There’s been a bit of a boom in small-scale skirmish miniature games over the past few years and I’d been meaning to collect my thoughts on the ones I’ve interacted with. But first, I should probably give some background information. If you don’t care about any of this (and that’s completely understandable), I touch on Kill Team and Battletech in this preamble, but they both have their own entries right after this wall of text if you just want to skip to the relevant header below.

In 2024, I was going through a fair bit of burnout and needed a change of pace from my usual hobbies. A friend recommended I get into painting Warhammer miniatures and it was the best advice I could have received at that time. The process of learning how to assemble, prime, and paint my little Genestealer Cults Biophagus helped bring back levels of concentration and focus that I didn’t think I had anymore. It was also an excuse to do something that wasn’t staring at a screen after work.

And then I started trying to figure out the mechanics of actually playing Warhammer 40,000. Finding rules was a chore and I didn’t want to buy a big clunky book whose rules would be out of date in a month or two, just to get a code to put into an app that *would* be updated. The immediate hurdle I encountered was the fact that I’d need to paint a bunch of what would functionally be the same model and invest in other, larger projects I wasn’t even sure I was ready for. If I wanted to play Warhammer, I was looking at a significant investment of time and money before I even got to the table to see if I liked it (yes, I’m aware Warhammer stores exist, and the staff are happy to walk you through demo games – I wasn’t at that point yet and by the time I got in there, I’d already dismissed the idea).

If you’re familiar with Warhammer, you probably know where I’m going – I eventually encountered Kill Team, a small-scale skirmish game set in the 40K universe. If regular Warhammer 40K is like a large-scale strategy game with hundreds of units on the board, Kill Team is much closer to a tactics game: each model is a specific operative with special abilities and a miniature with a more distinct look than their brethren (meaning greater variety when painting). Kill Team still had some of the same problems as what folks occasionally refer to as “bighammer” (or full-size army vs. army Warhammer games): official rules were hard to come by, the pace of balance updates meant that learning and then internalizing faction rules was like hopping on an already-moving train. Also, some kill teams required greater financial investment than others. But it was way more manageable and if I focused on single-box kill teams, I could paint a pretty wide variety of factions without feeling like I was never going to actually play the game. From this point, I started exploring other skirmish wargaming systems and found way more than I ever expected to encounter. This post is my attempt to keep some notes about what I’ve encountered, what I hope to dig into at some point, and might also serve as the organizational basis for longer form reviews or other intrusive thoughts I might wind up having.

A side note: you don’t need to play a damn thing with these miniature-focused games. The hobby side can be tremendous fun on its own and I understand the folks who are not interested in playing any games with their miniatures. I split the difference between hardcore players and hobbyists: I like rolling dice, but I’ll probably never have the free time or consistent schedule to be able to hang out a local game store every week or every other week. I’m looking at once a month if I’m lucky.

General Assessments

None of this is intended to be objective measurements by any means. I’ll probably need to refine this as I work through each one. I do want to keep the following considerations in mind:

Ease of Entry

Ease of entry can be a few things, but generally: how easy is it to get into the game? This can be a few things: are there readily available starter boxes? Are the rules relatively easy to digest? On a more anecdotal level: can I find anyone locally who would agree to a pickup game with some notice?

Cost of Entry

Somewhat related to ease of entry, but I want to break this out into its own section. Even if there are starter sets that one can purchase, not all starter boxes are created equal. The gold standard for me of a moderate cost of entry is the A Game of Armored Combat box for Battletech. For (significantly!) less than the cost of a AAA video game, you can get two lances of miniatures, some cardboard standees, quick start rules, hex maps, and a handful of great scenarios. I should specify that I’m based in North America, as I know Battletech prices are much higher in Europe, for example. Another great example of a low cost to entry setting would be one of the Forbidden Psalms games or something like Turnip28, where you can download the rules for around $20 or free and miniatures can be as simple as handmade papercraft/cardboard standees or as complex as deeply involved kitbashed miniatures/sculptures.

Rate of Change

This category is almost exclusively here because keeping up with Warhammer changes can be a hobby unto itself. I’m not inherently against this – regular balance changes and updates can keep things feeling fresh. However, I recognize that a lot of people don’t have the time to play tabletop games more than once or twice a month. A high frequency of rules changes can get frustrating at the best of times, even for the faithful. For more casual players, they might opt to look for a game they can play once or twice a month without spending half the time getting back up to speed from the last balance pass.

Competitive or Narrative Focus

Not all tabletop games need to be perfectly balanced competitive sports. That might be what you’re looking for, it might not. I’ll try my best to identify if there are narrative rules and also how much they seem to be used within the community from my very narrow perspective.

Solo/Automation Rules

This has been a growing trend in wargames and even minor implementations can help grow the playerbase tremendously by giving interested players an ability to play the game without having to build a scene from the ground up.

Miniature Agnostic/Proxying

This is another bit about the hobby and cost of things. How stringent is the community about the models? As 3d printers get better, cheaper, and more user-friendly, are you going to get turned away from a tournament with a 3D printed army? Are your models expected to be a 1:1 mirror with their loadout? Can you reasonably proxy something for another unit? I also try to emphasize when a ruleset was built from the ground up to be miniature agnostic (i.e., you’re free to kitbash, sculpt, proxy, or otherwise build your army as you see fit – there are no “official” miniatures you need to purchase).

Lore

This is clearly the most subjective category: how good is that lore, baby? How deep does this go? How accessible is it? How often is it updated? Without lore, we’re just doing math.

Crunch/Rules Light

Crunchy rules can mean a lot of different things to different people, even within a setting. The dichotomy I typically have in mind for something like this is Battletech. Classic Battletech is the living avatar of Ameritrash wargaming design from the late 70s/early 80s and you can feel every mile of road between then and now. It’s super cinematic, very sim-heavy, and it takes forever to play even a small scale scenario unless your opponent rolls hot and half your lance goes down to golden BB headshots on turn 1. I love Classic Battletech, it sucks ass if you only have two hours of consecutive free time to get a game in. Battletech: Alpha Strike is often derided as too abstracted and too “light” by people who also ignore like half of the rules that exist to add the crunch back into the game in small, manageable chunks. Meanwhile, the Forbidden Psalm games are all very quick playing, quick to resolve basic actions, but also pretty flavourful. Rolling a new warband can be done in minutes and you’ll probably lose most of them just as fast.

As always, I reserve the right to rework these categories and rubrics on a whim.

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team

Difficulty for New Players: Moderate
Cost of Entry: Moderate to high.
Rate of Change: Extremely high
Competitive or Narrative focus: Primarily competitive, but robust narrative rules
Solo/Automation Rules: Yes
Miniature Agnostic/Proxying: Depends on community. Generally WYSIWYG focused.
Lore: You already know the answer to this.
Crunch: Moderate.

As I mentioned above, if regular Warhammer is akin to a battle in one of the Total War games, then Kill Team is XCOM with a slightly higher unit count. Each miniature is an elite operative with their own abilities, equipment and discrete set of actions on a turn-by-turn basis. There’s a lot of sneaking around and positioning to complete various objectives (or set your opponent up for a devastating alpha strike). The price of entry can be as cheap as a single box of miniatures (but several teams are probably more competitive with a spare box to build all of the options available).

The Kill Team I was interested in playing in 2024 is already very different, and some of the complaints I had about that edition aren’t relevant anymore. Late last year, a new iteration of Kill Team was released. The rules are (finally) officially available for free from GW (in an app you need to sign into as opposed to something useful like a fucking PDF). There’s a new starter box (featuring Plague Marines and Space Marines, specifically from the Space Marine Heroes blind box line, if I understand correctly). Existing teams received updated rules.

The rules are approachable but certainly can be overwhelming if you’ve never played anything like this. Some teams can also be mechanically dense and difficult to play well until you’ve internalized all their capabilities and interactions. Games Workshop has a huge advantage in this space because they an afford to run shops where staff are happy to walk you through a demo game. Depending on your community, you can generally also find a decent number of Warhammer players. I struggled with finding any Warhammer players that wanted to play Kill Team in 2024, but that number seems to be growing (again, this is super anecdotal – some cities have thriving Kill Team scenes already – I just don’t seem to live near any of them). There’s also been a bit of a boom of YouTube channels producing battle reports for Kill Team that are probably doing a lot of heavy lifting to attract new players (I cannot recommend Mountainside Tabletop highly enough).

The pace of the balance changes can be exhilarating, but it’s hard to keep up with unless this is your *only* game. And because GW is really focused on the competitive scene and has limited production capacity, there’s a lot of precarity of investment. One of the major updates to Kill Team in 2024 was designating which teams will receive ongoing balance support. Those given “Classified” status will remain in the bubble of balance changes and will be acceptable at official GW tournaments. Those outside of Classified status are still playable, may even receive occasional balance changes, but are broadly outside of the scope of the folks working on Kill Team at GW. As of writing, every Kill Team released under the umbrella of Kill Team 2021 has “Classified” status, but as they move into year 2 (presumably some time this fall), 14 teams will lose that status. In fairness, that leaves 19+ teams in Classified for Year 2 and possibly Year 3. It would just suck to be a new player that picks up the Blooded Kill Team box in August 2025 with the intent of playing competitively, only to find that they may not even be able to play in an official tournament by the time they’ve painted their models.

As far as lore goes, you probably know what you’re in for – a grimdark setting where everyone is bad except when the Space Marines are good for Business Reasons. There are some talented writers in the GW stable and I’ve enjoyed reading some of the novels way more than I anticipated. Everyone will say this, but Dan Abnett’s stuff is genuinely worth reading (and I went in super sceptical about his writing before reading the first Gaunt’s Ghosts omnibus). As far as getting lore updates on a faction-by-faction basis, that’s probably found in the codexes that get released periodically (usually alongside rules updates). Someone at GW got Very Angry at the very idea of PDFs at some point, so it’s an absolute misery to get at that stuff without just buying a $60 book that’s going to take up space on a shelf and be out of date from a rules perspective before you even buy it. From what I can tell, the actual metaplot for the stakes of the universe writ large tends to proceed very slowly and isn’t really rolled out in a comprehensive fashion. However, most new major Kill Team boxes will have a specific planet/kill zone and lore (typically stitching together why one faction might want to fight another faction). Those are pretty thin but relatively well told and fun to read.

I still carry love in my heart for Kill Team. I have about four or five of them in various states of being painted. It’s where I started, and it led to me meeting some very cool people. I also have not actually sat down and played with other humans for a host of reasons (mostly because it wasn’t until last November that a league started up anywhere near me and I was busy doing sexy and cool Battletech stuff). I think the main thing that keeps me at arm’s length is that all Games Workshop games feel like live service video games. They are very specifically tuned to occupy a nontrivial amount of your brain, wallet, and clock. If you’re all-in on GW, I think it’s absolutely worth the time and investment. For us dabblers and dilettantes, the baked-in FOMO will crush you until you fall in line or run screaming for anything else.

Battletech

Difficulty for New Players: Moderate or High (Classic), Low (Alpha Strike)
Cost of Entry: Low to Moderate
Rate of Change: Extremely low
Competitive or Narrative focus: Balanced
Solo/Automation Rules: Battletech: Aces coming in 2025 (hopefully) – will support PvE for Alpha Strike. May include conversion rules for Classic.
Miniature Agnostic/Proxying: Very agnostic. Rules explicitly state that official miniatures are not required to play. That said, I guess if you’re playing some kind of official Catalyst Game Labs event, you’ll probably want minis.
Lore: Plentiful, flavourful, but depending on your preferences, absolutely maddening.
Crunch: High (Classic), Moderate (Alpha Strike).

I’ve written about how I fell back into Battletech already, you can read that in my AAR for an event from last August, so I’m going to keep this high level.

The A Game of Armoured Combat box is probably hands down the best value for a starter box in any tabletop context I can think of. You have enough to run two lances worth of mechs, a bunch of scenarios, and enough rules for Classic Battletech to play for hours. It’s generally cheaper than a single Kill Team. It also comes with a few double-sided map sheets, obviating the immediate problem all tabletop wargames face: finding, painting, and then storing terrain. The obstacles and hills are all indicated on the hex maps. I walked through a game by myself at the dining room table (handling both sides of a scenario) one afternoon after I got the box and I was hooked. The Alpha Strike starter box is also a screaming deal and has 3D cardboard terrain for a hexless experience closer to what you might find in the other wargames found here.

Is Battletech explicitly a skirmish game? Not really. Classic Battletech is an old-school wargame with a low unit count. This means it can take a *long* time to play. The rules have been mostly unchanged since the 80s, so a proper lance-on-lance deathmatch in Classic Battletech can probably last 3-5 hours depending on how many tables the players have memorized. There are plenty of ways to streamline things, though. Adding objectives and turn count limits tends to be the easiest way to cut that playing time down. The low frequency of rules changes and long history means there are *tons* of flavourful optional rules to incorporate or remove as you see fit to customize your experience. This can be daunting for new players (and it also means that every group tends to play things a little differently) but the in-person groups I’ve met have all been super welcoming and accommodating to new players.

Another option to expedite things is to play Alpha Strike. Alpha Strike is based on the old BattleForce rules FASA released in the 80s (and updated in the 90s). One of the things I’ve been writing on the side is a deep dive into the older rules and comparing them against what’s in the current system. Intended to accommodate larger scale engagements, Alpha Strike also streamlines a lot of finnicky things in Classic Battletech to a more manageable level. This also means the game system abstracts away some of the crunchier bits of an individual mech’s design to allow for faster play. As with Classic Battletech, there are a lot of ways to adjust the game experience and to your liking. Want to bring some of that crunchiness back into the game? Special pilot abilities, formation abilities, optional rules for special abilities, variable damage rolls – those are all options. As I’ve written before, I think Alpha Strike is a beautiful system and don’t mind using it to play small scale engagements that can be wrapped up inside of an hour or so. There’s probably a higher degree of rules updates to be found here than elsewhere in the setting, but the Alpha Strike rules haven’t really changed in any meaningful way outside of rules clarifications since 2022.

If Warhammer 40,000 is slow lore/fast rules, Battletech in its current iteration feels like the inverse. This feels like an unhinged thing to say – a lot of Battletech groups I know are ride-or-die for the Succession Wars era and may absolutely refuse to even play Clan Invasion games. This means they haven’t cared about anything related to the overarching story in the setting since the mid-80s. That said, Catalyst seems to have been slowly increasing the tempo of sourcebooks for the IlClan era (as well as developing the stories around the edges with novels and short stories in Shrapnel, their official magazine). This is probably the first time there has been a steady (and confident) hand on the wheel for the setting since the late 90s. The new Mecenaries box and the Hot Spots Hinterlands book also add randomly generated mercenary contracts and rules for running your own company – that shit rocks hard. Assuming Catalyst can weather the current business-destroying tariffs, the future looks really bright.

The history of the game also means engaging with Battletech feels like mining a particularly rich vein of game mechanics, freakshit mech variants, and weird little moments in an alternate history that seems to careen wildly from Saturday morning cartoon to gritty military sci-fi. And I guess that’s really the only major complaint I have, aside from the online community being overrun with angry old dudes still yelling at clouds: while Warhammer has a very specific and well-established tone, Battletech novels never seem to quite fully engage with the weight of the setting and its history (this can make reading the novels a bit annoying, depending on who’s writing them and what the perspective is).

Conquest: First Blood

Difficulty for New Players: Medium – mostly related to finding other players to play with. Rules and scenarios are free to download.
Cost of Entry: Moderate – mostly due to finding a shop that carries a starter box. Warband boxes are comparable in price to Kill Team starter boxes, but you’re probably ordering these online.
Rate of Change: Moderate
Competitive or Narrative focus: Competitive, from what I can tell.
Solo/Automation Rules: No
Miniature Agnostic/Proxying: Community dependent, I assume.
Lore: Unique cosmology, fun faction lore.
Crunch: Tough to really tell, but probably Medium.

When I first started exploring different wargames, I spent a lot of time on Goonhammer, the tabletop-focused site run by some folks from the Something Awful forums. As I was trying to learn how to paint glow effects, I came across this guide for OSL for the Old Dominion faction in Conquest. I found myself captivated by the art design for the different miniatures, and the lore felt super well-realized. Around this time, a game store I’d ordered some stuff from before was running into problems with re-opening after they’d moved, so had a significant discount on a bunch of stuff. I picked up a dual kit of Old Dominion Kheres/Moroi for super cheap, mostly to support the shop. I haven’t had a chance to assemble or paint anything from it yet.

There’s a lot to like about Conquest. Rules are free to download (but the PDF doesn’t have bookmarks), the kits seem to be decent quality and not super expensive (it’s annoying that some hero units tend to be resin prints, which is a slightly different beast to work with). There are rule updates every now and then, but it seems to be at a very measured pace. There’s a community for the game out there, but I really haven’t encountered anyone near me. As I dug into Conquest, I encountered a familiar sinking feeling. Whether it was reading TTRPG rules in high school or getting acquainted with Kill Team in a city without much of a scene, when that first blush of excitement and enthusiasm curdles into sadness as I realize the amount of work I’d need to put in just to play the game with others (and even then, I’d likely be running the campaign or event instead of playing it). Conquest looks neat, it just looks like nobody’s playing it near me and I don’t know if I have the energy to build that scene from the ground up.

Another cool thing: You have to dig a little on the Rules and FAQ page, but I appreciate that Campaigns and Scenarios are released for free on a very regular basis. I’d love for a PDF that collected the lore for the game together, but it’s all up in the Lore section of the Para Bellum site, so I’m mostly just griping because I want to put it on an eReader.

I almost didn’t include this game here as I haven’t really spent too much time with the rules for Conquest. I built a couple Old Dominion warbands and read up on tactics. That said, skimming the rules again for First Blood, it still carries what feels like the hallmarks of a larger scale strategy game shrunk down to a tactics game, and that’s worth considering. This probably occupies a mechanical space between a large-scale strategy game and a tactics game in that you’re worrying about morale rolls and other similar considerations while also working with individual minis that function as operatives. I also got the impression that there are fewer hero units and a greater reliance on rank and file chaff fighters, especially compared to the spec ops themes you find in Kill Team.

Forbidden Psalm

Difficulty for New Players: Low
Cost of Entry: Low
Rate of Change: Extremely low
Competitive or Narrative focus: Narrative
Solo/Automation Rules: Yes
Miniature Agnostic/Proxying: Gold standard in miniature agnostic wargaming.
Lore: Whatever you want it to be.
Crunch: Low.

Forbidden Psalm is a miniatures game inspired by and compatible with MORK BORG, a hyper stylized TTRPG setting I picked up the rulebook for back in 2020 but have been too burned out to put together a one-shot to play with friends. I happened across Forbidden Psalm when I was looking up whether anything new had come out for MORK BORG, and this happened to be as I was delving into all these different skirmish rulesets.

The thing you need to know about MORK BORG is that it’s a heavy metal fever dream spliced with the world-ending dread of a Dark Souls game. They released a playlist of doom metal to promote their Kickstarter. The rulebooks are unhinged works of art and are occasionally difficult to read. I love MORK BORG and related settings so much. Forbidden Psalm was created with the blessing of the MORK BORG authors. Everything is flavourful as possible, while resolving things is extremely straightforward.

It took me twenty minutes to roll up a Warband in Forbidden Psalm and the name/flaws system immediately gave every character a great deal of personality. Cora The Blind Idiot God is scared of monsters and has a revolting appearance, while Steve The Great Wyrm is allergic to metal (can’t wear armour) but can always leave combat. This system is so well designed because (like MORK BORG characters) your warband is there to live fast, die young, and leave a miserable corpse. You also have to contend with morale checks and they can produce some very funny results.

A thing I absolutely love about Forbidden Psalm is that scenarios come with solo play rules/adjustments baked into the explanation. All of this is very basic movement rules for monsters and how many you encounter, but I genuinely hope more tabletop games include rules for this. You can tell a good chunk of this ruleset was written while nobody felt safe going to a local game store and standing in close proximity with strangers and as someone who does very little hanging out in game stores through the winter for the same reasons, I really appreciate this option.

Also, this is roughly around the time I became aware of things like Inq28, 28 Mag, Turnip28, and eventually Trench Crusade. There’s just an absolute horde of sickos pumping out miniature wargaming rulesets right now and it fucking rules. Inq28 and 28 Mag definitely predate Forbidden Psalm, but this was a great inroad into that stuff.

After Forbidden Psalm came out, it feels like there was an explosion of games taking the bones of its core systems and laying new and flavourful flesh overtop. I’ve read through the rulebooks of these at least once and they all seem fun and flavourful takes on Forbidden Psalm’s very specific MORK BORG vibes. The biggest challenge is really having miniatures that properly reflect how flavourful the character creation is. That said, you can probably put together some decent papercraft standees instead of having to kitbash a whole squad if you don’t already have one. That said, I’m working on a short writeup about efficient warband design to cheaply put together models that might cut across a bunch of different miniatures-agnostic settings. If you’re familiar with this stuff, have read this far, and are just yelling at your screen “just buy some stuff from Perry Miniatures and go from there” – yeah, it’s basically that, but I’m probably going to go a little more in the weeds. In the meantime, please check out Gardens of Hecate’s excellent posts on Forbidden Psalm.

The Last War

The Last War is kind of like a weird World War 1 nightmare. I’m 90% sure I can just paint up the small Trench Crusade warband I have and use them in this. That said, this came first and I did actually make a warband (sorry, crew) in The Last War. Shouts out to Hiram Mud, a solid little trooper with trench foot and an immunity to fire. Ms. Brumowski is a covert operative whose fondness for carrot cake makes her a menace in the dark. Putnik the Cunning always has a plan and a turnip in their pocket.

Endless Horrors

This had a Kickstarter campaign sometime early in 2024 and I backed it mostly on a whim. Instead of a group of misbegotten mercenaries, you’re a cult that has decided it’s time to summon Your Own Personal Cthulhu and end the world. I appreciate that it’s interoperable with things like The Last War and even has a conversion table at the start.

I’ve only just rolled a cult, but this might be the first one I solo play through. We serve The Resonant Misfortune That Wants to Haunt the Dreams of the Living. Dawn, our leader, may be a vampire, may be a werewolf, and, blessed as they are by the Resonant Misfortune, do not seem to bleed. Prelate Young suffers from non-euclidean dice and must roll two and take the lower roll for any skill check. If both dice ever show the same number at once, their mind warps. Prelate Dandridge eschews weapons for biting, but is strong of mind and can rend the ears with a mighty scream. Prelate Chambers has a hunted look about him, which may be why he’s so quick to disappear into darkness. And finally, Prelate Penmark will balk at Horrors and Avatars but if pressed, may show their true colours as a leader.

Cloth Goblins

This is largely a fork of the Forbidden Psalm intended for use with the Cloth Goblins models created by Statuesque Miniatures. They’re cute miniatures and very fun to paint. I’ve not rolled a warband for them because I have this weird habit of saving up little joyful experiences for times when I’m really feeling down.

Kill Sample Process

This came out relatively recently and interfaces with CY_BORG, the sci-fi version of MORK BORG. I haven’t really delved too deeply into this one, but I look forward to rolling a crew for this soon.

Silver Bayonet

I wasn’t entirely aware that the designer of Silver Bayonet was also the same designer who did Frostgrave. Makes a fair bit of sense, though. For now, I’ll mostly recommend Peachy’s excellent Silver Bayonet primer.

Trench Crusade

Working on this one.

Other Games

This is a list of games that I either haven’t read enough about to form an opinion or just haven’t dug into them yet. Inclusion here is just for completion purposes. For example, I’m not a huge Marvel or Star Wars fan, so I’m probably not going to go out and buy any of their stuff except maybe to get MODOK if I suddenly want to paint a petulant Big Face Man or if they release a mini for everybody’s favourite and totally well-known superhero, Terror Inc. I’ll probably read through the rules at some point, though.

Mek28
Necromunda
Frostgrave
Stargrave
Zeo Genesis
Infinity
Warhammer Underworlds
Star Wars: Shatterpoint
Marvel: Crisis Protocol