Battle - where it all started

Way, way back in the middle years of the last century a young Elenderil's Father used to read the Meccano Magazine.  In that august tome were a series of articles by one Charles Grant.  They were on a new and potentially interesting topic that would allow him to play with his Airfix soldiers and tanks in a more structured way than rolling marbles at them to see who fell over.  Those articles were later gathered together and formed the book 'Battle! Practical Wargaming' a set of wargames rules for World War two games first published in 1970.  It was practical because it didn't just give a rule and say do it like that, instead it explained how each rule was formulated and the connections between the rules that went to make a coherent whole.  Back in 1968 that was a revelation.

You wouldn't get away with a cover like that nowadays - far too violent!

Those rules were not perfect by any means, for a start they only provided statistics for a handful of vehicles and only for 1944-45.  The defence values for AFV's were basic and while they worked it was difficult to see how the quoted values were calculated.  Equally well the attack value for anti-tank weapons was equally difficult to unravel, but (and it's a big but) they worked because the relationships between the vehicle armour and the AT guns killing power were about right.  There are obvious omissions but by and large Grant acknowledged those omissions and left it to the individual to add as much or as little extra as they wanted.  Probably the key one is the lack of any spotting rules.  A second issue is that fire fights don't pin or suppress targets, Infantrymen  are OK or they are not, I suppose the idea was that players themselves would become dubious of advancing into a hail of fire and would create a kind of player driven pinning.

Oh the simplicity of the early rule sets  These covered Ancients to ACW!

After Battle, I found John Tunstall's Discovering Wargaming which allowed me to put the rest of my Airfix collection to use. That was another primer that explained how the rules worked and it led on to bigger games with larger forces set in earlier periods of history.  The rules were a single set that covered everything up to the ACW......one set to rule them all!  Despite a growing interest in pre-gunpowder gaming I would still return to Grant's rules from time to time.  Over the years I don't think I ever found a set of World War 2 rules that provided as much fun, or were as easy to understand, although to be fair as a 14 year old my standards were probably easily met.

A couple or three years ago I had an urge to scratch the old World War Two itch again but couldn't find a set of rules I liked.  I tried the Battlegroup Kursk system which has some interesting ideas but just didn't do it for me.  I looked at some free to play stuff,  but nothing had the ease of use I was after and eventually I went back to Battle.  There is a framework there for a fast play easy to follow game it just lacked breadth of application as it focussed on Europe in the last year of the war .  So I decided to update them.  Great idea....didn't work!  The problem was that the factors given for tanks and AT guns were too limiting to easily allow for expanding the range of vehicles, especially back into the early war years.  However I did quite like the roll to hit and roll to see if you kill it system all it needed was a bit more chrome.

After a bit of research I came across two things that really helped, the data charts from 'Firefly Outgunned' and armour data and armour penetration data for most of the AFVs and AT weapons used between 1939 and 1945.  With a bit of work I was able to come up with a set of armour penetration charts for a set of ranges from 0-250 meters out to over 2,000 meters.  These are based upon the 50% chance of penetration data used in US and UK weapon testing during the war and just afterwards.  Adding a pair of opposed D6 rolls gives the potential for plus or minus 0 - 5 so that can add up to 50% greater and 50% lower penetration depth.  I added some simple to spot and to hit tables based upon the data on relative target sizes from the Firefly data and with that the tank rules were about done.  I tried a very brief play test and I'm happy with the penetration rules but the spotting and to hit factors need to be smoother as currently they slow things down too much.

Infantry rules updates will come next which will be by squads/sections rather than individual figures.  I have the basics in my head but need to play test them and write them up.  It is going to use factors for each type of weapon to create a fire density for a given range so that a German squad with Mg34s will lay down more fire than say a British squad with only a bren as support.  Weight of fire will generate a chance to pin (can't move and fires with a restricted weight of fire), suppressed (can't move or fire) and neutralised (which is a polite way of saying KIA and WIA).  The rest will probably be lifted from Grant although Olicanalad over on Olicanalad on artillery has some interesting thoughts on the actual application of indirect artillery fire I may need to steal I mean borrow.

Watch this space for updates and playtests.