"Good Fast Fun Rules for 20mm Skirmish?" Topic

Here's the situation-- I live up the street from the best source of plastic WW2 figures in my state, and I am looking for an excuse to go buy a couple hundred, paint them and play with them.

So, question-- what's a good fast set of skirmish rules for them? I want to base them individually where one figure = one man, and I don't care to do any paperwork during the game.

Thanks for any help!

I'd recommend Nuts! from Two Hour Wargames:

link

IŽll second Nuts! as the better option.

Be careful, the excuse is to buy a couple of plastic soldier boxes…before you notice you will have plenty of figures, vehicles and guns begging to be painted.Hehehe…

"Disposable Heroes" gives a good fun game using D10's ,only requires a platoon a side which is easily acheivable with 1/72 plastic sets but you could make it more if you wish .
Once you've played one game the rule book is rarely referred to , we actually use a whiteboard on the wall to record a few stats rather than refer to the book .

A quick fun game acheived in about 2-3 hours , but could be longer if platoons are increased and very adaptable rules to use for several periods .

cheers t

We are nuts for "Nuts!", and you will be, too!

I too vote for Nuts.

The 2 hour Games website has a free trial of the rules called mg42 which gives an excelent 'feel' for how the rules pay.

Good Luck

Nuts, nuts, nuts!

NUTS!

NUTS!

link

BattlegroundWWII will play out quickly if you use less units and do not add all of the extra fluff (that I actually enjoy).
We run well over 100 figures per side (skirmish gaming) in about 4 hours.

link

The new Patrol game would be a great option, you will just need to wait for the release. We will try to let you know what we hear about a date for these. I have playtested them (great rules!)

Baptism of fire II

taskforceproductions.com

perfect for reinforced platoon sized encounters

Rapid Fire is still an easy set of rules to introduce you to the scale……..short, uncomplicated games……

rapid-fire.uk.com

:)

cpmodels.co.uk

For company-sized games you should consider "I Ain't Been Shot, Mum" from Two Fat Lardies: toofatlardies.co.uk

IABSY and Nuts are both great, but Nuts is a truly superior skirmish game. Watch out for the MGs….

If you go for Nuts! i would also recommend have a look at their Yahoo! group. there are some interesting files there, specially examples of play and how reaction works (the core of the game) as it may be a little tricky the first time you read it.

Nuts to Nuts! I recommend Arc of Fire. It is by far the best WW II skirmish game out there!

I am going to recommend Disposable Heroes/Coffin for Seven Brothers.

You want skirmish, NUTS. You want an excuse to buy hundreds, IABSM.

I also recommend Nuts! Gives a good "feel" of real combat. You think you are in control and suddenly everything could go FUBAR in a hurry. Has a campaign system so you can watch your newbies mature (or die!).

Operation Overlord free on their site.
link

Another vote for Arc Of Fire . Good for Platoon size game

I play Operation Overlord, got it back in the first edition, very good game. I love the order cards. forces you to use a lot of strategy

Bama, try out my game, Over There. It is designed for 20th Century and later skirmish warfare, is paper work free and costs nothing. It's in the playtesting phase right now and I'd love to hear your thoughts about it. It's also very easy to learn (only 6 pages of rules). Here is our Yahoo group:

link

NUTS! if you want a fast game. BOF2 is cool but not as fast. Emphasizes psychological effects in combat in a great manner though.

USSR from bolt action are very quick and fast.

Take a look at Beer and Pretzels Skirmish. This plays very fast and has some unique mechanics for resolving small arms fire very quickly.

For your info if you like IABSM, a lower level set of rules is soon to be released by the Toofatlardies aimed at the platoon level… Keep an eye on the message boards!

"Disposable Heroes" is worth looking into. Go to the Iron Ivan website and get the 1st Edition rules for $5 USD plus S/H.
We have been playing "Disposable Heroes" at Western Oregon Wargamers Club for the last 2 months and the turn out of players has been great. I recommend you try these rules.

Buck,
Is 3.0 the latest version of Beer and Pretzels Skirmish? Wher is the best place to get a copy by mail order?

My recommendations are TW&T (platoon level IABSM soon to be released, should be good), Baptism of Fire II, and Battleground WWII. All good in their way, it really depends what sort of gaming experience you're after. Plenty of other choices out there, so take your pick! ;o)

link

Could some give a quick overview of the basic mechanics for some of these games? I'm guessing that each play very diferently, and I'm trying to figure out how to choose between them.
Thanks

I meant to say "Could someone…"

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As a gamer, without TMP I would not have discovered games like .45 Adventures or All Things Zombie, or other worth games.

Nice, an April Fool's bug! Here was my real post:

I can certainly give an overview of my game. Over There! is a skirmish level game where 1 model represents 1 soldier or vehicle. It can be played with either 10-15mm models or 20-28mm models. You can comfortably play with anything from a fireteam (4 soldiers) up to a company (100 soldiers) per side. A reinforced platoon game (50 models per side) takes my club just over an hour to play. The game features a card-based initiative system, where both players stay involved. Unit activation is usually not automatic (upon revealing the unit's card), but rather depends on an activation roll that takes into account the unit's morale, experience, stress and their current level of order and control.

When a unit activates, all soldiers in that unit can act independently although keeping with squad cohesion can help them maintain their effectiveness. Attacks are resolved by rolling between 1 and 6 dice depending on the rate of fire of the attack or the amount of time spent "aiming" the attack. Then a defense roll is made by the defender which determines whether the attack hits and damages or misses and (possibly) scatters.

Movement is dice generated, so you can declare the direction the soldier will move and what point he will stop at (if he reaches it) but *not* exactly how far he will move (if he doesn't make it to his target). Thus some squads might be very hesitant to approach the enemy while others will be more courageous. Other than moving and shooting, actions can be spent reloading weapons and hiding behind cover (increasing the dice for your defense roll).

Vehicles work much the same. Each vehicle has its own special card (featuring the only table or chart in the entire game!). Attacks against vehicles use real world penetration data and armour thickness/quality. In fact, realism is one of the driving themes of the game, especially the "true" scale. The distances, ranges and speeds are all perfect for the size of the models; it's the real world scaled onto your tabletop.

Again, it's free and here's the link: link

DHR has you organize the competing sides into sub units that can be controled by a leader.

You roll for success against the skill level of your troops minus any penalties.

The defender tries to negate any successes.

Any surviving troops then attempt to not run away like scared little girls.

D6 dice rolls, good fun, works for any scale.

The old rules can be found online at damnedhumanrace.com

Regards

We just got into Nuts, and are having a blast with it for squad level games. It takes a few games to "click" but once you get it, its all over.

Its a long time since a rules set has gotten me excited

Weasel, I agree! I am another convert to NUTS. I have wallowed in the quagmire of rulesets hoping to find one that would get my attention for more than the read through. Nuts does this for me. I hesitated buying Nuts for a very long time but once I did I have to say that I only game WW2 skirmish with it exclusively. Never tried bigger battles with Nuts but for a handful to a couple squads Nuts can't be beat.

We use rapid fire for skirmish with a couple of tweeks here and there,fast and fun.

Last night we had a game with 2 squads and a tank on one side, the other side having 2 squads and machine gun, with another squad arriving half way through.
It flowed pretty well actually, though since we played so late at night, we lost track a few times. In the end, the game was a hoot though :)

I get the feeling it propably tops out at about 5 squads or so.

Disposable Heroes will give an excellent, short skirmish game.
D.

Rapid Fire! is very playable for battalion-level games IMHO. It's easy enough to pick up and understand, and you can enjoy all of the "bells and whistles" of WW2 gaming including tanks, anti-tank guns, engineers, air support, ad nasuem. As it includes my heroes the 1940 French, I have found it to be very handy for early war games as well as mid- and late war.

Hope this helps!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Rules of Engagement. Great book, fantastic rule set, lots of support via the Great Escape Games website with free Orders of Battle.

I like NUTS but you'll struggle to play a game with more than 10 figures per side unless you've been playing it for quite some time.

I agree with Rules of Engagement. Nice fast simple rule set with enough depth for some good gaming.

I suggest Disposible Heroes.

- George

I too recommend Disposable Heroes. My game club has been playing DH for the past 2 years in the 20mm scale with armor too! We like the fact that we can get through a game in 2-3 hours. It's fast, it's easy to learn, there's minimal record keeping, and it's well-supported online. Good gaming.

Yet another vote for Disposable Heroes…

Cracking game.

Nuts!

I'd go with Disposable Heroes as well.

Nothing wrong with anything else suggested, just I'm most familiar with DH.

I gotta recommend Disposable Heroes. Warning though: The fighting is Bloody. Don't expect a squad to surivive in the open very long…

Another voice for Disposeable heroes and Arc of Fire too :)