Hi all,
I am teacher in alberta and I run a skirmish wargaming club during the noontime recess, I like to do historical themed battles that the students are coving in their respective Social Studies classes. Anyways I have recently bought and fallen in love with the Smooth&Rifled rule set from the boys who gave us IMPETUS.
Here is their blurb
"Smooth&Rifled is a game system designed to recreate skirmish games with 28, 20 or 15mm miniatures. This very first edition covers the period from approximately 1700 to approximately 1900. The French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the Napoleonicwars, the American Civil War and the wars of the Colonial era are just some of the periods you can play with S&R.
In the Appendix you will find all the information that will help you to choose the ideal format for your games, from simple patrol clashes involving few men per side to bigger encounters with 50-60 miniatures per side, ideal for multiplayer games."
Here is mine.
I am loving this rule set for a couple of reasons.
The first it is simple, simple enough that my grade 7's picked it up in about 15 minutes and none of them have any experence wargaming, they like the rules cause they are simple and you can steal other peoples weapons.
The Second is you can get it in PDF and print it the day you get it. I am in northen Alberta and some stuff takes weeks/months to reach us. I have been waiting for one set of rules for nearly an month and a half now.
The third it quick, furrious and fun. Some time we only have time for a 20 minute game and it works in that time frame. I also like that it supporst fights with as few as one figures a side. I had forteen students show up to battle so we did a quick Wild west shootout with one person controling one figure. Mounties vs Bandits of course
.
Which leads me to my second last point. Multiplayer. This system is great for allowing a lot of students to take part in a quick fight or historical battle. I have had it so that students each control a small unit from the approperate time period.
Finally they have free historical army lists on their website/blog and they have a living rulebook. Version 1.5 is being realised before Christmas and the developer is taking a lot of imput from the community. He is happy to answer questions and listen to and use suggestions when doing his rules.
Now I am sure there are other wonderful rule sets out there and if you can think of any good for a school enviroment please share. I just wanted to tell people about this one because it really is a nice set of rules and I figure people might like to hear about it.
Disclaimer
I asked and to the best of my knowlegde it is ok to talk about rule like this on the forums if it is not I apoligize and I will happily take this down.
Cheers,
Irish