A new guy looking for new Skirmish rules with a nice campaign system

[antimatter]

I'm biased here but you could try ShadowSea. The new version, Conquest of the Underground World has a full campaign system and character design system so you can build pretty much anything you want. I've been told the game is very "Mordheim-like" in the way a warband can progress and each individual model can grow. The underlying core of the game is SOBH but it has additional stats and a more complex combat and magic system, as well as more actions to do in general.

Here are a couple of the relevant sections to the discussion. These are only a small portion of the book.  http://antimatter-games.com/download/ShadowSea_Campaigns_sample.pdf

[Jevenkah]

I am looking for a "new" rulesystem to make use of the huge kind of different Fantasy miniatures I have collected over the years. I prefer small to medium scale Skirmish Systems ...

Fantasy Warriors
This link is all I found, but looks interesting enough to ask for more info

Hi Gecko! As the owner/creator/photographer/et al of the site you mention above I can help a bit. What you see on our website is our campaign setting using Mongoose's d20 Conan RPG for PCs,
(adventures #37-49 here: http://swordandsorceryrpg.com/sgk_overview/)
 with Fantasy Warriors  as a way to resolve mass combat for our Dark Ages-era fantasy game.

We started playing Fantasy Warriors with Adventure #40 (the all-night epic "Battle of Skarken River") and it's been a very fun and fulfilling story element.

We've used Fantasy Warriors with anywhere from 20-80 minis per side, and you could easily roll with more. I would say highly scalable. I like the "kill=take a figure off the board" element. It makes for fun pictures too.

We advance troops by keeping track of encounters and granting increases to various stats or rolls, and also bring in feats from the d20 rules as special abilities.

The Fantasy Warriors rules are available for free from the em4 website: http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Fantasy_Warriors.html

More of our Fantasy Warriors battles:
http://swordandsorceryrpg.com/fantasy-warriors/

Good luck gaming,
Jevenkah

[eilif]

I'd strongly suggest Song of Blades and Heroes in conjunction with the Song of Deeds and Glory supplement which contains the fully developed campaign system.  Song of Blades is wide open when it comes to unit creation and the free online unit builder at the ganesha website makes stating up a warband a breeze.

It's the game our club formed around and we do a campaign of it every summer.  Dont' be fooled by the simplicity of the rules and the two-stat profiles.  It's a very engaging system that derives much of it's variation and flavor from clever special rules.  Deeds and Glory (necessary for an extended campaign) has a very nice system for leveling up, exploring, buying gear and abilities, etc.

It's true that characters can die a bit easier than in some other games (though not as fast as some would imply), but in the campaign post-game sequece, they usually survive to fight another day, though sometimes with injuries, grudges or having to sit out a battle.  The only drawback I would note is that after 10-14 games a warband begins to get quite tough through stat upgrades.  As a character's "quality" gets better, the element of chance in the activation mechanic goes down and you end up with very reliable troops that make the game a bit predictable.

We limit campaigns to about 6-8 nights of gaming with 1-2 battles played at each meeting which is usually more than enough for players to have advanced their warband notably and for a clear frontrunner to have emerged.

You can see this year's campaigns here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/p/quake-and-mourn-song-of-blades-heroes.html
and last year's here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/p/dark-days-have-come-to-lands-of-qaarra.html

If you're interested in Open Combat, we played and reviewed it a couple weeks ago. 
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2014/11/battle-report-open-combat-by-second.html
It's a system with some very nice features and we're looking forward to seeing where it goes, but it did feel unfinished to us. However, I could see it being a real contender once a new edition or expansion comes out.

[julesav]

Imho you could do a lot worse than look at Crooked Dice's 'Seventh Voyage' variant plus it's supplements.

[Argonor]

Have you considered the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, using the Battle Companies addon for the campaign rules? I've recently found this and find it a nice little system for skirmish to small-level engagements. As it's LOTR, most generic fantasy stuff fits in without to much adapting! I'm hoping to do a bit more with this game and my homebrew fantasy setting shortly.

.

Good call, I was considering mentioning that, too (my recent LotR-surge for God og Battles has put me in Middle-Earth mood)

[eilif]

Yeah, LotR has been calling to me also.
A good choice too. I just recently picked up the rules for this and they look very well done and quite streamlined (in a good way) for GW produced rules.

You can get the "Return of the King" rule book for just a couple of bucks all over the internet. It's not the current version, but is close and has the stats for a wide variety of units from all three movies.  The Battle companies supplement is free on the interwebs and the "one-ring" forum has an updated version as well.

[Alcide Nikopol]

I've played many of the games mentioned and would also recommend Pulp Alley. It is a wonderful game with brilliant mechanics, granular in the right places and a solid campaign system. For a Sword and Sorcery setting it is suggested that you add an extra starting ability to each character for a bit more Fantasy flavoring.

[Faust23]

Someone mentioned Brink of Battle not having pre-generated stats for models. While other interviews and articles describe why having pre-gen stats kills the customization and open architecture of the game, we did listen to our customers and have included 13 Plug & Play Force Rosters in our Epic Heroes Fantasy supplement so people can get stuck in with the new rules and also have some ideas on just how flexible this game can be.  Here's two sample forces, one is a basic D&D type adventuring party and the other one is evil fishman cultists.





Sky is literally the limit with Flyers added as well as high level magic and large creatures, beasts of war, magic items, and an adjustable Power Level mechanic for making all types of settings from low to high magic.  Any time period as well, as the Campaign system established in Brink of Battle and there really isn't anything you can't do in the 3-20 model space.  And none of this is 'generic' in the bland sense. Every ounce of the Fantasy supplement drips with flavor and imagery.

Oh, and I've extended the Wargame Vault sale so you can really save some bucks. We've also got Iron Wind Metals, Bronze Age Miniatures, and Lead Adventure Miniatures in the book and each company is working on bundled deals so you can use the Force Roster and buy the whole force from their stores. 

Noch Weiter!
Bob