One of my latest projects has been skirmish gaming in Modern Africa -- in particular, the period of The Congo's independence in the Early 1960s. I'd wanted to do this period of quite some time, but never found a set of rules that caught my fancy. I'd bought and read Peter Pig's popular "AK-47" rules, but thought the combat system was "ho-hum" to the extreme. Then, one night a friend of mine staged a game using the Sci-Fi/Fantasy skirmish rules, Heroscape. He'd raved about how it was a perfect kind of Universal Skirmish system. After playing it and enjoying it, I began to see its uses for Modern Africa. I thought it merged quite well with AK-47's rules for troop types, setup and background information. So, began a process of melding the two rules sets together to create AK-47 Heroscape.
Click here to see pages dealing with the result.
I've always said that my second favorite period of historical miniatures is the "Age of Reason," particularly the Seven Years War. Although right now I have no photos of them, I have two reasonably sized 15mm armies from the SYW -- Frederick the Great's Prussians and Maria Theresa's Austrians. As they are the major combatants of the SYW (and the War of Austrian Succession that preceded it), so those were the first I painted. I have the miniatures for a Russian army, as well, but have painted up only a handful of figs.
Originally, when I purchased these troops, the rules set we were using was Warfare in the Age of Reason. We played it for a number of years, and it worked okay. However, since we did not do it on a regular basis, we were constantly refering to the rulebook to answer questions. And these rules are NOT well organized, despite the release of a second edition (which changes very little and is not a recommended purchase). So, playing Age of Reason became a frustrating experience, as we didn't remember all the rules and couldn't find them quickly when we looked for them.
Thus began my decade-long quest for a better set of Horse and Musket rules. Ideas came and went -- many inspired by articles I'd read in MWAN magazine. Nothing seemed to click, though, until we (my Sunday night gaming group) began to play Hordes of the Things fantasy miniatures rules. Hmmm, I thought. These ARE an excellently-balanced set of rules. Very much like our main miniatures set, De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA), for Ancients. With only a couple tweaks, they'd work fine for the Age of Reason. And probably most importantly, we'd be playing a familiar set of rules, so wouldn't need to scramble when we did get around to playing the period, from time to time.
So, with a couple tweaks, I now use Hordes of the Things for my Horse and Musket era miniatures...and I labelled the newly revised rules, HOTT Lead.
In 2003 and 2004, I avidly read the World War II books by Stephen Ambrose -- Band of Brothers, D-Day, Citizen Soldiers, et al. Their vivid accounts, along with the DVD set of the HBO Band of Brothers series, got me excited to finally get around to do some WW II gaming. It has always been one of the hobby's most popular periods, but I'd never purchased miniatures for it, and my group never did land WW II warfare on any regular basis. My buddies, Allen and Joel Sams, did run WW II naval battles or mini-campaigns from time to time using General Quarters. And there was the time we played "Dauntless" WW II aerial boardgame extensively. However, we'd never really collected armies of infantry, tanks and artillery.
The biggest question when doing WW II, though, is: What size? Do you want a man-to-man skirmish game, or one that uses squads as the smallest stands, or even companies, platoon, battalions, etc.? I really wasn't sure what I wanted. Years back, a couple guys who have since moved on from our group, ran Crossfire WW II for us. They collected 15mm U.S. and German armies -- mostly infantry (as Crossfire is an infantryman's game), but with a smatter of vehicles. I kind of liked that level, but wanted a more combined arms feel with armor, infantry and artillery all represented. Skirmish would be too man-to-man, I felt, for what I wanted right then. And Crossfire pretty much glosses over armor, it is not meant to be a tank-to-tank game. I'm not an armor buff, but I wanted the combined arms of WW II tactics.
So, I priced the figs and was horrified by how much 15mm armor costs. Microarmor was just TOO small, though, for the level of gaming I wanted. Eventually, I settled on 10mm, as I felt the tanks and APCs were more affordable, and the infantry were still cast as individuals, not in lumps. I bought Perrin or Noble miniatures as the main component, adding in Minifigs when looking for things Perrin didn't make. The vehicles looked awesome, but the infantry was a tiny bit of a dissapointment. I'd thought 10mm would be like small 15's, but honestly, they are better described as Big 5mm troops. The painting of them is nothing like a 15mm, and has more in common with 5/6mm figs. Still, as I painted the armies, they looked good, and I wasn't unhappy.
So, now what about miniatures rules?
About the time I was pondering that, I'd played the American Civil War boardgame "Battle Cry." I'd been really impressed with the beer and pretzels rules of the game. I thought the same "engine" could be used for a WW II set. So, I grabbed a notepad and over the next week or so jotted down ideas for command and control cards, which are the heart of the Battle Cry "Command and Colours" system. It all seemed to be fitting together nicely, and I was looking forward to playing it.
Little did I know, Battle Cry author Richard Borg was working on his OWN set of WW II adaptions for Battle Cry, and would release them shortly after I did my first couple of playtests. I still like my own better, although I did steal some of his card ideas and movement/combat rules.
We've played WW II with them a handful of times, and they provide a good game with the appropriate flavor, but not the level of detail a true buff may desire. For me, they're fine, though. I've never been fascinated with various armor thicknesses and what calibre gun can penetrate what vehicle, and yada yada. I've found WW II is VERY prone to Germanophiles, much as Napoleonics are prone to Francophiles. So, I tend to keep my distance from anyone who can spout off about Stugs and such, and smile and play a "WW II-flavored" game.