"British Army 1956 Wargame Rules for WWII campaign?" Topic

I would like to hear from folks with experience with these rules:

link

on the question: How well would these rules function as an operational level "engine" for a WWII miniatures campaign?

When I 'discovered' these rules in the National Archives, the thing that struck me was that they were very much a product of the British Army's experience during the latter part of WWII. They are designed to be used to refight tactical battles between divsional/corps-sized formations over terrain that resembles that of Western Germany. They would probably be suitable for a mini-campaign, but might be a bit too tactical for anyhting larger.

Martin Rapier (also a member of TMP) has had much more experience using the rules than I have, and if he makes a comment on this topic it will be well worth taking note of.

Bob Cordery

Yes, I've run a few games with these including historical WW2 operational scenarios. I haven't quite got around to using therm for the original purpose though – planning and fighting a tactical nuclear war in the BAOR area of operations in the late 1950s.

It depends what you want to do with them really, but yes, I suppose you could use the orders/planning system and resolve the actual battles on the tabletop rather than use the in-game system, or even use a mixture (use the rules for some battles and tabletop games for others).

The emphasis of the game is very much on planning cycles, task timings and operational manouvre however ie it is a division/corps HQ simulator, and much of the interest in the game is the way that it manages to reproduce OODA cycles and get players to plan ahead and deal with unexpected contingencies. If you try and get them to do that and to focus on tactical combat resolution as well, it might all be a bit too much.

It is also a bit 'bare bones' compared to commercial wargames rules, its target audience is trained military personnel so there aren't loads of rules to stop you doing stupid things and it relies heavily on active umpiring to resolve situations which aren't covered in the rules (like what happens if enemy tanks overrun your divisional artillery!).

Thanks, Martin, that is good information.