Reply To: Rule Recommendations for Small Scale Fantasy, 1 base per unit

[Mike Headden]

Pendraken’s “Warband” rules might suit you. (https://www.pendraken.co.uk/rules-warband)

Not dissimilar in some ways to Warmaster but each base is a unit. Standard base for 10mm scale is 100mm x 50mm so either lots of minis on a base and play as written or shrink down to 50mm x 25mm, maybe, and reduce moves and ranges.

Heroes and Wizards are baked in to units rather than individuals like Warmaster.

You don’t need many units to give a good game, I’d say half a dozen to a dozen with most somewhere in the middle of that range.

At sixteen quid a set they aren’t exactly break the bank expensive.

Blurb from the author posted when the rulebook was launched and copied from the Pendraken forum.

“Warband provides all the rules you need to bring great battles between fantasy armies to your tabletop.

Using miniature figures and terrain, you can fight battles from the glorious sword and sorcery epics you’ve read about.  
You can play games against your friends or competitive battles against worthy opponents.

Warband is designed to be simple to learn and difficult to master, and so it uses a single consistent task resolution method throughout the rules.  Whether you’re trying to get a unit of warriors to move, seeing how effective it’s shooting or fighting is, or how well it has defended itself, you’ll be using the same dice pool mechanism.  You determine the number of dice to roll and each result of 4+ is a success.  The more successes you roll, the better your units will do, and the more likely you are to win.  Simple!

Of course fighting a good tactical battle, getting your units into advantageous situations, and making effective command decisions will mean you’ll be far more likely to win.  Coming up with effective tactics for your chosen army to defeat your opponents is what will take you time to master.

So with Warband’s intuitive rules you’ll be fighting the battle not the rulebook, and hopefully having a lot of fun into the bargain!

You’ll be able to decide which of the fantastic races you’d like to command and then construct your force from the lists provided.

 
Warband includes complete army lists for twelve armies, with abilities, options, spell lists, and descriptions including;
Barbarian men, Dark elves, Dragon men, Eldritch vampires, Goblins, High elves, Hill dwarves, Lizardmen, Samurai apes, Taurians, Undead, and Wood elves.

Army composition and optional upgrades are highly flexible, allowing you to build the force that best fits your style of play.  If you’d like to command a horde of bison riding barbarians, rampaging minotaurs, skirmishing ghouls, or serried ranks of deadly elven archers then you’ll find something to suit you in the Warband rules.”

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data