Guys

A colleague wants to start wargaming, concentrating on the early World War II in France 1940 and I wanting some advice on rules.

I did play combined Arms in 6mm, Rapid fire in 20mm/28mm and bought Flames of War years ago and Crossfire but never really got into them.  Now I'm not a huge lover of loads of tanks, so the rules needs to cater for infantry, artillery and some tanks.

Ideally it sounds more like skirmish gaming... I do like one figure = 1 man, but happy to try something else. 

I've looked at all the articles on BKCII and wondered if they are slanted to lots of armour on the tabletop, plus I've looked at the new FOW...but wondered if I should try IABSM, Rules of Engagement or Bolt Action?

Your comments please

Thanks
Paul

BKCII gives a good game for the Fall of France, me and Mexican Dave had a game a month or so ago and it was a blast. Scale-wise, BKC has always been whatever you think it is, if you want to think that base of 5 figures is actually 5 men or whether you want to think of them as a platoon (or even a company) it makes no never mind to the rules. The rules are simple enough even for a wargaming noobie to pick them up within a couple of turns, "lemme see, my guys are in range of your guys, my target is infantry, so I chuck x number of dice, your guys are in the open so I need 4s to hit them.". Its fun, fast, furious and simple, whats not to like, oh yeah, did I mention that you need NO supplements, £20 for the book and thats all you need to buy. I cant say that about another popular set, if you bought that and all the supplements youd be out about half a grand.

Quote from: GordonY on 24 September 2012, 09:48:01 AM
BKCII gives a good game for the Fall of France, me and Mexican Dave had a game a month or so ago and it was a blast. Scale-wise, BKC has always been whatever you think it is, if you want to think that base of 5 figures is actually 5 men or whether you want to think of them as a platoon (or even a company) it makes no never mind to the rules. The rules are simple enough even for a wargaming noobie to pick them up within a couple of turns, "lemme see, my guys are in range of your guys, my target is infantry, so I chuck x number of dice, your guys are in the open so I need 4s to hit them.". Its fun, fast, furious and simple, whats not to like, oh yeah, did I mention that you need NO supplements, £20 for the book and thats all you need to buy. I cant say that about another popular set, if you bought that and all the supplements youd be out about half a grand.

have a grand is a bit of an exaggeration eh  more like a couple of hundie.

FOW V3 can work depends if you like Company action and the owners constantly dabbling with a good set of rules, which drives me nuts and I'm an ex developer of them Version One was fine bah!, 

Bolt Action just got mine seriously disappointed and DIDNT realise they also need supplements so same as above, although it is one to one but in 10mm hmm not sure depends what you lie, think 40k Version II and you have Bolt Action according to Mr Priestley himself.

Bernard lyalls Operation Warboard used to be fun for classic gaming.

BKC II Has some neat mechanisms and as Dave says one outlay does it all.

Combined Arms wow thats calssic but a little complex.

Rapid Fire also works as well for a laugh dpeends I suppose on how serious you wanna be and how much you want to spend

How much is each supplement?? about the £20 mark, I know of at least 20+, so about £500 isnt that far off the mark. And as its just 40k in WW2 clothes these days, you need to have at least ALL of them for your theatre, to know what cunning "special" rules your opponent is gonna pull out of the hat. Dont get me wrong I used to play them when they were a free PDF, v0.5 or so, they were ok then, theyve gone far too much like GW stuff these days. A good ruleset gone bad thanks to the bean counters.

I'd wholeheartedly recommend BCKII as a ruleset and you can use each stand to represent a section, platoon etc to suite the action your are fighting. Also RoE is very good and IIRC all the early war lists are free off their website.

and................ Dave??? Dont call me Dave.... You've just cursed my dice forever..........

I'm off to take up chess.

Gets coat.

BKC is not slanted towards tanks,  it generally rewards combined arms play. With  armour, infantry, artillery and air all contributing.

It is a more on the game side, than the simulation side, but it does give a good overall narrative to a battle when look at as a whole, even if on a given turn you feel a dice roll gave what seemed an odd result at the time.

I play both BKC and IABSM for 1940 games and enjoy them both very much.

IABSM gives a very good game at company level, sort of semi-skirnish where the basic unit is the section of 8-10 men.

BKC you can play at any level, but to me feels like a higher level game battalion to brigade.

You do not need loads of tanks for BKC, I've played enjoyable all-infantry games set in the Far East, but BKC does handle a large number of tanks better than IABSM.

So if you want company-level games I'd go for IABSM, if you want larger battles go for BKC.

You can buy the TFL rules as pdf downloads, I think IABSM is about £12. Not too much to try it out for a few games and if you like it buy a hard copy. You will need suppliement for IABSM for 1940 as the lists in the rules cover Normandy in 1944, but again you could just buy it as a pdf for about a fiver.

Yeah, you can tell I haven't played this period for a while

The rules need to be easy for a beginner to enjoy and not be put off by complexity... and FOW looks good but the prices are high for 15mm.

Quote from: far4ngn on 24 September 2012, 06:45:54 PM
Yeah, you can tell I haven't played this period for a while

The rules need to be easy for a beginner to enjoy and not be put off by complexity... and FOW looks good but the prices are high for 15mm.

Simple answer then, use FOW and Pendraken 10mm

The BKCII rules are very easy to pick up. Worth every penny IMHO . I've used them for games where one stand equals a section, as well as for a platoon. Combined arms is very much the name of the game, which I really enjoy. Check out some of the AAR on the forum to see if you might be interested in them as a ruleset.

Ok so sorry for the ignorance but what does IIRC and AAR stand for?

IIRC - If I remember correctly.

AAR - After Action Report.

So some sample AARs below using BKCII:

The first in 10mm set circa 1937 during the fictional British Civil War
https://sites.google.com/site/avbcwstormcloudsgather/battle-reports/the-battle-of-ashton-hill

The second in 15mm based upon a battle in 1944.
http://wwiiwargaming.blogspot.co.uk/

I hope these give you an idea of how the game plays.

Or try any of these

http://www.blitzkrieg-commander.com/Content/Reports/default.aspx

look at the right hand side column as theres Cold War and Future War (Sci-FI) there as well

IMHO (in my humble opinion) the best £20 you'll ever spend.

Quote from: GordonY on 24 September 2012, 09:17:29 PM
IMHO (in my humble opinion) the best £20 you'll ever spend.

Agreed (declares interest here - playtester & painter of figures-in-rulebook)