Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => The Great War => Topic started by: armchairgeneral on July 12, 2020, 08:13:30 AM
-
We use Bolt Action for our WW1 games which work well with one or two 1:1 platoons but not so good for any larger forces than this, despite us trying various ways to speed up the game.
I just wondered if there are any rule sets out there written for 1:1 company level games? My past enthusiasms and wargaming megalomania has led me to now have a full British command of 4 platoons with support weapons and 4 tanks but I have yet to use it all in one game.
-
Have you considered an adaptation of the Too Fat Lardies WW2/post-war company-level rules set "I Ain't Been Shot, Mum"? I'm afraid I can't give a personal review of them, but some gaming partners have tried them and like them for WW2, so I could seem them working for WW1, as well. You would need to scale down the off-table supports, and make the "communications" between front-line and rear elements a lot more random (much as you would have done with converting BA to WW1 I imagine).
-
Thanks. I checked them out on YouTube. Although for a company, they seemed to be scaled down so a platoon has a similar number of figures to a section?
Maybe what I am seeking hasn’t been written as there isn’t an appetite for moving over 100 or more figures aside on individual bases even if some are on sabot bases?
-
Take a look at Through the Mud and the Blood by Too Fat Lardies. They are one figure equals one man and can run up to 120 minis. They may be that you're looking for. 😁
-
Peter Pig have a company level WWII game (PBI) but a couple of years ago the demo team were using the rules for a 1917 or 1918 game. Not sure how much modification the rules needed, but it might be worth dropping them a line to see?
They have a WWI rule set, but it's more divisional than company level
-
Is that Square Bashing?
Thanks Bartman. I have TTMTB but not looked at them in a long while so will check them out again.
-
For my part I play the GREAT WAR rule of WARHAMMER HISTORICAL. we deploy about 100 to 150 figurines.
seb
-
The only problem being that Warhammer Historical is long out-of-print. I think you can find them on E-Bay but going for silly money.
-
I used to have them but sold them fairly recently. I wasn’t keen on them. They were written for a about a 1:4 ratio for one thing for battalion sized games.
-
A caveat that I haven't tried this myself, so I can't say how viable it is...
Too Fat Lardies included a WWI variant for Chain of Command in their 2014 Christmas Special (Cocking up In the Mud and the Blood). you could have a go at Big CoC (which is designed for multiple platoons per side) using the WWI variant. It would be a bit of work to assemble everything. Since WWI sections aren't divided into teams, some of the detail at the lower end will be offset (although you'll still have MG teams and snipers available to activate on a 1).
-
Is that Square Bashing?
Square bashing is the divisional set.
Uses quite a lot of figures in 15mm based as stands.
I've played a few games (mostly early war Serbian front or RCW) and they work quite well.
-
What about the Setting the East Ablaze Rules?
-
Contemptible Little Armies?
-
I have toyed with adapting Crossfire, but never gotten around to it. IABSM from Too Fat Lardies had a WW1 conversion in one fo the Christmas specials ump-teen years ago. It looked good but I never got it on the table.
-
I am a fan of The Great War by Warhammer Historicals, which is sadly out of print. It is a fast and easy game that operates on a stripped-down version of the Warhammer 40,000 3rd edition rules. My only quibble would be the lethality is a little high, but it is hard to say that is wrong.
-
Crossfire works very well. It needs the sector-based restrictions to movement incorporated in the multi-player recommendations:
https://balagan.info/how-to-play-multi-player-crossfire-games
Other than that, the standard rules are good to go.
Robert
-
I am a fan of The Great War by Warhammer Historicals, which is sadly out of print. It is a fast and easy game that operates on a stripped-down version of the Warhammer 40,000 3rd edition rules. My only quibble would be the lethality is a little high, but it is hard to say that is wrong.
I used to play The Great War Rules a lot and agree the lethality was high which I thought was due to I Go You Go system which tended to mean the attacker advanced only to be mowed down by the defender.
One of the TGW rules co-authors Rob Broom used to organise WW1 gaming days some years ago and there we used a house rule of using a pack of playing cards. A black suit for one side and a red suit for the other. The number of cards in the pack for each corresponding to the number of units each side had. You shuffled the cards at the start of each move and the moved/fired etc. each unit as yours or your opponents card came up. You could also opt to put a joker in the pack. When that was picked you just reshuffled and started a new move. If you had equal size forces, the attacker could also have 50% more cards than the units he had.
The rules worked a lot better using this rule IMHO.
I have since moved on to Bolt Action as they are a better set of rules in my view particularly as I believe Late War WW1 is better done at 1:1 to bring out the specialist roles of each of the platoon sections of the German, French and British armies at the stage of the war.
Bolt Action gets a bit too slow above two platoons though, so I am looking for ways to speed it up to cope with 1:1 company size games or find another set of rules I like as much that can cope with this size of game.
-
One of the TGW rules co-authors Rob Broom used to organise WW1 gaming days some years ago and there we used a house rule of using a pack of playing cards. A black suit for one side and a red suit for the other. The number of cards in the pack for each corresponding to the number of units each side had. You shuffled the cards at the start of each move and the moved/fired etc. each unit as yours or your opponents card came up. You could also opt to put a joker in the pack. When that was picked you just reshuffled and started a new move. If you had equal size forces, the attacker could also have 50% more cards than the units he had.
The rules worked a lot better using this rule IMHO.
--> By coincidence I found a draft of those amendments while sorting out a box over Christmas and remembered how simple they were, yet very effective in giving some balance to attack and defend games. Special events were controlled by the picture cards. I think the queen stopped the turn as in my WW1 inspired deck of playing cards they are nurses. When I finish the tidy up they should reappear so I can double check.
As the intro to the rules mentions the deck was inspired by the toofatlardies systems and it definitely made the games very enjoyable
-
By coincidence I found a draft of those amendments while sorting out a box over Christmas and remembered how simple they were, yet very effective in giving some balance to attack and defend games. Special events were controlled by the picture cards. I think the queen stopped the turn as in my WW1 inspired deck of playing cards they are nurses. When I finish the tidy up they should reappear so I can double check.
As the intro to the rules mentions the deck was inspired by the toofatlardies systems and it definitely made the games very enjoyable
Thanks for replying to this thread Rob and thanks for putting me right. I was struggling to remember the details lol