Skirmish Gaming

I've been somewhat obsessing about Skirmish gaming of late outside my Legends of the High Seas and Lord of Rings SBG interests. While I really enjoy the rules for these games, they occasionally get a little "busy" and I started thinking about other rules sets for other genres of gaming. Initially I intended to just modify the core skirmish rules that both LotHS and LotR use.
Early this summer I built my "Skirmish Dungeon" , built primarily with High Seas in mind, however I knew it would be fun setting for any kind of generic skirmish games. I've been wanting to do a "low fantasy" (think 1st ed D&D) warband type game that incorporated characters that could advance..without too many pre determined stats.I like to stay away from too many RPG elements but wanted enough to reflect the setting and a limited resource type game that I love.



An atypical Dark Elves warband for SoBH as I will run it, the Drider will probably just be a dungeon monster there are 6 other Drow still being painted. Dungeon Games will run around 500 points, Dark Elves a bit more expensive than most average 30 points for a Soldier to 80+ for a Hero type.

Some quick research and back link to the great "lead adventure forums" turned me on to Ganesha games and its Songs of Blades and Heroes rulesets. simple, with an interesting mechanic it still only uses a D6 and was about perfect for what I looking for. Essentially each figure has only 2 statistics with a variety of special rules are either inherent or learned, its open ended enough that its very adaptable to be used how you like it.


my WotC Umber Hulk from 1999, I love this model.

Given I have a pretty substantial fantasy miniature collection going way back to when I was kid, I figure I'd put all this together and do something fun. Since I have ton of terrain already, I've started going thru old sets of figures and picking out figures for various types warbands and Dungeon monsters, the last month or so I have been painting a bunch of them up. I have a couple of two player scenarios laid out that involve using the skirmish dungeon, where you play against each other and the dungeon simultaneously. there is a certain board game element to it
where I'll have some cards you draw that trigger events or dungeon residents, not unlike the new FFG release of Dungeon Quest which I have and will also be talking about eventually anyway, I'll continue to post photos of some recent works here as well as some narratives from the playtesting..hopefully all this month.


L to R, Drow Ranger, Drow Soldier..."City of the Spider Queen" by WotC 2002
Drider, by Grenadier, 1980,- Drow Cleric, "City of Spider Queen by WotC 2002 and Drow Soldier by Citadel 1985. Note the scale on these stands up pretty well, all the figures work together. This is a rarity.

Having run a day long Legend of High Seas Campaign last year and In order to facilitate the planned Legend of the High Seas event at Adepticon 2011, I know some changes have to happen to make a 4-5 hour event run smoother, the campaign systems of LotHs while great, doesnt lend it self well to a 4- 5 hours event with maybe 30 mins between rounds reconciling increasing stats per round over 8-10 teams and redistributing the stats each round is hell on the T.O., so some modification is in order, potentially increasing the gold to buy your team and/or picking one advance per round or submitting pre selected advancements that you can check off should you live and qualify for them or just running the same (but more advanced team) over 4 games. I don't know exactly where I am going yet, but I want to use play testing with other skirmish gaming to solidify how I want to run this High Seas event and to most of all make it fun. Sort of using "B" to get to "A" if you will I'll of course update this all as it happens


The Chainmail era figures by WotC are great and still available at reasonable prices, the last decent miniatures WotC made before moving over to low quality pre painted plastics.


Skeletons by Otherworld


The torturer fellow is the "harvey psycho" chronoscope model
by Reaper, Reapers GW+ scale prevent too much mixing with older
figs but I have lots of Reaper stuff.


Anyway, you all get the idea...I'll update when we throw down with an actual game.
oh and all minatures bases seen here are by Back 2 Base-ix