Good ruleset for Pacific Islands games?

[Belligerentparrot]

Hi all,

I'm not a WWII gamer, but am hoping to draw on your collective expertise 

I'd really like to try a kind of asymmetrical game, where one player's task is to design a puzzle so fiendishly difficult the other player must struggle to, and perhaps can't, unlock it.

It strikes me that late-war Pacific Island battles are perfect examples of this. Iwo Jima, for example: if I understand the history correctly, and to put it very crudely, Kuribayashi basically told his units to do nothing but hold their ground, trusting that he'd set up his forces to make the island as fiendishly difficult a proposition as he could.

Being a sci-fi gamer, mostly GW, I've not encountered a ruleset that even tries to do justice to that kind of scenario - they're all written with the assumption that both players will want to *do* lots of things on each turn. That isn't an unreasonable assumption! But that isn't the kind of game I'm intrigued by.

So I'm hoping you WWII gamers might know of some options I could look at. As for game scale, ideally skirmish/28mm or thereabouts, but anything will do - I want to find a good way of dealing with the asymmetry, ruleswise, and the scale of the encounter doesn't seem too relevant to that. (I may be mistaken about this, of course).

[AzSteven]

I would say Bolt Action, Chain of Command or even I Ain't Been Shot Mum would work, but all of them would need some scenario rules and house rules to handle the assymetric aspect well. 

I almost wonder if it wouldnt work better to make the Japanese side automated and give each player a section of Marines to run.  That would require a good amount of up-front work to set up the activities and conditions for the Japanese, but it would reflect both the symmetry issue and the rather inflexible defense nature of the Japanese positions at islands like Iwo Jima.

[NurgleHH]

Being a sci-fi gamer, mostly GW, I've not encountered a ruleset that even tries to do justice to that kind of scenario - they're all written with the assumption that both players will want to *do* lots of things on each turn. That isn't an unreasonable assumption! But that isn't the kind of game I'm intrigued by.

As a GW-Gamer you should have a look at "Rules of Engaement" from Great Escape Games. I would call them a good WW2-40K.
Or have a look at Battleground-Series distributed by Plastic Soldier Company. It is made by the Guys doing Battlefield Normandy for Warhammer Historical.

[fred]

These are all good rulesets for WWII skirmish gaming. But none of them address the asymmetric type of battle the OP is looking for.

This type of game feels more like having multiple players vs the umpire controlling the largely static defenders.

Some colonial rules have automated rules / instructions to take care of the native hordes (for example The Men Who Would be Kings) but I think these would be no-more than a starting point, as in colonial games it is likely the natives are the ones attacking.

Your idea about the defender building the defences and seeing if the attacker can breach them - suggests some kind of resource management to build the defences. Some scenarios do this with a bidding process between the attacker and defender about how many points one side feels they need to overcome the other.

[BillK]

Wars of Insurgency by Mike Demanna is tilted towards modern asymmetric wargaming and might provide a good starting point. You can find it here - http://www.firstcommandwargames.com/wars-of-insurgency.html and Mike posts here to LAF. Best of luck.

[Belligerentparrot]

Thanks for the replies so far, folks.

I agree with the notions that what I'm hoping to do is a lot like solo gaming or refereed gaming. I also like the idea of bidding for resources, that would work well as a balancing mechanism.

 I guess I should also have been more specific in what I was asking. I'm looking for rules covering things like *how* fortifications might be placed more or less mutually-supporting ways, so the Defender player has something to figure out here - and then Attacker, once the game is underway, in turn has to try to work out what Defender *was* thinking, which should help make clearer how best to take the position.

That's the one I'm really stuck on. (Rules for hidden deployment, tunnels, movement past concealed units, etc. seem a bit more common? But all suggestions there welcome too) I'm guessing a ruleset that handled things like crossfire from multiple directions, kill-zones for pill-boxes, etc. is the sort of thing I might find useful? Not something I've encountered in my limited gaming universes.

To be honest, it doesn't have to be WWII ruleset. The same kind of game could be played with e.g. a gang defending its hideout from rivals, or whatever. It just struck me that the kind of game I'm wanting to play is structurally just like late-war Pacific Island battles, so surely a WWII ruleset might be useful!



 

[SteveBurt]

Battlefront:WW2 works really well for Pacific. There are loads of scenarios at www.fireandfury.com.
No specific solo rules, but it works well solo and you could also easily play a load of US players against an umpire controlled Japanese defence.

[robh]

The best set of rules I have found for doing asymmetric games without playing solo/co-op is the Piquet system.
For what you want it would be "Point of Attack: Blitzkrieg" the WW2 expansion or "Forgotten Heroes" which is the Vietnam War.

http://www.piquetwargames.com

As you build specific command decks for the 2 sides you can create very different types of force. Taking your Iwo Jima example the Japanese would have lot of firing, observation and wait command cards while the US would have a lot of movement, support and combat cards. Making the Japanese fairly static force that can put down a lot of fire from ambush/prepared positions while with high mobility the US can easily outmanoeuvre the positions if they can find them.
Bunkers, Trenches, Tanks, Support artillery etc are all included and there is a point system to "balance" widely different types of forces.

Piquet is a brilliant but often exasperating system. The absolute epitome of a "fog of war" type game, as far removed from something like Warhammer or Bolt Action as it is possible to get.  It is specifically designed so that a player does not have choreographic control of his troops and is constantly forced to react and adapt to what is happening on the table. Sometimes the initiative is with you and you can do a lot, other times it is not. A lot of gamers hate it for that reason alone.

You would need to research how the forces involved in your battles would act and the tactics they would use and tailor your command decks to reflect that. May take a few attempts to get it but could certainly be done.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Not sure if the Original Poster would find it of use, but the Zona Alfa expansion Kontraband (for solo or cooperative play) has the concept of Points of Interest and the associated POI cards that are revealed on examining a location. Each mission adds a number of specific cards that have to be revealed and achieved. I am using this concept for Solo Vietnam games - with custom set of cards - while undertaking missions in a built up area.

A similar arrangement could be used for island clearing (though you might not need the zone babushka card).  Each point of interest (that hill over there, that clump of bamboo etc) requires the turning over of the next POI card which reveals

Other encounter systems of this kind are available, but the Kontraband combination of Encounter and Mission cards is very clever.

The Walking Dead: All Out War combination of Threat Level and what is effectively reinforcements is also worth looking at.

[Belligerentparrot]

Steve - thanks, that suggestion looks great! The cave rules that were at the end of one of the Okinawa scenarios look exceptionally helpful, thanks.

Robh and UVS - thanks, I'll try to look all those up.

Cheers all!