Generic Fantasy Skirmish Game?

Anyone out there know a good generic fantasy skirmish game?

I wonder since we have like 20,000 people out there due to get hundreds of generally fantasy miniatures next March.  These miniatures are not organized correctly for a battle game but a skirimish game has plenty of options for factions: Humans, Elves, Dark Elves, Goblinoids, Undead, and Demons all seem represented on a level where 5-10 model warbands could be assembled using the standard models plus some of the options.   Also since the models will be Bones at the end even if people missed them they can pick them at low cost compared to metal models now.

Now these factions match reasonably well with those in the WOTC Chainmail game which I am a fan of but what other options are there.  Some of the Chainmail rules and unproduced mini stat cards are available for download.  Anyone know if the D20 license is still out there?

Mordenheim is a classic GW fantasy skirmish game.  It has some continuing popularity in the specialist games line but I have never tried it.  Rules are a free download so that is good.  Anyone have an idea how the reaper miniatures would map onto this game?

Other suggestions of games or somebody already working on this in the Blogosphere or even Reaper?  I am already involved in The M42 Project for game development so not sure if I could take on a project like this right now.

Reaper Kickstarter: Time to Choose

Reaper has final gotten their kickstarter stuff finalized and are about to open up the system for people to spend those extra pledged dollars on the bigger models, paints, and cases.  I definately need to get some big baddies but might also get a case eventhough I have been investigating making my own recently.

Star Wars X-Wing Game + Legos?

So expanding on the earlier post about the idea of using my lego Star Wars collection with the new X-wing game. Now FFG seems to have designed it such that you need cards and other such so I will have to do a little more looking. You can see some of my ships above but to play the game with ships this size would appear to require a very large space. Might be something awesome to do at a CON with some sponsorship.

Then I remember I have some smaller lego ships which are probably a little bigger than the game ones and probably not very rigid in scale between them but would not require an entire empty building to play. These ships are often sold at registers at like 3.99 now.  I did not think of these at first since I only have 3 ships in this scale compared to like 10 in the normal minifigure scale.

One interesting point here is that these little ships actually make the Corvette about a proper scale if I remember correctly from seeing it near the starfighters during fleet scenes in return of the jedi. They also made a Midi Scale Falcon that I do not have that works very well in this scale. Adding small capatil ships as targets or support could be pretty cool.

Star Wars X-Wing Game

So I was looking at a post on the new X-Wing game and he talk about how it cost about 100 dollars for 7 pretty little ships.  This made me wonder how the game scales with physical size.  I already have X-Wing, Y-Wing, 2 A-Wings, Falcon, Slave 1, Tie Fighter, Tie Advanced, Tie Defender in lego scale.  Probably quite a bit bigger but might be interesting at that scale (whole family room).

Chainmail

So I have mentioned that I have quite a few Chainmail miniatures in my collection.  I had them out to look at them with my daughter today so I decide to snap a picture of the boxes.  For those people who do not know about it Chainmail was skirmish game released by Wizards of the Coast early in the last decade (~ 2002).  Many people considered it D&D Light which is a reasonable description of the basic mechanics(d20 vs AC) and character types (fighters, rangers, clerics, etc).

Each player builds a war band with commanders and troops.  The game had a nice command mechanic where each of your commanders could issue a certain number of orders to nearby troops to get them to do other than the most basic attacks on the nearest enemy.  Each model had enough stats (listed on little card for each model) to be interesting but most of the models also had special rules.  This is fine when the total number of models in the rules is small but runs into problems unless carefully crafted rules are used (see warseer 40k rules forum number of posts for the ultimate example of badly structured and maintained rules). 

The games ended with 7 distinct factions: Thalos (Humans), Ravilla (Elves), Mordengard (Dwarves), Ahmut's Legion (Undead), Drazen's Horde (Orciods), Naresh (Gnolls), and Kilsek (Drow).  Some of these models are really quite nice and occasionally you see them painted up for other purposes.

Now this game did not last very long in production.  WotC expected this game to be a huge hit and a Mage Knight killer.  I am not sure if they expected every player to buy every factor or thought that all D&D players would immediately pick up the game but they really did not let a following grow.  They essentially oversold it to the retailers with large quantities of the initial release and they had a hard time shifting them all.  This appeared to make them less like to stock the later releases which got harder and harder to find.  WotC pulled the plug part of the way into the 4 release.  I personally had all the models from the initial and second release but never saw the third in any stores and the writing was on the wall that the game was dead by the time the 4 set was in stores so I did not even look.

The initial release models can be purchased quite cheaply still new in box on ebay but the Set 3 and 4 models start to cost a pretty penny.  Recently watched a bundle with maybe 20-25 dollars original retail minis go for over 100 dollars.  I was hoping to fill in my collection for these sets but not at those prices.  I did recently get some set 3 stuff at a reasonable price on ebay due to a selling not really knowing the models and not having the stat cards (3 set stats are in the 4th set book which I have).

I plan on teaching this game to my kids since I have everything we need.  I like old OOP games so why should I not grow my own opponents.

Warhammer 40K Article on Slate Magazine

Slate magazine has an article on Warhammer 40K up today.  Just a fluff piece.  The article is focused on military members playing the game but overall is a general article about the game.  Not very deep, just some basic descriptions of wargaming in general and 40K in specific and a little history of the genre.  It is a more positive article than you normal find in mainstream media for gaming.  As an article looking at it through military members (ie adults) they do not ask about corrupting the kids or any of that normal negativity.  Did not see any mention of weird guys in basements but they did use the term nerd to describe players.  I am totally a nerd/geek since my real job is to design and build lasers and scientific instrumentation so I cannot really contest them on that fact.  Quick read worth it just to see what people are saying about us as oppose to learning anything about the wargaming hobby.

Black Reach Orks and Metal WHFB Dwarves for Sale

So I still have a set of Black Reach Orks for sale.  Whole set Warboss, Nobs, Koptas, Boys, assembled but unglued.  Looking for only 27.50 for this plus shipping which is just half the cost of the box when released after 20% discount including tax.  I here that spammed infantry is all the deal now.  Also have a good number of metal dwarves from WHFB. Why pay inflated finecast prices instead get them heavily discounted from me.  These are opened but totally new.  Check out my Bargain Bin for details.

Everyone is Talking FAQ so why not me?

So I was looking at the GW 40K 6e new FAQ and saw that they changed the look out sir rule and who qualified for using it.  These changes were not just standard FAQ clearing up issues these were rule rewrites which means unless they update the text in the future printings which they probably won't everyone will need to carry their printout FAQs since some people never get the memo.  It looked like they had more than 1 page of real rule changes now which leaves me of two minds:

Good for GW that they got on top of this after only like 2-3 months after release to fix some of the rules that were not working out.  Before we were waiting years to get answers so months is certainly better.

Bad for GW that they have to actually change rules (as opposed to just clarify poor wording) to remove glaring problems that are obvious to anyone who looks at the game as played in the real world.  You are the biggest player in the wargaming world and this is the 6th edition of the game.  There should be no draft rules that you are just checking out in the printed rulebook that has probably now been sold 100K people at 75 dollars a piece or in 100 dollar starter sets.  If you believe your rules are worth the 75 dollars then have some balls and act like you meant the game to work the way you wrote it or better yet write good rules into the rulebook the first time.

Getting Started with Fantasy Football

So it is the start of a new season of pro football here in the States.  Now I am a Fantasy Football fan, so lets look at what it takes to get started in Fantasy Football.  Of course, I am talking about Fantasy Football with elves and ogres not that stat compilation system that makes people watch tons of games because they have one of the players.

The Blood Bowl game of Fantasy Football by Games Workshop is a great game.  It is really a game of resource allocation and risk management.  When do I use my blitz this turn? Who can I risk injury to by marking opponent players?  It has some random elements to it since pretty much anything you do can go wrong and end your turn but mitigates that nicely through the reroll system.  GW still sells the game but the cost is high for the components included and the plastic minis are pretty lame compared to what they have put of recently in their one off games or starter boxes.  Of course those minis were first produced in plastic 20 years ago and GW has come a long way since then in terms of plastic model detail and appearance.  So if you are not going to get the box game from GW what do you need to get started?

Here is a nice list of the things you need:

Rules:  Free to Download from GW.  Once you have a couple games under your belt you can go find the NAF approved expansion teams.

Dice: You need Block dice, 6 siders, and an eight sider.  You can buy block dice but if you do not want to at first the block dice to standard 6 sider conversion is 1=Attacker Down, 2=Both Down, 3-4=Push, 5=Defender Stumbles, 6=Defender Down.

Pitch: You need a board.  Now you can buy some pretty cool boards, or make your own.  Now you do not have to be that fancy but what is important is the gird size (how big are the squares) and pattern(how many squares wide, how many squares deep, how deep is the end zones, how wide are the wide zones) .   You can see the pattern here in my pitch post for the green regulation board.  You can start out with the pattern on cardboard or even a large dry erase board which you might already have a gird pattern on for DnD or something.-

Templates:  You need a passing, scatter, and throw-in templates.  All pretty easy to make on card board or card stock. The rules has pictures of the scatter and throw in templates that are really simple. For the passing template one you need to make sure it is scaled properly based on your grid size from your board.

Team:  There are many great manufacturers of fantasy football teams.  I personally have mainly the GW teams since that is a collection and I really like the old second edition teams from the late 80's when I first started but some of the independents are now putting out really great looking teams but then generally cost about the same as the GW metal teams so there is not a cost savings.  You can also convert your own if you have any plastic fantasy miniatures around.  Here you can see my basic lizardman team where I just did weapon clips on fantasy models.  Then you can trade or buy partial spures (or sell partial spures) to get the cost of these down as you generally only need part of a GW box to make a certain type of player.  Most of the teams have about 4-5 different types of players so you will need that many different styles for your conversion work.  Or you can use the base edge painting technique to mark what position players are if you want your team to have a very team look of all in the same uniform.  General conventions are Red=Blitzer, Green=Blocker, White=Thrower/Runner, Yellow=Catcher, and Grey=Lineman.

Opponent(s): You need to find an opponent but if you work together on the pitches and making the teams it can become a little club event.  

Now Go out and crack some skulls and bring glory to Nuffle.  If you find you like it I have some random extra Blood Bowl minis in my bargain bin on sale at very reasonable prices.  Someone just came along and cleaned me out of most of my 2nd edition stuff but I still have some other bits and pieces.

Paint Maintenance

The other day I was moving some stuff around on the basement and had my paint container out (I use a 12*12 scrapbook paper storage bin).  I shook some of the paints and found that they did not sound very liquidy.  So today my daughter and I took them out and add a little water, remixed them with tooth picks, and did some serious shaking (or dancing while holding paint as the case my be).  I then bagged them and put them away in the hopes of getting to use them again in the new year when my household project is finished.  Anyone else have anything they do to keep their paints good as opposed to use them in a timely fashion.