"15mm sci-fi rules - what do you recommend for a starter ?" Topic

Hi

Which rules would you recommend for an experienced gamer who wants to get into 15mm sci-fi ?

15mm is a must because of cost.

Thanks,

Have you looked at Stargrunt II? The rules are very clear and elegant, and it seems very popular with the 15mm crowd.

Plus, its freely downloadable from the GZG website.

Jason

Personally, I don't find Stargrunt that straight forward. The rules may be after you get to know them, but the book is a bit of a jumble. But the concepts are great.

Fast and Dirty 4.0 is a free ruleset that is very professional and obviously inspired by Stargrunt, but a bit simpler (but not simple).

But there's also: Future War Commander, Alien Squad Leader, and I guess some are using Ambush Alley and their new Force on Force rules as well.

I'm curious about how all these play. I've read some examples, but not enough to know if I want to buy.

I agree that the SG2 rulebook isn't the most clearly laid out-it definitely takes some work to sort out what's what. But the effort seems well worth it IMO.

Another older favorite of the 15mm sci fi community seems to be Beamstrike. Also freely available and open-source, so it has a great deal of support from the player community.

Jason

Laserburn!

Yes – laserburn !

Look into Beamstrike. The production value is very high considering its free. Its a great combined arms ruleset and has a lot of support from its Yahoo group. You can download the rules there.

Shock Force/War Engine is scale blind and works quite well for 15mm, and has the advantage of "down to the boots" force construction rules.

Stargrunt II. Can't beat the price!

Laserburn, Imperial Commander or Beamstrike. Laserburn is skirmish level aimed at 12-20 figures. Imperial Commander and Beamstrike are aimed at larger actions with 50+ figures in them. They are old skool but great fun.

Fast And Dirty.

You can stat up almost any model you want, it plays in a pretty "realistic" fashion. THere's a ton of optional rules to include for things like recovering wounded troopers.
Morale and suppressing fire is important.

Also includes points system, campaign rules and scenario generation, as well as a pretty unique "priority" system for developing your armies.

And well, its fre, and I'll bet a dollar that it covers more stuff that just about any other game on the market

Standard game size is about a platoon each, but you can easily use up to a company with no fuss.

freewebs.com/weaselfierce

Stargrunt II… stick with the basic rules and you should be fine. :)

One of the 40k rulesets?

I dig Laserburn, but it really is proto-40k.

Really a lot of it what do you want to play, and how do you want to base your figures.

But Laserburn, Imperial Commander and Beamstrike are all good places to start.

Yeah, Beamstrike and Fast and Dirty are solid choices. I never could get into Stargrunt. The figs and fluff are AWESOME! I just think the rules are a little fiddily when combined with tracking all the markers and chits. The results provided are decent. Just too many hoops to jump through for me. I think FAD does it better and quicker. You also CAN use a Company in FAD and still play pretty quickly. Not so with SG.

Thanks,

John

"You also CAN use a Company in FAD and still play pretty quickly. Not so with SG."

SG2 was not designed for company sized actions. You would be hard pressed to fit a company on a typical 6x4 gaming table.

Ok. Now, for a REAL beginner . . .

How many are in a squad?

A platoon?

A company?

etc.???

CC
PS. In case you are wondering, I've gamed only ancients and medievals until now.

Squad- 8-10
Platoon- 3/4 squads, say 40
Company- 3/4 platoons. Anywhere between 80-150 including command and a support platoon.

So, Agent Brown, this is what I'm aiming for . . .

. . . for each side to have 24-40 figures, and for each figure to represent one man . . .

And my table is now down to only 80 inches by 40 inches.

If so, what rules would you recommend to a beginner?

Thanks.

CC

I'm not a fan of SGII but many others are and they're free so you could try them. Other than that FAD or Beamstrike are both good and also free.
However, after discovering Ambush Alley I'm awaiting the Force on Force variant (Ambush Alley only covers regulars vs irregulars, FoF will cover all regular battles). Ambush Alley isn't free but it's the best skirmish game I've played. I hold out great hopes for FoF.

CC, welcome to the future!

Actually, those numbers depend on what background you're using.

Many modern militaries use an organization of threes: Three guys and a leader in a fireteam, three fireteams and a leader in a Platoon (OK, that's mostly USMC and Airborne), three platoons and a command squad/fireteam in a company, three companies and a command platoon in a Battalion, three Battalions and a command company in a Regiment, etc. Now, that doesn't include the support assets at company, battalion, or regiment level. There's usually a Weapons platoon at the company level, a Weapons or Support company at battalion, and several different supporting companies at regiment (artillery, engineer, recon, comms, Anti-aircraft, etc).

So, IF you're running near-future organizations, 13 men per squad and 40 per platoon is about right. The company is bigger, roughly 165 men, including the Weapons platoon (machineguns, Mortars, and often heavy AT assets, while the individual squads have light AT assets like the USMC AT4 or the Ranger's Carl Gustav recoilless rifle).

If you like the Aliens universe, the Colonial Marines are a very unusual organization – they're organized in PAIRS: two guys to a fireteam, two fireteams to a squad, two squads in the APC makes a section (with the Dropship). Two sections make a Platoon. The platoon leader usually just hitches a ride in one of the platoon vehicles, and doesn't have one of his own. Yes, this does mean 11-12 guys in a section counting the pilot and WSO, and 26 or so in a platoon.

Unfortunately, the Colonial Marines tech manual doesn't go into more detail about organizations higher than company level, other than to broadly talk about the size of an Aerospace Wing. The Drop Group (the guys with the dropships) has about 200 craft, so there are roughly 100 platoons (of all types) in a Colonial Marines Division, because the Dropships are an organic part of the platoon. In addition to that, there's also 6-8 squadrons of strikeships (I assume 16 craft per squadron, since the USAF and USMC like aircraft in pairs or pairs-of-pairs).

The organization that James Cobb used in his short story 'Cav' is a little weird, too. There are three Stryker-size vehicles: One is manned, and carries a scout team of 4 in the back with a crew of three. The other two are unmanned 'tank destroyer' types. That's a single platoon (cav scouts IIRC). based on the 1+2 organization, and the infantry in pairs, I'd guess that the higher organization would still be triangular, with the scout platoon being a Battalion asset instead of a line combat unit. You can find the 'Cav' story in the collection 'Combat'.

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Using the SG2 groundscale of 1cm=10m, your 4x6 table is 1200m x 1800m, which is plenty of space for a full company. I'd like more space to play (I've really gotten addicted to maneuver warfare), but a platoon in a 4x4 table has lots of space to move.

Lion,

So, what do you know of the organization followed by the Marines in SAAB? Did it look like they were organized in twos, or threes, or something else?

YouTube link
TMP link

I am thinking of using the Rebel Minis Earth Force Marines for the humans, and use them in "bug hunts", until appropriate 15mm figures are made for Chigs and other techie aliens.

Thanks.

CC

Some people swear by the Alien Squad Leader rules. There's a new version out, and people seem to have a great time playing them.

"Using the SG2 groundscale of 1cm=10m, your 4x6 table is 1200m x 1800m,"

Um … no. The SG2 groundscale is 1 INCH = 10m. The rules do say you can use 1cm = 10m with 15mm figures, but that "parts of the action may look a bit cramped".

I prefer to use 0.5in = 10m for 15mm. At that groundscale, a 4x6 is 960m by 1440m. Given a company is 3 platoons of 3 squads and formed 2 up and 1 back at both platoon and company, that means you have 1 squad in 12" of table space (fighting lengthways). Very little, if any, room for manouevre. So no I don't think there is plenty of space for a full company.

Who regulary uses a 6'x4' table? Nobody I know uses one. We use anything from an 8'x6' to a 20lx5'. Besides Stargrunt would take several hours (6-8+) to run a game that large.

Thanks,

John

Ok. I take it that, of all the suggestions here so far, these are free:

Fast And Dirty 4.0
PDF link

Stargrunt II
PDF link

Beamstrike
Link
PDF link

There seem to be a whole bunch more I've never even heard of before:

Link

CC

"Who regulary uses a 6'x4' table?"
*Raises his hand*
Those size tables are readily available at any game store I've gone to play at. Usually to accommodate the card gaming crowd.

Cheers!

Like I said above . . .

"And my table is now down to only 80 inches by 40 inches."

So I'm not even a standard 6' x 4'. More like 6 feet, 8 inches by 3 feet, 4 inches.

CC

"Who regularly uses a 6'x4' table? Nobody I know uses one. We use anything from an 8'x6' to a 20lx5'."

SG2 was designed for the UK market. In the UK pretty much the standard size of table is 6x4 – we simply don't have the space for bigger tables. You guys in the US (John and CC) have the luxury of big tables that we do not.

Fast And Dirty 4.0
PDF link

Stargrunt II
PDF link

Beamstrike
Link
PDF link

Link

CC

My understanding is that these are ALL GOOD rules.
I would like to look into them all, but for now I only have a copy of F&F4.0.

I would toss in Chain Reaction 3 from Two Hour Wargames.

Link

It isn't as sci-fi as it use to be, but the system is great for smallish skirmishes (squad to platoon level). It wouldn't take much effort to turn these modern rules to sci-fi. If you like then feel then you should grab the sci-fi set: 5150.

Link

CR3 might be a bit hard to wrap your brain around when you first try, but one you get use to them you wouldn't want to play anything else for the scale (individual figures and platoon scale). It also has dedicated rules for bug hunts too and it is crafted so that you can run campaign characters (semi-RPG style).

Stargrunt is also an excellent system too! So you can't go wrong here.

link

Warengine is free. Seems pretty good. Stat your own figures. I haven't played it, though. For 15mm sci-fi, I'm geared up for Stargrunt II. I play Disposable Heroes for WWII 15mm.

I play 15mm on a 3'x5' table, a platoon per side. Action usually starts quickly, which usually is good. Forces tend to move lengthwise. Some day I'll get two folding tables for 5'x6'.

All the usual suspects already in the line? Guess I'll only need to trot out Defiance:Vital Ground then (-;)

More through here, for example:
link

No one seems to have mentioned Dirtside II which first drew my attention becuse it mounts troops in small sections not singly.

Are any other sets that do this ?

Has it gone out of fashion to have team bases ?

I recently received a copy of Future War Commander. AS I read through it I like what I see. It is based on Warmaster, which I also enjoyed playing.
I am still looking for a sci-fi game that will really catch my fancy. Yesterday I ordered a bucket-load of Command Horizon figures from Baccus. Now to find rules to use with them. I should probably give the rules for Command Horizon another read.

Cheers,
Brian

"No one seems to have mentioned Dirtside II which first drew my attention becuse it mounts troops in small sections not singly."

Dirtside II for 15mm? That's different … you'd need a pretty big table though.

5150, best sci-fi rules ever.

u can get a taste from chain reaction 3, free off the THW site..

Guthroth 21 Mar 2009 5:01 a.m. PST:
"Has it gone out of fashion to have team bases ?"

Was it a ever fashion to have team bases for 15mm, really? Some sets, I'm sure provide, this feature. Defiance as well as 5150, Warengine and Stargunt assume single model basing however (tho I must say I may be recalling 25-30mm specs for the last three as I don't personally play 15mm).

team bases was never really common in scifi. Off hand, I only recall Striker using it (and that used a mix of team and individual bases anyways)

CC: Well, that's a hard call about the S:A&B organization. It's a really weird one anyway, based half on WW2 Marine Raider operations and half on WW2 enlisted-pilot arrangements.

I'd honestly guess that as an 6-8 man 'unit' (a squadron should be about twice that size, or more), they're work as pairs. Since they fly that way, they would naturally tend to work that way on the ground, no matter what their training would indicate otherwise.

Base individually, and there's no problem with either organization, but I'd still assume operating in pairs for the S:A&B Marines.

=====
@Mike Snorbens:

The SG2 groundscale is 1 INCH = 10m. The rules do say you can use 1cm = 10m with 15mm figures, but that "parts of the action may look a bit cramped".

1"=10m looks a bit odd to me with 15s. Even with 1/2"=10m, (a 960mx1440m table area) that's still the kind of frontage that a battalion would have held in WW2, so a company wouldn't be too bunched up in a SF setting. Would it be better to have lower troop density? yes. Is it required? no.

=====
*raises hand for using 4x6 tables for 28mm scifi.

=====
I think the biggest reason for not using team basing in scifi games has to do with the nature of the stories being used as background. Everything from EE Smith's Lensemen to Heinlein's Starship Troopers to Hammer's Slammers centers on individuals, rather than larger battles where you'd consider team-basing. Even newer SF like the Starfist series or the Honorverse is much more focussed on platoon-and-below deployments instead of the larger engagements that act as the backdrop of the story.

Epic has used team basing since the beginning of the game, and makes a much smoother game IMO than the current incarnation of 40k does. 40k is still using a skirmish engine to resolve company-or-bigger 'Apocalypse' battles, so they had to go to large templates that just remove everything under them. Granted, Epic is 6mm, but it's still team basing for infantry, individual basing for vehicles.

I don't think that S:AAB ever set any sort of rigid unit orgs. I seem to remember that 5 was a typical number for what they were calling 'squadrons'. However even this number is just more common than anything. IIRC, the 58th started the Battle of the Belt with quite a few fighters, but by the third episode or so had shrank to the core 5 pilots with McQueen and the occasional extra that was promptly killed off.

After that, I remember them showing 'squadrons' with 5 or so ships. I don't think that they ever settled on any set number and you were just as likely to see the 58th ground pounding, crewing an ISSCV, or playing fly jocks in their Hammerheads.

So maybe you could use units of 5-6? This isn't a bad number for skirmish games and that figure would work great with many mini rules.

If you need more marines then just add in additional 'squadrons'.

Oh, IIRC, the S:AAB folks belonged to a sub-organization of the USMC called the United States Marine Corps Space Aviator Cavalry.

I guess this allows them to fight both 'mounted' and 'dismounted'.

link

Re team bases.

It has gone out of fashion. Striker and Striker-II both used fireteam bases back in the day.

The current fashion in 15mm hard sci-fi wargames is skirmish-scale games where one miniature = 1 real life equivalent. This usually means an action of up to platoon size on each side is the most you can realistically manage.

Personally I do think that there is a gap in the market for a set of rules that allows you to step up to a slightly larger sized action by having fireteam bases with a few representative miniatures mounted on them. Movement and combat resolved by fireteam significantly speeds up play if done in an elegant fashion (was not the case with Striker mind you!), and allows for up to a company to be fielded on the table by each side.

I have been working on a set for a universe similar to that in Traveller RPG.

While it's not a 15mm game, Epic:Armageddon is team-based, and the rules are free.

It has a much better mechanic for combat resolution than 40k, even though it's still roll to hit, roll armor save, remove failed saves. By taking out the roll to wound, and usually only rolling one die per stand, it speeds up the dice-rolling a bit. Also, the Blast-marker system works very well to represent the effect of coming under fire. Assaults are much more direct and destructive than in 40k. All formations in the assault are broken at the end of it, but if you have enough incoming attacks, you either drive the enemy out of the position or wipe them out entirely, all resolved in a single activation, instead of drawn-out combats that take multiple turns to resolve like in 40k or Fantasy.

E:A works with a battalion of normal infantry on the table, but that's operating in 3 company-sized maneuver groups with a few platoon-sized maneuver groups. You normally see 10-12 platoon-sized maneuver groups (OK, artillery batteries don't maneuver, but they do fire), including Air support and possibly Orbital support, as well as BOLOs/OGRES or whatever you want to call the multi-wound War Engines.

The game does start to come apart when there's a large disparity in the number of maneuver groups on the two sides. Since you control which unit activates when, if you've got a number of low-points activations, you can activate them and force your opponent to act, reserving your important formations for when the opponent can't react. An army is often considered to be broken for tournament play at about 15-16 activations (you usually have 10-12 activations per side, with a low of about 7 per side).

The only thing you'd have to do is enlarge the size of the templates (probably use the GW 5" and a 10" or so, since the original templates are 3" and 5" IIRC).

I am currently using SGII for my 15mm action. You only need a reenforced platoon and maybe a few vehicles for a nice good gaming session. I like the game a ton, it's got a good fire and maneuver, hard Sci-Fi feel to it. The amount of chits on the table is an eye sore until you replace them with modeled and painted homemade icons. That is if you love a finely panted army on a table full of great terrain… ;) SGII being a single based mini per trooper (1to1) and it being a platoon level game it's easy on the wallet. I have not tried any other 15mm Sci-Fi rules set yet, I've read a couple but I have not played them, so I don't have much to compare to.

I play Flames of War which uses small sections of minis on a single base and it works well, but I wanted a change from that and thats why I'm liking single minis on single bases for the Sci-Fi action.

If you are looking for small sections on a single base, give Dirt Side II a try, It's mainly designed for 6mm tank on tank action. But I know people who use this system with 15mm and they like it. This method of play will not be kind on the wallet… Seeing that you might find your self using a ton more vehicles and Infantry and a bigger table.

In the end, I suggest downloading SGII, Fast and Dirty 4.0, and Beamstrike and give them a try.

Starship Marine looks to be fairly decent for boarding actions, and they are available for free:

PDF link

Now, we just need ship's crew figures, and security troops to go with them, to battle it out with the Starship Marines.

Of course, a small to medium-sized courier, scout, or shuttle would be useful as well.

Collins355

How close are you to finshing your rules ? Myself I'm always intersted in looking at new sets.

Cheers

Vulture

(My Blog: link )

The question is asked again . . . sort of:

TMP link

CC