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About 2 weeks ago I was in the Portland area on vacation. Half the trip was spent with my old wargaming buddy and we got the chance to play WarEngine. WarEngine is the core ruleset that was originally used for the game "Shockforce" and later for "GWAR Rumble in Antarctica" and "Golgo Island". It's a nice platoon level ruleset that handles squads, heroes and small vehicles, but isn't really set up for big tanks and armor battles. It's also got a full unit creation mechanic so you can stat up virtually anything you can imagine.

Here's the AAR he wrote up for the game we played. A battle With Chaos Space Marines and Cultsts facing off against Imperial Guard troopers (Using Pig Iron figures)
https://comradewargames.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/warengine-assault-on-sarkir-chem-station
A few pics to whet your appetite:




It was really great to be able to revisit this ruleset that I haven't played in at least 4 years. As in the past WarEngine proved to be a great ruleset that is fast and easy to play and rewards good tactics. It was also fun to be able to game on some terrain pieces that I had built for him years ago. Some of them never got properly documented/shared and I've rectified that on my P&M blog: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/651712.page#8853443

For those Interested, the WarEngine rules are completely free. The best formatted version I've found is a nice PDF here:
http://freewargamesrules.wikia.com/wiki/File:The_WarEngine.pdf
It's the Version 2.1 rules that were last used in the second (and last) edition of Shockforce. A third edition is/was in the works here, but it seems to have stalled
The only downside is that the core rules do not include any army lists. They're not hard to make yourself, but beware of min/maxing and power-combo-ing. Like any ruleset with an unit-creation mechanic it is very easy to make uber-characters and break the rules.
The good news is that the "Warengine" Yahoo group has a huge variety of free army lists made for just about any sci-fi trope you could think of.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WarEngine/info
Alternatively you can look online for a used copy of the Shockforce Second Edition rulebook. It has the rules and a bunch of premade profiles that while aimed at Shockforce, will cover most games. I've got one and it's one of my prized rulebooks.

Since you're in the area, you might want to talk to Steve, the event coordinator at Little Wars. He used to run a yearly Shockforce game there (and was one of their reps back in the old days). Even if he's not running a game, he might be up for one in his downtime.

 warboss wrote:
Since you're in the area, you might want to talk to Steve, the event coordinator at Little Wars. He used to run a yearly Shockforce game there (and was one of their reps back in the old days). Even if he's not running a game, he might be up for one in his downtime.

We've been in touch with Steve a few times, including a few years back when we were playing this a bit more often.He was great help in getting us some unit profiles. Unfortunately his time and location never really permitted us to all get together to game. I think part of it was the massive amount of time that Little Wars takes for him. I didn't run a game (28mm Mech Attack) at Little Wars this year as I could only do one convention around that time and Adepticon offers some really nice perks. I do hope to get back to LW sometime though.

Shockforce 2.0 is back!

Looks like some of the cartoons and art from the original book might be missing, but some of the art is there (including the rules illustrations), the layout is clear and we finally have a version of Shockforce with lots of supplied army lists!

http://www.wargamevault.com/product/192892/Shock-Force-Second-Edition

I think Aaron is hoping for $8 each, but he's set it at pay what you like.

Thanks for the tip. I didn't know it was up for sale.

You're very welcome. Until a couple days ago it wasn't.
If I may be permited to toot my own horn...

On a whim I asked Aaron on the "Warengine" yahoo group if he had considered putting Shockforce 2nd edition on Wargames Vault. He said he would look into it and 2 weeks later it was for sale!

Toot away! For a couple bucks, I wouldn't mind a digital copy to go along with my two hard copies (prerelease and 1 st ed). I think I was a member of that Yahoo group years ago (and maybe still am...dunno...haven't logged in in years!) and got a plain word file version that didn't scratch the itch enough.

Toot Toot!

I think alot of us have/had the word file version at some point. It's not bad, but you really need the illustrations and the army lists to make it feel like a playable game.

I don't have the 1st ed, but I think the Second edition (book or PDF) Is definitely worth having.

The force creation system looks reasonable enough. I'm going to give this a more thorough read through.

After playing it in Oregon a month ago, I gave Shockforce/Warengine another run through last week with my local club.


Definitely a good experience and it was great to play on my buddies Winter terrain board and to have a chance to put my small batch of Squat's on the table.


We didn't use all the rules and somehow managed to skip the fact that you can move, shoot and then finish your move. That would have made it a much more tactical game. Looking forward to playing again.



AAR, more pics and additional observations about the rules here:
http://chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2016/09/24/shockforce-is-back-battle-in-the-frozen-city/
Writeup about the earlier game here:
https://comradewargames.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/warengine-assault-on-sarkir-chem-station/

ugh this feels like a sales pitch, not saying it is, but this whole topic feels like a sales pitch too me.

Asterios wrote:
ugh this feels like a sales pitch, not saying it is, but this whole topic feels like a sales pitch too me.

Despite possible whiffs of trolling and a lack of capitalization, I'll give your post the respect of a reasoned response.

No sales pitch here though I will perhaps assent to being a bit of a fanboy. I've got no stake in the success of the re-issue except possibly for finding more fellow players. Check the blog in my sig if you want to see my limited-but-enthusiastic experience. When you see the other games I enjoy playing (Dragon Rampant, Song of Blades, Kings of War, etc...) maybe it will be clearer why I realy like Shockforce and if you read my most recent batrep you'll see that I'm quite upfront about possible shortcomings of the game.

Sales pitch? A set of rules you can get for free being talked about by someone not involved with their publication. I LOLed.

The only thing I would like to see more people sold on is the idea that using whatever miniatures they want with whatever rules they want is a generally positive way to approach the hobby. And within such an approach, more options means more chances of enjoyable gaming.

That's not even WarEngine/ShockForce specific.