Legions and Hordes - Hark: A Miniature Wargames Dispatch
Hark is the Pandemonium Blog's Wargaming Segment, where Ben yaps about Wargames (its what it says on the tin but even cooler, if you can believe it.)
So you know how dolls come in different sizes? They range from 12 inchers which are huge and fully poseable, to 4 inches with one or two points of articulation, with oodles of variants in between. Actually, I was talking about standard action figure sizes (trad dolls have their own conventions too) but long story short, action figures are dolls, as are wargaming miniatures (colloq. war-dollies) and they exist in all sorts of scale in stature and conflict.
Recently we've seen moves in the community towards smaller minis and/or larger conflicts. Warmaster, a 10mm scale game that plays out large conflicts in the World of Warhammer Fantasy has recently found a revitalization within the indie scene, and support in the form of the Warmaster Revolution website, which hosts a fan-made second edition ruleset that the nerds can't stop yapping about (affectionately.) Additionally, with the return of Warhammer the Old World, and the community that's built up there's been a scramble to amass 28mm armies for that system (and the many others that sprang up to replace it when Games Workshop offed it a decade ago.) Given the popularity of these movements, I wanted to look at the ways these efforts and interests in smaller scales have rippled out beyond the clubs and kitchen tables.
Wargames Atlantic, international gap-filler extraordinaire has dipped its toes into making 10mm armies-in-a-box for the Ashigaru, the Samurai, and also the Orcish Hordes. As is proposed in their announcement for the line, there are plenty of benefits to playing with physically smaller miniatures: they're quicker to paint, there's already oodles of support for them, and not everyone has room for a 6'x4' table in their living space.
The concessions made by using smaller models are paid off by accessibility and affordability, while not sacrificing spectacle. The models still paint up nicely, but in an abstract enough way that one might find them not only handsome, but forgiving too. The Orc box comes with over 20 stands of models (at this scale multi-based models are called stands,) you can play games of quite a grand scale (wink) out of a single box. Games like...
Mike Hutchinson's Hobgoblin is the long awaited sophomore project of the Gaslands and Space Gits designer, and as a fan myself, I was not disappointed. Mini-agnostic and scale-flexible, Hobgoblin is a lightweight mass battler game that respects your time. Much of wargaming is doing comparative maths to put your good guys in fights that they'll win and your less good guys in fights that tie up your opponent's good guys. The math can be dense, referencing all sorts of sections and articles, but not here; there's one simple table to help you literally pick your battles, reducing the rules lawyering and expediting the meaningful decision making. On top of that, the units are super scalable and customizable, meaning that any army from your past or future can be ported in easy-peasy. Speaking of the future though...
Have you heard about 3D printing, and how its the future and all that? Me too (but its not regulated enough for my tastes and safety needs,) and so have the authors of Eternol, who point out how easy it is to print minis from 28-35mm scale (the really common ones) down to 12-15mm, and save on space and materials (and money.) As a budget-conscious gamer who's bedroom has become a warehouse, I love the very real considerations for the dimensionally challenged warlord. The game itself is also very flavorful, being of space-fantasy fare that also invites you to customize your forces to rope them into an implied epic opera of lasers and war-cooks. Actually, there's a bit of that going around these days...
Both Dragon Rampant (and Lion Rampant) have VIBES (and Xenos Rampant too, but I have feelings about it's layout,) and the vibes are ridiculous. Psychology and a unit's receptiveness to taking orders play the hugest role in this game, where you're at the whims of whatever Crusaders or Cyclopses you've opted to enlist. For me, this game hits a sweet spot just above A Song of Blades and Heroes and the USEME system, where its lightweight and abstract enough to flow, but with the rank and flank tactics that are back in vogue. That said, check out those other games as well to get a wider picture of the interpretations of wargames at this smaller but larger scale.
So there you have it! Small soldiers, but plenty of thrills and perks and diversity within the scene. If anyone needed further convincing, wargaming minis 15mm and under can happily engage with TT scale miniature railroads! We talked about the scaled benefits of time, money, accessibility, and strategy, but that doesn't even consider the crossover capabilities of two classic nerddoms. I hope you had fun on our snapshot tour of indie mini wargaming, and that you got something out of this article, no matter how small.
(But before we go, here's one neat trick games designers don't want you to know: if you change all measurements in a game from inches into centimeters, that kinda/sorta does the trick when you're looking to convert 28mm gaming into 15 and below. Don't tell anyone I told you that, but that's generally how they do it. Now you can do it whenever and wherever you want!)
Ben Doane has been a member of the Pandemonium Team since 2019, and has been playing wargames, rpgs, and tcgs since 2004 and earlier. When not blogging, Ben runs the wargames and mailing departments, and also puts together the store's newsletters. Her current favorite book is Horus Rising by Dan Abnett.