I'm a big OPR player, but I've heard that OPR Fleets is pretty bad because it's too simple. However, I like more or less simpler games. So perhaps you can recommend me something a bit more complex than that?
Thank you dearly for your time and attention.
Last week I was in France and Belgium with the Little War TV guys conducting a tour of some First World War battlefields and Waterloo. After Waterloo we got a chance to play a game of Real Time Wargaming hosted by the writer, Claus. It was a really interesting experience, the rules are based on timers allowing commanders to act and command those units around them, but there's quite a lot of nuance as well. It's an interesting concept and one I'd like to return to at some point.
Shaun Lowery's Wonderful ACW Game at the Club:
For more images of this fantastic looking game at Durham Wargames Group (UK) please hop on over to my Just Add Water blog here:
https://justaddwater-bedford.blogspot.com/2026/07/clubbing-it-shauns-wonderful-acw-game.htm
Cheers
The third Heer rifleman from early World War II. The details are a little softer on this model, likely due to an aging mould. Nevertheless, a delight to paint!
German Riflemen I (3 of 4), produced by Crusader Miniatures. Painted using the Vallejo Model Color range. 25mm base.
Welcome to this awesome place where SHAPES battle for supremacy. The glorious blockstate shall reign supreme!
Pop on in and check out the game, as we post photos, painting and modeling, terrain projects and lore discussions as well as tactica and strategies for the game. The fantastic artwork of the setting will also be prominently featured as well.
Painting individual miniatures goes quite quickly. He finished yesterday. That small Warhammer Estalia project; the next unit is coming soon.
Hey, I've been trying to expand my range of wargames to match my shifting hobbying tastes, but I'm having difficulty finding options that meet my kind of weird requirements. You see, my main opponent is my dad, who is not getting any younger and has much less brain space to learn different rulesets than me. While we greatly enjoy both kill team and 40k, it usually comes with ignoring about half of the rules and playing on much smaller boards than intended. Generally, we play and enjoyed turnip28 and warcry as well. I'd like some more options, especially for low-ish fantasy settings. Anyways, I'm looking for anything has the following vague characteristics:
- Easy to pick up/learn over a couple sessions. We usually don't play more than a couple times a month, so simplicity is good. That said, we've tried much more simple things like OPR and found them pretty dull. At the very least, give us room to cut stuff we find boring out.
- Not a ton of weird "meta" gameplay. I don't want to worry about stuff like command points or action dice or other things like that. If it does exist, I'd prefer that it be as intuitive/fluffy as possible. For example, 40k fans may know about the tau spotting mechanic, where one unit can guide another. That's intuitive, fun, and makes sense to both of us. Spending one GoodBoy Point to give my guns extra range makes no sense, and he will forget about them completely.
- At least one faction with rule-light units. He likes to stick to one faction, usually on the tanky side, that lets him worry more about the actual tactics and maneuvers than special rules. He's a military history nerd so that kind of stuff makes sense to him, but not stuff like "these guys can reroll one dice when the mercury is in retrograde"
- Cool weirdo factions! This is an absolute must. I am an avid kitbasher and like to have loads of weird mini-projects running around at once.
- No nazis. I hate to say it, because we are both very interested in WW2, but I really just don't want to collect them. It's not a judgement of people who do, it's just not really my thing.
- Mini agnostic is not a requirement! I know this is a rare one, but as far as I'm concerned, everything is miniature agnostic.
- Any size is good. We tend to enjoy having 30-40 28mm minis per side, but we also play loads of skirmish, and I'd love to break into epic scale tank battles or warships or something.
- Generally, I prefer it when the unit's weapons are all on the card or are aggregated into one statline. Not a requirement but it is an ask.
- No campaigns, or at least no campaign focus. A game that "comes to life in a campaign" requires too much effort, book keeping, weird meta mechanics, and scheduling for us. Mordheim, Necromunda, Trench Crusade, etc are all just not our thing.
Anyways, if you read this far, thank you! Literally any suggestions are helpful. Except for OPR. Don't like OPR. No offense.
There is a model agnostic mech game I am getting into that uses mech models around the size of the ones I listed. Think Titanfall.
Are there any amazing models for this purpose you’d recommend? Purchase or 3d printable. Thank you
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Thanks!
My Wargaming and Painting Blog:
Finished these up the other day, really like how the black and yellow artillery look, I think it turned out much better this was than brass which is apparently the other idea of how saxon artillery looked.
My Wargaming and Painting Blog:
Working my way through some Vikings from Baccus Miniatures for Ravenfeast/Hail Caesar. These turned out surprisingly well as I am used to painting 28mm figures.
Any other good rulesets to use 6mm miniatures? I'm always open to suggestions!
3625 points battle, Association of the Golden Belt (sand camo defenders) held their positions against general offensive conducted by Garkhan Crusaders (black and red attackers). Although the station was lost, and the forces defending it were completely annihilated, Crusaders' losses in fighter squadrons were extremely heavy, one of their vanguard carriers (a hybrid between a carrier and a battleship) was torn apart by laser cannons, and another one tanked a salvo by multiple torpedo squadrons that set it on fire. Realizing their arsenal still capable of hurting the arriving relief force was dwindling, the Garkhan admiral signaled general retreat. AGB's losses amounted to 52 fighters and torpedo bombers, 1 corvette, 4 destroyers and 2 heavy cruisers, the allied firebase was destroyed and took two of the aforementioned destroyers and a single hostile frigate with it in the ensuing blast. The attackers suffered around 40 interceptors and bombers lost, 3 heavy plasma frigates, 2 auxilary cruisers and one flagship destroyed and another one put on the brink of destruction.
The following is an account of a legacy Star Wars wargaming campaign that my brother and I have designed and completed over the last year. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as we enjoyed playing it!
Why did we do this?
My brother and I play own a lot of different tabletop miniatures games (including things like Hail Caesar, Silver Bayonet, Pillage, Black Seas, and MESBG). We don’t get to play together that often, or for more than a couple of hours, so some games definitely see more play than others. We struggled to find a reason to get some games on the table.
I first got the idea to create a campaign when I managed to get my hands on a Super Star Destroyer for Star Wars Armada. These are rare and getting rarer, and I was lucky enough to get one at a reasonable price on eBay. I already had a bit of an Armada collection, but I wanted to do the SSD justice.
I’d also just got a Star Wars Legion compatible model of one of our favourite characters, Kyle Katarn. My brother and I loved playing Dark Forces II Jedi Knight back in the 90s, and I was looking forward to painting him, but then started to think about how we could do a campaign using my Star Wars Legion models (with Kyle) leading up to a big space battle using my Armada stuff.
I then remembered that I had a small X-Wing collection that I’d not touched since before Covid, and that felt like a nice bridge between the ground combat of Legion, and the fleet combat of Armada. I found the final piece of the puzzle at the UK Games Expo 2025 in Birmingham, where I picked up a copy of 0200 hours, a WII commando wargame. I realised the rules would work perfectly with a handful of Legion models, and I started to plan!!!
The campaign
The campaign booklet with story, suggested forces, and pages for tracking results is available here - Star Wars Multi-Ruleset Campaign Guide - Shareable.pptx. We played each mission twice, swapping sides each time to have a go at using all the cool models on each side. We found it to be pretty even overall.
I designed a 4 part story, starting with a small commando raid using 0200 hours, then a dog fight using X-Wing, a ground battle with Legion, all leading into a big space battle finale with Armada.
I wanted each mission to influence and impact the future of the campaign, and a few of the objectives are all about the effect they have on the final big battle.
I set the story in the Legends universe, roughly 5/10 years after the Battle of Endor. The New Republic is firmly established, but the Imperial Remnant remains a threat. It’s most coherent with the Legends timeline and stories, but probably does clash somewhat. I also reused the character of Admiral Screed as my main villain, a character than I knew little about, but who happened to be available in Armada.
A lot of the story is as much inspired by the art and pictures I was able to cobble together from various online sources, including comic books, video games and movie stills. I absolutely don’t claim any of the visuals as my own, but am pretty proud of the story, albeit rudimentary, that I have been able to tell.
The armies / fleets in each battle are chosen mostly because they’re what I had in my collection. We did find the SSD to be VERY difficult to take down, and I’d probably adjust the rules to be more in favour of the New Republic in the last battle if we played again. I’m trying to get my hands on a Starhawk which would probably even the odds. We used the latest Legion rules, but stuck to 1.0 for X-Wing as I don’t have any 2.0 in my collection.
I’ve included some pictures from each of the games we played. If you like the look of the church in the 0200 game then check out this post I did last year - Dark age church finished : r/wargaming
What did we learn?
Firstly, it’s great fun to have a reason to get different miniatures games on the table, especially those you don’t always enjoy as much or struggle to find time to play. It breathed some new life into bits of my collection that were gathering dust, and formed some great memories of tight battles with my brother.
I probably found X-wing the easiest game to pick up and play, everything just feels really simple and sensible. We both found the use of keywords excessive in Legion. We spent loads of time constantly looking up keywords during the first battle, and found it much easier when we printed off a custom glossary for the second one.
0200 hours adapted really well to Star Wars, and the mechanics of the sentries on patrol with Stormtroopers was really thematic. I really don’t like the shooting though, so may try a mash-up of 0200 rules with Legion shooting next time. I do also want to try the Legion Special Operations rules too.
Finally
Please do let me know if you run your own version of my campaign, or if this inspires you to do something similar with your own story and rulesets.
I want to say thank you to jocke01 who posted the following on the FFG forum back in 2019. I used their custom Legion profile for Kyle and it worked brilliantly - FFG Forum Archive.
Was does people regard as the most realistic game set in that period? Crunchy/simulationist?
Game size like barons war or lions rampant. (But could be bigger and smaller) ie around 28mm, but probably not rank & flank…
First off, yes, the glowing crystals SHOULD have reflections on the model. HOWEVER, with how long the model took me, i was not going to be airbrushing green onto him immediately 🤣.
Very happy with him otherwise. i need to get better st smoother NMM and doing the reflections, but i think this will be my 3rd or 4th mini ive done with a substantial amount of NMM on, so im still very early in the process.
The base was ABSURDLY easy in comparison, which surprised me. But i was happy with the look and figured i shouldnt touch it more just because it felt too easy to do 🤣