Is there a wargame like Warhammer and Warhammer 40k by Games Workshop but with actual, real-life battles?

Is there a wargame like Warhammer and Warhammer 40k by Games Workshop but with actual, real-life battles? For example, something where i can buy, assemble and paint my own minis and play with them in battles? Thanks for any help.Is there a wargame like Warhammer and Warhammer 40k by Games Workshop but with actual, real-life battles?
There are a virtually unlimited number of wargame systems out there dealing with historical situations. There's even a series of Warhammer historical games, like for Ancients, WWI and others if you'd like to use that basic system. What kind of game depends mostly on what era you're interested in and what you can get other people around you to play. For WWII, Flames of War is pretty popular at the moment, but there are many many games for many periods out there. Figure out what era you want to do, then poke around. You're almost certain to be able to find rules and miniatures for whatever you're looking for, from ancient Romans to the Crusades to the English Civil War to American Civil War to 1920's Chinese warlords to Vietnam to modern-day.Is there a wargame like Warhammer and Warhammer 40k by Games Workshop but with actual, real-life battles?
When it comes to historical wargames, there tend not to be games with a range of miniatures made for a specific historical wargame. An exception is Flames of War, a 10mm wargame based in the Second World War (and a recent Vietname release).



Otherwise, players of historical wargames tend to buy miniatures from a range of manufacturers and then pick their rule-set, or even write their own. De Bellis Multitudinis is a free download and very popular for armies set in the middle ages and earlier, with its variation - De Bellis Antiquis - going back to the Bronze Age.



Games Workshop, meanwhile, has the Warhammer Historical range of books that cover Ancients (500BC to 500AD) and a variety of other historical areas and periods, up to the First World War. However, perhaps more excitingly, GW last year issued a press statement to the effect that they were intending to release a 28mm WW2 tabletop wargame and accompanying range of plastic miniatures.



The smart money say 2012 for that release, though.Is there a wargame like Warhammer and Warhammer 40k by Games Workshop but with actual, real-life battles?
If you want to go completely old school, try "Little Wars" by H.G. Wells - the man most famous for the Time Machine and War of the Worlds wrote a 'how to' manual in 1913 for fighting battles in any real life, historical context. If you search around online, you can find models to assemble, or even at your local hobby shop - the system works with any scale of model and miniature, and it's what my brother and I experimented with before we eventually settle on Warhammer. It's available as a free e-book that you can download in a variety of file types, so you can even bring it up on your computer and print it out if you like. The link is below.



Other than that, Flames of War is probably the most recognizable real-life wargame, and there are lots of others, just poke around at your friendly neighborhood gaming store and you're bound to run into someone who plays, or knows someone who does. Good luck!