Pondering a Fantasy Game of Ideal Proportions...

Hi!

Well its been almost two months since I posted anything on this blog due to a combination of the intrusion of Real Life and a serious case of painters block that almost had me giving up my hobby in dismay.

Fortunately, a bit of a rest followed by painting something completely different in the form of some SD Orks that I had sculpted from leftover putty seems to have got me over my painting failure (pics can be seen HERE) It also left me in a bit of a quandary as there's a new edition of Warhammer on the horizon which sounds like it could be interesting and in the process of looking up rumours, I stumbled upon some of the really amazing armies that folks have put together for Mantic Games' Kings of War:

 Nature Themed Army of Amazingness...

Now looking through these images, people may spot a couple of things that they all have in common. Firstly they are all 28mm scale and secondly, they are all multibased.

I have found the sheer spectacle of nicely painted 28mm scale figures on really beautiful bases terribly appealing and the more I look, the more tempted I am to give it a go, especially as it also allows one to not only cut back the number of figures a little, it also allows you to really make a very characterful force with each base being a vignette rather than just a small square or circle of generic basing.

Part of me still wonders if I could cheat it by simply using movement trays/sabot style bases or whatnot but I have been finding myself sorely tempted to give it a bit of a bash, and shock horror, go for a 28mm scale force!

There is a part of me that shows caution however, as I am fully aware of just how much effort would need to be put into such an endeavour, both in costs and painting time, not to mention the amount of space it would take up once complete. One option is to drop the scale a bit to something a bit more manageable, possibly 15 or even 10mm but I can't seem to get away from the visual appeal of a 28mm scale force.

I know I need to face facts and realise that such a project for me would be doomed to fail as I have no doubt the prospect of painting up dozens, if not scores of figures is just beyond me these days and mass battle games are just too much effort for me to attempt.

For a start, I would never be able to play a game! My gaming space just isn't up to it, even if by some miracle I did manage to paint so many figures! What I need is a game more akin to Warmachine with smaller numbers of figures centred around a character or two along with some nice big monsters to liven things up. This is something I think I might be able to manage.

The problem is there just doesn't seem to be any rules out there that quite cover what I want. There's lots of mass battle games like Warhammer, Kings of War and so on and there's also lots of small scale skirmish games such as Mordheim, Song of Blades and various others.

What I need is something part way between the two, a game with several small units, some individuals and monsters. To be honest, the closest to this ideal is the likes of Chronopia! Sadly, as mentioned previously, the figures are becoming increasingly difficult to source and there's set armylists, something I don't want to be constrained by.

I know that Oldhammer is a possible alternative but to be honest, I am looking for something a bit more modern and less clunky. I do think that one option would be No Quarter, a free, generic set of rules by Wargames Unlimited but if anyone could suggest other options, I would be more than willing to give them a bash and who knows, I may end up returning to the 28mm scale fold...

Anyway, enough of this navel gazing, I need to go get packed!

All the best.