40K Friday on Sunday: Other Miniatures Options for 2017

Anthony posted a comment on Friday's post that mentioned getting Bolt Action mini's ready as well as 40K. Yeah, similar problems here. I tend to focus on 40K because that's what we play the most but we go beyond that when we can. For 2016 I even made some deliberate efforts in that direction:

• I was determined to get in some games of Bolt Action so I went back to work on the 1/72 plastics I had from a while back. I also took a turn and got interested in playing more Pacific battles so I started looking into 28mm Marines and Japanese options. Then I saw a second edition was on the way and put the whole thing on hold. 2017 might be the time to get serious about my WW2 interests again and make this a real option. I was focused on 20mm or 1/72 plastics because they are cheap and a ton of stuff is available but so much of our terrain is 28mm and sometimes looks out of place for them. not so much hills/rocks/trees but the buildings are a real problem.

• I did, finally, get the two-player starter set for Dropzone Commander. It is a lot like epic, I really like the rules and the design overall, but I got bogged down while building the armies and it sits in a half-finished state, unplayed thus far. I really need to fix that.

• Frostgrave: It's a cool game, love the rules, but we just haven't found the time. Anything that uses the D&D mini's we already have and plays fairly fast has a chance here though.

• Flames of War: Bought an older rulebook cheap, read those rules, remembered why I lost interest the first time. Plus it's even more out of scale at 15mm. everything I have is built for either 6mm or 28mm. I'm not likely to buy or build a 3rd set of terrain for one game. 

• Kings of War: We repurposed my old Warhammer High Elves and Orcs for this game, wokred up some temp bases to stick them on and played 3 or 4 games of it. It's a lot of fun and plays quick without getting bogged down in umpteen special rules for each unit/leader/magic item. I like it a lot. I'm considering whether to rebase the old Chaos Warriors for it and I'm eyeballing the leftover Lizardmen I have so clearly it's found a home.

• X-Wing! Hey at least you don't have to paint the damn ships! We play this intermittently and I suspect it will resurface during the holiday break. It tends to spring up in conversations like this: Well I could go buy a new tank or a codex for 40K and spend the next few days reading it or building and painting up that unit -or- I could buy 4-5 new X-Wing ships for that same amount and be playing with them as soon as we get home. It's an easy decision sometimes.

Anyway I will probably pick one or two of those to bump up to "real, playable game" status alongside occasional Star Wars space skirmishes. If we do anything serious we will put some pictures here,