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No rivet counters allowed!

Wednesday 13 June 2012

More thoughts on 'simple' rules.

German Infantry squad with LMG support team

I've been playing around with differing rule sets just lately in an attempt to tailor a complete set of fast play rules. The bulk of this upcoming set will be mainly derived from one of my favourite systems 'Rate of Fire'.
These rules are for me one of the best easy play sets on the market but like most gamers there's parts of the rules that don't quite hit the mark for me the first of which is the variation of movement distances according to the moving units order.

RoF is also a simple IGOUGO system, something else I'm not particularly fond of preferring instead to activate individual units in a random (possibly card driven?) manner.

In my past few test games I've followed the random activation route and in my opinion it adds a different dimension to the game.

The other big change I made was the scrapping of the orders section. In RoF each unit can be assigned one of several orders for their upcoming move In my trial games I've simply assigned a Move (or remain stationary of course) or Fire option. Again, this seems to work well with advancing squads having to make a choice of pressing on and taking ground, firing at a visible target or possibly firing in support of another unit in the hope of causing suppression (more on this later too!) of enemy units.

So far the simple set I've put together is working really well and I'm really enjoying the testing of different ideas etc. There's still more to do including the question of AFV's in the close combat situation that these games represent. This should be a challenge as I really don't want tanks etc to rule (and possibly ruin) the game. One initial idea was to make it virtually impossible for a buttoned up vehicle to acquire a foot unit target unless it is closely supported by a friendly infantry unit..... anyway, more thoughts on that later.

More to come so stay tuned!

Steve


2 comments:

  1. This is all sounding very interesting Steve. I am new to all this and haven't even had my first game yet, but I have been looking at rule set so I can get a handle on how things work and what I have read so far has been quite complicated and confusing at times. So good luck with your project!

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  2. These may just be what you're after then as they are a very simple rule set but seem to have a good 'feel' when playing. I'll try and get a rough draft up on here soon so take take a look and see what you think.

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