We played a lot of Contemptible Little Armies.
The scale is non-specific. The units of 8-18 singly mounted figures could represent sections, platoons, companies or even battalions. So it COULD be a skirmish… Eitehr way it always LOOKS like a skirmish and most wargamers despite the scale you state it is in the scenario – will TREAT it like a skirmish…
Things I liked about the system were:
Movement was randomized – infantry went 2d6" in good-going, 1d6" in bad going. I am sick-Sick-sick of rules with completely deterministic movement systems. I played a lot of FoW and it drove me to distraction how rules-lawyers could measure from your guys and stop a half-inch short of you maximum range, then on the following turn move up, fire and suppress, then move into close assault and whipe you out without you even getting a shot of… The guys I like playing with also really liked the random movement it made you come up with a solid plan of attack and stick to it! Guys I didn't like playing with hated it no loss there.
Fire OR Move. If you moved, you could not fire! Again had to have a plan and stick to it and accept losses! As an attacker you simply had to advance to contact. If you stopped to shoot it meant the defender had another turn to shoot at YOU (generally in the open) and shooting at defenders in trenches was, generally speaking, a complete and utter waste of time!!! It was another sore point with the deterministic rules-lawyers raised on warhmammer and 40K. Again, no loss to me!
Dead simple rules fast and bloody I liked this, it made for very quick games as a lot of people thought it was TOO bloody entire units being wiped out before they even failed a single morale test. The problem is when most people remove figures from a table they think of them as "dead". I tend to think of them as "rendered combat ineffective". I saw the reduction in troops as a representation of a reduction in fighting capacity for the unit so I had no trouble with it. Of those removed only a fraction would be killed outright, a number of them would be crippled or seriously injured and given the quality of medical care at the time could very likely die of their wounds but the majority of those removed would simply have been lightly injured or simply given up! Just because the whole unit hasn't broken doesn't mean that pockets aren't drifting away or hiding in holes…
Orders (in certain scenarios) you had to give orders to attacking infantry and cavalry and they would act in a certain way under certain orders advancing troops would advance at full speed towards their given objective without stopping to anything except close assault and really given the rules it was the most sensible thing to do. A unit could be "halted" by morale failure or loss of troops(? I can't remember exactly), and would have to pass a morale test to get going again and then would carry on their advance as before…
Target Priority rules you couldn't just shoot at anybody at least with infantry there was a set of target priorities.
Downsides….
Artillery was weak and didn't go ANYWHERE if you missed. The great killer of the war rarely killed anything unless you happen to get lucky and catch some guys out in the open and actually managed to HIT them!! The blast template was tiny and if your opponent was dispersed you might hit one or two guys (out of a unit of 12 to 18) if you didn't hit them you hit NOTHING! The shots when sailing off the table…
Machine-guns were the big killers not artillery. Just wrong. Machine-guns would cut swathes out of units and artillery did nothing!
Artillery and MGS were ridiculously hard to kill?! There was no point in firing MGs and on-table artillery at each other as you only got to roll one die usually hitting on a 5 or 6 and if you DID hit they got a save of 50%+ I think it was morale value or less?
The rules weren't very tight they were poorly organized and a LOT of things just weren't explained very well. While it did say you couldn't move and fire the roles were written for individually based figures of units of 8 to 16 and most things were worked out individually so, technically, there was nothing saying you couldn't move some guys in a unit and fire other guys… a nightmare when you have a couple hundred figures on the table… No Quick Reference Chart…!? Complete and utter lack of support from the publisher or author. There is a Yahoo group – started by a player –
No orders for defenders, etc?! While the advancing troops had to have pretty defined orders and could not deviate from them without a change of orders from the CO (or a maybe a staff officer?) defenders could move about freely so a unit on one end of the line which could be mile distant could simply pick up and run over to help comrades that were faltering when in reality they'd have NO IDEA what the state of their brothers over yonder hill was… WE played with house rules that defenders had to have "hold" orders and if you wanted to move them the Commander would have to issue a change of orders.
Stupidly expensive for what you got it was what? 50 single-sided photo-copied pages cerlox bound for… $36.00 CAD by the time it got to my local game store!? by comparison the perfect bound, professionally printed Cold War Commander with 140 pages, colour pictures, clear diagrams and examples of play and separate QRS on cards stock cost me $50.00 CAD (…and they have a very active forum hosted by the publisher and rules queries are answer by the author generally within hours of you posting it..)!?
Ugh… I could go on all day with examples of screwy play – basically it was made to be "okay" with a LOT of house rules and then only if you played with reasonable people who had an appreciation for the era and would play to the era and not what was technically "allowed" by the rules. One rules lawyer could ruin the game for everyone!.
gets started with WWI British in 15mm.
