USD ($)
EUR (€)
The world of miniatures can be a daunting place: all those models, assembly, painting, background research, in-depth rule sets and can be fairly expensive, too. So where should you start if this is your first foray into tabletop warfare or even if you are an old hand but fancy a new area or a new era? Well this guide can help you. It features mu own experiences with 5 of the best starter sets on: Land, Sea and in Space from the 1700’s all the way up to 30,000 AD.
Black Seas - Master & Commander
So let’s dip our toes in the water with a cracking little box of tricks from Warlord games: Black Seas – Master and Commander. It’s naval warfare in the age of sail from mid 1700’s to mid 1800’s. It is designed to complement Warlord’s Black Powder rules for land warfare in the same period. This covers the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic wars plus a lot of smaller actions and pirate raids.
This is a very full box at a very good price. You get 9 fully detailed 1/700th scale model ships, 6 Brigs and 3 larger Frigates, plus their corresponding ship cards, wake markers and rules and dice to play the game. The 11 dice including 8D10 and a D3 in different colours are worth a lot on their own. And you get a nearly 4ft by 3ft (sorry no metric measures in that age!) double-sided paper playmat to play it on. One side shows bright tropical waters and the other darker Atlantic seas. You also get 3 boards of terrain pieces to add: islands, harbours, forts etc.
You’ll get a lot of pleasure building up the small but incredibly detailed ships and they will reward a decent paint job. The sails and ratlines are pre-printed and nice but for me the intricacies of the tiny cotton rigging was a step too far.
The game plays fast and furious and can be quite brutal at close quarters with ships on fire or exploding. It’s all about your seamanship as you try to manoeuvre and literally get the wind in your sails. 13 scenarios come with the set and are detailed in the lavish rule book that is a great read in itself as it sets out the history of the period and the nations involved.
Well worth a try if you fancy something a bit different.
Lord of the Rings – Journeys in Middle Earth
Talking of different let’s leave historical and enter into the world of fantasy with (the snappily titled) The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth. Now I’m sure all of you are aware of J.R.R.Tolkien’s incredibly detailed domains of his Middle Earth inhabited by a huge cast of characters and races that have been the staple tropes of Fantasy Fiction, D&D and Games Workshop: Dragons, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Wizards and, of course, Hobbits. All of these brought to life on screen in Peter Jackson’s epic films.
Given that, you either love it all and everything that goes with it or you think it’s a load of old tosh. If you’re in the latter camp please skip on to the next section!
For The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth absolutely drips flavour and Tolkienesque loveliness which makes, for fans of the genre, a good game, literally, fabulous. One other thing you need to know is that does require a free-to-download App to run it. Now, don’t throw up your hands in horror, I wasn’t keen but I was won over. This is a co-operative game for 1-5 players who embark as a fellowship on a journey to complete a goal and the App will take the rôle of Dungeon Master providing the story, the terrain tiles to place and the foes to fight.
There are 6 characters you can play including: Frodo, armed with Sting; Gimli; Legolas and Aragorn. Each will have their own ablities and special powers. As the journey progresses these skills and their equipment can get enhanced. Whilst these are reflected on the cards you have the App will also keep track of all the bookkeeping and also play evocative music as you journey on.
This is not a cheap box ( and there are many more additions and extras you can buy!) but you get 31 quality figures and 24 terrain tiles plus hundreds of cards all excellently produced and beautifully illustrated. The storylines, too, are good, original fiction in the LOTR style.
I enjoyed playing solo against the App with a party of 4 : Frodo, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli so I could utilise their different skillsets. It’s a tough task, though, as the App scales up the foes in relation to party size and you have to keep moving.
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door” - Bilbo Baggins
Flames of War – Hit the Beach
Moving forward in time and back into the world of historical fact rather than fantasy we have Flames of War: Hit The Beach. If you feel you’d have an interest in World War II wargaming this is an excellent place to start. Set in Flames of War’s world of 1:100 scale miniatures, giving a figure height of 15mm, this allows you to deploy a reasonable mixed force of infantry and vehicles on an average table top. You can conduct small scale battles rather than just skirmishes that are the province of the 28mm scales.
The other key benefit of the Flames of War starters is that they come with an 120 page A5 Booklet that not only provides all the rules you need (summarised in a 8 page Quick Start) but also a 20 page synopsis of all of the War in Europe. An excellent primer to give the background to the battles you chose.
Hit the Beach is one of the best Flames of War starter sets because as well as the usual tons of tanks:- 8 Shermans and 3 Panzer IVs you get 96 Infantry and 2 x 7.5cm Anti Tank Guns. Each of the tanks, ordnance and infantry squads have their own data card providing ready reference to the info you need in the battle. Indeed there are no less than 6 different cards for the Shermans covering variants and combat experience.
The infantry units portrayed are a Parachute Rifle Platoon on the US side and 2 Panzergrenadier Platoons on the German side. This means you could re-enact scenarios reminiscent of the “Band of Brothers” TV mini series. Alternatively you could recreate actions from the Battle of the Bulge where the 101st Airborne Division was holed up in Bastogne. The only thing, being paratroopers, they never actually hit the beach but we’ll gloss over that.
At a price that equates to only pence per unit the only thing to hold you back is constructing a dozen or so tanks and guns and painting nearly a hundred figures but, hey, welcome to the world of miniatures!
Star Wars - X-Wing 2nd Edition
Now jumping far forward in time and to a Galaxy Far, Far Away we have Star Wars - X-Wing 2nd Edition. Like the Lord of the Rings game before it X-Wing whilst being fantasy is steeped in a culture so familiar to us for generations that it almost seems real. We know the characters, their history, their failings, what drives them etc. and can dive straight in. Now you might think if you are not that into Star Wars you should give it a miss but if you do, that would be a shame for X-Wing is an excellent little aerial skirmish game in its own right.
Star Wars - X-Wing 2nd Edition core starter set provides you with everything you need to have Luke Skywalker in his X-Wing starfighter combat two Twin Ion Engine (TIE) fighters of the Dark Side. As well as the ships you get range rulers, manoeuvre templates, special dice, ship unit cards, pilot cards, equipment cards and the all-important Manoeuvre Dials. These Manoeuvre Dials allow each pilot to simultaneously plot their move in secret: their speed and which direction they will travel. When they are revealed the weaker pilots move first followed by the more experienced. These better pilots will then fire first before the others can reply – if they survive!
Whilst the action takes place in only 2 dimensions (X-Wing and Y-Wing but no Z-Wing!) there’s enough range of options the pilots can choose to make the outcomes unpredictable leading to triumph or disaster!
This an excellent and good value starter set and unlike the others in this feature, the models come ready assembled and already painted and to a high level of detail. The only downside is that it can lead you on to discover the wealth of beautiful and highly collectible models in all the various eras of the Star Wars Universe. I have many of these models still in cellophane wrapped boxes adorning my display shelf. Still you’ve got to spend your money on something!
Horus Heresy – Age of Darkness
Let’s finish far, far in the future, in the world of Games Workshop’s Warhammer. Not quite as far as Warhammer 40K, for Horus Heresy is set in the year 30,000, or thereabouts, 10,000 years before 40K but still the best part of 28,000 years in the future for us Earth-bound mortals.
I’ve been involved with Games Workshop for decades back in the 90’s I had a shop in Putney that was an approved GW reseller and I even had Ian Livingstone as a customer! Though my basement was used for massive space games on Sundays I didn’t get too involved directly having a young family at the time.
Roll forward to the summer of 2022 and the arrival of Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness and the (then) latest edition of the rules. I decided to take the plunge and re-immerse myself in the world of all things Workshop and buy the box. Being GW, of course, we are not talking about an as economical set as some all the others in this piece but what you do get is quality. To be fair to the No 1 Nottingham outfit you do get a lot of quantity too. The full retail value of all the items in Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness is double the price on the box but that would be eye-watering. Fortunately I bought some shares in GW a long time ago and could buy this from my profits!
This isn’t just a game it’s a hobby. Here you are constructing all the miniatures and there are a lot of pieces with many alternatives and then there’s the painting. Fellow bloggers on this site can paint to competition standard, I don’t, but I do enjoy doing what I can. This set comes with a wonderful 334 page hardback book of the rules and background information. To say it is both beautifully and lavishly illustrated would be like saying Messi is quite good at football (He is!)
I realise that there has been another edition of the rules since with their own starter sets and you should probably buy those, but I love this one (does that make me a heretic?) it’s given me hours of pleasure and I haven’t even fought any battles yet!
So there you have it. 5 starter sets of different times and different realms both real and imaginary to get you into the joys of miniature modelling and tabletop combat. Any one of them will give you hours and hours of pleasure and fill up your life. Having all 5 (plus expansions) would be insane!
Wouldn’t it?
