Here is the good news about miniatures gaming in 2026: you no longer need two hundred models and a spare room. Skirmish games field a handful of miniatures, finish inside an evening, and let you own a complete, painted, playable force for less than the cost of one big army's worth of infantry.
Here is the bad news: there are a lot of them, they all look great on a shelf, and the one you pick badly will sit in a cupboard reminding you of the money.
We stock five. Rather than pretend they are all perfect for everyone, here is the honest breakdown.
The Quick Version
- You want the biggest battles and you like building a real army: Star Wars: Legion
- You want Star Wars but not the model count: Star Wars: Shatterpoint
- You want to throw a car at Spider-Man: Marvel: Crisis Protocol
- You want the deepest, most demanding tactical game on the table: Infinity
- You are tired of dice ruining your plans: Moonstone
Now the detail.
Star Wars: Legion
Models you need: the most on this list. Think squads, not characters.
The Vibe: Actual battles. Vehicles, troopers, command structures, ground being taken and lost. Of everything here, Legion feels the most like a war.
The Playstyle: Order tokens and command cards mean you are constantly making decisions about sequence, not just targets. Which unit acts, and when, matters more than any single dice roll. It rewards planning a turn ahead and punishes autopilot.
The Commitment: Highest here. You are assembling and painting the most miniatures, and a full force is a project rather than a purchase. That is a feature if you love the hobby side and a warning if you do not.
Start with: whichever faction starter you want, then read our faction guide if you cannot choose. Add the Essentials Pack.
Star Wars: Shatterpoint
Models you need: very few. A squad is a handful of characters.
The Vibe: The duels, not the war. Shatterpoint is built around the moments Star Wars actually remembers, which means named characters doing character things while their support struggles to keep up.
The Playstyle: Faster and more cinematic than Legion, built around momentum and struggling over specific points on the board rather than holding a line. Games finish comfortably in an evening.
The Commitment: Low. A Core Set plus a squad pack or two is a real, complete collection, not a starting point that demands five more purchases.
Start with: the Core Set. It is genuinely two playable forces plus terrain, which is rarer than it should be.
Marvel: Crisis Protocol
Models you need: a handful. Most rosters are single characters you mix and match.
The Vibe: Comic book fights, and it commits completely. Terrain is destructible, characters get thrown through it, and the whole game is engineered to produce the panel where somebody goes through a wall.
The Playstyle: Power-level escalation. Characters get stronger as they take a beating, so being hurt is not simply losing, and a fight you are behind in is often the fight you want. Deeply satisfying, and the easiest game here to explain to somebody who has never played a miniatures game.
The Commitment: Genuinely modular. You buy the characters you like. That is the whole hobby. A Spider-Man fan and an X-Men fan can build in totally different directions and still play each other.
Start with: the Earth's Mightiest Core Set, or one of the themed starters if you already know your allegiance: X-Men, Spider-Foes, Guardians of the Galaxy or Asgardians.
Infinity
Models you need: roughly ten to fifteen. Small force, enormous depth.
The Vibe: Near-future sci-fi with an anime and cyberpunk streak, and hands down the most detailed sculpts we stock. Corvus Belli models are a flex.
The Playstyle: This is the deep end, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Infinity's headline idea is that you are never idle: your models react during your opponent's turn, so both players are engaged constantly and there is no such thing as watching someone else play. It is the most tactically rewarding game on this list and the one that demands the most from you.
The Commitment: Low on models, high on brainpower. Expect your first few games to be humbling.
Start with: Essentials - START HERE - Aleph / Nomads. The name is not subtle and neither is our recommendation.
Moonstone
Models you need: five to seven. The lowest barrier to entry here by a distance.
The Vibe: Grubby fairytale Britain. Goblins, drunk knights, folk-horror fae and the recently deceased, all fighting over magic rocks in a wood. The 32mm resin sculpts from Goblin King Games are the most characterful miniatures we sell.
The Playstyle: No dice. Combat is a card-driven duel where you are reading your opponent as much as the board, which makes it the only game on this list where a poker face is a real advantage. If you have ever wanted to throw dice across a room, this is the answer.
The Commitment: Lowest. A troupe box is three models. You can own a complete, tournament-legal force for less than most people spend on a single Legion tank.
Start with: Dusk till Dawn or Life & Death Struggle if you have a friend, or a troupe box plus the Core Rulebook if you do not. Our faction guide covers all four troupes.
The Question That Actually Decides It
Not "which is the best game". They are all good. Ask this instead:
Who is going to play it with you?
A mediocre game with three regular opponents beats a masterpiece nobody in your area owns. Before you buy, ask at your local store what hits the tables on a weeknight. If that is us, come ask. If it is not, go ask them anyway, because the single biggest predictor of whether a game sticks is whether somebody is waiting to play it with you.
Second question, and it is nearly as important: do you want to paint? Legion and Infinity ask for the most brushwork. Shatterpoint and Crisis Protocol come pre-assembled or close to it in most cases. Moonstone is a small number of models you will genuinely enjoy taking your time over. Be honest with yourself here. An unpainted army is not a moral failing, but it is a good sign you picked a game with the wrong workload.
So which one is calling you? The war, the duel, the comic book, the chess match, or the card game in a haunted wood?
