"Rules for urban, WW2 combat ?" Topic

Are there any rules specifically written aimed at urban combat ?

I'm reading about Stalingrad and the mind wanders… maybe 6mm figures, 3' urban board….but wouldn't have to be specifically 6mm

While not written for urban combat, I've tried Bolt Action for urban combat scenarios. I found them quite workable. I've done this in 28mm and 15mm.

Not written specifically, but Crossfire works really well in that sort of environment!

Force on Force rules work very well for this.

Free Wargames Rules

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has a free download set called Men Of Frost:

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I'd second Force on Force.

I think you'll have to either write something yourself or take a game that works pretty well in general, and adapt it a bit for room to room fighting.

Are you looking to field a few guys, fighting room to room (most skirmish games will work fine here, just loosen up on unit coherency stuff) or a larger force fighting from block to block?

While I second Crossfire and Force on Force for urban combat, (both incorporate interruption mechanics so that the "active" player can get some unpleasant surprises), I think Crossfire does a better job of handling WW2 urban combat.

Rob

To answer Weasel's question "I'm really not sure".

I'm not sure if I want to do a larger game in 6mm or possibly a 'heroic last stand' defending a building or two – I was kind of hoping there might be specific rules out there to steer me in one direction.

At the risk of heresy, maybe I should even take a look at FoW as I do have their Stalingrad book.

If you want to go room-to-room you could not do better than Nuts. In that environment morale is everything. And Nuts will do a better job handling that kind of fight.

Bolt Action is a fun and fast game, but awfully light on WW2 feel for my taste, and the pin system may be problematic in room to room action.

But for block-to-block Crossfire, Flames of War and Bolt Action would all work fine I think.

I always thought that room to room fight with a small handful of guys would be really fun. Lay out the interior of a factory or something and then fight to capture it.

Pretty much any skirmish game can work for that.

Fireball Forward will work very well for this. For any rule set one of the hard parts is terrain, you need to be able to stack much more tightly in an urban fight.

One other thought--for room-to-room type action, Chain Reaction from THW would work well--though you would have to play up the morale aspects a bit (everyone roles vs Rep before doing something dangerous).

Rob

It's not everyones cup of tea but the old Face Of Battle might work well. Tons of modifiers though.

MG was designed to refect some elemnts of Urban but not all. Buildings count as floor but no interior detail covered. Entry is through any wall. It works well (for us anyway) when you have 15 to 20 buildings and the buildings outnumber the defenders teams by about 2 to 1. Defender does not declare where he has hidden untill he moves or fires. Even at this level it makes for a complex game of maneouver. Crossfire was designed to work in urban and is my other recommendation. In either case 3 houses does not count as a built up area and both games need lots of houses.

MG has a simple elevation restriction to sort of reflect the problem the Germans has in Stalingrad of mortars not getting to the lower floors and the AFV's not getting enough elevation to hit the higher mortar free floors. We reduced this to 3 floors and a roof ;-).

On Military Matters shows Crossfire to be in stock and a recent addition, so they must have had another print run or found some old ones.

If you want to go room-to-room you could not do better than Nuts. In that environment morale is everything. And Nuts will do a better job handling that kind of fight.

the NUTS Clash of Titans Eastern Front book, and the campaign book Stalingrad: Heroes All, have extensive urban combat rules and scenarios.

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Fireball Forward at the scale you mentioned would do the trick – as noted there is a large-ish Stalingrad fight scenario in the main rules. 1 base is one squad or team like SL.
I can't remember the name, but there is a booklet set of rules I had that was great for Stalingrad Skirmish, I think the companion set was called 'panzerknecher'?
Have enjoyed a game of Crossfire in a city battle, and have heard nothing bad about NUTS! If you have the time and inclination, use a bunch of different rules to run the same (of course, modified) scenario, I don't think there's a best, but probably something you enjoy in each.

Crossfire would be a first pick, for no other reason than I have played largish urban scenarios with those excellent rules (and they work)

Right now I would like to give Fire&Fury battlefront wwII a go in that sort of environment.

Operation Squad works well, but grab the tournament FAQ to flesh out how grenades work indoors.

The old SPI game Sniper! was room to room. Very fun game. You can easily apply the Sniper! rules to minis. It would work well with 6mm.

You need to consider what sort of level you want to play at.
Will it be individual figures kicking dooors and a squad a side or are you thinking 6mm because you want to represent a company.
We used to play rpg stylegames with the ref runnning one side and the players a figure each.
The ref places enemy as they're spotted and that adds suspense.
We play double blind games with duplicated tables and the referee places figures as they are spotted.
That's a great way to game.
Multiple players a side give friction without any extra rules.
Lot of work for the ref and you need a good story teller.

The new chain of command supplement would work very well. It is a large-skirmish set of rules written for 28mm but if you swap out 6mm troops and use CM rather then inches the ground scale will nearly match the figure scale. Does anyone make a true scale Barrikady in 6mm?

If you want to run a 'last stand' and purely room-to-room, you can stretch the Infinity rules to work. Not a whole lot of unit-morale rules in Infinity, but there's also not a whole lot of morale to worry about in a last stand, IMO.

Best part is, the Infinity rules are free, so you're not losing anything but time to download and read them!

Infinity works fine for up to 20 models per side, but it doesn't have an open points system. Shouldn't be much of a problem, though, as there are a lot of troop types to choose from. Infinity also has pretty solid hidden-unit rules.

Thinking about it Squad Leader or Advancede Squad Leader was quite good at this level. No reason it could not be played on a hex table with real models using say Hexon II. It had good points at very low level (SQUAD LEDER DER!). Represented things like troops freezing as the first one to make a sound was dead inside a building. Far too detailed for my games which are at company level nowdays.

We are designing "Rattenkrieg!" exactly for this purpose, to be able to play "room by room" combats in the WWII (with from 8 up to 50 figures per side) in 28mm. If you want to try them (please, keep in mind that they are still under development), just download a copy (for free, of course) at: rattenkrieg.com/Rattenkrieg.pdf We would LOVE to have some feedback (this is my very first post, if I made something wrong, please, let me know).