And then punch each other to death at those instead. Not all miniature wargaming is about amassing armies and seeing whose guns can pump out the most lead in a single turn. Miniatures sports games Dreadball and Guild Ball instead challenge you to best your opponent in a game of goals and tackles, laced with just a sprinkle of unfair play. Guild Ball is by far the more popular of the two fantasy football titles.
Set in a steampunk world, the players represent various guilds from across the cities of the world. Guild Ball certainly has the nicer sculpts of the two options, as well with a gorgeous range of unique and interestingly-posed characters, along with thematic terrain and pitches you can buy to up the immersion.
Unfortunately, you might have to search around to find a set, as publisher Steamforged recently announced it was bringing an end to the game. Dreadball, in comparison, is much more silly and lightweight. The rulers and templates are replaced with a hex-based system, and instead of your standard football rules there are strike zone scoring areas that give you different point values depending on where you score from for a little risk-reward.
You get everything you need to play Dreadball in a single box, and just go from there without having to worry about army compositions or how expensive your prospective team is to put together. The smorgasboard of silly factions is lovely to pick from; each feels completely unique and absolutely true to the more comedic universe. The rulebook even includes a section on creating your own mutant team by combining lots of different body parts from other miniatures, which is a brilliant idea.
For better or for worse, everyone knows Star Wars. So it was almost inevitable that a miniatures game set in a galaxy far, far away was going to find its way to tables of fans the world over. Where X-Wing specialises in close-quarters dogfights between ships and Armada focuses on massive fleet battles, Legion sticks its boots into the mud of ground combat. The core rules are incredibly slim and the models are easy to build. All of the stats for each unit fit onto a single standard-sized card and there are essentially just two factions to choose from: goodies or baddies.
Sometimes things get a little more spicy when you add an unknown extra ingredient. A bit of coffee in your chilli con carne, some Die Hard in your Christmas movie marathon or, in this case, some brain-hungry zombies in your tabletop miniatures game.
The story of the Walking Dead exploded into popularity when the original graphic novels were adapted into a record-breaking TV series. There are rules for attracting the dead, or avoiding them by cleverly using noise to redirect their attacks, pushing your luck between sneaking and sprinting, and scavenging post-apocalyptic scraps. The miniatures in the box are well-built and come pre-assembled, which is a good start for anyone new to painting.
The minis are nice, the available terrain is a good start for someone building up a table for modern settings and it all comes packed in a nicely stylish box. It also happens to be one of the few miniatures games that allows you to play solo, too. Most board games set in the seven kingdoms of Westeros focus on the dirty dealings, betrayal and blood-spilling away from the battlefield. Instead of moving individual models as in skirmish games like Warhammer 40,, your models sit on plastic trays that keep them tightly arranged in pleasingly neat rows and columns.
Manoeuvring trays makes for a distinctly different style of play compared to the nimble single troops and flexible gangs in skirmish games.
Leaders can be assigned to particular units, lending their personality and special abilities to the frontline - you might have the fast striking ability of Robb Stark and his direwolf Grey Wind, or the slower but formidable might of The Mountain, or someone in-between. Familiar faces that favour brains over brawn, such as Tyrion and Sansa, compete over a separate board that represents the political machinations behind the scenes - granting each side extra powers and advantages.
It makes the whole thing stay true to the world of Westeros, while also giving battles a slightly different feel and flow to more cut-and-dried murderfests. In this bombastic miniatures game - affectionately called Tuesday Night Wizard Fight by my friends - each player gets a certain amount of gold to assemble a warband before taking to the eponymous frozen city of Frostgrave.
Units like knights are durable heavy-hitters and thus cost a bit more, but you can also hire archers, thieves, crossbowmen and even dogs.
You might be a summoner, for example, raising demons and attempting to bind them to your will. So far, so Earthsea, but this is where all the noble traditions of magic and the dignity of being a scholarly wizard go right out the castle window. In your average game of Frostgrave, there are a series of treasure markers. The game is a mad dash to grab those treasure markers and ferry them to the edge of the board, killing off your opponents as you go in order to see who can gather the most experience points and loot.
The core rulebook, which is all you need to get started, will set you back about fifteen quid at the most. Gaslands is a ruleset for playing wargames with matchbox cars such as Hot Wheels - or whatever toy cars you can find in a pound shop. Each of your vehicles will be set to a gear, determining how fast it can travel in exchange for manoeuvrability.
The biggest obstacle for getting into Gaslands is that the only official real resource that exists for it is the rulebook itself. A period of intense nationalism has begun as each nation grabs for its share of habitable planets and their resources. Conflict is inevitable, both among the forces of man and with the many aliens mankind has begun to encounter.
Most of the aliens encountered so far are less advanced than humans. Indigenous sentient aliens come in different levels of tech - from the very primitive stone age types all the way up to 20th century equivalent technology.
Of course, many have adopted human technology to propel their societies forward at least technically and many have struck out from their own homeworlds to explore what human space has to offer.
National militaries - especially the infamous Legion Etrangere - even include aliens in their forces. Humanity remains balkanized and fractioned, despite their conquest of nearby space. None of the alien species they've encountered so far is as advanced and widespread as they are. Core forces are those forces that have significant impact on the setting, and multiple box sets planned or available. Edge forces are those forces that have a much lesser impact on the setting, and only box sets planned or available.
The most advanced and widespread race in the vicinity of Earth, humans control the majority of forces seen in Alien War. A short list of important, and well known planets and systems. For a full list of known planets, see here. Alien War Wiki Explore.
0コメント