For anyone who doesn’t know, I created a really simple way of building battle ready miniatures (no glue or paint necessary) from plastic block and as part of this I also wrote a super simple set of wargaming rules. These were designed to allow almost anyone to setup and play a tabletop WW2 battle within 10 minutes of reading the rule.
These simple rules are continuously getting tweaked. They are far from perfect, but they were easy to write because there was a very clear focus – simple! It had to be simple. We removed or reduced everything we could. We treated historic fact and nuance with little regard and remained focused on the game and paid little attention to the realities of war.
This focus on simplicity can be challenging as it leaves a lot of gaps in the rules. This means that as our friends and customers become a little more familiar with the rules, they ask a lot of questions. We try to encourage them to write their own answers. Within the structure of the simple rules, just add to them for you and your games.
We accepted however from day one that we wanted to create some rules that were able to better replicate the strategic challenges of a real second world war battle. We anted to create something that enabled more advanced gamers to feel better able to enjoy the challenges of ‘winning’ a battle with all of the challenges that would have been present on the ground 80 years ago.
Before I start to explore the process, I went through, I want to be completely open and honest. I have been wargaming on and off for over 30 years. In that time, I have tried lots of different rule sets and very few of them are entirely new. Most are based on similar principles and structures. I don’t pretend that anything I have done is original, and I would stress that the rules of any game can be highly personal. One of the reasons I have written this it to encourage you to adapt, change and improve my rules and anybody else’s if and when you feel it works better for you.
What (Who) is it for?
I am a gamer…a tabletop general. For me if it isn’t fun and engaging and social then it is dull! This is why our whole business was born out of the focus on getting to the game as quickly as possible. I will readily admit to not having the skill or the patience to be a modeler. So, this is how the simple rules were born and this continued to be a key foundation for our advanced rules. As well as being a gamer (in the ‘pre internet sense’) I have always loved history. Now this is my first problem. I have a habit of disappearing into a rabbit hole of historical accuracy that for most people is very much NOT fun! So, my challenge with the advanced rules was how do I indulge my love of history and strategy, but in a way that those people who love the simple rules can still enjoy. I do not want to create rules that require players to refer to the rules 20 or 30 times each turn.
My aim is to create rules that give players an immersive experience of historic warfare while retaining the focus on fun…simple right?
Turn Structure
There are lots of ways of deciding how each player, army or unit can interact. Whether you take it in turns like a traditional board game (you go, I go), select units or individual models alternately, use a random selection method such as cards or dice or devise an even more complex method to add in the random and uncontrollable variety present in war. I have tried all different methods and there are benefits to them all.
There were three main factors that influenced my decision.
1. Scale – I use approximately 15mm (1:100) scale models. This means that we use bases and units more than individuals. This lends itself to bigger more integrated strategic movements which are easier when there is less ‘luck’ involved in giving orders.
2. Control and Skill – Proponents of other methods will of course shout me down, but I like to have enough control over the battle to feel like I earnt my victory. Similarly to Chess, the victory of the ‘better player’ is a big part of the game. If it was possible on the flip of a coin that one player got three turns before the other got any, there would be an argument that the outcome of a game could be hugely impacted by this element of luck rather than skill. I totally accept that in terms of recreating war, this ‘luck’ is definitely more accurate. However, when playing a game I want to feel like ‘I’ have won or lost. This is part of the fun!
3. Time – With more complex rules, I think it helps to be able to go through each step (Rally, Move, Fire, Attack for example), rules in hand, in one turn. This means battles are shorter and more complex ideas can be embraced on scale. Having to go through these phases for each model/unit can take a long time and over a larger army, this can lose a little bit of the fluidity and enjoyment.
So, my choice, right from the word go was to build the rules around a simple alternate turn structure. General 1 does everything, then general 2 does everything. There are some ideas introduced in the advanced rules that are designed to add some of the uncertainty that is integral to warfare, but within this simple structure.
Actions – Reinventing the Wheel
Strangely compared to the last section this one is short. I had decided the overriding objective for these rules and the underlying structure. The actual actions that would take place each turn was simple. There was only one addition to the simple rules.
1. Rally/Morale – A key part of any rules, especially more advanced ones is the recognition of psychology. Human beings react. Fear, bravery, training, purpose, camaraderie all impact whether troops will charge directly towards a machine gun nest or run away before the first shot is fired. This action is where this can be decided.
2. Movement – This is exactly what it sounds like. We added nuance to this to better reflect the different types of movement that can offer strategic advantage to different troop types. We also added a rule for reactive fire. As we mentioned when looking at the turn structure, we have added a way of ‘interrupting’ this structure by allowing the defending player (whose turn it is not) to have a pop at models that are moving in the open during their turn. We have also added a ‘reliability’ function that will allow or prevent armoured or motorized models from moving. This again is born out of historic reports that essential the reliability (and repairability) of tanks like the Sherman and the T34 made them as if not more valuable than the mighty Tigers of the German army. The Tiger was described as a ‘Tank for the crew’, where the Sherman was described as a ‘tank for the Generals’. As a tan crew you would always choose a Tiger, but if you wanted your armoured reserves to be in the right place at the right time, laying down the right fire…well most generals would choose the Sherman every day of the week.
3. Spotting (NEW) – This is a new one and was born out of my reading (mainly over Christmas). One of the challenges with tabletop gaming is that we as players can see everything. Combined with the realisation that none of us have tables big enough to actually make weapon range relevant (a ww2 rifle had an effective range of 457m, at our scale that means that your table would need to be 4.57m long before your infantry were concerned about range) we needed a way to add the element of surprise, or camouflage to the game. We added a mechanism for spotting your enemy. This varies from being easy (If it is a big tank that is driving loudly across the battlefield whilst shooting at you) to more difficult (for a machine gun hidden in the undergrowth that has neither moved nor fired). While this does not mean that you cannot see that the models are there, we felt it added strategic value to keeping some units ‘hidden’.
4. Shooting – we have added moved depth to this, especially to the wounding or destruction of vehicles or armoured vehicles. We did also add the function of ‘indirect fire’. This again is born out of my reading of infantry tactics of WW2. Particularly the use of machine guns. It explained that these were regularly used a ‘suppressing fire’ not direct fire. Essentially the purpose was to keep the enemies head down while you moved your troops. This seemed like such an important strategic tool that it needed better integrating to the rules.
5. Attack – This has changed relatively little. This is probably the ‘smallest’ part of the overall rules. This was relatively rare in most WW2 battles.
As well as the above phases, we brought the artillery, aircraft and building rules into the main body of the advanced rules. I didn’t add to these significantly, but it was important to be able to fully engage with all elements of the army. Particularly when Blitzkrieg itself was born out of the integration of armour, air and infantry.
Variables
In my desire to keep it simple, I kept to inches and D6. No complex sided dices, cards or maths! We have used 2D6 for some rolls (such as armour piercing) but generally speaking to play a game you still just need a measure and a D6!
Comparisons
One of the most difficult challenges in writing a set of rules is how to interpret the historical performance of units, weapons and armour into a dice roll or a number of inches. How do you represent the likelihood of hitting a target or penetrating armour?
Our simple rules used a basic 50:50 starting point for most things (roll of 4 or more). This still formed our starting point for the advanced rules. We used this base and then through research considered how that might change for different units, weapons and situations.
As well as probability we wanted our rules to be able to grow as our model range grew. As a result, we used AI to create detailed comparison of armour thicknesses, penetration values and more. We then related these numbers directly to our tables that dictated the rolls. This means that some outcomes are 100% (if it hits, it will penetrate) and some are no chance! What this also means however is that we have a simple way of adding any weapon or vehicle into these rules without worrying about whether we ‘get it right’. The numbers will speak for themselves.
What is next?
Well next is trying them out. We haven’t gone through the rules themselves in this article. It is more about the thought process for how we approached writing or updating them. I am certain however that they will still be full of holes and some parts of them I will have got wrong. Either the desire for historic accuracy will bog down gameplay, or the desire to keep the game fun, will not allow players the strategic flexibility they need to command their forces on the tabletop.
We will be playing some trial games with friends and maybe some of you! Once we have done that, we will review the rules and hope to release them by April this year.
These are some great insights. I look forward to playing with these rules!