Starting out

Winter in Edmonton is, for me at least, not a time of the year that involves a lot of activities outside my home. So when winter starts to make its impact felt I usually start to plan what my hobby activities are going to be for the upcoming inclement months. I don't ski, and I don't really like the cold in general, so the next four or five months are going to provide me with a lot of time to devote to hobby projects.

The plan

Over the many years that I have been gaming I have found that I really like fantasy wargames far more than sci-fi games. And after I started playing Oathmark I discovered that flank-and-rank fantasy games were more my style than games like Age of Sigmar. 

I recently stumbled upon a significant deal for an large Undead army. The models are all from Max Mini's Necropolis Undead range and there are enough figures to produce several different armies for several different systems. There are actually probably more miniatures in the set than I can possibly use. 

The games

My plan is to paint two forces and have the figures necessary to use them in several different rule systems. 

Saga: Age of Magic

I was introduced to this system by my friend Palmer. It started as, and is primarily, a historical rules system. The developers, Studio Tomahawk, released a fantasy expansion for the game, called Age of Magic, and it is my favourite fantasy skirmish game. The primary reason for this is that it allows you to take almost any set of miniatures and use them in one of the six provided army lists. The lists are thematic in nature and not tied to any particular miniature system. Some of the army lists, like the Undead, are less diverse in the models that you could possibly use. Others, like the Otherworld or Lords of the Wild, have enough scope that you could bring a considerable number of possible model ranges to the table and use them. 

Saga is a unique set of rules that focused on the quality of the troops on the field.  The core rules are very compact and there aren't many special rules or exceptions. The Age of Magic expansion adds enough 'fantasy chrome' to make you feel as if you were playing a fantasy army without overloading you with rules and abilities. 

Moonstone

Moonstone is an immensely fun fantasy skirmish game produced by Goblin King Games in the UK. Think of it as if Brian Froud and Monty Python had got together to create a miniature game. The figures are wonderful and full of whimsy and the game has the strategic scope of Warmachine without all the extraneous rules. The game also easily adapts from two to four players so you can always play it regardless of how many people show up. You only need six miniatures to play and there are no point costs. Quite the fun game. 

Age of Fantasy

Age of Fantasy is produced by One Page Rules and comes in three different formats. A skirmish game, an Age of Sigmar scale game and a 'rank-and-flank' system. All three games are built from the same core rules and the differences are primarily one of game size. Even the army lists for each game are scaled variants of each other. Age of Fantasy is easy to learn and quick to play. It is miniature agnostic but the core army lists are heavily influenced by Warhammer and Age of Sigmar armies.

The Age of Fantasy rules are the simplest of the three games mentioned here and the game leans heavily into the different abilities of army units and characters to give your game some necessary fantasy influence. There are a few generic system-wide abilities and each army usually has a handful of them as well. It isn't anywhere near as bad as Age of Sigmar though.

Some other ruleset

I am also interested in trying to paint up some small forces for some 10mm games. I really miss painting and playing with Warmaster scale minis. There are quite a few options to use at that scale but I am thinking of trying to get everyone to try out the Fantastic Battles rules from Nic Wright. They are scale and miniature agnostic and you can quickly create units and an army to allow you to make a unique force from your collection of 10mm figs. 

Picking a system

As much fun as Oathmark is I am not really interested in playing a campaign game and without that additional game experience there isn't really enough to recommend it. I will definitely be building forces for use in Saga: Age of Magic and I suspect that Age of Fantasy will end up being the game system I use for larger skirmish type or rank-and-flank games. Moonstone will also be played but since it uses its own figures...

Miniatures

Given my recent purchase, one of the forces will definitely be Undead. I have enough figures for a Horde and several units of Warriors. I also have Creatures and Monsters in abundance. There are no painted or assembled models I could use as Hearthguard but there are quite a few Mummy troops with shields and khopesh that could be used as Hearthguard. The Undead army in Age of Magic also uses the Chaos dice set which is a good thing since almost all of the other miniatures I have are Order factions. 

The choice of a second faction is a bit tougher. Not because I lack for miniatures but that many of them don't have a lot of the specialist units that a fantasy army typically fields. It is less of a problem for Saga: Age of Magic since those army lists tend not to make a lot of reference to specific weapons or troop abilities. Age of Fantasy though is heavily influenced by Warhammer and Age of Sigmar and so it  tends to require more distinct types of model. 

Quite a few of my existing models were built for Oathmark and so are more generic. That works well for core troops but I really don't have a lot of figures that are anything other than 'warriors'. This isn't a problem that is difficult to fix but I want to try to build this force up without having to spend a lot of money. So while I will most assuredly being doing Undead I still haven't figured out what my second force will be. I would actually love to use my existing force of Halflings and expand it with some models from Max Mini but that would immediately mean adding even more new minis to a collection that has overtaken my basement.