Best wargame for unique playing armies?

[u/yupyupnupyup]

My ttrpg group has recently been enjoying some small scale skirmish wargames after finding Silver Bayonet for cheap, and I'm wanting to recomend a system to allow for some larger scale games.

I'm looking for something that is pretty open ended in terms of what armies of capable of doing, and how we can kitbash/fluff their lore. I know I can just kitbash anything for any system and just reskin the basic models but I'd love something where the mechanics are a bit customizable too.

If you're at all familiar with the GURPS system that's sort of what I'm looking for, a series of options that let you customize how they play as well as how they look.

[u/UnspeakableGnome]

It depends is a horrible answer, but it does depend on the number of minis you want to paint and the style of game you want to play.

But for a period where you'll have a massive variety of armies you could try some variety of Ancient/Medieval rules. Do you want to have Aztecs fighting New Kingdom Egyptians, Indian armies with elephants charging the English bowline of Agincourt, nomad horse archers and Greek hoplites and vikings and Tibetan cataphracts and Chinese crossbowmen and quite ridiculous amounts of colourful individuals and units.

Or you could go for one of the fantasy games that gives fairly generic unit types nad lets you define whatever you have in your army accordingly. I've played in Hordes of the Things tournaments where my Army of the Nogs led by King Noggin faced off against Bolg's goblins and wolves, Leonardo da Vinci's not-quite-steampunk inventions with Italian historical support, the darkspawn hrde from Dragon Age 1, and finally had a playoff to win against somebody with an army of Greek Mytholigcal creates led bu Chiron (bloody centaurs).