Dlonnon from the DarkWing blog commented on the previous post, filling in a little of the missing information. This post is an edited version of his comment:
Stargrunt 2 is a game put out by Ground Zero Games. It is best described as Vietnam in space. It has a miniature line (fairly “realistic”) but the system itself is generic. Probably most famous for it’s complete lack of point system.
That reminds me of Starship Troopers by Mongoose Publishing which we also didn’t see in the poll results. This game has some great looking ‘sci fi bug’ miniatures that would look at home in any futuristic wargame.
Points systems are an interesting topic in themselves. Numerous people criticise Flames of War for it’s rather artificial inclusion of a GW-like points system in a historical wargame. However for any tabletop game that features regularly in tournaments points would seem to be the easiest way to go.
Speaking of Vietnam, can anybody recommend a good 28mm scale moderns skirmish ruleset? I’ve seen some great moderns terrain on Terragenesis which has piqued my interest.
Warzone is the original 40k clone (at least the first that was fairly successful). It was originally published by Target games (about 8 years ago), and briefly died when Target’s parent company went belly up (Warzone itself was said to be profitable). The rights were bought by Excelsior Games and they’ve slowly been revamping the rules and miniatures. A side note: Void was founded/started by ex-Target employees. The base rules for Void are almost identical to the old Warzone rules (except they 1/2′d the stats and used a d10 instead of a d20).
Interesting…although after 15 years of playing GW games I do prefer a D6 based game so I’ll stick with 40k and the three armies I already own.
I’d guess that “Railway Wars” was really the Great Rail Wars. It was put out by Pinnacle Enterainment Group. It was the miniature game that went with the RPG Deadlands. It is also the basis for the RPG/miniature game Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds is weird in that it’s both an RPG AND a miniatures game. Rumour has it will be re-released shortly after Deadlands Reloaded (a rewrite of the Deadlands RPG using the Savage Worlds rules), which should be out within the next month (in the US). The miniatures are still available from Jeff Valent’s Studios. They are good Western figures, but a smidge on the large size.
On further reflection those Jeff Valent figures aren’t the ones I’ve seen on the web. That range had a number of interesting figures like Chinese railway workers etc. It was probably one of the figure manufacturers listed on this ‘Wild West’ page however.
As an aside Jeff Valent Studios are an excellent supplier for sculpting tools and putties including very cheap ‘Green Stuff’.
Probably more than you wanted to know.
No that’s great information! Despite being a confirmed GW fanboy I’m always interested in other game systems…particularly since many of them come with their own unique figure ranges.
Related posts:
Could the Chinese figures you’re talking about be from teh Pulp Figures line?
http://www.pulpfigures.com/
I’m a big fan of Stargrunt 2 in a large part due to its lack of a point system. I find that designing scenarios which use victory conditions based on the composition of forces being used is far more challenging – and generally more “balanced” – than toe-to-toe slugfests between armies of equal point value.
Games of this sort take a little more work to design – one can’t simply throw down some terrain, set up on opposite sides of the the table and then go at it. In a convention setting tournament, the umpire would probably need to supply guidelines for acceptable troop composition well in advance and might even require players to play the scenario from both sides to determine advancement.
As a long time WH40K and WHFB player (started playing back in ’88 – I’m an old coot), I can tell you that scenario driven games using victory conditions as the balancing element rather than point costs have proven FAR more fun and challenging than the old “Let’s meet on Tuesday with 1500 points” affair. The games tend to feel fairer, too, and end with fewer arguments about one side’s super unit being two powerful for its point value.
Stargrunt 2′s other big appeal, to me at least, is that it focuses far more on the relative training, leadership, morale, and motivation of a unit than the ironmongery they’re lugging around. It’s a game that takes some getting used to, especially if you’re used to the slick presentation and speedy play that GW’s games offer – but I believe it’s a taste worth the effort to acquire.
Take care and keep up the great work! Yours is my favorite game related blog!
Shawn.
1988! Heh. That’s pretty much when I was introduced to GW as well via 40k. Bad plastic ‘bikers’ still form the bulk of my Imperial Guard force and most of them still have their terrible botched dry brushed paint jobs too (ugh).
GW games suffer a lot because their points values are almost universally unbalanced imho. This is just a symptom of their constant quest to sell more figures and the newest Army Book or Codex.
Although I hear what you’re saying about the 40k (and to a lesser extent WHFB) problem of playing with points rather than scenarios. But I do wonder if this is simply because of the rather unimaginative scenarios that feature in the main rulebooks for these games? Mind you 40k 4th Ed has a lot more interesting options since they folded 40k in 40 minutes and ‘Kill Teams’ into the main rules.
Flames of War is interesting because it too tends to focus more on the relative training and morale of the units than their hardware. A Russian conscript in a lend-lease Sherman will generally fair worse than an 8th Army Brit tanker in the same vehicle. Fire resolution is also interesting…with the training of your TARGET being the deciding factor. Pinning and routing is also considerably more painful in FOW than any GW game.
Thanks for the compliments too btw!
Actually what *would* be interesting would be to take the fast to play, streamlined Flames of War rules and apply them to a set of historical scenarios with no regard to points values.
I can see you’d have some difficulty with balance since FOW is a fairly abstracted game system with no real scales etc. but it might be worth trying in the future once I’ve built myself a NZer force, a DAK force and an entire North African textured table…so around 2010 sometime :)
One of our group members is angling towards FoW, but we haven’t tried it on for size yet. If training and morale are key features of the game, I’m a little more interested in giving it a go. Lord knows there are enough beautiful 15mm WW2 figs out there . . .
Our guy wants to play N. Africa, too. He’s already started a DAK force, so I guess I’ll have to raise the Union Jack!
Using the training of the target for fire resolution is an interesting idea – SG2 uses training to determine the unit’s effective range. A unit of regular rifles, for instance, can lay down effective fire at a greater range than a unit of green recruits. Range also plays into the casualty equation – I won’t go into the details here, but basically the longer the range, the less casualties you’re likely to cause. This seems to elegantly reflect the way fire tends to become more diffuse at range (My poorly aimed shot may still be good enough to hit you at 20 feet, but it will miss you by a yard at 100 feet). Once a unit is hit, it’s training determines what sort of die it throws to make a morale check (the better the unit’s training, the bigger the die type) and its leadership provides the basic target number to be beat on the roll.
As far as scenario based games go, that’s really all we play these days. This weekend my brother’s nefarious Democratic Republic of Glory army crossed the border into the Republic of Arden. We gamed out an engagement between his invading force and a listening post with ad hoc reinforcements available. It was fun, tense game and its outcome has determined what the flavor of our next several scenarios will be: Arden held the DPRG at Archinault Farm and created a bulge in the DPRG line. The DPRG is frantic to reduce the pocket and continue their advance – Arden is equally frantic about reinforcing the pocket and fragmenting the DPRG advance . . . fun will be had by all!
I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised with Flames of War. The manufacturer Battlefront has very clearly looked to the Games Workshop systems for inspiration and the games have a similar ‘flow’ of play with different mechanics.
It is most definitely a ‘game with WWII units’ rather than a simulation of any kind. Although having said that the units reflect the strengths and weaknesses of their historic counterparts to a reasonable degree.
Can’t hurt to give it a try! And as you say…plenty of 15mm manufacturers to chose from and quite a lot of very nice terrain available too.
Don’t feel obliged to play the Brits though unless you really want to. There were plenty of Commonwealth forces in North Africa…what with Canadians, South Africans, Indians, Aussies, NZers etc.
I was the first to vote for warzone in your favorite games poll, and I was indeed refering to the game currently produced by Excelsior Entertainment. I think calling it a 40k clone slights what is certainly the greatest of the (admittedly limited number) game’s I’ve played. In terms of setting the games are only similiar insofar as they both fall into the “Dark future” or “Gothic Scifi” genre. In some ways Warzone is easier to identify with since the whole of their setting takes place inside our solar system, and the Megacorporations that make up the main factions of the game all have clear analogs in the modern world (Capitol is basically America Inc. Same thing with Imperial and the UK or Mishima and Japan, Bauhaus and Germany/Western Russia). The biggest way the game sets itself apart from 40k are the rules. Rule differences that favorably separate it from 40k are:
Alternating activations at the unit level (your opponent moves one squad or individual and then you respond by moving one squad or individual) this allows much more sophisticated tactics since you get to react and respond immediately to your opponents actions, also the back and forth keeps the game fast paced and elminates the 40 min down time while your opponent moves and then when you get back half your army is gone before you even get a chance to respond.
Double blind deployment is another positive feature that I feel sets Warzone apart, during the deployment phase of the game units are represented by unit cards placed face down in the area of the deployment zone you want that unit to deploy, until the unit is first activated all your opponent sees is a face down card and therefore you have to carefully strategize and consider your deployment “Is that lone deployment card all the way at the left just a decoy to try to get me to split my forces, or is it his biggest nastiest unit…”
No more movement trays, in warzone you don’t have to move your troops in big static blocks around the field. As long as each trooper stays within a particular command distance of his squad leader (typically 6″) this means you can scatter your squad to avoid explosive template weapons, or get your troops into cover easily.
The importance of vehicles in 40k was always an annoyance for me, if you didn’t have them you were at a serious disadvantage, in Warzone I feel the few vehicles that do exist are much better balanced when compared to the infantry.
All in all I feel that these are the primary features that makes Warzone a dynamic and very strategic game that keeps the focus on squad level tactics.
I hope this has given you some insight into the game and if you ever get a chance to try a game I recomend you give it a try. Unfortunately it sounds as though the game may be drifting into limbo again since Excelsior was manufacturing the game under license from Paradox Entertainment (Who purchased Target Games and own the rights to both the Warzone and Chronopia miniatures games) and Paradox has elected not to renew the license for 2006.
MorganScott82 thanks for that comment! That’s very enlightening. Warzone sounds like an interesting game too, unfortunately I live in New Zealand where opponents for less well known games tend to be very very scarce. This is no doubt why I’ve never encountered it before.
I’ve always disliked the alternating turn scheme that all GW games use. It’s so artificial and lends a very seesaw feeling to every game you play. For Mordheim (a skirmish game with igu-ugo turns?) we actually adopted an alternate card based turn sequence that works much better and adds real suspense to the game.
Hidden deployment is always fun too. I seem to recall some 40k scenarios used to use this system of deployment or maybe that was WHFB? At any rate it certainly makes setup a lot more exciting. I suspect it’s not used in 40k more because 40k units tend to be fairly slow moving, taking the entire game to cross the table. So totally hidden deployment could make or break your game from turn 1.
Fixed unit coherency is flawed in 40k too I agree – in fact we commented as much in a 40k game last night. Flames of War is interesting in this respect because more veteran units can maintain a looser coherency, which is a nice approximation of what happens in real life.
40k certainly has it’s problems (although it has improved with 4th Ed) and I suspect the real reason I continue to play it is because of the small fortune I’ve already invested in 28mm GW figures :).