Even more ruminations about Fantastic Battles rules ideas

Some more ruminations about tweaking Fantastic Battles. While it is a great set of rules I am looking at ways to modify it to fit what I want in a game.

Cangames finds

 

So found some stuff from various vendors at Cangames. Apparently I am going to be working on a centaur themed Fantastic Battles army. I found these at Crossed Swords. Seventeen centaurs and 1 big monster/Minotaur/centaur thing. While I did not go looking for them, they were a fair price and I figure I do something with them. Apparently they are Bob Murch sculpts from the early 2000s. I already had some very old chaos centaurs painted a few years back. Combined this will be a force of 27 centaurs, roughly 12-13 companies and a couple of leaders. The big guy will be built as a dragon. The winded figure in the picture will be used for another project. 

More Fantastic Battles ruminations

 

So more ideas, not all of them are mine. 

While I have moved away from Warhammer I still have fond memories of some of the quirky rules and effects. So for your consideration here are some quirky ideas mixed in with some ideas that seem somewhat reasonable. 

For the most part they are untested, but we did try the artillery rules, they worked fine. Some like the oblique marching just seem reasonable as do the marching rules (I think maybe Nic talked about that)

Anyways here they are:

New units for Fantastic Battles done (at last)

 

So, two 2 company units of light Dwarf infantry are done. They were actually fun to paint but kept getting shunted aside for other tasks which is why it took so long to complete. In the end I just wanted them off the painting table so flocked them up today.

Again these are going to be fast moving skirmishers.with decent shooting skills. It should make them fairly flexible.

Some chaotic ruminations for Fantastic batlles

So, back in the old days when we played Warhammer 3rd ed, there were two tomes that could be used to create a Chaos army. It was silly fun as you rolled on chart after chart to create your army often rolling something that had no functionality. The best result I remember was the general of the army who was a lycanthrope who walked on four legs when human but would turn into a bipedal mammoth. He had so many other mutations that should he gain one more he would instantly turn into a chaos spawn and cease to be the leader, he was the most expensive figure in the army.

Anyways, it amused me to start work on a simple Fantastic Battles chart to allow a chaos player to create their own strange units. So here it is:

To say that it is a work in progress might be too generous but it ties in with some of my other ideas regarding the racial tropes and how to further define some armies.

Fantastic Battles Light, fast Dwarf archers (WIP)

 

Sprinting at you, some quick strike Dwarf archers!

So, I finally got around to building and basing some of the Oathmark light dwarves that I bought many months ago. Up first are these 12 guys who will be an auxiliary unit for my Roman Dwarves. I envision fielding them as two units of two companies, but I might also need to spread them out into four one company units.

I think they look the part and are bright enough that they should not go unnoticed on the battlefield. With only three figures a base they do look irregular, almost skirmish troops. Many of the poses are running or at very least they are in action poses. The bows were an add on that I had not planned for but the box included a mix of weapons and bows made sense.

They stat out as:

Irregular    Doughty    Shooting    Skirmish    Fast 

Just the way they look!

 

Fantastic Battles spell & relic cards

Here, despite the lack of demand to see them, are my cards for Fantastic Battles. They are in no order and are a mix of spells and relics. 

Disclaimer: I found these images through online searches and was unable to determine if they were copyrighted, hopefully not. At any rate I, perhaps foolishly, thought I would share these, no copyright infringement is intended & if I offend let me know and I shall remove them.

I have found them somewhat useful as all required information is included on the cards. I tried to make the cards visually interesting and the images matching the spell.If you are using character cards you could clip these to those cards to indicate who has what. 

For the spells you would want to record what level any given spell was selected at. I use plastic card sleeves for these cards, so dropping a damage marker into the sleeve is a quick way to record the spell level.  

Anyways, for what it is worth here they are!

 

Fantastic Battles Dwarf vs Goblin April 21 2024

 

Rematch Goblins vs Dwarves

So, with the battlefield still set up, we thought we would have time to play FB and still get in a game of Pulp Ally. However we were delayed in starting the game and just did not have time or the energy for two games. 

This was another stab at a Dwarf army defending against a horde of fast moving Goblins. I acted as ref for the game as neither player was all that familiar with the rules. The armies were 1000 points each and each army had 5 captains, 3 wizards and a Warlord. The dwarven army was made up of my FB purpose based Roman Dwarves (with a couple of WH based hand-gunner units) while the Goblins, for the most part, were on my homemade movement trays.

Fantastic Battles April 04 2024

Deployment after mishap roles. Not much impact on either army, one Dwarf unit suffered -2 Resolve & one wolf rider unit rushed ahead 4BW.

 

Yet another classic match up Dwarf vs Goblin, was played today. This was a game originally planned for last November, but had to be postponed. Thankfully Craig was able to attend this game despite the resurgence of winter! 

Fantastic Battles AAR for Thursday Jan 26th game

 

 Two 1000 point armies, Dwarf vs Orc.

 

Dwarf defenders

Orc attackers

 

Fantastic Battles AAR July 29th game

 

So, a bigger battle this time, Dwarfs (1,500 points) vs a combined army of Orcs (750 points) and Undead (750 points). I must say I much prefer bigger armies, more scope for variety of units. I felt very restricted trying to come up with the small 50 point armies. I had to make far more compromises than I would have liked. 

We tried to try out some experimental rules*, succeeded with some of them, forgot to use others...oh well. We did use the following:

1. March column
   
2. Artillery variables rules
3. Orc Animosity
4. Undead [Racial] Only remembered part of these new rules

 * These experimental rules can be found at the end of this AAR.

The Battlefield

 

Fantastic Battles AAR June 26th 2022 game

 

 

Great gaming weekend!

So two days of gaming this past weekend was a good start. On Saturday I was involved in two board games, The classic Aliens game by Leading Edge and Sentinels of the Multiverse. Both are easy go to, comfort games that have been played a lot and therefore I have a vague recollection of the rules.

In the Aliens game, despite my best effort all my marines, actually made it off the board, although two of them, Hicks and Dietrich, were both wounded. In fact all the marines were able to escape, something that does not happen all that often.

The Sentinels of the Multiverse game saw Sky-Scraper team up with the Sentinels to combat Friction and Ermine. It was a long challenging game that at times looked like we were going to quickly go down in ignominious defeat and then we would suddenly get a reprieve where we were able to recuperate and then reenter the fray. Sky-Scraper found it very difficult to deploy her arsenal of equipment as Friction and ermine were able to destroy any such items almost as quickly as they were deployed. I could never get ahead!

On Sunday we played Fantastic Battles, a game that none of the players had played before. While the original plan was for a very big game the plan was changed to a standard 750 point conflict we me acting as GM.(I had more familiarity with the rules) The game lasted just under 4 hours and unlike many other fantasy games that we have played we were able to finish the game with a decisive winner.

It was great to get the boys back together to roll some dice and swap some tales, overall a good time had by all!