"Games for a 2x2 foot board?" Topic

The title says it all really. Apart from DBA-x, 'Song of' games and 'Force on Force', what other games have people happily played on a 2' square board?

I'm looking more for battle games than skirmish ones, though I'm not against the smaller-scale ones.

I've played a couple of games of Mighty Armies, both fantasy and Ancients, which are made for that size board. It is certainly a light, fast, battle game, but sometimes that's a good thing. At about 30 minutes a game, you could do a whole campaign in an evening!

You can play Volley & Bayonet by using 40mm square bases with 6mm or smaller minis. Just reduce the ranges/movement accordingly.

I've also seen Warhammer 40k played with 6mm on a 2X2 board. There was a fellow did a write up over to Warseer about it, I believe, a year or two ago. Really neat idea.

I suspect you could easily play just about any game by just reducing the base size and range/movement accordingly.

JRIII, one brigade vs one brigade, a 2-player game.

That's a good point! I have played 40mm V&B on a 2x2 board, I forgot about that. And playing 40k using Epic miniatures does appeal somehow…

That said, Black Powder was a little uninspiring on a tiny board, being quite a Spectacle game IMHO.

I think really what I'm looking for on a table this size is a game that can, as you say, have bases/ranges reduced, but doesn't need too many counters or other paraphernalia, since there's not really enough room for a lot of that with scenery etc.

@ cwbuff: Is that Jonny Reb?

@ StCrispin: Thanks, I'll check it out!

Early next week we're going to be releasing Howard Whitehouse's ALIEN WAR rules which can play a squad level game on a 2' x 2' up to platoon/company sized games. It gives a good game with two squads per side (i.e. 12 Marines and 8 German Panzergrenadiers) in about an hour.

It will be available from our website – defiancegames.com next week!

Thanks,
Tony

Tony Reidy
Defiance Games

If you don't mind using a squared grid, you might consider THE PORTABLE WARGAME.

link

link

Aryiki (fantasy) and Antiquity (ancients B&P) both designed for card table (or restaurant table) play :) (described as mix of dba/WFB)

aryiki.com/a
aryiki.com/antiquity

Crossfire should be very playable on a 2x2 board with 6mm figures and terrain, since there is no distance measurement in that game.

Rally Round the King, Muskets and Mohawks for big battles. Any other THW game as well.

Justified Ancients is a must.

Unfortunate: Yes, Johnny Reb in any version.

for 2x2 pulp action…
.45 Adventure or Thrilling Tales.

You could do a 2000pt 40k game. That would be funny to watch…

Crossfire works well I've found.

The 2mm wargame group on Yahoo has rules for 2X2 Napoleonics which have been well recieved though I have not read nor played them so cant vouch for them.

Al

Command Decision or Fistful of Tows using CM rather then inch scale would work. 2x2 would be the equivalent of 5x5. IABSM or CDS using the same scale and 6mm figures.

Ancients D6.
Armati Intro.
Might of Arms using the Mini optional rule.
Rally Round the King.

Another grid game would be PBI2. I think the grid is 8*8, so the squares would have a 3" side. Might work with 10mm figures.

20mm Normandy firefight.

Brink of Battle: Skirmish Gaming through the Ages works well on 2x2.

brinkofbattle.com

Any fight from any game, as long as it fits into whatever area 2x2 is in the gamescale?

Malifaux will play nicely on a 2'x2' board. Otherwise, I'd go with 6mm models and scale down a 28mm ruleset.

FUBAR using 6mm

6mmfubar.blogspot.com

Is a good place to see some FUBAR 6mm goodness

Dadie e Piombo's Smooth and Rifled was designed for skirmish games on small boards.

Rezolution (SF/Cyberpunk skirmish, 28mm) was initially demoed on something like an 18" or 24" diameter circular board. With enough terrain, that had no problem handling the starter boxes (six minis per side or so) quite handily. I've since played Rezolution on standard tables that were not much wider than 2 feet, though we usually used more of the table length and focused on scenarios that were more than a little RPG-inspired instead of the usual line-em-ups.

MERCS is designed for a 2' x 3' board, but you should be able to use 2' x 2' without any major problems.

Any grid based set of rules (PBI, Square Bashing, Lost Battles, Wars of Empire etc) works fine on smaller tables. just use a smaller grid

If you prefer ruler based games, then the various DBA/HoTT clones and variants work fine on a 2x2. You need to be a bit cautious about rules which require very fiddly measuring as big clumsy fingers (like mine!) and teeny tiny distances don't mix well.

The only limit is your imagination really.

My 2´x2´board for Mordheim in 10mm

Aryiki? You mean boobies on a tabletop?

FoG works well in 15mm on a 4 by 4 board if you use the starter armies. If you use 6mm figures on 20mm bases then it would work just the same.

Blacksmith that is a lovely gamimng board indeed!

Aryiki? You mean boobies on a tabletop?

The reference to playing it on a restaurant table was troubling me for exactly that reason.

2x2 Napoleonics is a pretty great system. It's rather simple, but the beauty of it is rather in its simplicity, plus it has an off-tabel reserves ssytem built into it. Once the units (in this case brigades) get to the tabel they move more or less IGYG, so the real randomness of command comes from not knowing when your reinforcement are coming. The rules I think are less popular than they otherwise would be because they're packaged/burdened with the 2mm brand, which is not a lot of peoples cup of tea (I think its cool…). The truth is that you can easily, and veyr cheaply, put together two forces for the game with 4mm, 6m and 10mm figs. I have 10mm armies for it, which are 1 inch squares with 10 OG figs per brigade. Looks fine to me. And I'm about to do up some slightly larger 6mm units and just adjust the distances acordingly. Maybe make it 3x3 Naps…

Over the last two years, I have been trying out different ancient rules on a 2'x2' board and blogging about it:

link

This link is to the blog page listing all the replays and reviews:

link

After the first 10 rules, I did post on what rules worked and what ones didn't:

link

I have played with some more rules since then and sometime this year likely to update the blogpost with more recommended rules.

I would say that these ancient rules (not a complete list though, bound to be others) do, or should, work:

Rally Round the King
Justified Ancients
Irregular Miniatures Ancient Rules
Fantasy Rules!
Mighty Armies & Mighty Armies Ancients
DBM100, DBMM100
Gordian Knot
Wars Ancient
Heroic and Ros 5mm Ancient rules
In Death Ground (probably)
Antiquity
Might of Arms (mini version)
Terry Gore's Ancient Warfare
Basic Fury
ABC
Phalanx (by alienstar)
Impetus (if you halve base size and move distances)

Batlestandard Ancient rules should work from reading and about to play them in the next few months. Hail Caesar should work if you had standard units and small unit on the same 40mm unit frontage and scaled movement distances appropriately. I Want to try this before the end of the year.

That's the only size game board that I've ever used. Never had any problems playing 15mm games at that size.

Rules used on this size table:
FUBAR, Forge of War, Mutants & Death Ray Guns, USE ME, Blasters & Bulkheads, Fast And Dirty, In The Emperor's Name, Gut Check, and even multi-based rules like Alien Squad Leader and PZ8 Sci Fi.

Honestly, it comes down to using a bit of common sense with terrain density and force composition. If you want to play massed tank battles, that size board will only work for 2mm or 6mm. If you just want a handful of small fire teams and maybe a light vehicle or two, 2' x 2' is perfect for 15mm games. And I imagine it would be good for 5-10 figure skirmishes at 25mm+, but I haven't played anything in those scales for several years now.

-Chris K.

Full Thrust with fleet scale minis or smaller and ranges in centimeters.

1:48 Combat can be played on a 2x2 board with ease!

:) aryiki has armour like any other system and armoured units are hard to kill: eureka's hoplites, shadow forge dark temple praetorians and sure there are others – so baring ones chest isnt the most sensible thing to do. The eureka cataphracts from an image I commissioned have a face and that's about it. Needing 6s to be hit they're tough!

The game mechanics are not bad – try Antiquity instead with historical forces of nude men painted blue versus guys in skirts.

And did anyone mention AT-43 or other rakham games? The company might be dead but the stuff should be around.

A 2x2 Crossfire scenario:

link

Irregular Wars: Conflict at the World's End link

Small battles (not skirmishes) set in the 16th-17th century in Ireland, Britain, the Americas, East Indies and Eurasian steppe.

I have a recollection that the WWII rules Tac allow quite a small table if using 6mm figures and, indeed, recall being told that 2' x 2' was allowed for.

Flintloque
Malifaux
40k with epic minis.

Tabletop Games' Micro-Colonial

Cheers guys, this is an amazing list and level of effort! Especially your Mordheim board, Blacksmith!

Does anyone know which of the listed games are good for solo play as well as normal? I know Rally round the King & Crossfire are, but do people have any other suggestions?

Small Full Thrust actions in centimetres for Movement Units ( MU) can be played on similar sized boards, preferably with Fleet Scale ships.

DS2 will play well in the same size area as well.

Solo play: Flintloque, Any THW game, Blitzkrieg/Coldwar/Future Commander in 6mm or 3mm. (see their Solo forum section)
blitzkrieg-commander.com

Late to the party, but a lot of the Force of Force scenarios (at least those in Day of the Rangers) are on 2x2 boards.

Actually I find this thread a great relief – so many rules I've seen recently seem to assume massive tables. Here in cramped old London, I'm ecstatic if I can get a 3x4 ..

I think Maurice could work, provided your basewidths are 20mm to a side. You'd be stuck using smaller scale figures, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Yes, and Maurice is a class piece of design, IMO. You could definitely get some great games out of a smaller table with smaller figures using those rules (which is probably the route I'll go . . . but I'm not quite certain yet).

As far as Force on Force goes, 2x2 is the standard table size of the majority of scenarios in Day of the Rangers and the upcoming book on Spec Ops in the 20th/21st century. We've made it a policy to stick to smaller tables in future releases – each new scenario book will have one or two big table games for the folks that like them, and the rest will fall between 4x4 and 2x2.

Best wishes,

Shawn.

Bushido also uses 2'x2' as a standard table size.
bushido-thegame.com