"What's your ruleset preference?" Topic

Hi, folks!
A friend and I have been talking about giving 15 mm a go, and we're into near-future sci-fi. His games of choice are 40k or Dropzone Commander and sometimes we play the X-Wing minis game.

We've had an itch for small-scale, squad to platoon-sized skirmish games and 15 mm seemed to be a great solution. I've actually got the rules for Gruntz, Tomorrow's War, and others like FAD that'd be suitable, although it's been a while since I've given them a good look-over. I've heard good things about Nordic Weasel's No Stars in Sight and Clash on the Fringe.

I wanted to ask around and see what systems other folks enjoyed the most, and what might be good introductory systems to ease into the scale. Although the option for aliens and more light, outlandish sci-fi tech is appreciated, I forsee us going mostly with harder sci-fi and human-on-human engagements. Both of us like mechs as well, so rules with mecha profiles or the option to construct custom profiles is great!

cold war commander, fubar

I like alien squad leader…..and gruntz

(ASL has a 2.0 which I haven't seen yet)

((Yes come to 15mm you will be glad you did))

((( you could proxy necromunda )))

I still use Striker, the Traveller miniatures wargame rules. A bit old school, but effective.

Drop me aline…mark@scalecreep.com

I'm partial to a few you mentioned ;-)

Let me know if you want the sales pitch.

Do you want points systems? "Realistic" or more space fantasy? Building your own stuff? Monsters?

A point system is useful for balancing; I imagine most battles we'll play are going to be scenarios with loose stories/backgrounds. Balance can be eyeballed, but a more concrete system might be nice.

I think we're after realism, so long as it doesn't bog down the gameplay with loads of superficial factors. Personally, I'm into systems based on suppression/pinning moreso than inflicting casualties outright; this is one problem I have with 40k – too often it boils down to plopping down models and then scooping them up. Also, I'd like an emphasis on maneuvering and positioning.

I don't think we're after giant alien monsters, but y'never know. The ability to write up our own units will be something both of us will enjoy, I think.

A lot of us in Glen Burnie, Maryland are playing Tomorrows War and have adapted it for use with 40K figs and Mech Warrior clicks.
We do hard Sci-Fi too.
There is a lot to it, but both sides are constantly involved.
Thinking of using DZC figs with TW rules.
Joe

our group loves gruntz. its a great system, and on the gruntz site, many many scifi vehicles have stat cards.

At that level, I've settled on 5Core. Planning on using them for some Traveller ship board combat next.

I'm with Twoball on this
Alien Squad Leader – just re-released this week. Generic army templates, no tied in figures. Simple rules and requires just 2 D6
Gruntz – just tried this set and love it. Great rules and love the design your force aspect

I'm very biased…

John Treadaway
Www.hammers-slammers.com

Tomorrow's War.

I've narrowed my options a little, going off reviews and battle reports that meet my expectations.

I'm very much interested in Nordic Weasel's rules: FiveCore, No Stars in Sight and Clash on the Fringe. However, not having seen them in action, I'm not too sure what the differences are other than what I've read on the sales pages. I can safely say that they all seem to resemble what I'm looking for, but the minute variation between them might put one ahead of another.

Gruntz & Tomorrow's War – I have the rules for both, so they'd definitely be worth giving a go. I gave Gruntz's rules another read-through, but it's been a while since I've given TW a look and I'm not sure how it plays.

I've also got FUBAR for a very simple set of rules, as well as Fast and Dirty and 5150 Star Army. I'm certainly not wanting for options, but I'm saturated with choices and it's a bit overwhelming.

Tomorrows War by far. The rulebook is not the best but once you figure it out there is no going back.

I have some QRS stuff I'm working on for TW. email me if you are interested unstoppablecarlolsen at gmail.com

For squad level I like Laserburn despite it being a bazillion years old and requiring a little ability with mental arithmetic. For platoon level, I like Imperial Commander, especially the revised version that was put out on the afewgonadsmore yahoo group, because that permits armoured support.

I've read Gruntz and it looks like it should play well at both levels. The rules are easy to read, logically laid out and the systems appear to make sense. I'm looking forward to trying it.

Tomorrow's War is too much like hard work. We had some fun games but they left us exhausted at the end. Trying to learn the rules and working out the sequences of actions was a pain because of the poor layout of the rules. There seemed to be too many areas where assumed knowledge of the Force on Force rules was present. For the price, I expect better layout and structure. I also found the forum to be unhelpful. I only received answers to a few of the questions I asked, and too often questions from others were answered by referring to FoF. We're planning to return to TW in the future to see if we can make it work for us, so we'll see if I revise my opinion of the rules then.

So I can be biased too… ;)

PMC 2640

Here you can see the reviews:
link

And here you can download demo version:
link

Regards,
Marcin
Assault Publishing

No Stars in Sight is my vote. Gritty and fast playing.

Hammer's Slammers … you can't beat a game with loads of tanks on the table !

This is a specific question aimed at Weasel, but anyone who's dabbled in these is free to chime in: What sets FiveCore, No Stars in Sight and Clash on the Fringe apart from each other? I've read a couple battreps of each, but I haven't got a great understanding of how they differ.

Any love for USE ME?

Doug

@ Doug, Yes I like USE ME 001 very much…..
I will second it with Gruntz. For me Gruntz is my small game rules, and USE ME is my large game rules. I also do not care for mass units on one base, and both of these fit with my likes.

Oddly I was going to ask Nordic Weasel the same thing about the sci-fi arm of his expanding repertoire. I've 5 Parsecs from Home but wonder how the other sets (modern too I suppose) all relate to each other scale wise/flavour wise etc.

Cheat sheet required for the cerebrally challenged. Or a bulk-buy discount on Wargame Vault and I'll work it out for myself ;-)

TheBeast – really? with that online name you are going to ask "Any love for USE ME?" You cheeky submissive.

Don't you know 'lull them into a false sense…' when you see it? THEN CRUSH.

*ahem* Lamentation of their women. Yadda yadda…

I've a friend that LOVES Laserstorm, but that seems to be 6mm, so, micro-armor-ish.

Haven't looked at the others; 5 Parsecs… is mostly for small groups, sort of ragtag, right? Another 'I bought, I really SHOULD read someday…'

*sigh* I suppose this is where Weasel starts gloating…

Doug

TheBeast – I'm glad to report I do not know what you mean. This means my brain is not as tainted as I first thought it was!

Yes on the 5 Parsecs. RPG lite skirmish level – Firefly-ish.

De ja vue – 'Another I bought, I really SHOULD read someday…' Same applies here.

As does 'Another I bought, I really SHOULD PAINT someday…'
As does 'Another I bought, I really SHOULD PLAY someday…'

Ironically, I have USE ME (various versions including Sci Fi one). Unfortunately they fall in to the 'Another I bought, I really SHOULD read someday…' category.

Hey gang.

Okay, so:

FiveCore is a generic rule set. It does scifi decently though it was intended for "somewhere within 100 years of today".

A typical skirmish game will have a squad or so on each side and the campaigns delve into the specific characters.
Five Parsecs is a Firefly/Traveller style campaign for that kind of set up.

Clash on the Fringe is my take o nRogue Trader. 2-4 squads, a robot, a tank you kitbashed, a psionic and a teleporting guy go to fight crime.

No Stars in Sight is platoon level "hard scifi". If you like Stargrunt or Tomorrows War, this is the same vein, though mechanically different.
Lots of tech gadgets, and lots of being bogged down in hte mud, while you try to get a fusion gun to bear on the power armour tearing you up.

Make more sense?

Incidentally, Five Parsecs totally works with other rule sets. I know people who use it with all sorts of other games.