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Greetings my fellow historical players, I know we're the shunned cave trolls of Dakka Dakka but I come searching for wisdom! My first foray into tabletop WWII was Flames of War, as I'm sure was the case for many of you. I grew to dislike the game and migrated to Battlegroup, which I've thoroughly enjoyed. I find myself very curious about what else is out there though, and was hoping to get some recommendations from the people on this board. In particular, I'm looking for something that works well in 1/72, keeps the rules ambiguity to a minimum, well balanced, and company-level. I am not a rivet counter so I'm okay with something that doesn't try its hardest to be a simulation, though I would consider a game like that if it met my above criteria. Thanks in advance!

Try Bolt Action. Its very popular for a good reason.

Battlegroup

Wonderful game system, balanced, every game I've palyed ahs come down to the wire.

http://ironfistpublishing.com

They have Kursk, Overlord, Blitzkrieg, and Barbarossa out Now. Check out the website, and check out Big P's posts here on his games and tables. Amazing stuff. And its fairly scale neutral. A lot of people play in 20mm, I use my FOW stuff to play, works great either way.

Boltaction. The rules work well at 1/56 and 1/72 scale.

I second Battlegroup, but you know how that plays all ready.

I have also see/heard of Chain of Command which is pretty popular right now. i personally want to pick this up next.

Nuts!
Operation: World War II
Operation: Squad- Very small scale operations, like squad on squad
Cross of Iron

You could also use Force-on-Force rules too. I like those a lot, but they are more for Platoon sized actions.

A quick google would tell you there are probably more rules sets to chose from at this scale than any other period or scale in the world!

Third for Battlegroup.

I'm just playtesting my skirmish rules for WW2 at the moment...

Out with my two primary playtest teams at present. Will be for any scale but 20mm and 28mm will feature in the book.

But if you have Battlegroup, how could you want anything else! I'm upset!

Bolt Action and Chain of Command work fine in 20mm, though neither appeal to my tastes for a low level WW2 skirmish game.

I had alot of fun with both Rapid Fire and Crossfire in the past before we write Battlegroup.

There is also Normandy Firefight that Warwick wrote before we did Battlegroup, that's a very neat squad game based around individual soldiers.

Bolt Action, very popular right now.

Bolt Action is not company level though...

I played all my WWII games with "Battleground WWII" by Easy Eights Productions. The company is defunct now, sadly, but the rules can be found still.

This rule set was about as realistic as you can get. They were intended for squad based games at 28mm, but all rules, tables, ranges, templates, etc were included in the rules for 20mm / 1:72 models. We played massive battles with 3+ players per side. We played with as many as 3 platoons, mortar support, and 8+ tanks a side. As I said before, it's a VERY in-depth game. If you're looking for a game that gives you a really good idea of what it was like to be in a Sherman, looking down the business end of a Tiger, this is the rule set for you.

They had many, many, many expansions that covered one specific aspect of WWII. Everything from British para commandos to North Africa, to recon rules, French countryside and bocage fighting, and so on. Every set of rules has scenarios, special rules, specific units, etc. Then there were campaign expansions like the Battle of the Bulge or North Africa. In the Battle of the Bulge campaign expansion, you have to deal with specific units, increasingly bad weather, casualties, lack of reinforcements, sabotage, Germans have to contend with fuel shortages, time is against them, travel on different road surface,... man, it's intense.

What a fantastic game if you want to be accurately "historical." If you want to play less hardcore, then there are others mentioned already that run the gamut from quick to fairly realistic.


There was a legendary demo at Origins one year, late 90s, I think, where some guys put on a 1-on-1 squad battle with 1 Hetzer and 2 Shermans in the bocage in France. Thing is, it was all in 1/6 scale!!! They used old 12" G.I. Joe action figures. The battlefield was on the floor and it was MASSIVE.


Ghidorah