Gharak21 | 23 Dec 2014 3:12 a.m. PST |
Hi there, I'm just getting back to gaming after a bit of a break and fancy some smaller scale mass battle rules. I've been checking out Impetus, FOG, DBA etc but I'm not sure any of those really tickle my fancy, what I am really looking for is: Fast play – A game in around an hour Points battles and Scenario based games 15mm miniatures as above Not a igougo system where each player gets to move their whole force. Some kind of break or alternating turn would be preferable. Semi random command system leaving some control to the players. No charts Opposing dice rolls preferably Yes I'm asking a lot, but I thought I would throw the questions out there and see if anyone has any other ideas other than the big usual games. |
MajorB | 23 Dec 2014 4:04 a.m. PST |
Rules recommendations for 15mm HYW Rules are pretty much figure-size agnostic. You could probably tweak Hail Caesar to do what you want. |
Oh Bugger | 23 Dec 2014 4:40 a.m. PST |
Try Pulse of Battle for most of what you want its meant for ancient battles but with a bit of thought you would be OK. |
advocate | 23 Dec 2014 4:59 a.m. PST |
A game with all of that in under an hour is asking a lot. Sword and Spear ticks all the boxes except the 'game in an hour'. Unless you play a really small game (in which case luck may seem to have a more extreme effect) you would be looking at more like two hours. Rally Round the King (from Two Hour Wargames – the clue's in the name) would cover a lot of what you want too. |
Jcfrog | 23 Dec 2014 5:20 a.m. PST |
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vdal1812 | 23 Dec 2014 7:06 a.m. PST |
Bloody Barons from Peter Pig may work for you. I haven't looked at it in a long while. |
Wackmole9 | 23 Dec 2014 7:27 a.m. PST |
Flower of Chivalry by Canadian wargames group |
Who asked this joker | 23 Dec 2014 11:08 a.m. PST |
Gharak21, So you want small scale but don't want DBA, Impetus/BI or FoG. The latter takes at least two hours to play BTW. Probably Mighty Armies would fit the bill. Arcane Battle Composer. Flower of Chivalry is a purpose built game so that should work. It is not opposed rolls and I think the game would last longer than 1 hour. Fantasy Rules TCE would work. Just cut out the fantasy stuff and adjust units to taste. Armati perhaps? Might of Arms? Both played at "intro" scale would probably yield a quick game. |
Marshal Mark | 23 Dec 2014 1:51 p.m. PST |
A game with all of that in under an hour is asking a lot.Sword and Spear ticks all the boxes except the 'game in an hour'. I concur with what advocate advocates.:) Unless you want something like DBA, with very little detail (e.g. no different troop quality, no attritional combat losses), it's unlikely that you're going to find a big battle game that plays in around an hour. My Sword & Spear rules really do meet all your other requirements though. In particular they have: An interactive turn sequence where both players are involved at all times. A semi random command system where players have some control over activation (dice are rolled to activate units, but they are rolled before allocating to units). No charts, tables or long lists of dice roll modifiers. (Okay, they do have a table of movement rates by troop type but I don't see how you could do away with that !). Combat is resolved by opposing dice rolls. You can read reviews and find out more about them here: link |
raylev3 | 23 Dec 2014 2:10 p.m. PST |
Another vote for Bloody Barons. Easyk to learn and play, and can be played quickly….semi-random command and control system based on die roll. |
Gharak21 | 24 Dec 2014 3:36 a.m. PST |
Cheers guys, I do expect I'll have to compromise somewhere, time may be the one that goes, we generally prefer to play a set of linked skirmishes back to back over an evening or two thus a game of around an hour/ and hour and a half would allow us to do this. Abstraction wise I'm looking for something between Warmaster/DBA and FOG. A good example of the kind of rules we enjoy would be Sharp Practice, Pulp Alley etc I've picked up the PDF of Sword and Spear, thanks Mark for the quick turn around before Christmas I was reading it on the train this morning and your right they do seem to tick most of my boxes. Guess I'll be pushing some proxies around a table this next week to see how it actually plays. I'll take a look at bloody barons too since it's had a couple of votes. |
BigRedBat | 24 Dec 2014 8:30 a.m. PST |
Hi Gharak, I have a set that suit your criteria, except that they play at around 90 mins. I have some 100 years War lists, too. link If you want a set, drop me a line at the address on the top left of the blog. Cheers, Simon |