Aetherverse is a universal rules system that was a commercial product a couple of years ago. The author writes:
Aetherverse is a miniatures game I published a number of years ago. It was nominated for an Origins Award for Best New Miniatures Game when it came out, though I had to stop working on it due to financial difficulties at the time. I’m casually working on a second edition as time permits, though, with the intent of making it a free digital release with the option to buy a nicely-printed physical copy.
Key features of the first edition:
Highly flexible army design system allowing the use of pretty much any miniatures line in existence (though focused primarily on 25-30mm scale minis)
Keeping character in the player-designed armies as opposed to just creating a bunch of numbers (such as was the case in a number of other games with a similar system)
“Weighted Random” activation system that keeps both players involved at all times during the course of a turn rather than forcing one player to sit around watching the other move stuff around
d12 Death Blow pits two combatants against each other in a contest for supremacy. The opponents might be martial artists, wizards trading bolds of eldrich energies, mentalists in a psychic contest or a pair of intergalactic wrestlers vying for the Cosmic Championship.
Quick Intermediate Level Skirmish is a set of free wargames rules with a unique mechanism: variously colored pips on dice to represent a figure’s strengths and weaknesses.
Core Game Development Studios offers a set of free wargames rules called Timeline. From the author: Timeline Skirmish is the skirmish game covering all historical ages and into the far future. This game is meant to be fast and furious.
Between 1968 and 1970, wargaming pioneer Charles Grant wrote a serialized wargames guide in Meccano Magazine. The serial is now available as a free download. This serial eventually became his classic Battle: Practical Wargaming.
David Medlock offers The General Purpose Wargame, a set of semi-skirmish level wargames rules for simulating battles from the Stone Age to the Victorian.
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.
For pictures, visit the gallery.
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.
