Chicago Skirmish Wargames

On April 8th five of us met for a pair of games of Age of Fantasy.

After a few meetings playing Grimdark Future, Age of Fantasy was an easy transition as the rulesets are essentially identical. The points calculations appear to be the same, but it's worth noting that with most units not having ranged attacks, an Age of Fantasy army will generally be notably larger than an equivalent-points Grimdark future game. What follows is just a few pics from each game.

Table 1 Chaos vs Undead

On the first table, Michael's Chaos Warriors pledged to the deadly Samira Faced off against James' Vampiric Undead in the midst of what should have otherwise been a peaceful village.

Chaos gave their brutal best, but were defeated by the undead hordes who presumably then set about resurrecting the bodies of their defeated foes.

Table 2: Empire Vs Chaos

On the other table, my Empire Expeditionary (Runewars Daquan miniatures) faced off against the Chaos Hordes (GW, Battlemasters, Ral Partha, etc) of Tim and Charlie battling over ancient relics at the edge of the desert wastes.

Though outnumbered (2400 vs 3000 points) the Empire Expeditionary managed to fight the hordes to a draw. Note that despite the many trays used for ease of movement, this was standard Age of Fantasy, not the rank-and-flank "Age of Fantasy: Regiments" variation.

Final Thoughts.

Some time ago I was skeptical that Age of Fantasy (with almost nothing setting it apart mechanically from Grimdark) would produce a satisfactory fantasy gaming experience. However, after two games I'm won over. It's a fast and fun game that has a distinctly skirmishing (not in the small unit sense of the word) feel and I like that it allows for much more terrain than the regimented maneuvering of rank-and-flank games like Kings of War. As with all my experiences with One Page Rules, it's a simple ruleset that provides the fast-playing, comic-book, cinematic feel that I prefer in my Fantasy and Sci-Fantasy wargaming.

All in all a solid evening of gaming and everyone had a good time. We were able to finish  relatively large 2 and 3 player games in less than 3 hours and with minimal rules checking. After alot of Grimdark Future games (in the 40k and Star Wars settings) and a few Age of Fantasy games it seems most CSW players are fairly happy with One Page Rules. There are a few players who are interested in revisiting some games like Dragon Rampant and other games that have more interesting activation and morale/command systems. I'm sure we'll do so at some point and we do have other preferred rulesets for small-skirmish gaming but it's very nice to have OPR rules on-deck for fun big-battle gaming at any time.

Happy Gaming,

Karl