"One Hour Wargame: WW2 Battle Report" Topic

After a longer delay than I would have liked, I have finally managed to try out Martin Rapier's hexed-based variant of the World War II rules in Neil Thomas's ONE-HOUR WARGAMES rules … and thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

A battle report can be found here = link

Are Martin's variants posted online? I'd like to see them.

Martin Rapier's rules are in the "Files" section of the AMW (Ancient & Medieval Wargaming) group on Yahoo Groups. You have to join the group to access the files.

Glad you enjoyed them Bob, I thought they'd appeal to you. Yes, they are in the AMNW yahoo group.

I've put them on my blog now so they are a bit more accessible.

tgamesweplay.blogspot.co.uk

Before this thread and then doing some digging,I wasnt really familiar with one hour wargames.We are trying to develop a miniatures following at our local shop,and these would work perfectly.

And how many hexes would the typical OHW scenario be (wide X deep) ?

The scenarios are meant to played on a 3' x 3' table, I went with 1 hex per 4" so 9x9 hexes.

Some jiggling may be required fit the scenario maps onto a hex grid.

You can always just switch back to using rulers (at 4" per hex, or whatever measure floats your boat), I just prefer the clean simplicity of hexes (or squares).

My mini-campaign board is 6 hexes wide and 8 hexes long. I think that the rules would work better using a 9 x 9 grid, as outlined in Martin Rapier's comment.

I played using the rules in the book. For WWII, I found the side that had two mortars (artillery) had a huge advantage over the side that did not. Have you found this true in your version?

For ACW I used 1 hex = 6" as this is a common denominator for both movement and fire ranges. This gives a 6 x 6 grid.

I thought about 6x6, but for WW2 I wanted a bit more scope for manoeuvre.

I do love the way these rules have inspired lots and lots of people to tweak, adapt and modify them. They are so simple they provide an excellent foundation.

As to the balance of particular forces, it depends on the overall mix of units and the specific scenario. No one said war was fair, but if it bothers you, then fighting a mini campaign of several scenarios as suggested in the rules might help.

We've usually found the scenarios to be quite tense, and being so strppied down and with combat so bloody, the initial deployment and execution are critical. You can't just shove your units forward and hope for good dice throws.

"You can't just shove your units forward and hope for good dice throws."

I find that works for me in most games, regardless of the rules :)

So far my crew has played Dark Ages, Pike and Shot, Horse and Musket, ACW, Rifle and Saber, WWI and WWII versions of these rules. All of them can give unbalanced games. But, oh, those two mortars…

Well, if you find them overpowered, you could always knock a couple more pips off their firing dice. The standard rules are pretty bloody, and it is worse for units with ranged capability as they can 'gang up' on targets.

One simple mod I used for the naval variant was that only the first unit firing fires at full effect, any other units firing at the same target are halved. It encourages people to spread their fire out (and would mitigate the double mortar effect).