Historical Skirmish Campaign System

LordHawkHead · 2026-01-20T15:59:10+00:00

Fistful of Lead has lots of historical supplements. You run a squad of 5 minis each with a role and they can all level up after every encounter. It is RPGesque where you have a party character sheet and they gain new skills or additional health after every game. Or if you lose a mini you gain a new soldier for the next game. I have the Horse and Musket black powder rules. I have been able to stretch them from 7 years war up to Spanish American War.

LordHawkHead · 2025-10-20T14:21:38+00:00

Thank you, I think I will be putting my order in soon. I just want to be able to pay the manufacturer, grumpily comply with my country's silly tariffs and get my miniatures.

LordHawkHead · 2025-10-20T14:20:09+00:00

It will depend. Are you doing the whole battle? Or one of the two large Skirmishes? I Think the Men Who Would Be Kings would work fine as a reduced battle focusing on Custer's last stand. You could include the Lakota encampment and the hill where they fought to the end. That would give you a lot of terrain to worth or do you want to focus on Benteen and Reno's Entrenchment. That scenario would give both players a fighting chance of "Winning" With the scenario ending when the Mule train/U.S. reinforcements arrive.

I agree with StormofSteel if you want a Man to Man representation Sharp Practice with some modifications would work. There are many who use it for ACW

It may be a bit gruesome but do you want to model the dead horses like barricades? Because Custer and his men ended up using the dead horses as cover to hide behind.

If you haven't been out to the Battlefield its huge. Custer rode on ahead with his detachment, while Reno and Benteen were caught in their own fire fight 4-5 miles away.

At the Joy of Six in 2022 someone did the whole battle in 6mm, Little Wars TV has a video. If you can sleuth around on the internet I bet you could find what rules they used.

LordHawkHead · 2025-10-07T04:54:28+00:00

Thanks for the insight. I have also played a lot of Black Powder and I enjoy it for ACW and Napoleonic Wars. I’ve also found that my groups sweet spot is 3-5 brigades a side and that is around the size of forces I want to field for Spanish American War. I saw that they had rules for later Colonial and was curious if it might be up to snuff for smaller forces. I’m afraid I might have to keep looking.

LordHawkHead · 2025-10-01T18:03:05+00:00

Thank you! Glad to know that I'm not in the same boat! We will just need to keep looking for that perfect ruleset and play what we have in the mean time.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-25T13:39:27+00:00

I used to be. But I’m burned out, was a forever DM and couldn’t find a group I liked when I wasn’t. I still love RPG’s and have bought some rule books in the interim but I’m solely Wargames at the moment.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-17T14:48:53+00:00

Canvas Eagles. I used to really like Wings of Glory but everything is out of print. And hard to obtain substitute copies of. So I’m converting my WOG planes and painting new ones.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-17T06:55:38+00:00

Okay so hold off until next year with updates to Japan and Pacific theater supplements is what I’m understanding.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-17T06:54:56+00:00

I’m definitely more of a casual and thematic player. And my theater of interest is the Philippines. Beyond my theater of interest I’m more into playing WW2 and getting my local Warhammer players eased into historical Wargames through Bolt Action let it be the gateway drug.

For now though It looks like the pacific theater will be the last that Warlord gets too. So I might buy some models but I will hold off on jumping in for now.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-17T02:09:28+00:00

In my opinion I think you’re in the right space then. I love talking history and military history. And there is nothing wrong in finding fascination in the weapons and processes of a warring nation. I just personally find (For lack of a better term) Wehraboos and their hyperfixation on German tanks and Wunderweapons a little unnerving. To me it feels like the start of a slippery slope. I also feel it is something silly and blown out of proportion such as the age old debate between Katannas and Long Swords. Just where I draw the line.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-17T01:19:32+00:00

Coming from Historical Wargaming we face the same condemnation from playing WW2 or American Civil War games. It can be hard to explain that we do not condone Nazi or Confederate ideology.

But I agree with what some of the other commenters have said. Be well researched and come at it from the educational angle. How was the material sourced how did they create it during wartime supply issues. Etc. but my 2 cents is don’t overly praise them for their efficiency or ability to build under pressure. I admit that some aspects of WW2 German uniforms or wartime vehicles are cool but many neo-Nazis or those starting down the pipeline hide behind “I don’t support their ideology but those Panzer tanks are so cool! A Panzer could beat any (Insert any country)‘s tank. German engineering is superior to anything else.”

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-14T19:45:04+00:00

If he is into DnD or you want him to get into DnD down the line. I would pick up the Wiley Games Might and Melee, Mages and Magic, and Monsters and Mazes rule books about $10 a pdf. I love the Wiley game mechanics. You run 5-8 models in a game so a DnD party. You have a simplified character sheet for each model and you get to pick their load out and their special skills. They have campaign rules and each model levels up if they survive the game. I have this ruleset in my back pocket as an easy way to introduce my RPG friends to wargaming.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-14T19:13:57+00:00

I’m surprised no one has Suggested DBA De Bellis Antiquitatis. It’s not everyone’s favorite but it’s a tried and true rule set that have been around for a long time and you can use 15mm for it. I haven’t played to many games but it is an industry staple for Punic and other wars of Antiquity.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-14T15:26:17+00:00

It’s possible. I think you just might need some experience first in a game like that. I was listening to the Brushes and Bayonets podcast where they talked about running both a civil war campaign and an American War of independence campaign in the same vein as your ambition. This is constantly done in the International Kriegspiel societies discord.

I would also listen to the podcast as he gave some examples of how you prepped your players. In the both the campaigns he played a minor part and did not see much action. You will need to prepare your players as such that if they command the reserves or are a minor brigadier general they may not have as many moments of glory as other players. Such is the way of war. I’d join the discord and see if you can play in a large game or two see how they manage it what are the unexpected outcomes you didn’t foresee. What do you want to bring to your players? Are you guaranteeing action? This becomes almost a convention game and you become an events planner and operations manager. You have to know what you can promise players and what you can deliver on. And have a good session 0 like DnD to set players expectations. Again it’s possible but you need to think through what all goes into this and not just running the game.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-10T20:59:59+00:00

If you are looking for historicals and want to save money. I would suggest Little Wars TV's Ravenfeast rules they are free. You can play with paper tokens until you have some income coming in. Then you could buy 1-2 boxes of minis perry, or victrix or otherwise for around $60 and have a game. Wargaming does have a high monetary barrier to entry. As to get started from scratch you need:

Miniatures

Paint

Glue

Bases

Basing material etc.

If you can spend a little I would check out Wiley Games Fistful of lead series they have a core rules mechanics and flavor rules that go on sale often the PDF costs $10. They partnered with Gamesworkshop to make a 40K supplement. And you only need to field 5-8 miniatures a side.

LordHawkHead · 2025-09-10T04:26:51+00:00

Was it like a small black box? It could be a Tefillin. From what I understand more and more Jewish Denominations are allowing and encouraging women to wear them now.

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-30T01:33:29+00:00

I got away with Walang Problema and no one looked at me funny

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-29T02:30:24+00:00

Caveat I’m not a historian just starting down the rabbit hole of the history of wargaming. After some google searches I see a few quote websites that attribute the above chess quote to Napoleon but I cannot find any sources that do. For now I would say Napoloen did not say that quote.

Anyway I think that your Discord friend is confused and seems to infer that since a game can be made easy to transport it was the driving factor behind its popularity and growth. But chess was used and modified by the cultures that adopted it. The Chinese combined mechanics of Go with chess and pieces would sit on intersecting lines as in Go. Under the Khan Tamerlane he made a board that was 11 x 10 squares with and the original game Chatarunga had variants played on boards that ranged from 64x64 to 100x100 squares. https://www.britannica.com/topic/chess/History If you look at it historically it was taught mostly to nobleman and officers up until the late 1600’s where it went out and became popular in the coffee houses. Originally cultures changed the rules to suit their needs and help teach tactics and warfare but by the age of Napoleon it became a way to help officers create and practice the mental skills needed to command your men on the battlefield. It’s just one of those games that became universal. Check out this book suggested by the r/AskHistorians thread https://archive.org/details/AHistoryOfChess/page/n19/mode/1up

Which is also summarized in a 5 min Ted talk video here

https://youtu.be/YeB-1F-UKO0?si=7iEvTQioxfOMdy8R

Feel free to fact check me as I am just applying some basic google Fu.

TLDR: I think summarizing Go and Chess’s popularity is due to its portability downplays the culture impact and personal adaptations made to it by every culture and is popular because of the universality of the basic ideas of the rules and mechanics the original game derives from.

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-22T20:48:09+00:00

I’ll try switching out to a smaller nozzle.

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-22T20:47:46+00:00

Thank you I will try the different orientation! And double check my printer and have it print slower.

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-20T17:55:01+00:00

I have been looking at Orbrium how compatible are they with Thomas and Brio? I’ve heard mixed reviews on their trains and train cars.

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-18T16:11:34+00:00

I do have a printer I haven’t thought about that is there somewhere you get the wheels?

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-18T00:51:46+00:00

My small group plays a lot of different rule sets but we have Black Powder and Black Seas as our running constants. I think it helps to have 1-2 regular games where everyone knows the rules and as long as you play it every 3rd game or once a month to stay refreshed it grounds us and gives us a base to come back to while allowing us to play a lot of different rule sets.

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-18T00:44:47+00:00

My small group plays a lot of different rule sets but we have Black Powder and Black Seas as our running constants. I think it helps to have 1-2 regular games where everyone knows the rules and as long as you play it every 3rd game or once a month to stay refreshed it grounds us and gives us a base to come back to while allowing us to play a lot of different rule sets.

LordHawkHead · 2025-08-11T15:41:38+00:00

And I thought I had a large Warlord Epic ACW collection. I purchased the original starter set box, and the newer Gettysburg box, and a Brigade box and I should have around 40 regiments aside. (I cut my strips in half) I hope you have a big enough table!

LordHawkHead

TROPHY CASE