28mm Sci-Fi Skirmish Games?

[buckyball]

If you want a more Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers type game, I would like to recommend Future Tales from Two Hour Wargames. If you are interested in a more solid or serious set of rules, they also have 5150. Both sets of rules use the chain reaction system. If you are not familiar with chain reaction, I think you can still download a free quickstart of the rules from their website.

 

   buckyball

[kristof65]

Buckyball - I'll look into that. Thanks.

[Club]

Two more options

Scrappers, from osprey. I'm about halfway through the book, but it seems fairly solid. Really liking Osprey's build-your-own-force games.

Warmachine is MagicPunk, but at the 0-25 point levels could count as skirmish. Unfortunately, tourney level is 75 points, which is an army, no two ways about it.
The company of iron spinoff-game is based around trooper and hero models instead of the titular warmachines, and is smaller scale. Counts a sci-fi if you squint a lot.

Edited December 4, 2017 by Club

[Chrome]

On 11/12/2017 at 10:18 PM, kristof65 said:

Lars - I'm aware of Infinity, watched several games being played at my previous FLGS.  I don't much care for the aesthetics or the rules

I gave Infinity a swing last year and I really liked the rules - the thing is that I think they worked a lot better with smaller army sizes and tables. I joined an escalation league and by the time we got to regulation sized armies I was just clueless to what abilities the other guy's minis could do. It was like playing in a complete vacuum, and I just don't have the time anymore (or desire) to memorize what hundreds of different models can do.

 

The other thing that I didn't like was the terrain, which is odd. On one hand it is absolutely gorgeous, but on the other it led to way too much nit-picking of what was and wasn't legal, and too many house rules. For example, having a model lie Prone is one of the primary rules and strategies of the game. The group I played with had a bunch of terrain buildings that were on 3/4" stilts, so it should have been legal for a character to go prone and shoot under them, but they'd house ruled against it b/c it made things too easy.

 

A lot of stuff in the game seemed to be double-edged in that manner.

 

Still, it was a good, fast game when you just threw down some of their paper terrain cargo containers, grabbed a few basic troops, and threw some dice. Their Operation Icestorm box is a great intro to the game that uses a series of 6 escalating scenarios to teach the core rules using small teams.

[Sanael]

On Sunday, December 03, 2017 at 7:51 PM, Club said:

Warmachine (...) Counts a sci-fi if you squint a lot.
 

...or if all you play is Convergence vs Retribution (cyborgs vs generic-future anime-elves).

 

Although you can play Jaeger vs Kaiju by throwing any Warmachine caster+colossal on the table vs any Hordes warlock+gargantuan. Most factions can do that at relatively low point levels.

 

I havent looked at the Co of Iron rules, yet.

Edited December 5, 2017 by Sanael
removed irrelevant parts of quote

[kristof65]

1 hour ago, Chrome said:

I gave Infinity a swing last year and I really liked the rules - the thing is that I think they worked a lot better with smaller army sizes and tables. I joined an escalation league and by the time we got to regulation sized armies I was just clueless to what abilities the other guy's minis could do. It was like playing in a complete vacuum, and I just don't have the time anymore (or desire) to memorize what hundreds of different models can do.

 

I hear you.  I'm also tired of rule sets constantly changing, and "codex creep".   

What I'm really looking to do is find a decent, inexpensive set of generic sci-fi rules I can use to recreate the types of Rogue Trader/40k 2e games my old game group used to play in the 90s. Back in those days, we had multi-sided battles that were as much role-play as they were wargame.  Those games were less about the rules or the figures, but really about a bunch of guys getting together and having some fun playing out scenarios and campaigns.  While several of us built multiple huge (by standards then) armies, we rarely played with more than a unit or two each on the table and quite a few of the guys who cycled through that group didn't even own any - they just showed up to play.  We had a core of 4 of us who were serious players, another 4-5 who were casual players, and over the decade plus I was in that group, another 15-20 guys (and girls) cycled through it. 

I'm finally in a position where I not only have a decent game room and hordes of minis, I have a potential audience of new players. I'm in a smaller town that doesn't have a lot of recreational activity options and appears to have a lot of board gamers.  Based on how easy it has been so far to get a D&D group together at the local high school, I'm pretty sure that if I can get a few pre-built forces together using my own minis and rules like Song of Blades and Heroes, I can sucker  introduce a few people into playing for awhile.  And maybe I can even get some of them to keep playing long term, if I can avoid games that are money pits.  

 

[Dalth]

Could check out https://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/beyond-the-gates-of-antares Gates of Antares.

 

It's basically Bolt Action sci-fi.  

[Lars Porsenna]

I really like Gates & the minis are for the most part pretty cool (I collect Algoryn & Isorians). Unfortunately has not taken off at all locally...

 

Damon.

[Arc 724]

Battle Systems new game - Core Space - looks REALLY good to me. It's still in KS right now but looks really good.

[Froggy the Great]

I just got the urge to pick up work on FUBAR Heroes again.  I'd love it if someone else wanted to try it too.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13XiP6rgNHV6PB3EeghW9nguRfjD5VYGM/view?usp=sharing

 

You can do roughly 8-12 figures in 1200 pts.

[Jeneki]

For 28mm scifi games, I kinda miss the late 90s - early 2000s.  There was a local place that stocked a good variety including 40k, Vor, Warzone, Void, etc.  I really liked Warzone due to how it emphasized guns, some of the fed-up-with-40k people were pushing Void as the "fixed" version, and a bunch of painters were really into Vor's Neo-Soviets and Growlers.  Good times!

[Dilvish the Deliverer]

My FLGS still has a bunch of those figures.  They are slowly being whittled down.  The Partha section is a fraction of the size of used to be too.

25 minutes ago, Jeneki said:

For 28mm scifi games, I kinda miss the late 90s - early 2000s.  There was a local place that stocked a good variety including 40k, Vor, Warzone, Void, etc.  I really liked Warzone due to how it emphasized guns, some of the fed-up-with-40k people were pushing Void as the "fixed" version, and a bunch of painters were really into Vor's Neo-Soviets and Growlers.  Good times!

 

[Club]

https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/rules.html

Here's another one, stargrunt. No point values, but vehicle rules included; token intensive.

-----

Shadow war armageddon is a good skirmish rule-set, although the armies in the box aren't great for what it sounds like you're doing.

Edit: I've got a friend who plays tyranids with it; his army is three tyranid warriors, and it has a very Alien-esque feel where the monster creeps up, pounces, and drags your poor guardsman away screaming.

I played Harlequins, which is three or four psycho bouncy-snipers running back and forth between cover trying to whittle you down piece by piece.

then 40k 8th came out, and shadow war came to a screeching stop, which is a shame.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Club

[Froggy the Great]

I've got a friend working on a miniatures game version of Fate.

[Chrome]

On 12/5/2017 at 1:29 PM, kristof65 said:

What I'm really looking to do is find a decent, inexpensive set of generic sci-fi rules I can use to recreate the types of Rogue Trader/40k 2e games my old game group used to play in the 90s. Back in those days, we had multi-sided battles that were as much role-play as they were wargame.  Those games were less about the rules or the figures, but really about a bunch of guys getting together and having some fun playing out scenarios and campaigns.  While several of us built multiple huge (by standards then) armies, we rarely played with more than a unit or two each on the table and quite a few of the guys who cycled through that group didn't even own any - they just showed up to play.  We had a core of 4 of us who were serious players, another 4-5 who were casual players, and over the decade plus I was in that group, another 15-20 guys (and girls) cycled through it. 

Have you considered Imperial Assault? They finally released the App for it so you can play it co-op now w/out one guy having to play the bad guy. My group is going to start a campaign after Christmas. We played thru two Descent campaigns using the original version of the FFG app and had a great time.