This sections covers various fantasy rules of the traditional tolkienesque
fantasy ilk. Steampunk and such "fantasy extensions" are covered together with
their non-fantasy elements. Though you could argue that classic fantasy is
likewise an extension of medieval...
Major supplements owned for each game are also listed.
It's GDW's 1889... no, it's FASA's 1879. Sounds very similar, though... Given I got this for chump change on sale I guess the game is pretty much dead.
15mm fantasy mass battle rules. I haven't had the time to read these yet.
10mm fantasy mass battle rules from Poland. Basically old school Warhammer with two 10mm models on each base. Interesting, but I'm not likely to play it.
Small press fantasy skirmish rules, seem to be percentile-based. I have no recollection why I bought these. Most likely for completeness.
GW joint effort with Milton Bradley, back when they did that sort of things. I bought this for the figures, even though the map has also seen some use. And I've actually even painted most of the figures. Never played the game, though.
Fantasy skirmish rules. I actually bought these because a designer claimed his rules had been copied and I wanted to see for myself. And yes, they both use multiple types of dice but that's about where the similarities end.
Hey, every respectable figure manufacturer needs their own rules, right? These were Ral Partha's take on fantasy sirmish in 1997. I actually had a very minor part in the development. I tried to help maintain their web pages for a while but it didn't really work out due to time differences etc. Never actually played these, seems rather detailed.
Loads of computer graphics for art. Looks rather dated now.
Mass battle rules for AD&D. I actually used to own the first edition rules too. Horribly, horribly broken they were (unless you were a rabid halfling fan, 3rd level halflings ruled the world). Sold them off, and still sort of regret that. This version I haven't actually played.
Skirmish game for AD&D, not really related ruleswise to the mass battle game. Why would you want to play this game instead of just playing AD&D? Yes, Advanced, this is that old. Well, it does streamline the combat somewhat while still mostly allowing you to use the same characters and monsters.
This was ICE's entry into the fantasy miniatures skirmish market. It is most notable for using a similar combat resolution to Silent Death, but this looks so much more dated. Compared to modern publications this really hasn't aged well...
I bought it because I thought I could get some good ideas for my own skirmish project, but quite frankly I already knew everything relevant about these rules.
Fantasy historical warband skirmish. Haven't really looked at this yet.
To be honest, I bought this for the Gary Chalk illustrations, but the game actually looks pretty interesting and they have a neat line of miniatures to go with it.
The game i-Kore was launching when they went bust back early 2000's. It actually looks a pretty nifty Warhammer derivative skirmish game.
Actually, I don't have the basic rules for this game. I picked these two supplements from a sale somewhere.
I actually have the 1st edition rules. They're a pretty workable small scale fantasy skirmish rule set. The rules are obviously based on Warzone rules, but they work for fantasy too as long as you keep the amount of missile-armed figures low enough. There may be some balance issues in army composition, this will probably work better with scenarios. What I really fell in love with was the imagery. Except for the Devout, who are mostly a boring chaos clone. They had the nerve to go against fantasy cliches even by putting two muscular axe-wielding elves on the cover wading through dwarves and orcs. I really should paint up more of these, for use in whatever game. I don't really care, I just want to use these figures.
I got these rules because the figures were absolutely gorgeous. Read them, couldn't make heads or tails of them (and I dislike the damn cards) and then they killed off the whole game with some idiotic pre-painted crap. Oh well...
To be honest, I got these for the figures -- before realizing they really are 38mm scale, far larger than anything else I have. The visual style is very close to Confrontation and the rules are a pretty basic WFB clone.
Despite the eastern theme, I'm classifying this as fantasy. I got this as a gift I believe. Haven't really read it, though it does seem to have fairly typical old school figure-based mechanics.
I also seem to have the Daimyo Edition rulebook. No idea how it is different from the regular edition.
Yet another failed fantasy skirmish game. It's a bit sad, really. No recollection where I got this from, some overstock sale probably. Never really read it.
They were on sale, what can I say? D20-based fantasy skirmish. I like the look of some of the models.
This was Flintloque's sister game. The rules are the same, just the scenarios were set in the "Russian" campaign instead of the peninsula. The second edition has substantial differences, it is based on column shifts instead of numeric modifiers and while usually ok, it does tend to produce odd results for extreme modifiers.
We played this a couple of times and it was fun enough, but painting a completely new set of figures didn't really appeal to me all that much. Some time later I bit the bullet however, and painted all my Flintloque figures for a New Year's resolution.
Oh, and if you weren't aware, Flintloque was a fantasy Napoleonics skirmish game. The French were elves while the British were orcs and so on. Pretty fun premise, I think.
Now, this is a refreshingly new concept, straight from 1998. A microscale fantasy battle game. The game revolves around dragons and other massive monsters, normal troops are to be represented with microscale figures and are there mostly to be stomped on. Never really played these, partly due to difficulty of building forces for it.
It's Osprey's Lion Rampant for fantasy armies. The concept seems solid but I'm not sure how the fixed unit sizes would actually work with my figure selection.
Sort of dueling rules to accompany Flintloque, but this is a self-contained small game. I got these a long time ago, never played, can't recall a whole lot about them. If I recall correctly, this is based on diminishing dice pools.
A new version of Duel (above), with completely different rules. I'll paint a bunch of duellists and try it out.
Alternative Armies' celtic myth game. The combat system is actually pretty interesting.
Chipco's original fantasy rules. Clean, simple and a lot of fun. Element-based, extending from basic DBx -mechanics, uses d10's. Square basing scheme eliminates a lot of typical element basing problems.
A substantial expansion from the first edition, but still built on the same premise and base rules. I think they went a little bit overboard with the special abilities, but on the whole it's a very good game.
I also have the third edition and tournament edition, but those were PDFs and you know what I said about PDF rules, right? The tournament edition is the best edition of these rules, though.
A fantasy battle game from a company publishing a supporting magazine called Red Giant? Actually, I've never seen an issue of Red Giant, I wonder if they really published it. The book has wonderful illustrations by Gary Chalk (I'm a fan of his work). The system is percentile-based and actually pretty deterministic when it comes to combat outcomes. Think like you'd calculate the average final hits in Warhammer and then only actually roll for the fractions. Unfortunately, this tends to heavily favor weapons that can strike from multiple ranks.
Grenadier's attempt at a fantasy battle game. You can still get the box game figures from em-4. The rules actually weren't all that bad, they had some pretty nice ideas. Then again, some things like cavalry were done pretty poorly. With these rules it was very cumbersome if not impossible to field actual units of cavalry.
Possibly the weirdest game setting I have, this one is about murder fairies duking it out. Haven't played it but the construct-your-own point system unfortunately seems to be out of whack...
I got this with the figures. These rules won't feel strange to anyone familiar with any old edition of Warhammer.
The rules are on the simple side and the major nuances in the system are in spell use. Theoretically you could play this without the wizards but I think that might be a bit boring.
Thaw of the Lich Lord contains additional rules (ofcourse) and a small campaign with scenarios. I'm not sure how this would actually work, especially without a GM.
Ghost Archipelago is technically a stand-alone game apparently with less focus on spell-casting, but I haven't taken a closer look at it yet.
Hey, it was on sale! The book is actually very pretty. I only skimmed through the rules section, though. It does seem to have some interesting concepts but it has static unit sizes and locked army lists. It's something of an oddity these days: it's not a skirmish game. Expect a full army to be around 100 figures.
I think I'll need to test these some day.
I bought some models but then I noticed the boxes actually came with rulebooks. Oh well...
Phil Barker's fantasy rules, essentially a DBA-variant. There are some good ideas here under the convoluted writing. I played them a couple of times, but in the end the basing scheme turned me off. These rules are the reason why my Zombie Dragon (Tom Meier original) is on a 60mm wide base, though.
Fantasy skirmish with big monsters and such. Pretty low figure requirements. I bought this because it was on sale. I like the models, don't really like the rules. Yeah, and in my opinion putting smoke stacks on the jacks doesn't really make this a steampunk game. They're really golems or similar magical constructs for all practical purposes.
Not really sure where to put this. It's a game about insects. It's actually pretty well founded in real biology, but obviously the part about inventing your own bug species by combining parts is a bit fantasy. This game actually came with plastic toy bugs. Haven't played it.
Maybe the Trilobite expansion belongs in historicals...
I broke down and bought the rulebook. It's light and seems a bit gamey, but it could be reasonably fun. I will probably try these out one day, though I'm not entirely sold why I should prefer these over Fantasy Rules!
Yeah, I got this one too. Still not sure about it. The Historical Armies book is actually a full self-contained game, but I included it here anyway.
I got the latest edition. The production values are great, I'll try to have a game with this one.
The skirmish game in the KoW family. It has an interesting fatigue mechanic, but it's abit difficult to stop melee-based skirmish turning into a furball in the middle of the board.
Fantasy streetgang skirmish from Osprey. Not really sure what this is about.
I actually seem to have two of the Two Towers rulebooks. And the mini rulebook from the Moria set. I've never really played this game because I absolutely hated the plastic figures. Flimsy, easily broken, lacking detail. I just gave up after painting a couple of them.
The original box set, which was a self-contained game even though it could also be used as campaign rules. I bought this used long ago planning to do something with it, but all the stuff sits unpainted in the box.
Osprey's new fantasy mass battle system with figure range to match. Haven't read these yet.
Ganesha's mass battle system with area movement. Looks interesting, I will have to give it a try.
Song -variant for skirmish between gods, legends and mortals. This variant actually has substantially different rules for units, something I always found to be a weakness in the original rules. These probably could be adapted to other genres.
Frostgrave engine turned into a co-op RPG lite. I really want to test this out.
Harlequin's take on Warhammer from 1996. Based on small elements of 2-3 figures. Never actually played these. They do have some interesting concepts, but I'm not sure if it all really worked together.
Possibly the first published ruleset by Richard Halliwell and Rick Priestley. I'll admit, I haven't really read these. I did leaf through them and lost count of the bare bosoms in the illustrations. Ah, 1981, why did you go away? Lots of tables and percentile based mechanics.
Monster hunting in medieval Japan. This is another semi co-op game. An excellent excuse to buy up oni figures!
An interesitng indie fantasy 28mm game. There is also a naval game in the series, but I didn't buy that... yet anyway.
Napoleonic monster hunting? Not really sure what this is about, need to read it.
Warlord's 2000AD Fantasy game. This actually looks to be the best game of this line yet!
The original. I really got these to go with Flying Lead, but I have a feeling this set might actually be the most workable one from the game family.
Though this could easily be played as a historical game, I put it here anyway. Small scale RPG-lite skirmish for about a dozen figures per side.
Instead of stocking up on the supplements I got the advanced edition instead. Yes, this is no indexed correctly here...
Greek fantasy in the vein of Jason and the argonauts. I will have to take a closer look at this.
The fantasy mass battle variant of the USEME rules. full review available.
GW's Age of Sigmar skirmish rules. This is not an adaptation of AoS but a new ruleset that uses some of the same models. Looks interesting.
They were on sale, what can I say? Some of the minis look interesting, not so sure the rules really had much innovation in them.
What can I say? I actually like the look of the Sigmarines. The game itself is typical GW -- the base rules are overly simple, prone to some gamey manipulation and finally cluttered by special rules on top of special rules. I inluced the Soul Wars second edition here because ruleswise there is very little difference.
Oh, and the army composition balance is out of whack as usual. But I guess you might be able to get a decent game out of it in good company.
I happened upon a nearly pristine box of the old 2nd edition which I drooled at in the shops back then but never actually bought.
Now I wish I could find the old scenario books like McDeath...
Ah, the real men's Warhammer, before all this army book nonsense when the game was supposed to be about magnificient fantasy scenarios and not fine-tuning your tournament list. Sadly, when I got this rulebook that was just about all I could afford. Building the armies required to play this game was beyond my means at the time and consequently I never really played the game.
The first siege book also had section on 40K sieges.
I have to list these this way because I have no clue which edition these really are. The last edition I really played was the fourth, and this is not it. Why can't they put the darn edition in the actual book?
I buy these books mostly because they have pretty pictures and they can be had really cheaply when the new edition is published or when players are switching armies. Sometimes they even come as freebies when buying old figures.
I do occasionally contemplate the idea of returning to the game (even though I never really played it all that much), but all my stuff has been based "wrong" for years so it wouldn't really work anyway.
Reaper's very own fantasy ruleset. Seems pretty simple and basic, except combat may bog down a bit as most attacks have a success chance in the 10-20% range. An interesting idea is that hero models' stats go down as they take wounds. Hmmm... maybe I should try these rules after all...
I guess their idea was that figure blisters would contain stat cards, but I don't know if those are still available or not.
Rick Priestley's new fantasy skirmish that actually has nothing to do with the book of the same name.
This is actually a multi-genre skirmish game, but I'm putting it here. The game is intended for kids so it should be clean and simple. I often play with people who don't have much gaming experience so this could be a good solution.
Mantic's fantasy naval game based on Black Seas. It was on sale, couldn't resist.
Undersea skirmish game? Ok, I'll put it here. It's really a Song -variant, but the rulebook looks really nice. Not sure if you can still get the minis anywhere... unfortunately this looks like another from Kickstarter straight to oblivion game.
I missed this when they first came out, but then I bought a set from somewhere later on when the game was already dead. Actually it looks pretty fun but I still haven't managed to paint any of the ships. And some of the ships do look pretty idiotic...
Ofcourse now is the perfect time to buy Uncharted Seas... Not sure if I can still get the models, but I never really liked their looks anyway. I'll have to see if I cook up something with this.
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