"Skirmish rules? What do you play?" Topic

I'm looking for something for a small table

FUBAR.

No Stars in Sight. Here is my review of the rules:

link

Here is an AAR:

link

I recommend you read the comments as the author responded to my questions about some of the gray areas.

Tomorrow's War works for skirmishes on a small table.

FiveCore!

Fivecore for 12 or fewer figs per side, no stars in sight for platoon on platoon action :D

You people are too kind :-)

When I don't play something I wrote, its 5150 or Stargrunt, with a touch of Laserburn for the really retro moments.

Try these and they're free.

link

If they work for you then there's 5150.

To fluff up Ed a bit, I should add, we played 5150 for about a year and still felt we had new things to do.

This was with the old "one book" version, with the current split editions, you could get many years of gaming out of that universe.

Tomorrow's War

I like the 2d6SciFi/CR2015/5150 line of games from Two Hour Wargames. I would also second Fivecore. I haven't gotten around to the larger sized games for that.

KR 16 by Angel Barraks is a Fubar variant that I would also recommend.

Tomorrows War is small scale?

What about Gruntz?

I have Gruntz for platoon-per-side for harder sci-fi gaming, and Blasters and Bulkheads for Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. For Trek, I'm looking at Pulp Alley, though I could probably do it with B&B too; it will have fewer figs on the table than the others though.

Tomorrows War was based on Ambush Alley – which plays on a 2x2 table fine, and Force on Force, which is what most people probably think of. AA is asymmetrical and is a lot of fun with small forces, where FF is a more conventional game. Tomorrows War gives the sci-fi version of both.

That being said, I'd go with Five Core first or Chain Reaction (the free version of 5150). Both are very fun, simple, elegant systems and different from the traditional miniature games. Tomorrows and 5150 are overly complicated IMHO with special rules to cover a wide variety of sci-fi situations. I didn't like Gruntz, again mostly because it seemed overly complicated without adding much to the game. But the Gruntz Spec Ops expansion is designed for small skirmish.

Too bad HELLFIRE is OOP, as it is a lovely game for skirmish and small unit actions with a genuine SFnal feel.

And yes, I still play it with my copy. :)

FUBAR (and varients or just write your own…) or Tomorrows War

Moved from FUBAR over to 5Core Skirmish by Nordic Weasel Games.

Dale thanks for the review of "No Stars In Sight." I thought these rules were completely different from 5Core in as much as they didn't have shock/kill dice. Glad to see they do!

Do note that they work a little different but the fundamentals are similar enough: Unmodified dice, shock dice pin the target, kill dice land hits etc.

Tomorrows War is small scale?

Fire team as the unit of maneuver on the table.

I wouldn't run more than about a platoon per side to minimize bogging, but you can run a company per side if you don't mind a long game. The core scenarios have you running a platoon or less per side.

i wrote my own. been playing for 49 years. always felt something lacking in current systems. hopefully to be published.

THUD. played with a friend, 1-1 at company scale. played 8 turns in 90 minutes.

will post a demo soon.

Tomorrow's War.

Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader (the one that came out in the 80's)

In 6mm? How about Epic Escarmouches (aka Epic Skirmishes): link