Wargaming one's favorite films and television programmes is such a staple of the hobby that I've seen more than one article of late proposing that the practice be dropped in favour of "good old proper historical wargaming". As an artsy type who got started in the hobby with Warhammer 40,000, I find that kind of attitude laughable, I mean, this is a hobby, right? It's meant to be fun. And hey, if reproducing the battle of Waterloo in excruciating detail is your idea of fun, more power to you, but it doesn't do it for me, I'd rather make a big superhero city or cyberpunk sprawl. Back to original point though, wargaming a particular franchise has, in the past few years, gone from a fringe element of the hobby to quite a big money-spinner for your Friendly Local Gaming Store. Games like Star Wars Legions, Fallout Wasteland Warfare and The Batman Miniatures Game bring comic, film, television and video game worlds to the tabletop.
Of course, back in the day, if you and/or you play group decided to do something like Battlestar Galactica or Dune, you'd have to hunt down your own models, terrain and maybe even homebrew some rules to get going. Call me nostalgic, but I miss that kind of home made game put together by dedicated people who just really want to play in their favouite fictional setting. I already do a lot of superhero games (though I derive joy mostly from mashing teams and settings together there) and a few "Imagi-Nation" and "setting neutral" games, but I have, on occasion, found myself tempted to game something I'm watching, playing or reading. The handful of such examples below are not only ideas that I have considered over the years, but specifically the ones I have put a reasonable amount of though into and even looked for the miniatures and rules. Perhaps one of these ideas may get you excited, or maybe writing this will make me cave in and start a new project; only time will tell.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Probably my most recent consideration, I've never been a big fan of this mystical, anime-inspired, coming of age, war story, but I gave it another watch when I lost my job last year and was really inspired by the setting, if not the characters. In a world where nations are divided into elemental types and individuals who can control said elements are called "Benders" (Air Bender, Fire Bender, etc), Asian and tribal elements flavour a setting with heavy groundings in Zen and Taoism. The aggressive and Samurai-like Fire Nation have waged a century-long war of conquest against the other nations, leaving only scatterings of the Water Nation and major walled cities of the Earth Nation still standing. Most of the soldiers fighting in the war aren't Benders themselves, but normal warriors, with swords, spears and shields, supported by the mighty Benders of their Nation.
The setting is somewhat asymmetrical, with the Fire Nation having much greater military power than its rivals, but most of the battles featuring the main cast are skirmishes, with a handful of warriors each side and perhaps only a couple of Benders. The best fights involve warriors, bandits and martial artists who can hold their own, even against Benders, with each soldier having a role to play. I could honestly see this kind of battle being fun to game, with a mix of soldiers and one or two Benders on each side battling over an objective or running a mission, perhaps something along the lines of Frostgrave in terms of game size.
Speaking of Frostgrave, whist I'm personally not a huge fan, I think it, or something like it, would be ideal for gaming the world of Avatar, with inbuilt stats and rules for a variety of soldiers and magic users already, only minor modifications, such as spell lists reworked for Benders, required to adapt for the setting. Removing the treasure hunting and monster-fighting elements from Frostgrave would also be necessary, but pretty easy, as would either writing or importing more thematic scenarios. As for miniatures, there are plenty of martial artists in roleplaying ranges that would work for Benders, and many historical producers that would suit the soldiers with minor tweaks. As mentioned above, the Fire Nation has a Samurai look about it, Medieval Chinese would work for the Earth Nation, Native North Americans for Water Nation and the Air Nation have a very Tibetan and Shaolin vibe.
Red Faction
Though they have a enjoyed a critically mixed reception, I've personally enjoyed all of the Red Faction games, not only in spite of their jumping genre and play-style, but because of that commitment to risk taking and innovation. The ongoing story of repeated and failed attempts to settle Mars plays out in broad historical strokes across the four main games, with colonisation, rebellion, factional strife and partisan politics all playing a role in shaping the frontier and eventual society that forms. From the titular "Red Faction" populist uprising, factions include cultists, Corporate Soldiers, tribal warriors and even alien swarms. Whilst the draw of the Red Faction games has always been the ability to destroy terrain during play, I, personally, am drawn in by the factional conflict and the depth of the setting.
Although larger conflicts are hinted at in the Red Faction games, most of the action is small squads and perhaps a couple of support vehicles, building to building combat is common and most of the available armaments are standard across forces. The missions are primarily objective-driven, blowing up a building, escorting a convoy, retrieving supplies, all pretty standard wargames stuff. Add to the fact that most of the weapons, armour and equipment in Guerrilla and Armageddon (the two games I feel provide the best table top gaming inspiration) are fairly generic, putting it all together wouldn't be terribly difficult. In fact, the main factor preventing me from actually starting this project is a lack of people that I think would want to join in.
As mentioned above, only really the aliens from Armageddon have anything like a distinctive look, just about every other faction could be easily put together from existing Science Fiction and Post-Apocalypse miniatures ranges with minimal conversion and kit bashing. Thinking on it more now as I write, even the aliens aren't beyond the limits of conversion, depending on how many I would eventually need to play. Any good skirmish set of rules would probably work for playing games on the Mars of Red Faction, but I'd be worried that the wrong rules would lack the "feel" of the setting I'm looking for. Perhaps starting with a solid Modern or WWII set and working the Sci-Fi elements in may be the best bet.
Command & Conquer
This one is a little different in that I have actually made repeated attempts to wargame this game over the years. In an alternate 1990s, the discovery of an alien mineral, Tiberium, sets the world on a new path and soon a global conflict erupts between the Global Defence Initiative and the quasi-mystical Brotherhood of Nod. The classic game is the grandfather of the Real Time Strategy genre, featuring resource harvesting, constructing a variety of buildings and plenty of soldiers to die in droves. I spent far too much time playing Command & Conquer as a child and many of the songs and dodgy videos are now embedded in my brain. Looking at the game from the perspective of a wargame, pretty much everything I could want is already around in various scales, like Warthogs, M1-A1 and Bradley tanks.
I see playing Command & Conquer on the table top as being more of a traditional wargame than needing to include the harvesting and building elements, almost like a slightly Sci-Fi take on Team Yankee. In fact, that kind of scale of game would be ideal, with plenty of scope for infantry teams, support vehicles and air wings, because I'd have to have the iconic Orca VTOLS if I were going to play. Recent advances in 3D-printing mean I already have some files saved for the fictional units as well as some good ideas for doing Tiberium patches, which I do feel would be necessary to tie everything into the setting. Nothing says Command & Conquer like a forced retreat across Tiberium that kills more soldiers than enemy fire.
Much like Gundam One Year War, another franchise I've wanted to game for years, but won't we covered here because I own minis for it already, what's stopping me from getting into a bit of table top Command & Conquer is finding people who want to play the same scales and era as me. I'm pretty much only down for classic Command & Conquer, rather than the sequels, and don't want to buy and store figures for the game in anything larger than 20mm, but not everyone is on the same page. Maybe someday, I'll have a play group that wants to give this a go, but until then, I'll just keep collecting rules, images and STLs and hope that my GDI forces may, one day, grace the table at my club or local store.
Redwall
This series of novels by Brian Jacques made up a lot of my reading for an number of years of my adolescence, as I transitioned from Calvin and Hobbes to Dragonlance. Set in a mostly late-medieval world, all of the traditional European woodland creatures are present, divided along "good" and "evil" lines, mice, squirrels and badgers being good and rats, stoats and foxes being evil. Battles ensue, with death and war, but all dialled down a little to meet parent approval. Having picked a handful of the books out of my local street library recently, I indulged in a little nostalgia, only to discover that, for the most part, Redwall is pretty repetitive and many of the books are pretty bland overall. Where they are good, however, Redwall is really engaging, with Badger Warlords, Sea Rat Pirates, Shrew Guerrillas and Cannibal Toads doing battle across a range of landscapes. Naturally, this sound like something I'd want to game.
When I was reading Redwall for the first time, most of my exposure to miniature wargames came through Games Workshop, so what I pictured in my head was more akin to something like Warhammer Fantasy (5th Edition) than anything else. These days, I think something more like Warlords of Erehwon or Middle Eart SBG would work better, as they involve fewer figures and I kind of just want to make a couple of armies as a fun project. I would honestly love the chance to put together armies for GUOSIM and/or the Toad King, both of which are just dripping in character, which is a big appeal for me. Only a handful of characters in the novels have anything approaching supernatural ability, and there is no magic to speak of, so the only real issue of game balance would be the different species, and making sure no one can field too many Badgers at the same time.
There are a few companies around that do miniatures in a similar vein to Redwall, but not often in the variety that an army-sized game would demand, even when considered all together; and don't get me started on the lack of Shrews and Toads. This kind of project really demands a lot of conversion and probably even some sculpting of whole miniatures, and I'm just not there yet in terms of my skills. If, somehow, a licenced Redwall miniatures game came on to the market, I'd be happy to buy in, but for now, this one's kind of just wishful thinking.
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