"Modern rule set for company+ force size" Topic

I'm looking at doing some modern (as in current 2025 forces) in 10mm and was wondering what are my options for rules in this company to battalion level?

Thanks

I'dd suggest Fist Full of TOWs. It's a good 'round rules set that is pretty detailed, but easy enough to pick up quickly. It's great for armored/mechanized actions from WWI up to say the last round of wars in the Middle East circa 2015. It could do the invasions of Ukraine through 2022 as well. But I wouldn't go much past that because it doesn't really model current drone usage. It could, but you're the one who has to make it up.

+1 Tgunner

I use Five Core Company Command for my post-WW2 company level actions. They are pretty simple, perhaps a bit too abstract for some but they allow me to get my figures on the table.

Here is a play test with my 10mm Falklands collection: link

+1 Tgunner – The Ukraine war is more and more about strategic and tactical drone warfare. Our rules do to about 2010 with moden kit but of course a lot in Ukraine is that age. However with the rise of even land based robot drones we don't cover them and to be honest It has no interest to me. I guess I and becoming and "ancient gamer" as older periods like 1980 become more interesting.

With regard to drones I'm not aware of any rule set that includes them yet. Hard to do as range, payload and sophistication are expanding rapidly. Now you have drones that have a 1000km range alongside home made "Radio Shack" grenade carriers, and everything in between….

I hate living in the future.

I've been thinking over Ukraine and drones with Fist Full of TOWs for a while and have a few ideas. The basic rules could cover 2022-2023 as it, but with maybe special rules for recce drones and the occasional attack from them. But after say the Ukrainian counter offensive and the siege of Bakhmut you start reaching the drone saturation point to where they aren't special rules any more, but actual participants on the battlefield.

I could see a sort of drone unit on board which would be a stand of guys who'd be hiding in your rear and with them you can maybe generate a mixture of drone missions? Like a mixture of recce and FPV strikes, but then you're facing the current battlefield where the forces aren't really fighting as platoon sized blobs of infantry and armor that can maneuver in the face of a battlefield that is saturated with attack and recce drones backed up by lot's of artillery.

In fact at that saturation point you're seeing forces devolve into individual fire teams, mechanized infantry squads on their carrier, and individual tanks that can slip on to the battlefield for tiny pin-prick assaults that pick-up a building here, or a tree line there with the attacker sending them in wave after wave after wave of them. You're not really playing a company/battalion sized game anymore. You're playing something like Bolt Action, Force on Force, or even modified Crossfire with teams rather than squads. At that point you're maybe rolling on a preset table for how many drone strikes you have and whether or not there's artillery nearby. You're fielding maybe a team to a squad of Ukrainian soldiers in a couple of defensive points and they're calling in those support assets to clobber the attacker who's coming in with a platoon spread out in a few waves of a squad or so each with maybe an armored carrier and/or a tank. In support you're looking at maybe a field gun, mmg team, ATGM team, Grenade launcher team… so on, or even a platoon sized combination of them. They stay on the board laying down fires as the squad waves move onto the board like WWI waves in mechanized/motorized miniature. It becomes a game of castle defense really with the Ukrainian, or sometimes Russian, trying to crush each wave before the enemy gains momentum and takes your position.

It could be an interesting game, but… it's not the game you're thinking about playing. Massed mechanized warfare like what I was taught to fight back in the '90's might be over for a while until the whole drone saturation thing is figured out.

+1 Tgunner. I suspect the Ukraines give ground in many cases if the emeny get too close so as not to lose too may troops.

Any Ukraine attack seems to suffer less attrition by drones but that makes it a very one sided and in my opinion, not an interesting game to play.

Currently we have no plans to cover dromes in our rules: as has been said many attacks seem to largely falter before the actual combat gets underway.

The problem is the deep mine belts, that hamper large scale operations. In addition modern anti-tank missiles.The drones are only a nuisance, until there are appropriate means of defense against them. In the tabletop game, drones provide an overview of the action, extra firepower and extra action options.

It's a lot of things put together, really. First you have artillery and the ability to engage units in tactical assembly areas. The drones spot units massing in TAAs and call fires which murders whatever is in the TAA. Then you have the FPVs, ATGMs, and then mines. Like WWI, it wasn't just then one thing. It was a bunch of things that added up- bolt action rifles, modern artillery, machine-guns, barbed wire, etc with huge armies but comparatively small fronts. Everything became a frontal assault. Toss in poor communications and the ability to move reserves quickly enough to exploit breakthroughs and you got the mess of the Western Front. I think Ukraine is very similar in that respect.