Riftway Cataclysm, an indie miniature wargame that’s free to download and can use any miniatures at all, first came to Wargamer’s attention thanks to some great model conversions of dinosaurs with laser eyes. They’re the work of David Rogers, an experienced Warhammer tournament player with respectable placings at the massive Las Vegas Open competition: Riftway Cataclysm is his attempt to make a better wargame than Games Workshop.
Rogers has been part of the hobby “for about 25 years”, most recently playing Age of Sigmar competitively “and doing pretty decently, 4th and 17th at LVO”. He “got tired of the constant overpowered new releases”, “lack of serious attention to unit balance”, and the “massive luck component” in Age of Sigmar (and, we’ll be frank, Warhammer 40k, Horus Heresy, and most dice driven wargames). With Riftway Cataclysm, he hopes to “build a better wargame”.
He started the project in 2022, aiming to make something “affordable to play”, that “welcomed creativity”, and which “consistently rewarded good generalship”. He’s certainly succeeded on the “affordable to play” front, as you can download the rules, useful templates, and even unit markers to create a print and play army, all from the Riftway Cataclym website.
The system is miniature agnostic, with flexible unit design rules so players can “custom build your own faction and pick your own cocktail of faction abilities to make your head canon come to life”. If you have an Age of Sigmar army or Space Marines force lying around, you can give it a try – but the Cataclysm website calls out several great independent miniature designers.
Wargamer hasn’t kicked the tires on Riftway Cataclysm yet, so we can’t comment how it stands up against the best miniature wargames. It certainly seems interesting. “Rather than unit actions having randomized outcomes, players bet, bluff, and gamble to activate special abilities”, Rogers says. He adds “actions take time to resolve and you can see the firefight on the tabletop as it’s happening”.
Players have great freedom in how they model their units. All models, even infantry units, use a base, which is used for range measurement, so “there’s no modelling for advantage”. Rogers adds that “the squad bases also make movement a breeze and give great opportunities for building dioramas” – something that Kings of War players can attest to.
Rogers explains how he made the miniatures that first drew Wargamer’s attention onto this game – those super-powered dinosaurs. “I wanted to make an army that showed off how cheap and accessible wargaming could be”, Rogers says, adding “I was very inspired by Gaslands and their use of toy cars”.
When he came across some great pre-painted rubber dinosaur toys, he had the idea for a custom faction, dinosaurs with unique superpowers. “The laser eyes are nothing more than straightened floral wire inserted into the eyes with the help of a pin-drill”, Rogers says, while the laser breath on another is “a plastic tube inserted into the mouth” with “a donut of green stuff” on the end.
The other armies that appear in Rogers’ photographs come from Mortian, a German miniature maker that creates units and vehicles that would sit perfectly alongside several Warhammer 40k factions. Their cyberrats are the premium option for anyone who wants Warhammer 40k Skaven stand-ins, but doesn’t want to kitbash their new Skaventide miniatures.
If this doesn’t seem like the perfect, miniature agnostic wargame for you, we actually have a (very old) guide to the best free miniature wargame rules; and if you fancy something digital, we have a guide to the best free wargames online.
Source: Wargamer
