"Manoeuvre Group Rules & Fold Flat Terrain" Topic

While doing some research I came across some comments about a ruleset called "Manoeuvre Group" that covers combat from 1944 to 2010:

link

Has anyone played these rules? Are they very complex? I am looking for rules to cover Cold War+ armour (3mm or 6mm, 1:1 or small unit scale) combat and I would prefer a simpler set of rules over rules that are loaded with detailed simulations.

I also see that the producers of the Manoeuvre Group rules sell what they call Fold Flat Terrain packs. Does anyone know anything about this and if so how did you like them?

I discovered an old TMP post about the Manoeuvre Group rules but it didn't have much details.

Thank you in advance for any feedback.

MG is a highly detailed set of rules so probably not what you are looking for. For example, it goes in to detail about calculating LOS for hills, tracking hull/turret down, etc.

I would suggest you look at FiveCore. It is simple and fast and at $7.99 USD the price is right. It has quite a few fans on these pages.

link

To ExtraCrispy,

Thank you for the feedback!

I am also a fan of the FiveCore rules… I have a number of the rules, I like Brigade Commander a lot.

I often see FiveCore and Fist Full Of Tow's mentioned often. Between the two which would you say is better suited for "simpler" armor combat?

I don't know a lot about FFOT…. it is a little daunting to me because it is a beefy rule book, but a lot of that is equipment tables—but for the place I am in in my life I like the simplicity of the 5Core engine, which for the most part translates to most of their products. I know a lot of people love FFOT but I have just never been tempted to pull the trigger on it. You really can't beat the pricing of 5Core products—they ain't glitzy or glamorous but they do the job.

I see that the 5Core rules come in different versions (e.g. Company, Brigade). Are the rules essentially the same except for the size of units being fielded for play?

Fistful of Tows is my goto rules set for WW2 and Modern platoon level games (platoon stands that is). They crunched numbers quite a bit to come up with a truly fast playing set of rules that is easy to play while still coming up with reasonable results. The only thing that still gets me tripped up is Arty.

There are free versions of the rules online you read to see if it is right for you. The full rules do add a couple wrinkles to the lite versions but not much.
fft3.com

Ramble here on the detail they try to get into the game versus how hard it is to play.
On the Facebook group they recently had a post saying that upping an armor factor or AP factor in certain instances would not be a bad thing since they mathematical model they used to come up with armor and penetration ratings had break points very near the performance levels of the hardware in question (this is older hardware from the sixties, more modern stuff I assume is harder to get answers for). They put this kind of effort into the data to make the game flow faster.

Bit late as I have been away. I am one of the authors.

To be honest I would not call the LOS rules difficult. Dead ground is just 8" per contour (8 ft at model scale) measured from the bottom of the hill. Much less hasstle than trying to work it out with a laser pointer and eveybody has a clear common standard. Real slope defence is a key issue in modern war so its important if you are adverse to fantasy games.

Hopefully you get what you see in the pictures for the fold flat terrain. The buildings are desined for 1/72 or 1/144 and won't scale down to 3mm and will proably not work well at 6mm but at those scales you could just glue it, proably not worth folding flat at 6mm. There may be better card buildings for your requirements but the images are cheap so may do while you find better.

Hills well they can be any siye but again a hill
that is 60mm high and 440mm wide to the bottom may be a bit big for a typical 6 to 3mm game. I love them but only for 1/72. Smaller I use Hexon II. No commecial attachment just love the stuff but is a bit expensive,

kallistra.co.uk/?page=8

The rules do horrific things (as far as wargamers are concerned) like mimiking real tanks and requireing players to turn turrets (just like the real thing!). This lapse into reality is considerd by some as unadulterated Herasey in its worst form ;-). Apparently this need for thought and adherence to reality is over complicated. However to be fair even I consider that impractical at 3mm, we have done it at 6mm ourselves. However using markers to indicate faceing even I admit is not ideal, so 3mm is unsuitable for these rules and at 3mm. However 1 to 1 is not very practical in my opinion. Some folk have complaing about the size of the rule book, however most rules fail utterly to cover such key issues as engineering, again an apprent herasy in wargameing "Just throw more die" ;-).