Best Fantasy Skirmish Game?

[throwsFireball]

Just curious as to what you guys think is the best fantasy skirmish game and why. I'm looking for a game in which I can field orcs vs goblins and the like without going into astronomical numbers of units.

(Not including Frostgrave.)

[Elbows]

Depends on your level of skirmish.

5-9 figures per side, or 20-30 per side?

My temptation is to suggest Dragon Rampant - solely because it can be used with any miniatures, isn't tied to a world or super complicate system.  While you can make it any scale you want, it's really about small company sized groups (handful of units 6-12 figures each ---- or suitable monsters "counting as").

I desperately want to try Otherworld Skirmish as well.  I thought Frostgrave was hugely underwhelming.

[Vacuumjockey]

Besides Frostgrave, there's also Mayhem, Relicblade, Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish and Goalsystem Delves. Of those, Delves has the most robust campaigning system IMO. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but it is deffo RPG-lite.

There's also Savage Worlds, which is a straight-up RPG with a robust tactical game.

[Skrapwelder]

I have high hopes for Skulldred once it gets out of Beta.

[Digitarii]

Dragon Rampant and Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish would be my first choices for skirmish-level fantasy gaming.

[throwsFireball]

Thanks guys, this is helpful. I already have Dragon Rampant on the shelf and I was eyeing Otherworld but it's pretty expensive for something that I have no certainty of.

I'll probably end up grabbing it, though.

[Hobgoblin]

For small-scale clashes (5-20 figures a side, say), I'd recommend Song of Blades and Heroes. It's a brilliant game, and you can quickly design profiles to reflect whatever you want, using the online builders. The Advanced version is available too, which adds quite a lot, but the basic game's a classic. It's cheap, fun and fast, with a very quick "time to table". There's a whole family of variants, ranging from sci-fi and modern to slightly larger-scale skirmishes involving gods (Of Gods and Mortals, published by Osprey) to wuxia (A Fistful of Kung Fu - also by Osprey).

For larger skirmishes involving units (say 20-60 figures a side), Dragon Rampant is terrific.

I also like Battlesworn, from Ganesha Games (publisher of Song of Blades). It's more abstract in some ways and uses a bidding system, but works really well once you've got that hang of the system. An expansion - Knights and Knaves - has just been published, which adds many more "character classes".

In my view, all three games are excellent. They're also popular and well-supported, and can be used with whatever models you please. And in all three cases, "time to table" - the stretch from deciding to play to getting the game underway - is very short.

[Elbows]

Thanks guys, this is helpful. I already have Dragon Rampant on the shelf and I was eyeing Otherworld but it's pretty expensive for something that I have no certainty of.

I'll probably end up grabbing it, though.

This is my only issue...it's expensive, and their online downloadable version is from a website that looks a bit too shady for me to trust.  It's on my list though.

[affun]

There's allready been mentioned a lot of the "greats" - but I thought that I'd pipe in with some of my personal favourites, even though I think the question of "best" game in any capacity is a bit weird. Games do different things well for different people. Having fun with it is what counts.

Song of Blades and Heroes has already been mentioned: We're currently playing our second campaign of it in our local club. Great fun. I prefer the base version (revised) to the newly released Advanced, though a lot of the new traits and special rules are great fun.

Open Combat - Not sure what happened to it, since the author hasn't really made any fuzz since ~august 2015. Its a pretty fun system, though it works best for human or human-ish forces fighting. Some remark that it feels like it misses "something" extra, which I am inclined to agree with. Still - Its a really great system thats very fun to play. A bit smaller in scale - 5-10 per side, with the sweet spot being around 8, in my opinion.

LotR SBG - I really really love this system, and I really really hate what GW is doing with it. In my opinion, it was at its best before they released the current "The Hobbit" version, which added bloat, unnecessary dice rolls, and hiked the prices into ridiculous. With the price of the base rules, its almost like they dont want people to play their game.
Still, if you can grab a previous version of the rules, its well worth it. It works from "Heroic" skirmish (small groups of powerful heroes) to small battles of 30-50 miniatures, and has a really great 'ebb and flow' feel to the battles. Think more of a tug of war. 'Legends of the Old West' and '... of the High Seas' use the same system, and its pretty easy to mod, if thats your thing. Personally I am working on a Mordheim/SBG crossover, as a sort of sideproject.
The greatest problem with the system is that GW owns it, and that it is tied to the LotR-IP - I'd love to see a generic or historic version of the system released.

Relicblade - VERY small scale skirmish, about the same scale as Open Combat, though it can go even lower and still provide a meaningful game. Heroic fantasy. Great fun to play. Very new still. I am anxiously awaiting more releases for the system.

Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish - I haven't had a change to play it yet, but just reading the book is a joy in itself, and I am greatly looking forward to trying it. It takes some design-ques from SBG, but seems like a very different system. Extremely customizable, and seems to work with anything from 2 to 20 models. Though, as said, I haven't had a chance to actually play it yet, just drool over the book  

Lion/Dragon Rampant: Also already mentioned. I personally prefer Lion more than Dragon, though the differences are minor. Lion Rampant has some, in my opinion, better Boasts, scenarios and mechanics for the General (Duels and challenges are very simple, seem arbitrary, but has some actual decision-making in the way they key into the boasts and rest of the games systems. I've had some very tense moments as I rolled those duel dice). I greatly recommend this system as well. Absolutely magnificent game.


Those are my big ones at the moment.
Saga seems interesting, but I have yet to try it. Mayhem, likewise (though that is more "mass battle" - some people play it as skirmish, but I'd rather use another system for that). The rulebook is a great read though, and I definitely want to get some games in at some point.
Of course, there's also the venerable Mordheim and Warhammer Fantasy Skirmish - Both of which very much where my entry into skirmish gaming, though the rules are a bit clunky. Still, they have that feel to them. Might just be nostalgia, but a lot of games certainly takes inspiration from them.

That turned into a wall of text and a half. Hopefully there's some value in there to you.

[MattofWar]

A friend of mine recently told me that he was grabbing the LOTR books off of used book store sites like Abebooks for super cheap.  Like $5 a title including shipping.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=lord+of+the+ring+strategy+battle+game

I'm sure there are other used book sites that will have lots of them as well.

[affun]

A friend of mine recently told me that he was grabbing the LOTR books off of used book store sites like Abebooks for super cheap.  Like $5 a title including shipping.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=lord+of+the+ring+strategy+battle+game

I'm sure there are other used book sites that will have lots of them as well.

The older editions actually go for quite cheap. If you can pick up The Return of the King version of the rules cheaply, I'd say its well worth it. In my opinion that was really where the system was at its height. The following "One Rulebook" added a lot of great erreta and small rules fixes, but the book itself is a quite shoddy product, full of re-used pictures and articles and typos. And I've yet to find it at a reasonable cost.

[MattofWar]

Well, I just ordered a RotK book.    I've got a collection of miniatures that I use for AD&D/Swords & Wizardry so why not?  I emailed my friend about it.

[Philhelm]

I keep seeing Dragon Rampant pop up.  Do they have different army lists (humans, elves, orcs, etc.), or is it more about troop type (spearmen, cavalry, archer, etc.)?  I'd like to look into the game, but don't really know where to start.

[throwsFireball]

I keep seeing Dragon Rampant pop up.  Do they have different army lists (humans, elves, orcs, etc.), or is it more about troop type (spearmen, cavalry, archer, etc.)?  I'd like to look into the game, but don't really know where to start.

There are different races, but you can design your own army lists really easily which is one of the strengths of the game.

[Hobgoblin]

Song of Blades and Heroes has already been mentioned: We're currently playing our second campaign of it in our local club. Great fun. I prefer the base version (revised) to the newly released Advanced, though a lot of the new traits and special rules are great fun.

It's probably worth pointing out that the differences between the basic and Advanced versions aren't that great. The main ones are that Advanced introduces reactions, which allow you to act in your opponent's turn, and a greatly expanded magic system. There are also a lot of weapon-specific traits, none of which are compulsory - i.e a model with a warhammer doesn't need to have Piercing Weapon, but you can add it if you want. You could use pretty much any of the Advanced traits in a basic game, and if you played an Advanced game without reactions or the wider magic system, it would be little different from the basic version.

I really like reactions, so we always use those when we play. We rarely use much magic, but I really like the different types of leader that Advanced introduces  - e.g. Discipline Master for orcs and the like.