"Recommend me a 15mm Skirmish ruleset" Topic

So far I have amassed a good amount of 15mm lead, about 2/3 unpainted yet. Most was intended for use with Tomorrow's War – an excellent platoon/company level ruleset. But given my current time constrains, I find myself desiring something smaller in scale; something I can detail-paint a few figures for rather a whole platoon and something I can play solo or easily transport to friends.

What I'm looking for in a ruleset right now is:
1) Sci-fi. Post-Apoc and/or modern is an added bonus.
2) Versatile enough to fit the existing 15mm figures I have at hand.
3) Requiring basic terrain (not too much; I'm slowly building some) and playable on my current 100cm x 60cm table.
4) A reinforced squad (say, 10-12 figures at most) at most per side; less figures are OK (or even preferrable?) even 5-6 per side if combat is interesting enough.
5) Solid (or, better yet, strong) support for solo play; I'll probably mostly run solo games in the near/foreseeable future.
6) Some support for vehicles; say, 1-2 per side, as I have several painted tanks and want to use them.
7) Clearly written and organized if possible.

Recommendations would be welcome.

The original Traveller rpg works surprisingly well as a sci-fi skirmish gane.

StarGrunt
Tomorrow's War

are two I like. StarGrunt being a free download from GZG

5150 Star Army. You can play it solo.

Here's some AARs and a step by step for Star Army.

link

link

Try Five Parsecs, it might be a good fit. Ed's 5150 might also meet your needs, but the layout and organization of the THW rulebooks drives me crazy. They are especially good for solo play.

AE Bounty is an over-looked but great skirmish game, so is Salvage Crew, and Blasters and Bulkheads. I like these three better than Five Parsecs and 5150, but they are not designed with solo play in mind. Lots of options out there.

Something RPG lite –

(I would recommend a songs of blades and heroes style game… as slightly lighter – so I suggest a trip to Ganesha games for a Space game?)

Tomorrows war, with a squad against a few more than a squad for the Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia in space, or aliens feel.

and at Ganesha Games…

Mutants and death ray guns…

seems to be able to fit the bill… even if it is apocalypse not Space…?

5150 Star Army – THW
Flying Lead – Ganesha Games
KR16 (free)- Angel Barracks angelbarracks.co.uk/rules.html

Star Grunt was my favorite until 5150/ Star Army came out. That's been my go to game for several years.

I tried Tomorrow's War, wasn't my cuppa, but I need to give it another game or three to really decide.

I'm intrigued by the mechanics of Five Parsecs. I'll be trying out the sister set, Five Core, later this week. I liked the game concepts so well I purchased the company rules today. For $5 USD – $10 USD each you might want to give them a try.

Five Parsecs will absolutely do the Traveller / Firefly style RPG but there's no vehicles in the main rules.
You get campaign rules included as well and its super popular for solo gaming.

Shill note: I'm the author.

If you have a way to tell the difference between weapons easily, you can download the Infinity rules for free. It's a pretty slick system, but there are some known issues with the points mechanic. We're actually coming up on the release of a new edition, but Corvus Belli is not releasing the PDF of the rules for a couple months to try to convince everyone to buy the core rules.

Infinity is super spec-ops oriented, though, with minimal 'squad' or 'fireteam' movement and shooting. The core of the game is one model activates and does something, and any opposing models who saw that model do something can react. Repeat until the number of models that have done something equals the number of models in your force (note that you do NOT have to activate every model, you can 'give' a model's activation to another model).

Infinity doesn't really have good vehicle rules, either. It treats the big stompy robots as large people that have structure points instead of wounds (so need to be healed by an engineer instead of a doctor).

But the core rules work wonderfully for 15mm all-infantry bashes.

5150: Star Army is your best bet of all the choices suggested. Outstanding solo play, scalability, and a campaign system.

And you can add vehicles if you want

I still like the old Star Grunts for small Skirmish level games.

I'll look into Five Parsecs and Star Army soon :)

Thanks you :)

How easy would it be to add vehicles to Five Parsecs? Again, I have several tanks, armoured cars and small mechs gathering dust and I want to see 1-3 per side in action (even if just 1 vehicle).

And how moddable is Star Army for using my own setting(s)?

By the way anything that could also do Aliens-type bug-hunts is a plus for me :-)

I'll throw a couple of my games into the mix.

Rogue Planet
There are some ideas for solo play in the discussion section on the Wargame Vault page. ;)

The Battlefield

Star Army is basically a tool kit, with a little work you can mod it to what ever setting you'd like, also it is PERFECT for Aliens-type bug hunts.

Another rules set you might want to try is GRUNTZ 15MM. If you add the Activation Cards accessory and the BETA version of the Spec Ops rules supplement by Mr Harold (designed for smaller engagements)
link

you can pretty much play a game with all the requirements you specified.

I think you may want to have more than one ruleset.

For solo play (and possibly with an opponent) I think that 5150 is still a solid choice. Especially if you like the reaction-style systems like TW.

For a different flavor of game take a look at "Blasters and Bulkheads" it's more of a sci-pulp flavor and is well suited to the size of game you want, though not for solo. Also B&B is a bit easier to share with others as it's a bit easier to grok for newbies than 5150.

If Post Apoc is your flavor, then I'd definitely look at Nuclear Reanaissance. It's exactly the size game you are looking for and alot of fun. The full PDF is free from Ramshackle games.

By the way anything that could also do Aliens-type bug-hunts is a plus for me :-)

Original LEG boardgame WAS as solo game in drag; the bugs were programmed, and the soldiers, all cooperative, could be played by one or many.

On squares, it's a quick set-up-and-play; as the squares are in a long, crowded zone you move down, feels not as much like chess as you might fear.

In 15mm, nice compact play, as well.

Doug

There are vehicle rules for Five Parsecs, the "heavy metal" supplement available on Wargamevault. It's very generic though so it won't go into a huge amount of detail.

Here's an AAR for Five Parsecs

TMP link

Star Army will give you a better game for vehicle combat.

Another contender: The ancient Laserburn. You can still buy the rules and it feels very much like an RPG, with hit locations, skills, percentile rolls etc. Probably better suited for 4-5 figures per side than 8-10 but great fun and it has a huge selection of weapons and gadgets.

Pulp Alley is a rule set that I'm new to, but blown away by the potential "adaptability" of this concept. Push from your mind the 1920s flavour it is presented with and you have an RPG lite, warband focussed narrative style of skirmish game that could be set in any period or genre, scifi or fantasy.

I will be giving it a go for solo play space opera with 4-8 characters per team in the flavour of Infinity or AE Bounty (okay, read 'Star Wars Universe"). Not sure if it will stretch to a Necromunda substitute?

Should add forums and authors very proactive and full of good ideas.

General point on terrain: Any skirmish level miniatures game, regardless of genre or period, is going to benefit from lots of LoS blocking terrain.

Yeah, no matter what you play, pile lots of neat things on the table and it'll be a fun game.

I find that small skirmishes at this scale really live and die by their narrative and the terrain can make a huge difference there.

@Weasel – I don't need very complex vehicle rules, just enough rules to add a vehicle or two per side sometimes.

Nobody mentioned Laserburn yet?

OK, I just bought a big bunch of 5-Core books of the Wargame Vault, and from a first skim they look exactly like what I've been looking for! Very cool rules and easy to use and remember.