After years of reading miniatures rules and trying to play
them, only to find that the rules were too fiddly or vague and the games too
long, I finally discovered it didn't have to be that way. Miniatures games could be fun and fast, and played with any
miniatures of the same scale that I had handy.
I was briefly part of a miniatures wargame club and greatly
enjoyed the people and the games. But I never did learn how to paint figures
very well, and eventually the games were held in homes instead of game stores.
Distant homes, and often with cats (allergic) so attending was no longer an
option.
Luckily, the club keeps a fantastic blog with great pictures
of their work and battles, so my experiences are not lost like tears in the
rain, and you can see what I'm talking about.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/
Here is a recent entry, a playtest of a new supplement for
Song of Blades and Heroes called Song of Hammer and Forge. It introduces new
rules for dwarves, flintlocks and cannons. Which frankly are three of my
favorite things.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2014/07/playtesting-song-of-hammer-forge.html
As a kid I played hellishly complicated miniatures wargames
like Tractics or Engage and Destroy. I tried Chainmail a few times but there
were holes and contradictions in the rules. The only Warhammer miniatures I
ever played were demos at Games Workshop stores, and my dreams of playing
Mordheim never materialized. Battlelore
is fun but set-up and take-down are lengthy.
When the guys at the club told me I could bring my old
Grenadier miniatures or HeroQuest figures, my Ral Partha creatures or Warhammer troops, I was
excited. They showed me how to stat them up, explained the easy and fun rules,
and the games began. We could get two games finished in one night, easy. We
used terrain from the stores at first, but the guys in the club are genius and
soon had their own terrain created and painted.
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| The best of the sci-fi miniatures rule sets that I tried. |
I was lucky enough to play a few other rulesets with them, a
couple sci-fi battles on distant colony worlds (Tomorrow's War and 5150 Star
Army) and a fantastic post-apocalyptic game (Wastelands). There was also an
epic Halloween zombie battle with multi-story buildings and vehicles, using customized All
Things Zombie rules.
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| A great pic from Chicago Skirmish blog. Killing zombies on Halloween. |
If you're at all interested in enjoying a fast miniatures game
with a maximum of fun, I strongly suggest the Song
of Blades and Heroes series and Wastelands. Put those old figures to use!
http://www.ganeshagames.net/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=Song+blades+and+heroes&x=0&y=0
