Players take the roles of Gods, secretly influencing six Heroes as they strive to complete the mythical Marathon race. You must be subtle as you influence your Heroes: once a God’s favorite Heroes are known the other Gods will work to thwart them! At the end of the race, the God whose favorites have moved the furthest wins the game!
The Lost Worlds game books are a classic game where two players face off against each other using illustrated booklets that cross index the results of their combat moves. These rules are for using miniatures with the Lost Worlds books.
Dungeoneer is a set of free wargames rules for an evening of dungeon bashing fun. The author writes:
These are a set of very simple dungeon-bashing rules for youngsters and the young at heart. This is classic kick-in-the-door, kill the monsters and steal their treasure stuff. One player is the Overfiend. He creates the layout of his dungeon, populates it with monsters and treasure and then runs the game. The other players, best between three and five, must guide their Dungeoneers through the dungeon hopefully to emerge victorious, alive and laden down with treasure at the end. Obviously it would be easy for the Overfiend to kill the Dungeoneers very quickly, just by placing a dragon behind every door. This is not his objective however. His job is to provide a fun evening that challenges the Dungeoneers, but may yet kill the occasional foolish or unlucky one.
Dungeoneer is about having a good laugh with your friends. If you play often then each player who wants to can have a turn as the Overfiend. This keeps things fresh and allows the regular Overfiend the chance to kick some monster ass.
This is a fantasy/medieval skirmish combat system that is intended to work for narrative style games where there are heroes fighting anything from rank and file minions to Cave Trolls and also where the dramatic action follows some characters more than others. Time is not spread evenly across the tabletop. If Aragorn is running to try to rescue the Hobbits, the heroic character will keep trying to activate Aragorn while the villainous player will keep trying to activate the Orcs fighting Boromir. As part of this, when groups of characters are activated, that is when they get attacked. You cannot be damaged, for example, until the story is talking about you so by activating a group of characters, the player chooses to risk their safety.
You can download a free playtest version of Battle Axe at RPG Now. The author writes:
Battle Axe is a simple-to-play tabletop system for skirmish-level battles. Using cards instead of dice, you will find the game to be less luck-based and much more tactical in nature. The rules and cards provide here are meant solely for play testing.
Miniature Wargaming is part of the "adventure games" hobby, which includes r ole p laying and board games. Wargamers recreate battles on the tabletop with toy soldiers, like a more complicated game of chess. Models range in height from 6mm to 28mm tall, with 15mm and 25mm being the most popular. There also is a growing interest in toy soldiers and military models, such as the 1/32 and 1/35 scale plastic soldiers from Conte, and Marx.
The most popular miniature wargames are fantasy and science fiction based, such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine and The Lord of the Rings. World War II games such as Flames of War and Axis and Allies are new favorites. Other favorite historical periods include Napoleonics, the American Civil War, and ancients, such as Romans or Greeks. Other gamers enjoy miniature naval wargames, recreating battles like Trafalgar, Jutland and the Coral Sea.
Hobbyists research historical periods and paint their tiny soldiers in accurate uniforms. Others develop "historically realistic" rules sets or build scale battlefield terrain using model railroad techniques.
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Some of the bigger hobby companies are Games Workshop, which produces Warhammer, Wargames Foundry and Old Glory Miniatures. Wizards of the Coast produces several lines of pre-painted miniatures games, such as the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons miniatures games, and a historical game with pre-painted miniatures: The new Axis and Allies game. Wizkids produces a fantasy collectable miniatures game, such as the Mage Knight and Heroclick fantasy games, the science fiction games MechWarrior and Rocketmen, as well as the quasi-historical Pirates of the Spanish Main.
