"Challenger vs. Challenger II Modern Rules?" Topic

Just curious to see if anyone is still using them for their Modern, Cold War gaming.

I was looking at them again last night, and it seems like both would be quite good, especially for more simplistic, tank on tank/IFV engagements.

Challenger is older, and doesn't have as many modifiers for shooting. The QRS is a simple two-page sheet, and all the vehicle stats for the major vehicle combatants are listed on another, single sheet, so with two page-protected sheets (front and back), looks like you could easily run some pretty quick games.

A bit more complexity if you want to add in infantry, artillery, etc., but still pretty doable.

Challenger II is a revised, and update version, with more firing modifiers, amended "To-Hit" values, theoretically making them a bit more "real world" in terms of performance. For example, those long-range ATGMs really don't often hit with 90% accuracy, despite what the marketing people say.

Need to locate my QRS for the latter, but they still look to be quite good, and perhaps better than the original Challenger, due to the more "realistic" weapons stats.

I noticed that a lot of the modifiers that have been adding for shooting, etc., don't really apply in many cases, so while they look to be quite complex, I suspect with a little experience and playtesting, they'd still work quite well, especially for more simple, tank-on-tank/IFV engagements.

There's also Challenger 2000, which some say went a bit too far. Not sure about that myself, so need to locate them again as well, to do a bit of comparison with those also. The infantry rules, IIRC, did seem to be a bit more complex than I was interested in.

Thoughts?

i now use cold war commander. all the stats are there. challenger became complex with all the erratta changes.

Yes – we tried it back in the 1980s but frankly it was too complicated without any pay off in realism.

The author worked hard and did his best but maybe back then there was too little data available and his approach was too traditional – for my taste anyway.

There was a Challenger 2000 but by then I was bored with the era.

I'm only familiar with Chally 2000, which was straightforward in design, but lots of chart cross referencing, especially for the effect of chemical energy rounds against reactive or composite armour – about 5 sets of charts from target lay to penetration!

I've heard it said Challenger 2 was much easier to use….

Fist full of Tows 3 – great game!!!

I bought a copy off eBay for reasons of nostalgia. It was still as awful as I remember, but it was only 99p and I have a soft spot for TTG rules, so I'm keeping it!

I am waiting for Challenger III…

I think Challenger 2020 to be more likely, but I'd be okay with Challenger III as well.

Perhaps it is possible to compress the other versions into a more player-friendly, quick playing variant, that still uses D20s for gaming granularity.

I suspect that would be possible.

The Challenger/Challenger 2000 rules were workable for small actions such as company sized combat teams, but at larger scales they created too much "friction" for comfortable use. They were good fun however although admittedly a bit fiddly with the charts and tables. For large scale games nothing beat WRG rules. Table Top's Corps Commander OMG was a good set of rules for operational level games.
Cheers and good gaming