"WWII 28mm rules" Topic

I've been reading through posts on the board trying to find some reviews of rules for 28mm wwii skirmish games.

any suggestions with pros and cons is appreciated.

Disposable Heroes! Plays quickly, easy to learn. You can generally play a game to a conclusion in under two hours.

Cons – It is a high casualty game. It is very simplified.

Sigh. Rules are not scale specific. Any set of skirmish level WW2 rules should work with 28mm figures.

A corner of hell works well…..We are playing a band of brothers game with them….

Pros – quick to pick up and play.

Cons – Artillery is deadly in the rules….

MH
:-)

NUTS! From two hour wargames is my favorite. Realistic combat, while still being easy to play.

FYI you are gonna get a lot of differing opinions…

If you can find it, Battleground WWII is good.

Rules of Engagement from Great Escape Games is also very good. And looks like you'll be having more options soon, since I keep hearing that Mongoose Publishing will release a WWII rule book based on their Battlefield Evolution system early this year.

Operation Overlord gives a good game, not so good with armour though.

Troops Weapons and Tactics is our set of choice for platoon level and Face of Battle is a great one for even lower level actions.

Mike Snorbens? are you taking the time to type "Sigh" because I have annoyed you in some way? Please forgive me.

I have no experience with any WWII game system other than FoW.

Suggestions have been great. Thank you. I guess I will do some research on each of the suggested systems. . Is there any place that hosts an in depth review of each game?

Matt

I like Crossfire, you could use your FOW bases to try it out before investing in 28mm figures.
It's not really skirmish though as the basic 'piece' is a squad so feel free to ignore me.

matakishi.com/crossfire.htm

Crossfire, best set of WW2 rules out there. But like Matakishi said not really skirmish. We have just started playing NUTS for 28mm skirmish, and we all like the feel alot. There are some similarities to Crossfire, kinda, I think thats why we like 'em so.
My 2¢.
Peter

Lots of rules and lots of opinions. Isn't there a list??? Look at rules threads under and just search WW2 rules in general this will give you days and days of reading. Everyone likes different rules. Everyone has their own opinions. Then you have some more popular rule sets which more people play because they are easy to learn.

I like games with no rules.

Thanks Matakishi (I've seen your work in Lead Adventure forum it's great stuff)

Crossfire might not be what I am looking for. But the write up is. Also,Strangely enough, it is designed by Arty Conliffe who also designed tactica which is one of the games our grognards brought to the club. They played in a club with him for years in NYC. My six degrees of wargaming elite separation. sorry for the digression. :)

"Mike Snorbens? are you taking the time to type "Sigh" because I have annoyed you in some way?"

No, you haven't annoyed me. Its just that there appear to be a lot of gamers who seem to think that just because it says (say) "rules for 15mm war games" on the cover you can't use them for any other scale.

If you are not one of them, then I apologise for the sigh!

For the record I happen to think that Stargrunt II with a few modifications are excellent for WW2 games up to platoon level.

Dude--you're telling me that in your searches you couldn't find an answer or some good advice? This topic gets brought up every week! Dig a little deeper!

Just searched for WW2 Rules and about 1000 threads came up.

Dude--you're telling me that in your searches you couldn't find an answer or some good advice? This topic gets brought up every week! Dig a little deeper!

Just searched for WW2 Rules and about 1000 threads came up.

Many for 6, 10, 15, 20, 25, 28mm and so on.

i vote for disposable heroes rules; fast, deadly, fun, easy to play, and fewer charts. good luck, go to cold wars or another con and find one that suits your gaming style. cheers ; )

"If you can find it, Battleground WWII is good."
link

Or you can try PATROL:WWII
link

Here are some free downloads-
link

Here are a few reviews of some of the games discussed:

A Corner of Hell
link

Crossfire
link

Rules of Engagement
PDF link

Disposable Heroes
link

Nuts!
link

Battleground WW2
link

Stuart & Brian excellent posts!

Just what I was looking for.

I especially liked Rules of Engagement and Disposable heroes.

Gives me something to do more research on.

Thanks,

Matt

Rules of Engagement is a fantastic game. Well recommended.

I'll add my vote for Rules of Engagement too!

[GAME] is the greatest ever! No additional information will be provided.

You can help playtest my game, Over There!, and you get the rules for free. We have a Yahoo group:

link

It plays quick and accurate, rewarding real world tactics and historical combat doctrine. Other little gribblies:

No modifiers, no charts, no paperwork.
Fast play that acts like a zoom lense to focus on the parts of the battlefield you are most interested in.
Detailed, allowing each soldier to act of his own free will (kick down doors, drop grenades out windows, leap over walls and cover his buddies).
Realistic outcomes (everything from tank armour thickness to casualty results).
Fun, ORIGINAL game mechanics (!)

Join the group and start chucking dice!

-AM

Rules of Engagement? Forget it! Only good if you are into losing your whole squad on the first die roll or the last. Go with…

Combatpainter, would you care to qualify that statement? I have never once seen that happening in many hundreds of games.

Achtung,

Free rules? Kicking in doors? SOLD!

Nothing I like better than free rules. it properly allows you to put the horse in front of the cart and start planning with no damage to the wallet.

:)

P.S. the modern Army troopers kind of freaked me out. . .

I was expecting Fallschirmjaegers

@Quadratus, welcome aboard. The v2.4 core rulebook is in the download section (the last full version), and the v2.5 update document is found there too (we are currently playtesting v2.5 very thoroughly). The game covers everything from 1900 to 2020, but don't be dissuaded by the "near future" soldiers, the majority of supplements I've released for the game relate to WW2 (including a German motor pool with over 70 vehicles, and a Soviet and US motor pool with something like 30 or 40 vehicles).

The best (most accurate, realistic, and intense) WWII-Modern set of skirmish rules is Final Combat, hands down. Final Combat is highly detailed, but very playable with a Game Master who is knowledgeable of the rules. A colleague of mine and I will be running two WWII skirmish games in 25mm scale at Cold Wars with these rules -- Friday at 9AM and Saturday at 9AM. If you make it to Cold Wars, stop by and check it out.

A lot of the games mentioned are not true "skirmish" games. They are "small unit" games -- there is a difference.

NUTS!
Super concept and relatively inexpensive

Patrol
A lot of stuff / great ideas here. More expensive but . . . might be worth it for what you get.

Over There
Shows a lot of promise. Probably my favorite true skirmish game right now but I must say I haven't played it much and my experience is with infantry only. The price is right -- free download. Do yourself a favor and get a copy before the author wises up and starts selling them.

combat painter wrote: "Rules of Engagement? Forget it! Only good if you are into losing your whole squad on the first die roll or the last. Go with…"

I think you have Rules of Engagement mixed up with another set of rules. There is one set of rules in particular that often delivers silly casualties. RoE is not THAT set of rules.

I've played Rules of Engagement more than a bit and will be presenting a RoE game at Enfilade-2008 if anyone want's to take a look (will be an 8 hour game divided into two 4 hour segments).

The Enfilade scenario features considerable potential for ambushes and unexpected attacks from unexpected quarters. It has been play tested 3-4 times so far (probably 30 hours of gaming by several different people). If there was ever an opportunity/situation to get your entire squad wiped out, this game certainly provides a setting for that kind of occurrence.

In all of that 30 hours, I can only recall one incident where a squad was wiped out in a couple of turns. The player controlling the squad wanted to expose some of his opponent's hidden positions and didn't really care about the squad he sent in to expose those positions.

The unfortunate scouts went trudging across an open field into a cross fire from two heavy machine gun positions. The first turn the squad took fire, IIRC, the 10 or 11 man squad only took a couple of casualties but were shaken by all the incoming fire. The second turn the squad passed it's morale test and managed to return enough fire on one of the HMG's, such that the HMG crew was forced to cease firing -- no casualties on the HMG crew IIRC. It was at this point continuing fire was received from the other HMG, new fire from the main gun of a tank, and new fire from half a panzer grenadier squad. After that hail of fire (unit caught in a cross fire while located in an open field) the squad was reduced to a single individual (who was last seen thumbing a ride to Moscow).

Where Rules of Engagement is concerned the above action is not typical but can happen. If you take the trouble to use a little cover in your approach and pick on something that does not have 4 times your fire power, you generally last quite a bit longer.

In the above described scenario, one of the scout squads has gone through the entire game each and every time, once without a scratch (which included an infantry assault on a tank), once with 4 figs remaining and once with 2 figs remaining. I'm not sure how many RoE turns were played in these 8 hour games but I would venture probably at least 20 and maybe 30+. So it is possible to play the game and not suffer so much as a single loss (also not typical), or with a few survivors after heavy fighting -- which is typical in my experience.

mjc

I said:

Rules of Engagement? Forget it! Only good if you are into losing your whole squad on the first die roll or the last. Go with…

Then someone said:

Combatpainter, would you care to qualify that statement? I have never once seen that happening in many hundreds of games.

Just kidding. Lol… Never played them and know nothing about them. Probably just as much fun as any other set.