I’ve been looking atthe best way to rebase my various Star Wars and Star Trek miniatures in order to use them with simpler, faster rules like Orion’s Gate. Looks like the two best commercial methods for rebasing starship miniatures is to use either Hawk Wargames’ Dropzone Commander toppers and flight stands, or equivalent products from Litko. I’ve ordered some stands from both companies so we’ll see which work best. Both have 3mm rods so theoretically you could interchange toppers and flight stands between the two vendores.

Here are some links to these products which I’ll file here for future reference:

• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HQNNQUE
• https://www.amazon.com/Space-Fighter-Large-Ship-Toppers/dp/B00XV17PTY/
• https://www.amazon.com/Acrylic-Flight-Stands-Circle-Clear/dp/B01HQNNQUE/
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DX78S10/
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DX7BH7W/
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I4YRR64/
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HOYKT0A/
• http://www.litko.net/products/Flight-Peg-Toppers-%2820%29.html#.WdTlPmtSyUl
• http://www.litko.net/products.php?product=Squadron-Peg-Toppers%2C-3-Prong%2C-Set-of-5#.WdTnDGtSyUk

Here are several wargame settings and rulesets I’d like to try out, most o f which have 1-8 pages of rules, play in 1 hour, and only require a 3×3’ or 4×4’ battlemat. I’m putting all this in this blog post, but also have a copy as a page which I’ll keep up to date as things evolve.

Roadmap

Based on simplicity of rules and availability of minis and terrain, here’s a possible roadmaps of the order in which we try games.

1. Starships — Can play immediately using Orion’s Gate.
2. Historical / Byzantine — Can play if Robert has painted armies for both sides using One-Hour Wargames rules.
3. WWII — Can play with rebased MechWarrior minis to start, then switch to actual WWII minis once Stan has them painted, using One-Hour Wargames rules.

Settings & Rules

Starships

Supplies: Would use Stan’s growing collection of starship and asteroids terrain. Longer term would need Traveller, Full Thrust, Starfinder, Starmada, Firestorm Armada, or Dropfleet Commander minis. 

I envision small fleet-level actions with 3-5 ships per player (more ships means more game time).

Here are the top one-page rules I’d like to try:

• Orion’s Gate — Orion’s Gate is a great looking one-page game that shows promise and would feel more like Star Trek and Star Wars battles. BoardGameGeek overview.
• A Sky Full of Ships — A Sky Full of Ships is another game I summarized down to one-page with is a bit more hard-science feel with a point-buy ship construction system. The full rules have several space scenarios which we’ll probably use even if we’re playing with Orion’s Gate. BoardGameGeek overview.

If we eventually graduate beyond one-page rules, here are some more complex systems with wide community support:

• Full Thrust — Full Thrust from Ground Zero Games has a cool point-buy system for more robust interstellar wargaming. They have a cool starter set. Even if we don’t use their rules, they have a great line of starships with various factions and races. BoardGameGeek overview.
• Firestorm Armada — Another alternative beyond the one-page rules is Firestorm Armada. BoardGameGeek overview. (note that Firestorm’s company went out of business but Warcradle Studioes acquired the assets and will re-launch in 2018).
• Starmada — A hex based game. See the BoardGameGeek overview.

Historical

Supplies: Would use Robert’s armies for Byzantine era. Stan is working on minis for WWII but need some time to paint them. As a quick-start, Stan might use rebased MechWarrior minis with WWII rules.

Robert has a particular interest in the 1071-1571 historical era which ended with Battle of Lepanto. Stan has particular interest in World War II era gaming.

We could first hit Robert’s era using the One-Hour Wargame ‘Medieval Wargaming — AD 1100-1300’ rules for his Crusader and Byzantine armies.

Wargames in these eras are Regiment level with multiple figures on a base organized into units.

• One-Hour Wargames (1 hour) — Great system full of one-page rules for multiple eras, as a blogged about previously. It has rules for:
  Ancient Wargaming — 500 BC-AD 100
  Dark Age Wargaming — AD 600-1000
  Medieval Wargaming — AD 1100-1300
  Pike and Shot Wargaming — AD 1450–1650
  Horse and Musket Wargaming — AD 1700–1860
  Rifle and Sabre Wargaming — AD 1860–1900
  American Civil War Wargaming — AD 1861–1865
  Machine Age Wargaming — AD 1900–1939
  Second World War Wargaming — AD 1939–1945
• Sword & Spear (2 hours) — 50 pages of rules, has received rave reviews. BoardGameGeek overview.
• L’Art de la Guerre (2 hours) –– A great set of rules for tournaments. BoardGameGeek overview.

Sci Fi

Supplies: Would use rebased MechWarrior minis (for 10mm), 15mm GZG minis. Could use Star Wars minis, 40K minis, or rebased HALO Heroclix minis.

Skirmish-level games.

• FUBAR — Rules here, with reviews here.
• Grimdark Future — Grimdark Future was previously 1 Page 40K, it has several variations. Their scenarios and random event charts could be used in any game.
• Warstuff — Warstuff or Advanced Warstuff.
• Mech Attack! — Game using rebased MechWarrior minis. BoardGameGeek overview.
• Star Wars d20 — Older Star Wars Miniatures rules.

Other possibilities are the microgames from Steve Jackson (possibly with metal minis): G.E.V., O.G.R.E, Creature that Ate Sheboygan.

Fantasy

Supplies: Would use D&D minis and eventually Frostgrave-style warband minis plus various terrain.

• Grimdark Fantasy — Grimdark Fantasy. Their scenarios and random event charts could be used in any game.
• Warstuff or Warstuff evolved — Warstuff is also put out by the Grimdark creator.

Supers

Supplies: Would use rebased Heroclix figures with Heroclix maps and eventually boxes painted as buildings. 

• Power Legion — See details here and blog post here. BoardGameGeek link.

I’m interested in wargames but I’ve found many of the most popular wargames (such as Warhammer and Warmachine, each with 300-400 page rulebooks) and even smaller historical games (such as Sword & Spear, with 50 pages) are daunting for newbies, and raise a challenge for gamers who might go several weeks between game sessions and might forget the rules.

Also, a lot of the rules assume ‘big’ games played on a 4×6’ battlemat with a lot of figures. The bigger games are cool, but setup and take-down take a bit of time, and such games usually have 40 or more figures which take 2-3 hours (or more) to play.

Smaller, Leaner Games

With all that in mind, I’ve been researching a bunch of smaller, simpler wargames which have 1-8 pages of rules, play in 1 hour, and only require a 3×3’ or 4×4’ battlemat.

Ergonomically, this means I can set up a game in a side-room and have the terrain and battlemat setup and ready to go when players arrive. After we play, we just leave that wargame room and move over to the bigger gameroom table. No take-down of wargame space is required. (Caveat: I’ll lose one or both side-rooms next summer when kid(s) are home from college; after next summer I should have a dedicated bedroom though).

Tournaments and Campaigns

Over time, as we find particular sets of rules we like and settings which players are passionate about, we can narrow our focus to those rules and settings and build out larger collections of miniatures. At some point we can have tournaments and campaigns (when games are only 1 hour, we could play ‘best out of 3 games’ in a three hour slot, and even have tournament brackets where you play different people in a 3-4 game session).

Wargames as Narrative Side-missions

Some wargames could eventually serve as side-missions that feed the narrative of a current RPG campaign. Imagine a series of starship wargames that serves as a backstory for a future Traveller RPG campaign, a series of World War II style wargames which detail events in battles of Reich America™, or fantasy skirmish games detailing adventures in another region of Redmark™.

Wargames as Backup Games

Also, as we find areas of passion, we can have wargames as a back-up game whenever we don’t have quorum or the GM’s brain is fried. By finding wargames synergistic with the main roleplaying campaign, if (for example) the Redmark roleplaying game doesn’t get quorum, we just roll over to playing a Redmark miniatures wargame with the 2-4 folks who show up. Wargames are low or no-prep once you have the figures and terrain, with no GM is needed!

Skunkworks Projects

We’ll also have what I’ll call skunkworks games time-to-time which are beta tests of either new wargames or subsets of RPG rules (such as mass battle rules, domain management rules, or beta rules from Rogue Comet).

Scheduling

I imagine we’ll start by having a wargame or skunkworks games at 3pm on Saturday Night Dice game days (prior to the Doors Open at 4:30pm time). More as these events firm up.

In my next post, I’ll review top 1-hour wargames I’m considering.

Maybe I’ll have enough terrain and figs to make this scene someday!