Recommendations for generic sci-fi platoon rules with army lists

[Longstrider]

Hey all,

I'm looking for a sci-fi ruleset designed to play with platoonish forces - 20-50 infantry, 1-3 vehicles, and a few characters - but also some sort of army building rules or lists that are suitably generic. Super soldiers, humans, fast aliens, tough aliens, robots, etc. Something which lets me and my friend pit my Antares models and his Space Marines against each other with relatively little pre-game prep, basically.

Either a set that has interesting scenarios, or is rules-light enough that we can just put together a scenario on the day - capture the hill, destroy the generator, loot the bank, or what have you.

Thanks!

[Hobby Services]

Stargrunt or Tomorrow's War.

[Seal]

Tomorrow's War is popular with our group, but One Page 40k pleasantly surprised us. It may be worth checking out. Plus it's free

[eilif]

For Rules-Light, platoon level I would recommend Warengine 2.1. You have to join the Warengine yahoo group to get the rules, but it's free.  Lots of army lists are provided for most any sci-fi trope you can think of and it has a complete unit building mechanic to if you want to customize.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WarEngine/info

It's got a nice pulpy feel that suits space marines and other GW-ish-ness quite well.  The only possibly drawback is that while it handles light vehicles (dreadnaughts, buggies, bikes Sentinels) quite well, but doesn't really do heavy vehicles and tanks without some houseruling.

Personally, I'm waiting for the new Warpath ruleset which will have both Platoon level and Company (aka "mass battle") rulesets which should be out this year.  Every so often I've been using the old Warpath 1.0 rules (basically Kings of War with a few sci-fi bits bolted on) to run Apocalpyse-style games with 40k figures that take a few hours rather than a few days.  It's alot of fun and I hope the new warpath will be just as good.

[Vermis]

Victory Decision: Future Combat? Sci-Fi version of Agis' Victory Decision rules, all dealt with in the child board of the WWII board here.
The initial book has generic 'low tech ' (~modern), 'mid tech' and 'high tech' lists, with different options and add-ons, that should be able to take care of e.g. every humanoid race in 40K. For the one non-humanoid race there's the Rival Species 'bugs' supplement.

http://www.agisn.de/html/future_combat_vide.html
http://www.wargamevault.com/product/123481/Victory-Decision-Future-Combat

[Sangennaru]

Victory Decision: Future Combat?

Definitely worth trying! Not everyone likes its units management, but that's because it's unique! I certainly do like it.

Other might reccomend Gruntz, but i seriously don't. The game is plain, the system is a bare copy of Warmachine, the point system is broken, in my opinion.

Cheers
Jack

[Hat Guy]

Been experimenting with Warpath Firefight recently and I really like it. It's in Alpha at the moment, so has flaws, but shows a great deal of promise.

[tnjrp]

My usual suspect would be pretty much spot on for that...
http://www.mj12games.com/defiance/
...except perhaps for the "relatively little pre-game prep" part. The force builder rules are a little involved but not really too complex if you follow the step outlined in the book. The main problem is actually that there are two rulebooks involved, the original Vital Ground and the newer Evolution of Arms and if you want to build forces based on the latter you'll need to read both books side by side. Which is a bit of a bother. Also, the force building rules and scenarios aren't in the free portion of the rules.

If it helps, premade Space Marines lists are available, one from the "Army Demo Lists" from above and another through my Defiance resources page:
http://heros.netai.net/html/DVG.html

Don't think there are any BtGoA lists anywhere to be found tho.

[dijit]

Been experimenting with Warpath Firefight recently and I really like it. It's in Alpha at the moment, so has flaws, but shows a great deal of promise.

Do you have a link to where you can find it? I've had a look around mantic's site, but can't seem to find it. I could be interested to see it after starting to play Deadzone.

[sundayhero]

no stars in sight

I don't really know it, but I have "no end in sight" (modern combat) and it's great  !