Requirements, Stories, and Miniature Wargame Rules

Requirements - or what do I want anyway.

I am looking for the right set of WWII wargame rules.  A fool's task, of course, but at least it's an excuse to read some rules and play some games.

When I was a young software developer I was taught to start with requirements; after all stating what you want makes it far easier to get it.  So, what are my requirements?

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  A game that I can play with a small group of friends at my home in a day  -- which means of course that it has to be a game my friends enjoy.  One day is important because while my cat is very tolerant of my hobbies, I do not want to tempt her too far.

• A game that I can take to a convention and present to a group of boardgamers and have a fun game wrap up in four hours including setup, teaching, and teardown.

• A game that uses my existing kit.  I have an extensive 10mm collection for late war east front and while it might be fun to extend it to earlier periods or to add the western allies, I cannot afford to throw it all over to re-invest in 3mm or 28mm.  And that's not just the money but the painting time.  I do have a huge (5'x8' more or less) gaming table and enough Hexon terrain to cover the whole table, so hex grid based games are open to me.

• A game that tells a story that is useful for the solo campaign I am planning.

Story?

I believe that the history books that wargamers enjoy provoke our desire to game, not because they show us the truth of the progress of human history but because they tell stories that connect to something fundamental in humans; and that we have to find a way to express in something we do or make.  OK, your mileage may very, but that is always the urge that events large and small have provoked in me.  Judging from the number of dedicated trekkies, reenactors, and roleplayers around, I am not alone. 

The campaign that I am planning is a fiction.  Not a novel, but a secondary world to use Tolkien's term.  A secondary world can be shaped with all sorts of content, including ordinary fiction but also false histories and encyclopedias, maps and myths, and propaganda and straight up lies.   By using hypertext to tie it all together, I think that I can produce something a little bit different,  Will it be worth it?  As long as it entertains me I will be satisfied.

Of course, it's one thing to write fiction; the challenge is writing something that other people will want to read, and to keep writing it until it's done.  If that was easy I would probably have done it.  But the tool of a game with its cycle of scenario design, setup, play, and battle report provides a library that can inspire threads of narrative when I am out of fresh ideas.  

So what rules?

Right now I am looking hard at three sets.

War Stories: A World War 2 RPG is a game of the Year Zero Engine family.  Those games have excellent combat mechanisms and being RPGs are not just skirmish games.  No, it's not a wargame but instead it droves to the sort of detail we find in frontline soldier's memoirs,

Command Decision: Test Of Battle is a set of rules where one stand equals (more or less) a platoon.  Decision making is quite granular, using both proximity to command units and issued order that can go to a stand level.  This is the level that can cover some of the small unit actions we find in history books.  I CD have enjoyed it in the past, but I have some concern about using it as a convention game.  

My backup plan right now is either Fist Full Of Tows or Battlefront but everything needs testing.  The pleasure of this level is that it can involve some detailed tactics that resemble a lower level while covering more ground.  A realistic mix of unit types is easy to achieve.  I have played a lot of Blitzkrieg Commander but it has left me cold.  A fast, fun game but if you play enough the dice will deliver too many frustrating activation fails.

Panzer Korps uses an approach that I have not tried.  The fundamental unit of operation is the battalion.  It is represented by three company stands that illustrate the base type and up to four company attachments.  All of these stands remain together act act as a single formation.  At 1cm = 50m I can use my table to represent a divisional attack such as Juno Beach.  I will be testing those rules in a couple of weeks.  My only real problem with them is that they are in desperate need of editing; but I can work through that for a good game at that level.

It is not quite alone at that scale, but the only one I have at hand, Rommel (one square is 1km, so on my table with my Kallistra hexes 1cm =100m) reminds me very much of a board game.  Not so much the hex map as the fact that all information is really on a scrap of card with the  miniatures merely providing decoration.  It might be more interesting to "jack up" the representations of Panzer Korps to a higher level and even use a hex grid with that scale.

Next?

In this line of investigation, testing -- with a plan to blog the results in detail as battle reports.  I am also still working on the economic model for the campaign and I will be investigating platforms for presenting the campaign results.