Cult Of Games XLBS: What Wargames Could You Play In The Pub?
November 1, 2026 by crew
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Happy Sunday Backstagers, OTTers and how’s it going CoGs?
Pub gaming? That is distinctly a pass time over there across the pond. There’s a gaming complex in my area (a space in a mall converted to gaming space) that has a small pub area that you can patronize and a gaming tavern but snagging normies in your manner is culturally impossible if not as rare as hens’ teeth for the US.
Ah that’s a shame
Same in Canada. “Pub gaming” is a UK thing.
An excuse to go the the pub? Oh no!
Any excuse!
Sunday. Ugh.
01:30 sounds like more work than planning on a terrain build.
03:55 yeah, AI slop page 1 picture. *skip*
22:22 John is into bio engineering now? 8)
23:30 “There are FOUR models” – “Are you sure?” – “FOUR MODELS!” Sir Patrick Steward did it first 😉
30:00 soooo many minis
31:30 Shorts? oO
33:30 Gaming at the pub. hmm… nah.
53:00 I barely go into a pub. Not because I’m not social but barely anyone I know goes there and it’s bloody expensive. And far away (in relative terms)
58:11 “It’s not so bad the amount of stuff you have to paint” – no, it WORSE! XD
I only recognise Sir Roger Casement
Did look that one up. Understandable.
Happy Sunday and I am watching this on a Sunday, would you beleave it.
I think the Daniel Mersey Penda? or Storm of Arrows with a scaled down grid, using 6mm or 10mm sized units, so smaller bases could be playable on a table.
l Travel Battle could also be adapted to be used with ToTheStrongest or For King & Parliament with a early 1700s ruleset coming out for that system as well and the PErry have released TB figures suitable for WSS and GNW.
Just got to Jerry saying Halo should go to the pub. I am going to be very disappointed if Rumblelslam doesn’t get a mention. 5 minis a side, small neoprene square and sole dice and cards!
Love the GBs this week. That dragon is something else.
Interesting topic this week. My lads and I often play something in the pub. We are fond of the Osprey Games small box games, Katmai is very good.
For a proper wargame why not try Denizen’s Pocket Wargame: https://www.spacedenizens.com/product-page/test-product I’ve painted a set which I showed on the site somewhere. It is a smart little game with everything needed in a tin that fits in a pocket.
Hi XLBSers and COGz 👍
Ooh a battle force Hen night party 🤔👍
Lloyd will be looking at the 00 scale figures I bet
More angry than the one’s in Dune🤔🤷
Their looking great Gerry👌
Domino Ben 🤔🤷
Fab show guy’s 👍
Back in the late 70s and early 80s there was a company called Game Designers Workshop (GDW), an American publishing company famous for originating Traveler, the sci fi RPG. They also did a series of games in their 120 collection. Designed as a series of hex and counter wargames that were played on a 17 x 22 inch board and playable in around two hours. Mostly historical if I recall correctly, I had two covering a couple of battles from the Seven Years War featuring Fredrick the Great.
At roughly the same time Metagaming Concepts introduced their micro games which were also hex and counter games. They played on a legal stationary sized map, 8 x 14 and played in about 30 minutes. They had 22 games in the series . The first one is still around. Ogre! Now published by Steve Jackson games. But they had Melee and Wizard, which is now combined into The Fantasy Trip and still available. They also had Chitin 1, a game about intelligent alien insectoids battling each other for food. One of the funnier aspects of that game was as units died, they increased the value of the food you were battling for because the worker insects collected the dead of both sides as additional food. Another game was Warp War, a dice less space combat game and yet another. Yet another one was Black Hole were the battle ground was basically a donut shaped asteroid and you could traverse on the inner surface, the sides or the outer surface and leave off one board edge and return on the opposite board edge because all surfaces of the “donut” were traversable.
Yet another game designed to be pub friendly was Dust and its original grid based maps.
Then there is the entire Tiny Epic series, like Tiny Epic Galaxies, Tiny Epic Dinosaurs or Tiny Epic Cthulhu.
@blipvertus – I was a HUGE Traveller fan; I was young, just out of AD&D, and somehow o found that game next. Loved it, it was so open compared to D&D. Wish I still had my original boxed sets, if not for only nostalgia.
Oh yeah, my friends and I used to play Traveller on a regular basis.
I once played a Deadzone tournament ‘Deadzone After Dark’ in the downstairs room of a Manchester bar one evening, we had a custom cocktail menu and tipsy girls popping in to see what we were playing on their ways to the loos.
Mantic’s Clive has regular Halo gaming as part of a larger club gathering on Wednesdays in a Mansfield pub (The Swan, 6pm) and is selling tickets for the next Halo GT there too.
I have my regular boardgame club in a Nottingham pub on Tuesdays (The Navigation at 6.30pm), we have been known to break out the minis games too.
Pub gaming is a great combo of beer and dice, just watch out for sticky tables.