What:
Encounter28 is a fanmade wargaming ruleset for small skirmish battles, typically 5-15 models for each player. It is made to work for both Sci Fi and Fantasy (specifically written for a certain Grimdark Future setting and a Fantastical Realm Wars setting), but there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't use it for ANY setting you feel like.
It is also completely FREE, and will continue to be so for it's entire existence. We have no intention of selling anything and all this is made for the love of the hobby.
Why?
“But… There IS already an official skirmish game in the grimdark future and fantastical realm wars?”
Yes. And we’ve played both quite a bit, being huge fans of the setting, the lore, the miniatures, the art - we love everything about it. Except perhaps the game itself. We’re old. Bitter Old Painters, y’know? And being old and bitter, we just don’t have the necessary memory to remember a bunch of special rules, the processing power to navigate a huge amount of synergies, and actually have a good time playing the game. We just want to play with our little plastic soldiers, and tell a good story while doing it.
How?
This isn’t a ruleset for someone looking for a tight, complex and competitive game, with constant balance updates. Other people do this much better than us. This ruleset is made for anyone looking for something a bit lighter, much more flexible in regards to building a team or warband, and just wanting to move their cool little plastic dudes around and hopefully have a lot of fun doing it.
We’ve gotten ideas from lots of place, too many to mention - We’ve basically taken things we like the most from the official Grimdark Future Skirmish Game, combined it with a lot of stuff borrowed from a lot of different wargames, added a lot of stuff we came up with and forged it all into Encounter28.
The most important things to us were that the game should be fast to play (about an hour and a half), easy to learn, the rules should be simple enough to quickly fade into the background (only 1-2 pages of rules for each type of action a Fighter can make), so the story takes the lead, and flexible enough to let you use pretty much any miniature or conversion you like. If this sounds interesting, please read on.
28?
Why the “28” moniker? About a decade and a half ago, a grassroots movement called Inq28 surfaced. The idea was inspired by GW’s long abandoned game “Inquisitor”, where the story, the miniatures and the setting is much more important than things like perfectly balanced rules, min-maxed lists and winning. It grew into a huge community, and Instagram and Pinterest are absolutely brimming with amazing miniatures, converted and painted to emphasize the “Grimdark”, the “Blanchitsu” and the dark, damp corners of a gothic future. We heartily recommend searching for “Inq28”, "AoS28" and getting inspired by the amazing stuff people come up with.
