"Ancient history, anyone use this or remember?" Topic

I bought this rulebook when I was a teenager, my brother and I played it using airfix models and figures I had. Does anyone remember this game or playing it? I looked on the internet but could find virtually no information on it.

This has real sentimental value to me and I am thinking about re-reading it and seeing if it is playable. I have not touched this in over 34 years.

Yes. I have a copy around somewhere. The author saw the Russian Front as the most important and artillery was the big killer as it was historically. If memory serves, I thought it was an outstanding set of rules but they have to be about 50 years old.

Is a platoon the smallest unit/miniature on the table like Command Decision? If so yes I've played it. Hard to recall but I don't remember any problems. Of course I sometimes don't recall my name so …

Hi Bashi -
I knew Arnold well from New England Wargamers back in the day – a very bright guy. He authored "1944", "Surface Warship", "Sword and Spear" and probably a few other rule sets that I have forgotten over time.

Back in the early 70's, "1944" was our rule set of choice for WW2 gaming (Dragon6 is correct in saying that it was a platoon based game). Each infantry stand and tank = a platoon. We eventually moved over to Phil Barker's WRG Armour & Infantry rules in the late 70's.

Some of the weird stuff I recall from the rules were:

(a) lack of overwatch ability in an alternate move game system;

(b) use of wrecked trucks to form tank barriers (don't ask – it was a time of "creative gamesmanship" in our club).

Cannot offer any sort of informed overview beyond that. It has just been too many decades since I last played the rules.

B

Turns out it seems many of us are cut from the same cloth/tree. I had this one but then found one called Tactics. I think. 1944 was company level. Then we used the grey book one called tactics to get our end result. It turned out to be a cool little system.

Lots of drawing up villages. Even leArned how to glue the buildings together with hot glue gun. Arifix models all around. Tons of charts.
Was like a chart to then tell you which chart to use.

Man that makes me feel old.

JH

The gray book was called Tactical Commander by Andrew Rethmill.

Best to have the correct name in case someone was curious.

Glad I found it or that would have been a quest until found.

I remember these so well. I remember making the village and city maps in class in junior high school. We had crummy painted soldiers but a supply of my dad's railroad supplies and a few good article we did a great Red Oktober building that was like 3 feet by 4 feet with many levels and one level under ground. That was some fun.

Buddies mom through it out during spring clean up! Turns out we were not too macho to cry.

Again, OP, this was a nice travel back in time. Cheers to you.

1944 was essentially a miniatures version of Panzerblitz and suffered a number of the same issues although the use of PSM's (blind markers for unspotted units) avoided some of the omniscience Panzerblitz suffered from.

Chris

Played this many times when I was a member of NEWA. It was somewhat quirky as the rules were written before the various types of dice available today. We were limited to D6s only!

Yes, we had that (I still have a copy in the attic). Panzer Leader with miniatures with some very strange additions on top!

Many WWII games continue to limit themselves to d6's with amussing results.

Truck/transport barriers continue to plague some systems. Design has creap rather than leaped forward in many cases.

Platoon base is an excellent atomic unit though for WWII combined arms tactics/mauver. One of the reasons that Panzerblitz/leader/and the SPI versions have held up.

Thomas J. Thomas
Fame & Glory Games

Nothing wrong with d6s, though they are quite granular in their effects. So you might need to have an additional roll somewhere. Or use 2d6 and run with the bell curve.

I will be honest, stand=platoon is not where I like to game, I much prefer 1:1 representation for anything with vehicles. I can tolerate higher representation in earlier eras, like Napoleonics.

1944 used two d6, but of different colors. So results ran 11-66 as opposed to 2-12. Russian infantry were Companies, German and all armor were platoons, guns batteries. The PSM, ground points and pinning were great ideas. Overwatch was a problem. Also proposed that the number of men in the target zone was more important than the volume of fire. So you rolled once for ever figure in the zone for small arms and artillery.