"Any only infantry ruleset?" Topic

I am trying to play ww2 on a budget, since my other projects are consuming all my money. I just grab some italeri 1/72 infantry sets and for now that is all i am going to spend. I am looking for a company/platoon level ruleset that features no tanks or heavy artillery. I know about Crossfire, though i am unsure about the innovative mechanics.

Crossfire is actually an interesting game to play. But be sure to have plenty of terrain (copses of trees, hedges, fence lines, etc., etc.) on the battlefield to provide cover. Otherwise your little heroes will end up blasted.

Crossfire, in my experience, works best with one vs one player. With multiple players, you either have to wait until everyone on the other side has completed all their actions or artificially divide the "battlefield" into sectors so you don't have to wait on the other players to finish their actions. But that creates an artificial situation that doesn't allow opportunity fire across the sector boundaries.

You might want to try "A Sergeants War" [ link and link ] which has a free introductory version. It is based on company/platoon infantry fighting although you can add heavy support weapons (medium machineguns, medium & light mortars, etc.) and even heavy support (artillery and tanks) if you want. We've used it a couple of times and it seems to work well with both one on one and multiple players.

Jim

Most sets can support Infantry only scenarios.

What size units are you looking at?

Single figure or Multi figures bases (what are you already using)?

What level of command are you assuming each player is?

TMP link

More questions

Chain of Command are IMO the best platoon level set out there.

Crossfire.

Second vote for Chain of Command. You _can_ do tanks, but it is an infantry game from the ground up.

peterpig.co.uk/infopbi.html

Here is a link to PBI.
A really full description to help inform you I hope.

In various forms PBI has been around for 25 years and been used a lot.
Do have a read of the above link when you have some spare time.

Good luck with the search Sebastian

martin

Another vote for Crossfire. Terrain wise what you really need are things that break LOS. So hedges, ridgelines (I make mine out of string covered in flock), walls etc.

My club loves 'em and we've run 4 and 6 layer games quite easily, if everyone is friendly.

Crossfire is a great rule set.

I second the suggestion of PBI, my favourite Company Level game. There are plenty of options to introduce armour and artillery into the game but the basic game is for an infantry company – and works very well as such …

(15mm PBI Game in North Africa)

‌

(from a friend's 20mm PBI game)

(15mm Ardennes game)

Phil
P.B.Eye-Candy

Depending on the feel you're looking for, Spectre Operations can be easily adapted for WWII. It gives a very cinematic almost rpg feel to fire fights.

I photocopied and enlarged the maps from the scenarios in Crossfire. Saved on terrain. Used watercolour to enhance them. Played the Bocage scenario on two maps, genuine ambush fear in those games.
Usual games are multiplayer, turns determined by cards. Plays well enough as players need to be aware of reactive fire opportunities, when it's not their turn.
Need to learn how to use terrain to cover movement, and exploit holes in defensive lines late.
As an aside, we all started WW2 on a budget, it's a rabbit hole 😜

Look at ARC of Fire.

Chain of Command or Crossfire will both give very good infantry games. Crossfire is company level, Chain of Command is platoon level. When armour is present it's only ever in a supporting role and the infantry only games are not some sort of compromise but a good look at how tactical warfare occurred at this level.

I have plenty of game reports for Chain of Command where you can get a feel for how these games play out and when armour does make an appearance you can see it's not taking a dominant role Chain of Command AARs

Nice input Phil

thanks

martin

This is not my genre, but I can think of a few honorable mentions worth investigating:

• I Ain't Been Shot Mum, another game by TFL, sort of vaguely similar to CoC for company-level command.
  
• Nuts! by Two Hour Wargames, a fast and flexible 1:1 skirmish system with players commanding whole squads or platoons.
  
• Bolt Action, a Warhammer-like approach to WWII tactical gaming.
  
• Fireball Forward, written for company level. I've only played this game with tanks on the field (usually LOTS of tanks), but it wasn't meant as a tank-focused game.

I believe Chain of Command will fill your need.

I suspect you are looking for skirmish rules, this video lists a number of Skirmish rules which may be of interest. A couple are either freeware, or available as a free download because they are superseded.
But if skirmish is not your thing, as indicated above, most squad scale rules support infantry only conflicts. The GHQ squad scale set of rules are free and possess good army lists as well.