Almost a month has passed since I last ventured into this blog. Work and family sometimes demand time that has to be taken from any pastimes. I am sat at home now with a virus that has stopped me working and makes my family want to avoid me! So… I finally have time to update the blog.
We played our first game of Horizon Wars. Damn the set missions are hard to achieve. So hard in fact that I don’t think either of us has managed to win as the attacker in any game so far.
We are also now aware that the game calls for a specific selection of miniatures for your army to be effective as a force. Either the force should be selected after the mission is decided, or the players are likely to only take tanks and drop troops, as movement is key to most of the missions.
My force is heavy on infantry, as that was the way I wanted the miniatures to be depicted. These forces, lots of light infantry, haven’t been effective so far in games we have played. Units can be very hard to destroy, so a tank may take shots on it for 4-5 turns before it is destroyed. This is usually due to the opponent placing all the damage it takes on anything but their armour stat. I have failed to kill units when shooting with all my effective units on some occasions.
Don’t get me wrong I like this game. I just find it very hard to win the missions. We are going to try the Adventure style games next to see if they appear more balanced. The fact they have options for both sides to have differing context and missions appeals to me but we will see if they remain very hard to achieve.
Another thing about Horizon Wars that has come up in our discussions is the fact that it is an odd scale for a game which uses such a small force to represent its armies. We have compared this to a number of other popular 6mm games that we know and almost all I can name are using 6mm to represent huge armies on the table. The benefit of such a small scale is in its ability to field hordes of tanks and troops and gain the feeling of massed battles. I guess the author alone knows why this scale was his first choice.
All that musing aside I am happily adding to my scenery collection for this scale again. China has again been my country of choice for models and items in this scale. My cars are an older purchase but these busses are the newest addition to the collection.
If nothing else we are in the mood for more 6mm fun and who knows where that may lead us…
An Archive For The Steinberg Shed Space Blog 
If you find the set-piece battles hard to win as the attacker, I think you might find the adventures even more geared towards the high-manoeuvrability elements (I got some aspects of the design of the Adventures wrong, in retrospect – not enough play-testing, I fear!). The set-piece battles, though, were pretty thoroughly tested with a range of different elements and army choices, but what does affect the ease of victory for the attacker in some scenarios is the size of table. After all, a 12″ move that takes you to the centre of a 2’x2′ barely gets you out of the deployment zone on a 4’x6′.
I did write more “balanced” scenarios, but I hate them because they have no proper narrative logic. You might enjoy the new set-piece battle in the BioWar expansion, just published on my website, though. http://precinctomega.co.uk
Oh, and my logic for the scale? A combination of economics and experience. I was infuriated with the crowded battlefields of games like 40k (and even Epic) that seemed to assume that warfare was like a flash-mob with guns. My experience was that real battles are far more widely distributed and that the average 4’x4′ table should accommodate, at most, a company+ sort of force. Also, I hated the trend of miniatures wargames towards more and more miniatures that were more and more expensive. 6mm is a super-economical scale with some wonderful minis (and so are the other “smaller scale” ranges between 2mm and 10mm). I wanted people to feel like they could play a challenging, interesting miniatures game with a powerful “hard SF, near future” feel without feeling like they’d been punched in the wallet.
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Hi Robey
Nice to get an opinion directly from the source. First off I like the game (even though I may sound like I am moaning). We played a 9 point game on the 2×4 board and a few 12 point games on a 4×4 board as suggested. Fast units make it to a respectable range but foot troops are still left nearer the players own edge for a long while.
We have played again with this in mind but still didn’t get enough firepower in place at that range before it was all over. I think we may go for 3×3 next time, until we are more practiced with the games demands.
Often I feel it’s more down to playing ‘my style’ of game, rather than adjusting my tactics to how the game needs to be played, that I get wrong. Does that make sense?
On scale it’s nice to hear your views. Economics is often a factor and it’s something I agree with you on. My fondest game memories are mostly all from skirmish or small figure count games. A guess it is just that a 4×4 table looks sparse with only 8-10 bases or figures on it.
I have noticed a trend towards smaller games of late and the largest game we play now is still only made up of a few 5 man units and a few vehicles. I keep an eye on the Facebook page and your site so will take a look at your new ideas. Cheers. S.
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As a player of 6mm sci-fi skirmish with individually based infantry, I have no problems with this.
Times are a changing.
Or as president Starkey said; things are getting better, things are getting better everyday.
I will chime in with thoughts when my copy arrives.
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Individually based 6mm figures! Definitely pocket sized play. How many figures do you use in those games and what table size do you use?
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