"Early War Skirmish Rules" Topic

Could you tell what rules are out there that cover in good manner the early part of the war? Level of gaming is platoon to company skirmish.

Campaigns of interest
Winter War
Poland 1939
Norway 1940
Greece vs. Italians 1940
Dutch, Belgian 1940
Battle of France 1940

With Respect
Konstantinos Travlos

Iron Ivan's _Disposable Heroes_ has a great sourcebook called "Futile Gallantry" that covers a number of these. I think the Greco-Italian may come under their Italy sourcebook.

Skirmish Campaigns puts out a lot of these periods, I bought the Winter War, and it was pretty good.

I don't think they are a specific rule system, but offer options for other ones.

P.

I think such preferences can be very personal. You're likely to get many different recommendations.

Do you have something in mind about how rules would cover early war particularly well?
Do you have in mind unit stats and organisations or something?

I think it might be an idea to give more information on how you like to play.
Do you want to emphasise fun and quick play and don't care about any "simulation" OR would you ideally want super simulation and if that means the gamers have no fun then that's their problem.

Other rules you like. Scale and abstraction. Do you have individually mounted figures or stands and are you expecting 1:1. How many tanks do you expect to see on table?
How well do you understand the background to the periods?
At one extreme that could be you know them very well and require no more info from the rules. At the other end, you'd like a Warhammer race/40k codex style book with an entire background per army for each period.

Making the winter war interesting for both sides is quite challenging. Making it so the Finns can win and the Soviet player still enjoy the experience is kind of tricky.
Maybe you should indeed consider rules background and scenarios separately.

Chain of Command

Chain of Command has lists for nearly all off the armies for those conflicts.

Hi Andy

Primarily rules that will bring out the best from the kind of scenarios Skirmish Campaigns puts out. I dislike systems that are too army-list based, but I also dislike overtly complex systems. I have zero experience with WW2 gaming beyond a very short run through NUTS!. It was a good system but not for me. If it helps (which it will not) my favorite systems right now generally in wargaming are Bloody Big Battles (grand tactical level), Kiss me Hardy, and Saga.

Size wise I am thinking 15mm figures, would like armor present but not dominating.

Thanks to everyone else as well for their suggestions to this point.

Try the new Bolt Action. Ignore the points and use with historically-valid units.

I've used Combat Patrol to fight scenarios from the Skirmish Campaigns books and they work pretty well. The books list several different rule sets which can be used, so it might be worth getting one of them and then looking at which rules suit you best.

TW&T! It has Battle for France 1940 and yours truly is preparing a Winter War supplement for publication. The weapon stats are generic and the vehicle stats are identical to I Ain't Been Shot Mum and Chain of Command, so the only work required to port it to other conflicts is to research the platoon organization (or, if you're lazy, just steal it from another game).

I would also recommend checking out Rules of Engagement for Early War.

What's TW&T please?

Troops Weapons & Tactics from Toofatlardies

Troops Weapons & Tactics from Toofatlardies, a sadly underplayed, excellent set of rules.

Another vote for TW&T…

It's essentially I Ain't Been Shot Mum on a smaller scale. I think I may like it even more than IABSM, though, since the Tactical Initiative system is simply brilliant.

In TW&T I like how units are reliant on leaders to get/keep them moving 😊…it's successor CoC doesn't quite do it for me…

I would recommend the Arc of Fire rules from the stables of Skirmish Campaigns, morale;leaders;vehicle stats all in one book with qrf sheets too, the set I've used for all of the campaigns mentioned.

Captain you are the exception it seems as most of the Lardie aficionados prefer CoC to TWaT.
PBI Company Commander from RFCM would work fine for your needs. Army lists for all the forces you outline are in the seperate Company Architects book

Hey Fred I've often been referred to as 'exceptional' usually by my partner when I've done something she doesn't agree with 😊…

Thank you all. I will do my research.