6mm Fantastic Battles

When I did my look back at abandoned projects to celebrate 50,000 views I mentioned a couple of pre-blog projects.  One of these was 6mm fantasy using Irregular Miniatures range of figures.  Bodvoc (or Merlin as he was then known) and I first tried writing our own rules based on, if I recall correctly, a set of SciFi rules from one of the wargaming magazines.  It used a combination of ordinary d6 and average dice*.  I recently found my notes, and I may type them up just for nostalgia's sake, though I doubt we'll be revisiting them for actually play.  While there was nothing wrong with them , we never quite sorted any form of points costings, so battles could be a bit unequal (there is an argument for unequal games being more 'realistic', as few generals would willingly engage in battle unless they felt they had an advantage, but for testing new rules, balanced games are important).

Anyway, the project died off over time, but we revisited the scale years later (2015) with our fantasy version of Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames Rules.  This was fun, but it came at a time when our gaming opportunities were limited by time and distance, so it eventually died off, to be replaced by another bright new shiny game, no doubt.

Now I'm in the process of thinning out my collection (I know, again. But this is a more comprehensive exercise involving looking through all my possessions, even books and music!) and either using or getting rid of stuff.  No keeping stuff on the off chance I might get around to it sometime in the future**.  So what to do with the 6mm fantasy?

I enjoy Fantastic Battles, and have quite a bit of 10mm stuff which is painted up for Middle Earth gaming.  However, there are certain aspects of the rules that don't have a place in our vision of Middle Earth, and I do like the idea of games that aren't set elsewhere, with armies and abilities that don't belong in Tolkien's world.  I'm not rebasing my 15mm Kings of War stuff, and I'm not planning on buying a load more minis just for this, but I've still got the old Irregular Fantasy minis in my garage, some of them are even painted!  Sounds ideal.

Bodvoc has already experimented with basing some of the Irregular Dark Elves for Fantastic Battles, so we have a standard base width of 25mm.  I happen to have quite a few of the Renedra 25mm plastic bases and they are ideal.  Now all I have to do is find the 6mm stuff, decide what to do first and get painting.  I should have quite a few dwarves, orcs and goblins from the previous projects, so that might give me a good few just to base up.  Alternatively I might decide that they are all so awful that I need to start again, so off to the pile of shame to start digging.

* A staple of pre GW wargames, average dice were numbered 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, giving a narrower spread and emphasising the middle results.  They tended to be used for regular troops as they were more predictable.  Irregular troops used a standard d6, with the possibility of extremes.

** I am, of course, aware of the irony here. If I hadn't kept the 6mm fantasy just on the off chance, I wouldn't be doing this project.