Skirmish rules for beginners - advice needed

[Monster]

I'm planning to run a fantasy skirmish game at my FLGS over the summer to introduce miniature gaming to some of the youngsters who play Magic the Gathering, RPGs and Warhammer 40k. We'll get them doing a bit of painting as well, and I plan to make a simple background riffing off a Game of Thrones but including undead, elves and a bit of magic to help draw people in. 

The problem is the rules. I'm looking for a something easy to learn, using about 12 - 20 models a side and with simple campaign system that allows warbands to improve over time. Being mainly a role player these day, I'm not against the idea of a system that needs a gamesmaster.

Casting around I've come up with a few possibilities so far:

1)Saga: Nice production values, good reputation and my FLGS would be happy to stock it and sell it. It doesn't sound too hard to add fantasy elements to. On the downside it's relatively expensive for a teenager who just wants to try out the hobby and I've never played it myself so I'm not sure if it's suitable for what I'm planning.

2)Song of Blades and Heroes: Cheap and very well thought of but has to be bought off the Internet as a PDF which might be a little awkward with the FLGS. Not sure whether it can accommodate as many models as I want. Again, I've never played it myself.

3)Mordheim: I've played it before and it would probably work okay. I like the campaign system, although the basic Warhammer rules are kind of clunky. The fact that it's free is a a definite plus but, on the other hand, I'd like to use something that wasn't Warhammer.

4)One of the many free rule sets...  Perhaps a variant of the GW LOTR rules if anyone knows anything suitable?

Any advice from the good members of the LAF would be gratefully received!

[Abbner Home]

I'm a big fan of Savage Worlds - they have a free version aimed at miniatures skirmish:

http://www.peginc.com/pdfstore/savage-worlds-showdown/

[Estarriol]

Song of blades is good. You can buy hard copies, and Deepwars and Shadowsea are enhanced versions of SoBH with an awesome background.


Have you considered
- Lord of the Rings? whilst it doesn't include improvement over time there are linked campaign rules.

- Crom! by Matakishi is simplicity itself, it's Conan, it's awesome, and Matakishi has published a campaign as well. For a pick up and play game with complete beginners you won't get a better system in my opinion. Even if you adapt it to generic fantasy and away from Conan.

- I've been vaguely eyeing up Broadsword Adventures. A little more complex but it's a story driven wargame which appeals to me, anyway.

[Bergil]

Crom is fantastic, but might take some people a few minutes to get their heads round.

Songs of blades and heroes is very easy tp pivk up and serves any skirmish based game well.

[max]

I'd say the Lord of the Rings skirmish set. It's simple to get the hang of and you can make some profiles quickly, especially for Game of Thrones as the forces have similar troops. There's a yahoo group for varients too.
SAGA could be good and i saw some battle boards on a blog for starks and lannisters, but the forces might be a bit bigger than 20 men a side, more like 30-40.

[blacksmith]

If most of your players come from WH40K I think Mordheim would be the best option as it will be something famliar to them.

[Blue in vt]

Agree with the above...and if you want things streamlined and freshened up a bit check out corehiem.  It's a spin off that is well thought out.

Cheers,

Blue

[Monster]

Thanks for all the ideas,folks. Keep 'em coming. I'm off to read up on some of them!

[Simlasa]

Normally I'd say Song of Blades & Heroes... but Blacksmith's comment about their familiarity with the basic Warhammer stuff makes sense in favor of Mordheim/Coreheim.
If you were to go SoBH maybe the store would be friendly to it as long as you used figures ranges they sell?

[Bloodsbane]

Rack & Ruin is in open beta at the moment. They've got an indiegogo campaign going to get the game printed.
It's very close to Mordheim, but with a bit of D&D thrown in.
Here's the news snippet that led me to the beta just the other day:
http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2013/06/05/74265/

[fastolfrus]

Where are you based?

[kalamadea]

about 9 years ago Warhammer Historicals put out Legends of the Old West. LotOW was a skirmish game that was basically just LotR with renamed stats, a heavier bent on shooting, and most importantly a campaign system that was simply a rewritten Mordheim experience/level up system. If you can get a hold of the rulebook then you could just grab the campaign system and move it over to LotR itself and it would work just fine.

Or, you could try out G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T which is a narrative skirmish game for Victorian Sci-fi/pulp adventure with a lot of customizability built into it to represent pretty much anything from zulu warriors to elves to aliens with death rays. Friend of mine made an army for it out of flying monkeys straight out of Wizard of Oz just because he thought it was cool.

[Monster]

Just wanted to say a belated thank you to everyone for your advice. After some research I went for SoBH and we're using figures that the FLGS stocks. There are really a wealth of rules out there to choose from.

For theme I've gone for a mythical version of the Persian Wars because I wanted a break from standard fantasy. If you're interested you can see more on my blog:
http://axesandarrows.blogspot.co.uk/p/wrath-of-gods-2013.html

@fastolfrus I'm based in Redhill, in Surrey.

[eilif]

I'm a big fan of Song of Blades and Heroes.  Really fast to learn, and plays out in less than an hour -so the kids can get in more than one match a day- but with lots of replay value. We've been playing it off and on for 3 years and are just starting another campaign.

The rules will accommodate a 500 point warband easily which can be 10-12 characters if they're not too powerful.  Not as large as you would prefer, but great for kids, and the expanded campaign system in "Song of deeds and glory" is quite good. Plus, the kids can collect and paint whatever figures they want.  

The PDF-ability of the game might actually be a good thing as the kids can easily go home and buy/print it if they wish. I think some/most of the SBH games are also available in Ipad versions for the more tech savvy kids.

Here's a look at our campaign last year:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/p/iron-isle-song-of-blades-heroes.html

Mordheim is cool too, but you can't buy the specific figures for it anymore, and the factions and characters are a good part of the draw for that system.  Without the Mordhiem story, you're pretty much left with necro-warhammer-skirmish. Still, it's not a bad system, just not great.

EDIT: Didn't realize that you'd already decided on SBH. Glad it's working out for you!