A
Anonymous01/24/26, 05:08No.97431941Small scale scifi wargames
My friends and I got bored with 28-32mm wargames, space is expensive, minis are expensive, logistics are cumbersome (and expensive). Grimdark tropes are also getting old (and expensive). Keeping up the pace with the release cycles, patchy availability and the never ending downscaling and inflation of everything made me think about some smaller scale games.
I been doing some exploring:
>Battletech, Heavy Gear
Feel ancient, are ancient. Both of these feel pretty mech centric. Their playerbase is also pretty old and well established. You basically join a very old club.
>Epic Warpath, Armored Clash & Dystopian Wars
Very traditional rules but I must admit that they are quite fun. But can be pretty costly to field an army.
But all of the games above are still reliant on traditional miniature production & distribution, and therefore are subject to the same good old tactics of the producers. FOMO, limiting availability of the product, constant flux of meta driven by the sale tactics. I am tired of that.
And then, by a chance, during a convention I've played demo game:
>Full Spectrum Dominance
And it looks pretty good.
>completely digital distribution for minis and books
Whole factions are sold as complete STL packs, rules are maintained as a living PDF rulebook, unit cards are available for DIY or professional printing in PDF form.
>looks indie as f, but with a community
Made by a single guy, a pretty talented sculptor but still collaborates with outside concept artists to pour some soul into each of the factions. Feels really unbloated due to community input.
>Manageable release cycle
Everything is released as a yearly MyMiniFactory campaign, that caps content expenses to about $60-70 per year.
>quite simple rules
From a demo, everything felt pretty straightforward thanks to most of the management offloaded onto unit cards.
Did anyone play that game? Any recommendations for it or against it? Any alternatives I've overlooked?
96
Replies
A
Anon01/24/26, 05:10No.97431959
I am kind of strongly attracted to the designs as well, It's been a while since we have played a more generic scifi, and these still look pretty nice to paint.
A
Anon01/24/26, 06:12No.97432219
I play BT on and off, but I exclusively buy metals from Ral Partha EU, or third party 3d prints.Catalyst can suck the shit out of a dead surat's asshole.
A
Anon01/24/26, 08:26No.97432572
>Any alternatives I've overlooked?
the cheapest small scale miniature games you can get are naval and air games, space games also fit here.
Most of them are historical or generic sci fi and in the bigger scales you might never have more than 6-10 models on the table and no terrain.There are also a ton of games played with 10-2mm minis for any historical era as well as sci-fi and fantasy. Most of those games don't have proprietary miniatures since you can't copyright french line infantry or elf bowmen or whatever so you can play a lot of different games for the same investment in minisin all cases 3D printing is an incredibly cheap and effective way to quickly get whatever you need, if you can find it
A
Anon01/24/26, 21:54No.97435363
>Did anyone play that game?
not yet i hope to. i have a sizable cosair force and enough 6-8mm epic to run any other force. and i'm sniping the robots after i do my accounting for this month (thank you pioneer status)
>any alternatives
>Mac attack,
it's fairly good if you want the complexity of battletech with none of the slower mechanics.
it is mech centred, or mac centric, but it's a very good system.
>Drop zone commander, it's 10mm but it's solid, shame hawk wargames lost the ip.
and of course
>FIRELOCK1980
look at it
LOOK AT IT.
played with standees but i think guys are sculpting it. also lots of 6-15 mm 40s to 90s vehicles exist to kitbash with.
A
Anon01/25/26, 03:22No.97436932
had my first game of Dystopian Wars 4th edition today, dug out my ships from over a decade ago and touched them up.Great time, SRS are handled way better. I'm looking forward to more
A
Anon01/25/26, 15:21No.97439267
Wow - not sure where you tried the game, but whoever did the demo really demoed it the right way!FSD Author here - and flattered to be (finally!) mentioned on 4chan. :3Jokes aside, my primary drive for the game size/format is to have something that i can paint and two armies for in a reasonable time frame. I love a bunch of the games you mentioned, but the amount of effort (rather than just money) to have a playable force is just not something i could do personally.
I'm setting the same hard limits (small table, limited forces, but not-a-skirmish) for a space game I'm working on now, and it's... challenging, but the final product will at least serve that niche! :)
A
Anon01/25/26, 17:05No.97439677
the real question you should be asking is: do you have a resin 3d printer?Because having one opens the doors to pretty much any genre and any scale. They are expensive, toxic and require a whole process of cleaning and safe disposal, but are incredibly useful. And there are people making 3d printable files for everything.There are tons of games ranging from 20mm to 1/3000 scale. it's easier to make a recommendation based on what you are interested in. I wouldn't recommend a 2mm greek mass battle game if you're looking for a starship fleet combat game.
A
Anon01/25/26, 21:09No.97440773
FSD seems to attract a pretty ambitious painters, that's a 6mm terrain layout, found on their discord
A
Anon01/26/26, 21:09No.97446424
Soooo... how does it play?
I've been looking for a system to play battles in my setting and so far was tempted by Horizon War. But I'm happy to try something else
especially since I love the designs that Lazy Forger dude is making. I bought his medieval knights and they were *chef kiss*
A
Anon01/26/26, 21:19No.97446486
Just play Future War Commander or Dirtside 2 you shill.
FSD sucks dick as do all rules produced by companies that sell minis. There is a reason the only good things you hear about it are respect to minis and not how it plays.
A
Anon01/27/26, 07:57No.97449059
I want sci-fi games where mechs are a specialized vehicle among others that have their own roles on a combined arms battlefield. Too many games with mechs are 99% mech focused
A
Anon01/27/26, 12:02No.97449794
Im not at all shocked that the lazy forger would create such a blatant adpost for your game like this given how you spam so many other communities Im in.Your stl prices are obscene , your designs objectively suck and lack an understanding of utilizing different scales above all else , which is evident by having multiple scales just be basic % changes and not proportion changes. Your photography is misleading.Above all I will continue to acquire your stls free of charge because theyre never worth printing and your rules are the lamest slop of all the small scales I play.Buy an ad. Especially in the communities you actively make worse with your bullshit spam
A
Anon01/27/26, 12:38No.97449911
>>Battletech, Heavy Gear
>Feel ancient, are ancient. Both of these feel pretty mech centric. Their playerbase is also pretty old and well established. You basically join a very old club.
not really, I teached teenagers at local club, it clicked well; planning campaign now, expanded with old Battletech RPG splinter book
A
Anon01/27/26, 17:31No.97451300
So an OP asks for game recommendations that ain't "mech centric" and has pointed out that he does not like BT for that very reason.And then old time mech guys then go apeshit,:
>proceed to ragepost, accuse the op of being the author
despite the fact that the author did respond separately, or the fact that he has just secured funds&work for about a year ahead, so the timing seems off
>shill their blocky, 90s retro aesthetics optimized for being cast in metal for the mech as the overall design peak of all things
Guys, those designs look dated. You do the same thing that oldhammer guys but with much more spite and much less chill, you simply have a favorite aesthetic, but it isn't The Absolute Best For Everyone, you ain't the gods of taste to say shit like 'your designs objectively suck'
>slander the shit out of FSD designs as being impossible to print, too detailed, too pricey
but they seem to be very well acquainted with them nevertheless. If FSD has pricy terrain, then what do you say about Thunderhead Studios, Hardware Studios and other BT centric STL companies?
>shill other wargames made in 199X by companies that still sell metal minis, while simultaneously saying that all rules made by companies selling minis suck dick
That's a pretty hilarious self own, ngl, and also an indication of what was your age of initiation into wargamesConcluding, even if the post is ragebait, you guys have failed so hard that it's funny to observe such a petty manchild behavior
A
Anon01/27/26, 18:10No.97451542
Armored Clash is like $316 bucks for a giant army with options.
A
Anon01/27/26, 19:44No.97452082
Thingiverse Solar troopers = $0
Dirtside 2 = $0Not playing On the Spectrum Dominance = priceless
A
Anon01/27/26, 20:24No.97452382
So when the FSD team was in their discord planning this guerilla marketing campaign they weren't expecting this response eh.Like my dudes, anyone who is capable of 3dprinting and is here on this site knows where to acquire a myriad of rule sets free or shareware. Also why would I bother with anything other than battletech, alpha strike, one of the dozens of branches of epic armageddon, or a GZG system. That are all free and easily accessible with easy to find and cheap minis or free stls. All of those games which have active, fun, committed communities for themThere's literally no value proposition in wasting any time on your shit.
A
Anon01/27/26, 21:04No.97452708
I printed some for fun
A
Anon01/27/26, 23:27No.97453725
Some games you might have ovelooked, OP.>Epic Armageddon
The one I play regularly. GW game, but old GW's, and dead (as in unsupported) as fuck. The rules are very, very good, without falling into minutia hell.>Future War Commander
Model agnostic, interesting command & control, but somewhat clunky. The second edition should be coming in a few months.>Microcosmic
>https://microcosmic.games/
Completely free, and very succint, so worth a read. And to be honest, a read it's all I did with it, but it looked quite interesting.>Xenos Rampant
The rules are functional if somewhat bland, and the activation system is controversial, but it's "fine". On paper it needs singly-based models, but you can just use 6mm infantry bases with some dice to mark the losses.>Firelock 198X
Already mentioned, but it's worth repeating. Very good rules, factions with a strong identity, top notch illustrations, 100% free, 9/10 overall.
The biggest problem, it's gonna take a lot of kitbashing (physical or digital) to get it on a table (but the Tabletop Sim module is official and quite good).>Bonus
Some other names I have on my hard drive, all of them small scale (6mm) sci-fi games. Some of them I've read a long time ago, some I just skimmed. Never played them, so I can't offer any comments, but you might want to look into them.>Command Horizon
>Dirtside II
>Hardwar
>Laserstorm
>Polyversal
>Pz8
>Strike Legion Operational
>Strike Legion Tactical
A
Anon01/28/26, 19:14No.97459025
Did anybody try upscaling LazyForger units to use in other wargames?
They look like they would be still nice in 15mm, but I don't know how those bigger vehicles are constructed
A
Anon01/28/26, 20:24No.97459494
I've dabbled in a few different games. I have to say the most satisfaction I ever had in a skirmish game was using Friday Night Fire Fight from R Talsorian Games. It's the bare bones combat system that Cyberpunk 2020 uses.