My personal vanity project of writing a set of wargaming rules continues on. One of the goals of using hex-based terrain is speed of play (no measuring) for large participation games. Another side benefit, is I can test the rules using board games - as with the lovely Stalingrad board and counters from Flying Pig's Old School Tactical game series. If you're looking for a fun and "not brain melting" complex tactical WW2 game, I highly recommend Old School Tactical.
I've been running some company level actions to test the rules and find some logic flaws. The first game proved that KV-1's shred tiny Panzer III's if they can not be outflanked. It also proved Germans trying to cross open ground without smoke or artillery support do not have a very good time of it.
The infantry combat worked really well but I'm still tweaking the mechanics to make it a bit more deadly.
Close Assault in the first game proved to be a bit bloodless and that combat results process needs to be tweaked also.
One of the evolving goals for this ruleset is to allow players to stage games with miniatures on a tabletop - lets call that "3D gaming" or using an existing hex and counter game like Old School Tactical / Squad Leader / Combat Commander to play out a "2D game".
Why would one want to do that - to make the game more approachable to new players - there are a lot of copies of Squad Leader gathering dust on shelves around the world and to facilitate extended multiplayer campaigns. More on that in a later post.
The working title for these rules is "Company Commander: WW2". I suspect that will change as there is all ready a ruleset named Company Commander but it's for small scale Napoleonics. Still I think using the same name isn't the right thing to do. At some point I'll need to put on my "brand management" thinking cap and come up with a suitably overwrought name. Maybe "The Brave Little Toy Soldiers".
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