change the game completely. I often get that feeling, when I play it. I then realize that it most of the time is due to a positioning mistake on my behalf.

Mordheim seems great, but I'm put off by the "army list" part. Which is ofcourse also the lure of the system itself, the constrictions on rosters gives the game a certain balance.

One important difference between SBH and Mordheim is playing time, SBH is suppose to emulate a battle between two forces over a few seconds. Pretty much charge, clash, whack, flee! The way a "real" skirmish would be fought. A few casualties suffered, and your guys are ready to leg it. Usually, it plays out in an hour and on a rather small (1m x 1m) playing surface.

How would Mordheim play on a board which isn't a burned down multi level city btw? The setting have always put me off and if it would work playing it on a regular battle field I would be more inclined to try it out.

[Sangennaru]

That is true to some extent, apart from the list building thing... SBH has no meta. You're not supposed to min-max. It's not that type of game, and it's easy to break the points system if you're coming from an ultra-competitive GW background. You're completely right that a single dice roll can change the game completely. I often get that feeling, when I play it. I then realize that it most of the time is due to a positioning mistake on my behalf.

well, i'm also thinking about many matches when i just choosed the characters by background: a cool warrior, some monster as enemy, trying to balance just by the point system.
Well, some plays were too much unbalanced, and that means a weak point system.

When a game can be played only by expert players to have a good match (enough experts to know which forces are balanced) ...well, there's something missing for shure!

[Grimmnar]

Anyway before I hit full blown Rant i'll just say that Mordheim is one of the best GW games ever produced and the latest expansion on the way "Mutiny in Marienburg" looks to be a damned good addition to the game (and the last one "Border town Burning" was damned good too).

Maxx,

Tell us how you really feel? I to love Mordheim as well as Necromunda. I am a skirmish lover, and of the GW world it is the skirmish games that catch my attention.
Speaking of which Maxx, dont you have more MODheim warbands to convert? Get to steppin. :-)

and the latest expansion on the way "Mutiny in Marienburg" looks to be a damned good addition to the game (and the last one "Border town Burning" was damned good too).

Forgot to ask, what info is there on the above new xpac coming out? First i have heard of it.

Grimm

[maxxev]

First off before anyone gets excited, GWs specialist games is long dead, therefore none of the expansions are official in the sense that they are produced by GW, however there are expansions that were endorsed by GW employees (before specialist games died). The last one and the next one are projects by the guys over here: http://libermalefic.blogspot.co.uk/. These guys worked on various other Mordheim projects in the Cryers and online on the Specialist games website when it exisited, they are as close to official as anyone is ever going to get unless GW reboot the game, but i've never let un-official stop me having fun ..

Mutiny in Marienburg is slowly being leaked out on the blog, with enough rules to try out some of the items / rules but not enough to play a full campaign yet (like none of the warbands yet for a start).

I admit to only having played 2 games of SoB&H, so my experience is limited, but the first game I got walked all over completely. Trashed by my opponent, the worst skill checks I had were 4+ but due to my opponent having ranges attacks and failing lots of rolls (even on single dice), having slow troops (dwarves) I ended up split accross the battlefield to attempt to removed the ranged threat. I hugged cover wherever possible but then for the rest of the game the guys in the rear failed every test, standing still the entire battle while my elites got ganged up on and spent the game on the floor or worse. I lost everything, he lost nothing.

2nd game I took some pre-created characters from the back of the book, my opponent chose some undead models with some nasty abilities... it didn't help him as that game ended with me loosing no models and him loosing everything (though I came close to loosing one bear). Maybe this was all down to poor tactics on both our parts but it didn't feel like it as much as it came down to making some wrong choices in list building and random dice events throwing the game / any tactics into turmoil.

After watching a couple of you tube vids of games using the same system I can see that it's not just my games that can end this way, more than any other game I have played to date (and i'll admit that that's probably less than 10 different systems) SoB&H and games using the same system suffer from a dice randomness that can suck the fun out of games. I also felt that the "only 3 stats" thing sucked some of the fun out of the game for me, yes it made it really simple but, well I guess i'm not really a fan of that style of game.

At the moment though i'm not really a fan of any game system, though there are some excellent highly tactical mechanics out there (e.g. Malifaux card system, Warmachine's focus / fury / spell casting / animus mechanics) I have not seen any that tick all my boxes, though I want to know more about Godslayer.

I would write my own system combining all the elements that "float my boat" but I suffer from Gamers ADD and a lack of drive / inspiration (possibly depression) which means I never get very far, and even if I did then I have to try and get someone to play the game with me, where again the fact that I have moved so many times I don't have a solid group of gamer friends to call up and game with means I have limited choices by whomever is interested at the local club (where Mordheim was recently suggested and fizzled out anyway).

My ideal game allows the use of any figures, has restricted but highly flexible list building a good campagin system (e.g. Mordheim) and highly tactical gaming (e.g. Warmachine) An example of list building would be: a list revolves around a faction and the races within that faction, but they can also have allies within the list from other factions with the number of allies being dependent on how friendly they are (something like an alignment), e.g. although you want to use an "undead" list, you could recruit allies from any of the evil type warbands, the number of allies from each faction is only dependent on just how willing they are to pair with the undead. In my head you could recruit allies and henchmen from the "Snakemen" list as they are happy to work with / for the undead but you would only be able to recruit a small number of henchmen from the Orc faction (and probably no actual Orcs) as they value their independance so would be less likely to work for the undead (and therefore more likely to be slaves). Snakemen being closer in thier goals to the Undead faction and Orcs being more about just causing chaos, but they coulden't pick from say a Dwarf faction as they could not be allied (Dwarves revering life). However it might still be possible to recruit a necromancer who happened to BE a dwarf.... there are allways black sheep... .

If all the above sounds confusing, this will be another reason why I haven't finished any rules, you try coming up with a system that covers all of that .

...

On the subject of MODheim, thank you for taking an interest, by way of an excuse ; i've had 3 Christmases and a wedding / reception in the last 3 weeks, i've had little in the way of spare time and i'm pretty burnt out at the moment, inspiration is at and all time low (for fantasy at least, ideas keep popping into my head for Sci fi annoyingly, so when the bits arrive you may see something in that genre popping up). My desk is currently littered with Terrortoise, Fishmen, Wolfbeasts, Orcs and the unfinished faun plus a number of other random figures but nothing finished.

Just because i've got nothing better to do right now but reminisce here are some titles of game concepts that never made it anywhere spanning from 1998-2006 when I gave up writing after a particularily fatal computer crash: Fathom (underwater sci-fi meets mordheim), Another world (wild west sci-fi set on a barren planet where the only water is deep DEEP underground), World in Flames, Fringewars (40k meets NEcromunda), Conflict (when I had dreams of creating / selling my own fantasy line (shot myself in the foot by buying a bad bach of figures off someone else)), Gang Wars, I've started and stopped an X-com game a couple of times and more recently I worked on the dead "gangs of 5 fingers" mordheim meets Warmachine rules that were started over on the Privateer press forums.

If I had a gaming "CV" it would read that I started a LOT of games, armies, paint work, terrain but never finished ANYTHING....

[Faust23]

My ideal game allows the use of any figures, has restricted but highly flexible list building a good campagin system (e.g. Mordheim) and highly tactical gaming (e.g. Warmachine) An example of list building would be: a list revolves around a faction and the races within that faction, but they can also have allies within the list from other factions with the number of allies being dependent on how friendly they are (something like an alignment), e.g. although you want to use an "undead" list, you could recruit allies from any of the evil type warbands, the number of allies from each faction is only dependent on just how willing they are to pair with the undead. In my head you could recruit allies and henchmen from the "Snakemen" list as they are happy to work with / for the undead but you would only be able to recruit a small number of henchmen from the Orc faction (and probably no actual Orcs) as they value their independance so would be less likely to work for the undead (and therefore more likely to be slaves). Snakemen being closer in thier goals to the Undead faction and Orcs being more about just causing chaos, but they coulden't pick from say a Dwarf faction as they could not be allied (Dwarves revering life). However it might still be possible to recruit a necromancer who happened to BE a dwarf.... there are allways black sheep... .

If all the above sounds confusing, this will be another reason why I haven't finished any rules, you try coming up with a system that covers all of that .

I plan on delivering exactly that level of flexibility with the Epic Heroes supplement for Brink of Battle.  For the last 6 years of development, I've been taking notes from this forum as to what people want.  You won't be disappointed.   

[Grimmnar]

On the subject of MODheim, thank you for taking an interest, by way of an excuse ; I've had 3 Christmases and a wedding / reception in the last 3 weeks, I've had little in the way of spare time and I'm pretty burnt out at the moment, inspiration is at and all time low (for fantasy at least, ideas keep popping into my head for Sci fi annoyingly, so when the bits arrive you may see something in that genre popping up). My desk is currently littered with Terrortoise, Fishmen, Wolfbeasts, Orcs and the unfinished faun plus a number of other random figures but nothing finished.

All i am hearing is excuses. Come here and let me hit one of your toes with the hammer. That will get ya jumping. :-)
I personally like your work. When you get something going and i catch a gander at it i usually find myself thinking "why the hell didn't i think of that, so simple but so damn effective." Been at times i thought of picking your brain on a thought and seeing what my thought process would come up with. Get the fire back my friend and get some creating done.
The faun, on a side note, just so reminds me from the ones in Narnia. I keep thinking sword and board or whatever a normal humanoid troop would carry. Not to say your crazy wackiness cant come up with something else. But i guess if your thinking sword for example what kind of sword. Single edge? Double? Short fat or short skinny. Elvish and fancy in design or just straight forward in design. and this is just thinking of the sword. Of course i can see how hard being as creative and original as you try to be can be hard some times.
Looking forward to some new stuff soon. :-)

Grimm