Some Reference Material

Friday, January 8, 2021

 With rebasing going forward, I have decided to evaluate several rules set with an eye to replacing Blitzkrieg Commander as my main rules set.

So far on the list:

  • Rapid Fire 
    • Nice level of simplicity, but individual figure tracking leaves me completely cold.  Distance scale is "abstract".  The last time I played, there was a significant miss on the sequence of play and reserved fire.
  • Command Decision
    • Complete rules with high detail. Complex company-level command rules might make it hard to teach.  One inch = 50m
  • Spearhead  
    • Simple, designed to allow a full division on the table at stand=platoon.  Scale of 1"=100m.  The odd spearhead "thing" is writing orders by drawing a line on a map.  This probably means significant planning time before a game, but that's not necessarily a bad thing,
  • Panzer Korps
    • A real outlier.  Units of maneuver are battalions with a stand roughly a company and fire by the battalion rather than the stand.  This sounds tempting, but it does throw away a lot of things people are familiar with.  It just isn't like playing with tanks any more.  But it is an interesting idea.
The plan is:
  • Construct an interestingly complex terrain on my 5x7 table, with lots of diverse features to try rules against.  I am studying the battles near Targo-Frumos, Romania in early 1944, so that area will inspire the landforms.
  • With each rules set, play a series of solo games
    • Once with small but diverse forces to get familiar with the mechanism
    • Once with a standard regiment scale scenario, looking closely at times required to perform various parts of the rules
    • Once with as large a force as I can argue on to the table -- aiming for a division on one side at least, to see just how far the rules can be stretched.
Once I am down to a favorite, it will be time to get folks in for a game.  Hopefully we will be passed COVID by then,  The final result of player testing might well be a set of franken-rules stealing the best parts of multiple systems.

No comments:

Post a Comment