5 Warhammer Alternatives Worth Your Time, From Frostgrave and Trench Crusade to Moonstone

If you like Warhammer, what else is out there? I have five answers, and each one is the best pick for a different reason: Frostgrave, Trench Crusade, Gaslands, Malifaux and Moonstone. None of them is here because it beats Warhammer. By the end you should know which one is worth your time based on what you want from the hobby.

This question came back to me again and again when I asked what to cover next, and it is a fair one. I want to say straight away that this is not a Games Workshop is bad, play this instead piece. I love Warhammer. I know Games Workshop has a cloud over its head at the moment, but for me that does not take away from the fact that I just like Warhammer. I have spent money on it, I have painted Blood Angels, and I have lost games spectacularly with those Blood Angels. I am, as I put it, "emotionally and financially compromised" at this point. You think you are just going to paint a few little plastic men, and six months later you have a huge army, three books you apparently needed, and you are arguing online with strangers about line of sight. Show me a cool mini or a weird bit of lore and you have got me.

A few ground rules. I did not pick four of these. Those four came straight from your suggestions, and only the last one is my own recommendation. I went down the rabbit hole for research, using Reddit threads, the official websites for prices and models, articles, and plenty of other people's coverage. I was not just chasing the cheapest options. I wanted to show how much each one costs to start, how many models you need, whether they are worth painting, and whether there is enough game there to play it twice, because replayability is huge for me when I am parting with money. Most important of all: does it look fun? I am not swapping one hobby spreadsheet for another. I want that feeling of excitement, then painting something badly for a fortnight, then getting killed on turn one. That is the hobby.

Frostgrave is the cheap fantasy pick where your old minis already count

First up is Frostgrave, which came up a lot in your suggestions. It is published by Osprey and is currently, I believe, on its second edition, though I am happy to be corrected. The idea is a tiny warband built around a wizard and their apprentice, wandering a ruined frozen city and essentially robbing treasure. Think Mordheim meets a D&D dungeon crawl. The best part is that it is miniature agnostic. There are official minis, and some of them are lovely, but you do not need them. Old Warhammer stuff, D&D minis, or that random wizard you have had in a drawer since 2008 for reasons you cannot explain: as long as everyone knows what is what, you can crack on.

A warband is, I believe, only about 10 models, all built around your wizard, and there are 80 spells across 10 schools of magic. So you are basically building a character, not an army. I have not played it. I desperately wish I could be one of those people who says you told me to play these games so I went and bought them, but I do not have those kind of funds. So I am not going to pretend I am an authority here just because I have read the blurb and listened to three people talk about it.

Still, I think it is an easy one to recommend trying because you are barely committing to anything. You might not even need to buy a warband. I do not think it would be for you if you want two massive armies smashing into each other. It also uses a D20, so it can be swingy. Sometimes your plan does not fail because you made a bad call, it fails because you rolled a three, and having played D&D I am already emotionally prepared for that. If you like painting individual characters and telling stupid stories afterwards, Frostgrave is probably one of the safest places on this list to start, because the financial damage of another failed hobby crisis is a lot smaller.

Trench Crusade is the grimdark kitbashing game for 40K players

With Trench Crusade, I looked at the art and immediately knew I liked it. If you are a 40K player it feels familiar, but also really not. There is a good origin story too. The artist who created it started it back in 2016 as basically a lore and art project. People got obsessed with the setting and started kitbashing their own versions, and eventually the original lead designer on Mordheim came on board to turn it into an actual game. The full rules only came out, I believe, last year, but that might be wrong; as I said, I am just researching. Either way, it is fresh.

The premise is that back in 1099 the Templars accidentally open a gateway to hell. Eight hundred years later it is 1914 and you have the First World War, except hell is real. There are demons in the trenches and religious fanatics with machine guns. Basically, what if World War I was not quite miserable enough? It is not just 40K but grimier. 40K is enormous, with cathedrals and 10,000 year old demigods punching each other. This feels claustrophobic: mud, rust, gas masks, things crawling out of holes you wish had stayed in the hole. Less "Look at my glorious army" and more "Something's gone badly wrong in this basement."

I am not a master kitbasher. I still manage to glue myself to models doing completely normal builds. The closest I have come is my Blood Angels army. I bought the whole 2,000 point army second hand off a random kid, and some of the paint choices were confident. I stripped it back, repainted it, and added Dante, Lemartes, the Death Company and the Sanguinary Guard, slowly taking something that already existed and making it feel personal. I really enjoy that, so the fact that Trench Crusade warbands do not have to look like everyone else's is genuinely appealing. I can already see myself making one little warband and then it is quarter past midnight and I am on eBay searching for job lots of medieval gas mask heads. Your partner asks what you are doing, you say nothing, and it is never nothing.

Official rulebooks come in at around 60 dollars, and I am still not sure why it is always dollars. But you do not need every model to be official. The whole community kitbashes from historical kits, fantasy bits, old Warhammer sprues, whatever they have. So if Frostgrave is use what you have got, Trench Crusade is go and build something horrible nobody else has. It looks cool, and thank you for suggesting it.

Gaslands turns Hot Wheels cars into a Mad Max wargame

Next is Gaslands, where the miniatures are Hot Wheels cars, and that is it. Actual Hot Wheels, like the ones your mum definitely binned despite you being convinced one was worth 40 pounds. It is published by Osprey again and the rulebook is about 20 pounds, so after that you just go and buy some toy cars. The setting is basically Mad Max: bolt weapons on, ram each other, occasionally explode. It is Mario Kart if Nintendo had completely given up on safeguarding, I guess.

Underneath the daft premise there is a proper game, with vehicles, weapons, sponsors, gears, the lot. You do not have to touch the cars, but the community adds armour, guns, rust and scrap, turning innocent little Hot Wheels into something that looks like it has spent 15 years being driven around Australia by a man wearing human skin.

I have not played this one either, but I know exactly who it is for: someone who is not already a miniature wargamer. You are not asking them to spend 100 pounds or paint 50 identical trousers. You are saying, "Pick up a car." Honestly, I think it is perfect for anyone who just wants tabletop gaming to be a laugh again. A couple of mates, a few cars, maybe a beer. Nobody has spent 600 pounds on an optimised list. You just want to ram your mate's tiny Ford Escort into a shipping container at 80 miles an hour, and sometimes that is enough. I might actually go rummaging in my mum's garage this weekend to see if I can find my old Hot Wheels.

Malifaux swaps dice for cards and could become a proper main game

Malifaux is the one I would call a game I could make my proper game. I believe it is on its fourth edition, and the big thing that drew my attention is that there are no dice. It uses a fate deck, so anywhere you would normally roll, you flip a card instead. You also have cards in hand to override a bad flip, so instead of rolling a one and accepting it, I believe you can refuse that result and play a better card. I really like that.

I have not played it myself, but I went properly deep researching this one: battle reports, people breaking down the deck, the lot. The crews look small and are built around a master. Crucially, killing everything is not the point. It is about schemes, strategies and objectives. So you can spend the whole game battering your opponent, feel very pleased with yourself, and discover that your opponent has been standing near a lamp post for three turns and somehow won. The vibe is gothic horror and steampunk. The models are proper little characters, not 30 identical blokes with rifles.

If I had to pick a downside, this is where we leave Gaslands money behind. A two player starter is around 90 pounds. Split two ways that is not actually awful, especially by Warhammer standards; we are all so financially traumatised that 45 pounds feels like finding money down the sofa. If you like the game part of Warhammer, building lists, learning combos and getting better, this is the one I would probably point you towards. It looks like a lot of fun.

Moonstone is my pick: a silly, social bluffing game from a small UK company

Finally, my own recommendation: Moonstone. Unlike the others, I have played this one and spent money on it. I first saw it at the UK Games Expo, I think last year, though it may have been the year before. The demo table was packed, so I did the very British thing of hovering nearby, deciding not to bother anyone, and walking off. I went back the next day and played one demo, only about 30 minutes, and I bought the set, which probably tells you where this is going.

It is made by Goblin King Games, a small UK company that grew out of a Kickstarter, and it is about as far from Trench Crusade as you can get. We have gone from humanity fighting hell for 800 years to look at this funny little goblin. One of the characters in my starter set is literally called Doug the Flatulent, and his whole thing is flatulence. Not metaphorically. But underneath the silliness it is a really clever game. Crews are tiny, four a side, and there is a proper bluffing mechanic. Combat and magic both run on cards, and sometimes you can straight up lie about what you have got. So you are sat across from an actual person wondering whether they are lying to you right now, and if it is one of your mates, obviously yes, even when they are not.

I would describe the models as characterful. For example, Baron Von Fancy Hat genuinely looks like a man who would insist on being called Baron Von Fancy Hat. I also wanted a small company on this list, and not in a down with Games Workshop way; I will probably have given them another 50 pounds before this goes out. It is just that this hobby is full of tiny companies making brilliant stuff, and unless someone tells you, you would probably never know. When you spend 69 pounds on their starter set, it still has to actually be good, and it is good, because I played it and I enjoyed it. The small company thing is just a nice bonus on top.

So that is five. Frostgrave for cheap fantasy and total freedom. Trench Crusade for grimdark and kitbashing something horrible. Gaslands if you have 20 pounds, some Hot Wheels and zero respect for vehicle safety. Malifaux if you want a proper deep game you could sink years into. Moonstone if you want something weird and social. I am not ranking them, because that is not actually useful. They each solve a different problem, and if you made me pick one, I would not be able to.

I could not choose just one of these five, so which would you pick up first alongside Warhammer?