The BEST Affordable Wargaming Starter Sets (2026 Update)

0:00 In this video, I'll tell you about seven more two-player miniature wargaming starter sets for around $100. Almost two years ago, I did a video here on the channel about seven different two-player starter sets for tabletop miniature war games that you could get for a h 100red bucks or less. Now, if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that a lot's happening in the world, and it's been happening over the last, you know, two years. The economy is, let's say, different than it was. So, it's become harder to find as many two player starter sets for under a hundred bucks. I found two, but two two-player starter sets under $100 seemed first of all kind of confusing. Like two two player starter set, you know, and also frankly a little bit dull and it would be a pretty short video. So, we're kind of upping the limit here a little bit.

1:04 Again, a a good two-player starter for under a hundred bucks is a great thing for the hobby. It allows you as a gaming advocate who wants to maybe teach some somebody else a new game, a different game. It allows you to grab that, you know, have the two forces, build and paint them quick, and it's not too expensive, it's not too hard, all that kind of stuff. It's it's a great thing to have. Uh you can check the old video that I mentioned, you know, in the previous uh pchow if you haven't already seen it and if you want to learn more about the ones I talked about last time. However, some of these sets that I'm about to mention are, like I said, a little over a hundred bucks, you know, in this economy. Uh, and but they're still really good sets and several of them you've probably even heard of before. They all give you like two forces of models to build and paint. You know, they give you the access to the rules and maybe even a little bit of terrain or something like that. So, sit back and we'll start with the cheapest.

2:02 This first game is one that I own. And as far as I can tell, it retails for about $66 or so. At least that's how it's listed on the publishers website. I got mine on Amazon, I think, and it was a touch cheaper than than than the 66 bucks. It's called Mutantyear Zero: Zone Wars, and it's from Free League Publishing. Free League is mostly known for publishing role- playinging games and stuff like that. But this is a neat little kind of gateway game. But whether it's a gateway between like board games and miniatures games or if it's between RPGs and miniatures games, you'll you'll probably have to decide for yourself. You get two forces of five miniatures each. And they're pretty decent board game style miniatures, which means you don't have to build them. They come pre, you know, pre-built. They're kind of a mixture of like mutant animal hybrid people and like, you know, general kind of apocalyptic survivors. And the game also includes uh cards, dice, tokens, a little bit of cardboard terrain, a gaming mat to play on, and then of course all the rules that you need, including five scenarios, campaign rules, character generation rules, and even solo rules. everything in the box for, like I said, 66 bucks or less. They technically list it as a board game on the free League website, but with all the things that I mentioned, I feel that it's like way more than that.

3:33 And then there's even an expansion called Mutantyear Zero Zone Wars: Robots and Psionics, which you can probably guess what that adds to the game, right? it it's the same price as the core set and it includes two more forces of five models each robots and you know psykers I'm assuming and then there's also more cards and more dice more cardboard terrain another mat and it also adds five more scenarios. It also now allows you to play with up to four players if you have both boxes which is pretty cool. Some of the models, you know, I really look forward to painting, but with the character generation rules, there's also I want to make my own guys as well. This next game is based off of a game that I've talked about here on the channel before called Forbidden Psalm. I even did a why I like it episode about Forbidden Psalm, Pachchow.

4:28 But this isn't technically that game. It's a different version of that game called The Last War. The Last War is kind of a World War I game, but there's been like a horrible plague that spread across the globe like during the war to end all wars and now things are like twisted and weird and the fighting has kind of changed to like frankly fighting for survival. It's it's it's a really cool book. It was originally produced as like just a miniatures agnostic kind of game. You can use whatever miniatures you'd like. You just like buy the rules book or PDF or whatever and you kind of go from there. However, they eventually worked out like a partnership deal with War Games Atlantic and now you can buy a great two-player starter box for The Last War and it's only 90 bucks. It includes the 128 page rule book which is like a total trip to look through. Uh I And then you also get tokens and you get dice and you get four sprews of World War I models from, you know, the the folks over there at War Games Atlantic.

5:34 You get a sprew of uh British, German, Russian, and French. And then you also get two sprews. Uh, they're the same sprew, but you get two copies of it. Especially made for The Last War, which includes all kinds of weird add-on parts and heads and tentacles and and whatnot. I also own this box as well, and the models are great. The special sprews made just for the last war are like crazy because there's like giant trench maggots and huge rats. Plus, like I said, weird tentacles and other stuff that you can put on your kind of plague ridden survivors in the trenches of Europe. The game, like all the games spawned from Forbidden Psalm, is is great. It's a it's a not too difficult of a system, but every system that they've made since Forbidden Psalm has kind of added a little bit more to it, right? And it also includes solo play and of course a campaign system and tons of scenarios and all that. If you want your spooky World War I to be probably less demonic than say something like Trench Crusade, then you know you should take a look at The Last War. The rest of these two-player starters I don't own.

6:48 However, I have played several of the games, some of them in the past and some frankly more recently. The most recent of course is Blackout. I've talked about Blackout here on the channel before, but I don't have the current like two player starter, which sells for $120. It includes two complete forces, which I think comes to a total of 15 models. I think it's like seven on one side and eight on the other side. And then you also get uh the unit cards for those forces. Uh there's a stat card thing as well. There's also the rule book, which is cool because it's spiral bound, so it lays flat when you set it down on the tabletop, which I always like. and then also uh a token set and you get some 10-sided dice. And I think that's pretty much everything. All you need then is pretty much a tape measure, some terrain, and a surface to play on.

7:34 Blackout is a highly tactical sci-fi skirmish game. It takes place like a couple hundred years in the future and on a different planet, an Earth colony called Aball or Abal, I'm not sure. Anyway, uh being a very tactical game means that positioning and cover are incredibly important as you play because most units in the game pretty much die after a single hit, right? So, you'd really rather not get hit. I've painted four different forces so far and I find them like just really fun to paint because they're very military and all that kind of stuff. They can go really quickly because I kind of have a tendency to paint my military stuff. So, it's all kind of the same color, which is if you look at military folks, it's kind of what they do. There's a there's a bunch of different factions available to you, so you've got a lot of different choices, uh, for what you want to get into if you decide to go past the just the plain old two-player starter box.

8:29 Another starter that I don't have yet, uh, but I've played years and years ago and thinking about it again, is War Machine. For those of you that don't know, War Machine, which used to be owned by, you know, Privateeer Press, uh, is now owned and operated by Steam Forged Games, who make a lot of like Dungeons and Dragons stuff, and they've done all kinds of different games within the miniature space as well, but they make a lot of plastics, right? I think they bought Privateier Press sometime in 2024. Steam Forge has really picked up the ball and has spent the time to not only like relaunch everything, but they've also, you know, like changed things in the game as well. the timeline in the lore kind of moved along a bit, right? And the game, which has always been a bit steampunkish, is now a bit more of a sci-fi bent to it while still kind of steampunk.

9:21 Also, Steam Forge Games really knows how to make plastics, right? Like, they've been making plastics for years on lots of different games. And of course, they do all the Epic Encounters stuff for all the role- playinging folks. And those are all really cool plastic figures as well. So, the new starter sets here for War Machine are done in hips uh or high impact polystyrene plastic. It's on sprus kind of like, you know, like Warhammer models are and everything like that. Now, not all the models in the line are done this way, but the two player starters do seem to be done with hips. I really personally want the $100 KOR versus Signar starter, but it says that it's currently out of stock on the website, and I can't find any place online either. So, hopefully it'll be back in stock soon, cuz that's really the one that I want. There's also a new starter for $120 called the Frozen and Forgotten, and it has two forces that I'm not particularly familiar with from like back in the old days of second edition when I used to play War Machine.

10:21 Another game that I played back in the day that now has a a pretty nice two-player starter is Malifox. The game is in its fourth edition rules right now. And the $120 two-player starter includes two complete crews for you to build and paint. Again, they're done in high quality HIPS plastic on sprus. And they're very, very, very detailed miniatures. You get a crew of like clockwork roboty folks and a crew of mostly kind of sea creature looking folks which in this situation are my favorite. Technically there not any fishermen in that group. You know generally fishermen are really my favorites but they're kind of close. There's a lot of barnacles going on everything. It's it's fishermen adjacent. Malifox has always kind of been a sort of steampunk world as well but it's very very different from War Machine. It's a skirmish game that uses a deck of cards, like a normal poker deck of cards, although they make their own fancy versions of them. But it's a deck of cards instead of rolling dice.

11:24 And it's a very cool mechanic, right? The starter includes two forces, like I mentioned, but it also gives you two of the card decks, which they call fate decks. And there's also two measuring widgets and two sets of markers and tokens and all that kind of stuff. There's free ro rules to download for the game as well. And like War Machine, there's a pretty powerful app to use for, you know, your rules, but also for army building and all that stuff. These last two entries are games that I haven't played, but I've been told I should try them out many times. The first is Moonstone, which seems to be a whimsical fantasy skirmish game with highly detailed resin miniatures. The two-player starter set, which is called Dusk Till Dawn, includes four human and four goblin miniatures, uh, a card deck, and then there's also rules and then counters and a measuring widget and and a collection of dice basically for about $105. It's also won some awards from the UK Games Expo for best miniatures rules and best miniatures range back in 2023.

12:27 With character names like Baron von Fancy Hat, Beaky Bobby, and Doug the Flatulant, we're definitely deep into whimsical and silly territory here. It seems the models look very well done, cool sculpts and all that kind of stuff, but understand that they're not plastic. They're poured resin, right? So it's it's very highly detailed, but sometimes poured resin, and by poured I mean it's poured into a mold, you know, kind of generally sometimes by hand, sometimes not. Depends. Could be a spin cast, who knows? But poured resin can sometimes be a little bit warped when you get it right. Like, but usually a soak in hot water, you know, you throw a mug of water into the microwave and you get it real hot and then you soak the stuff in there and you can bend it back, put it where you want, and then that fixes the issue. But it is something to be aware of if you've not used resin before. I've had it re the game recommended to me many many many times and it it was a good sized event at Adepticon this year too. So you might want to take a look.

13:27 Lastly is the Baron's War second edition sold by War Games Atlantic and created by Andy Hobday which I hope I'm pronouncing that properly. This two-player historical starter set includes like the full soft cover second edition rule book, enough tokens for two players. There's 54 multi-art plastic models on sprus in included including um uh let's see, there's 12 foot knights, 18 foot sergeants, and 24 peasant levy. Uh some, you know, hard plastic terrain bits as well, like little barricades and stuff like that. and a whole bunch of dice, including, you know, 10 custom morale dice as well. All that stuff for $130, which makes it admittedly the most expensive starter on the list, but it also comes with the most stuff, too.

14:16 It's not exactly what I would call a skirmish game generally, I don't think. Like, it comes with enough models for two 500 point starter retinues, which I assume means roughly six knights, nine sergeants, and 12, you know, peasants each. That's more models than I'd usually want in a skirmish game myself, but for a in a historical game, it's probably a lighter number of models than historical games generally have. Also, if you just like want the whole box for yourself, you know, two players be damned, then you can make an entire 1,000 point retinue uh with the contents of the box as well. So, if you bought a box and your friend bought a box, you both have a thousand points. And that's pretty cool, too. If you're interested in easing into the world of medieval historicals, you might want to check it out.

15:03 So, there's seven more two-player miniature wargaming starters for around a hundred bucks. All All the prices I gave you here are retail prices, you know, from the manufacturer. So, you might find discounts at your local shops or, you know, online if you can't, you know, find these games near you. Links are all down in the description below if you want to know more. I'm sure I missed something. What should I have mentioned in this video? And also potentially in the last one that I might have skipped, right? Let us all know down in the comments below. And while you're down there, some two-player depressment of the like button and the hype button if you have one. Check underneath the video and the little all the buttons down there. It would be greatly appreciated by me. And uh also, if you haven't, you could hit the subscribe button to get more videos like this every single Friday. It's free.

15:58 Thanks for watching.