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April 24, 2008
WWII playoff
Chris, Freddy and I are now in a WW2 mood, and we are playing with all kinda rules, using both our 15mm FoW army and Freddy's various 25mm/20mm stuff. More detailed writeup will follow later, but here's what we've got so far:
1. Disposable Hero: Set of Mass Skirmish rules (my term given to rules that are 1:1, but smallest maneuver unit is a section or a squad). Very straight forward and gives pretty realistic results, what I call "workman-like" in that it's got all the basics, but nothing too innovative. Will be used as a baseline for us to compare all other Mass Skirmish rules against.
We played two games so far, one a 25mm game with Ge vs Ru, about 1 platoon a side plus one vehicle ea. and a second game of German attack into Arnhem using Freddy's collection of 20mm stuff. We found that attacking into a city is hard business and makes a long and attritional game. A village will be the largest I'll do from now on.
2. I Ain't Been Shot Mum using our 15mm FoW army. I call it a Company level ww2 RPG game, where a game master is really de rigure. It's got a high chaos factor, and a lot of anxiety and excitement since units are hidden and move on "blinds" until they are revealed. In principal I have resistance against rules that uses hidden forces (i painted all those nice figures damn it I want to see them on the table!) It's fun enough that it'll probably get an occasional outing when we are in a RPG mood, but won't make it as our "default" set.
3. NUTS! - First time I tried this weeks ago I didn't like it, main reason being that the rules are badly organized and I was lost trying to read through it. THis time Chris did more prep and we played 2 games in about 2 hours (living up to the Two Hour Wargames label twice over!) and I enjoyed it much more. It's at a lower scale of individual level game, so running 1~2 squad per player is about the limit. THe game feels like WW2 small unit action, with minimal level of DRM and charts. Highly chaotic. In both of our games once a side "dominated" the battle field (i.e. have firelane setup before the other bloke can get into position), the game is pretty much over in that if you pop up into an established firelane you are pretty much hosed. THis fits in well with my understanding of WW2 battles. Will get occasional outing (I say occasional since I prefer more toys on the table, so "mass skirmish" or Company level is probably my preferred level of game), but this being so innovative and so atmospheric that I'll definitely play it again. I just hope the rules could be better organized and some key concepts better explained (there's also a lot of wristage, since a 1 on 1 firefight can literally take forever).
Next up: Metal Storm WW2 (company level game) and Battlefield Evolution WW2...
Posted by msoong at April 24, 2008 09:48 PM
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