So, I just bought two decks of this card game that is NOT a card game.

Battleground Fantasy Warfare.

https://rattrapgames.com/collections/battleground-fantasy-warfare




It is a deck of cards, but they're actually the miniatures for the wargame.  You place them onto the table, and the image on the card is of a block of soldiers, or a line of cavalry, and their stats.  They move across the tabletop as rank & file soldiers should, ready to charge the enemy soldiers and get into their vulnerable rear.

I like it because I don't have to paint an entire display case full of 28mm toys (I'm not much interested in that hobby), but I can have a battle game.  And then, when I am done, it packs away into a box of playing cards.

Completely forgot about Battleground! Excellent game, and it gives that big battle feel without committing to hordes of models.

Back when my son and his friends where younger, I just house ruled Battletech into a fast-kill version.  Armor and internals were combined, weapons did dice damage, heat was replaced with cool down for the big guns.  It played quickly and each kid could drive several mechs so a loss was not a sit out of the game moment.  At that time, a ran the opposing force of vehicles and mechs so it was a co-op game for them.

Similar to Battleground was a game called Star Trek: Red Alert. Instead of cards, it used giant cardboard discs. Luckily, it sold badly and one of the guys who worked at Last Unicorn Game forum sold off a ton of complete sets when they lost the license.



One of the cool parts is that you'd buy upgrades that were disks hidden on your ship card and you'd only reveal them when you needed to. So your ship could have special torpedoes or Boarding Parties to surprise your opponents with. Sadly, it was only Next Generation so I'll stick with Star Fleet Battles (which is not simple at all).

So, I have a set of rules for naval combat games (free stuff you find on the internet) called Starmageddon.  I think I mentioned it above, but I'll repost it here.

Starmageddon rules on an Angelfire page (they're still around?!?)

Here are the ships I am making 3D models of, and have already 3D printed to be ships for the game.  I own a Mars Elegoo 3D resin printer.  A battleship and a cruiser.  I still have to make some destroyers.

Hi, I also recommend Battleground, a very good game.

I recommend Hordes of the Things. Low production values and you have to get used to the writing style, but really a fun & simple rank & flank fantasy battle game.

Some nice little wargames.

Tom Wham's King of the Tabletop as appeared in Dragon way back.

Barbarian Kings and Ragnarok from early issues of Ares. In fact all the pack in games are pretty good. Personal favorites are the two BESM Pandora space games and Damocles Mission.

Macho Women with Guns, a wargame disguised as an RPG by the designers own admittance. Lil more complex. But surprisingly versatile.

Both Diskwars (originall, L5R, and Warhammer versions available) and Pirates of the Spanish Main could work, as could any Clix game.

You could even grab some Battletech Clix.

Star Trek: Attack Wing/ Star Wars: X-Wing

BLKOUT looks simple, I have not played it though.
I think it is more of a skirmish, and I think it has campaign stuff to.
A futuristic sci-fi small squad deadly combat and fast rounds so it appears.
I do love lore dense stuff but sometimes I just want to get in to play.
I assume you can use a lot of minis from where ever.  The in game minis look fairly expensive.
I think the core rules are free if you want a PDF.

I'll give a bit of a silly reply, but I'd recommend the board game Root. Hidden behind cute animals and pretty artwork is actually a pretty savage tactical wargame with asymmetric factions. A ton of content that fits into a single box and you can even play it solo.

I saw this the other day.  Hobgoblin, written by the same guy who did Gaslands.

Hobgoblin is a traditional Rank-&-Flank army game.  Blocks of troops march and charge across the table top.

The two big differences here are how casualties happen, and how units are stated out.

1.  Casualties.  You inflict damage on a unit, but it doesn't result in removing models from the table.  Instead, a "doom" counter goes up.  When the doom is more than the unit's morale, the unit is removed at the end of the turn.  I think this is done to make playing the game easier since you're not having to monkey around with models, or decreasing stats due to casualties and such.  You're in, or you're out.  A simple binary state.

2.  All units are just variations on 11 core units. Light infantry or light cavalry for example.  The dice you roll is found on a single chart, so no need to look it up in a codex.  These units are then flavored by taking positive and negative traits.  Undead light infantry might have higher morale, but also move slower than a normal light infantry, or a commander has an area effect ability that gives higher morale to friendly units near it. 

It's also got a free demo set of rules to try out. 

Hobgoblin demo rules (free)

I've been looking hard at Oathmark lately. Its a rank and flank with tolkien vibes.  Uses d10 with no more than 5 dice to a roll.  Seems pretty quick and straightforward but has a neat campaign mechanic.

Necromolds: Monster Battles

This game does not claim to be the most interesting, but nevertheless I have not seen anything similar. Unfortunately, I have not played it myself, so I can not share my personal impressions.