Researching wargames and finally committing

Nov 13th, 2021

I’ve been researching wargames for awhile, ever since I decided I needed a reason to justify getting an airbrush (wargames -> miniatures -> painting -> airbrush). I’d gone down several rabbit holes researching different companies’ free offerings, like One Page Rules, Two Hour Wargames, and Fast and Dirty, and paid games like THG’s 5150 line, Five Parsecs from Home, Rangers of Shadowdeep, and other indie games. I’d even made a flowchart and list of games to try if I liked those games.

Today, I finally decided I’d researched a bit too much (there’s only sooo many actual plays one can half-watch/half-listen to…) and was ready to commit to a set of free rules and try it out. Since I’d already printed out booklets of Warfleets: FTL and Age of Fantasy: Firefight–both of which I laboriously and manually re-ordered to print as a booklet–I decided to stick with One Page Rules (OPR). (If you’re curious about what other games I’ve got on my list, I’ve got some listed on the gaming page.)

Ok, rules are picked out, now what???

Storage & Scale

Storage is currently a problem, though it’s something I’m actively working on. So no extensive mini hoarding and terrain building can happen until I have a storage solution figured out.

And I decided I’d like to start very small to help with storage, maybe with 10mm models? That way I can convert 1” = 1cm and do a sliiightly smaller board. But would painting miniatures (if I get that far) be shitty at that scale?

Other ways to keep it small: 20cm^2 max board/battle mat?

Cheap miniature options:

OPR Paper Miniatures bundle $17.99

This is like all of the paper minis for Warships: FTL. I could get the factions separately if I wanted to pick a couple.

I could also join the Patreon and swoop those minis out that way? I feel weird joining a Patreon just to grab some stuff and then peacing out, so I’ll just sit on this for awhile.

Sci-fi TopDown Armies by Michael Allen Newbanks Games $1/each

A few different options to choose from, all with 2 sides of ships. And all for $1. This might be my first choice, just financially. And I think they’re pretty cute. I’ll have to think about how I want to mount them if they’re just flat images and not fold-up tokens of some sort. I have some cardboard I could mount them on, maybe?

Space Ship Paper Miniatures and Star Map bundle by DramaScape $4

Comes with 2-sides of ships and a map. And the ships are made to be fold-up tokens, which takes care of the problem mentioned in the “Sci-fi TopDown” ships above.

Terrain

Been thinking gabout what kind of terrain and other game aids I can find or make. I have counters and asteroids from a couple of core X-wing sets that I think are an okay start. I have some clay to make some more random blobby things, but I’d love to figure out other obstacles. Planets? Space stations?

Things I can do now:

  • Build some fleets - probably start with 200pts or maybe even smaller.
  • Print Core rules on bigger print (booklet print is too tiny for quick ref)
  • Fleet roster sheets – blanks or pre-filled from Fleet builder?
  • Make a flow chart out of the AI rules.

Random thoughts

Since OPR games including W:FTL are lore-light or lore-assumed (I made that one up), what if I included solo roleplaying or worldbuilding elements as well? I suppose it’d depend on my mood, whether I want to just push some game tokens around or explore pathos or whatever.