Decisions, Decisions

As mentioned previously, and many times at that, my WWII European Theater games are going to be of the very small skirmish variety as suits the state of the collection. While I may at some point like to field two undersized squads perhaps per side (the exception being the Americans who I have two full squads already - one in plastic from Toy Soldiers of San Diego, and one of W. Brtitain's Big Red One figures), for now, one squad would be quite enough. My hope is to play a campaign that produces a more personalized narrative, with characters and stories reminiscent of role-playing games and Commando comics, as compared to unit histories and Osprey books.

Compared to games featuring a platoon per side or higher, there are few systems designed for this level of play specifically for WWII. Yet, there is still an overwhelming amount of choice. At least from what I have seen, every minis game at this scale of game contains role-playing elements such as skills and advancement, and the primary WWII role-playing game that captures my fancy, Operation: Whitebox, supports minis-based combat. The difficulty is finding "the one" set of rules that fit me best (isn't it always).

This old chestnut.

I will add too that I don't want to do much in the way of building my own system, although I am happy to bolt on Mythic: Game Master Emulator for soloing interactions with NPCs.

While it's possible to go on a mad shopping spree and spend endless hours reading rules, I opted to limit myself to what I have on hand and could easily locate on my hard drives in the case of digital titles. 

In the end, I considered:

Five Men in Normandy: .30 Cal Edition

Nuts! Final Edition (it wasn't the Final Edition after all, there is now a 4th edition)

One Hour Skirmish Wargames

Red Poppy, White Feather

Please note, this is not a review, nor do I do a lot of comparing and contrasting. It's just to give my impression of the suitability of the rules to reproduce war movie type episodes or the kind featured in Commando.

My Testing Scenario

There is a particular small scenario that I play often - it originally appeared in Two Hour Wargames MG-42, which was a free preview of what would become Nuts! (the 1st edition). The same scenario appeared as Mission One in Nuts! 2nd edition. I rather like it - a small group of paratroopers, four in number, come upon a farm house with two German sentries. There is an MG-42 team and an NCO as well, that are randomly placed once the shooting starts. I decided I would use that as my test scenario.

One Hour Skirmish Wargames

I have had issues with One Hour Skirmish Wargames when playing scenarios of my own design or those not in the book - which probably speaks more about me than the rules. In fact, I quite love the rules and have found they give a great game when playing one of the book's scenarios. That said, when I played the above scenario some time back with them, I found the games unsatisfactory - almost too cinematic if that's a thing, with one figure moving leaps and bounds, firing and knocking out Germans, while standing in open ground under fire on the German activations, surviving and mopping up more Germans. 

Still, I gave them a try this time around, twice, just to see what happened. It was almost the opposite of my previous experience and these two games, besides being very quick, had two similar outcomes. The first saw the British dropped like flies, and a single German rifle figure went around and mopped them all up because they could not recover until the turn ended, which it didn't. The second, was over after a round of shooting - two figures knocked down and failed their recovery check, so the surviving paratroopers grabbed their wounded and fled the battlefield. Realistic, but not satisfying as a stand-alone game. In a campaign however, it would work fine.

More figures on the table per side would have changed the equation no doubt as well. So, I still love these rules - I just think they will work better for games with closer to a full squad or more per side.

Nuts! Final Edition

Nuts! required a quick review, as it's been a while, but I used to play it often enough. I really like the reaction system of Nuts! Final Edition (which I got on with a lot better than the one in 2nd edition). I believe I stopped playing them because I started to get into squad-per-base games and away from one figure = one man. But, needless to say, I forgot how much fun the rules could be.

Nuts! goes fast, despite rolling many reaction tests and checking tables, once you know the system. The first game, I don't think it lasted 3 turns and maybe 10 minutes before all of the Germans were out of the fight and that includes double-checking the rules. The second game went longer, with a similar outcome but much more dramatic, and good tactics (using my SMG to force the enemy to keep their head down) were rewarded. Nuts! "feels right' for gritty WWII, and giving squad members higher reps, and using the Star rules, can increase the "pulpiness" of the games - a necessity for the type of campaign I wish to play.

from a Five Men in Normandy game, British pops around the corner, SS fires off a snap fire and misses. British shoots and kills the SS soldier. The gamble paid off!

Five Men in Normandy .30 Cal Edition

Each game with Five Men in Normandy played considerably longer than any of the other systems, even when I no longer needed to reference the rules. While it doesn't have quite the level of automatic reactions of Nuts! the shock and kill dice results do force figures to do things other than stand there under fire like statues, much as the player might want them to. 

It feels more cinematic than Nuts!, being harder to kill someone instantly - SMGs, bolt action rifles, and LMGs only roll 1 Kill die each, and only a 6 is an instant Out of Fight result - so figures last longer generally. Yet, a figure moving into the open doesn't have much hope of just staying there - unlike One Hour Skirmish Wargames. Cover is treated differently than other games, so that took a mental adjustment, but once grokked it works quite well and feels right. (Cover doesn't change your ability to hit or kill a target, it gives them an option to duck out of sight if they are missed). 

I played five games once I had the rules down. Two were wonderful and war-movie like. Two were realistic, if a bit heavy on dice rolls that did nothing, and one, well, too much caution and poor die rolling took the wind out of the game.

Red Poppy, White Feather

Red Poppy, White Feather has some interesting mechanics, like the initiative system which is basically the same as Crossfire. It's a pretty deadly game too- I would say more so than any of the others I played.  It also requires a bit of setup for both sides, not just your own, to make it a fair fight (the training rolls really make individual characters out of the figures but also give them improved performance in the game). That said, not giving training to the enemy makes for a more pulp-like game I suppose. While I enjoyed playing it, it's not enough to convince me to invest more time with it for now. 

Two paras enter the house and the LMG tries to defend it to the end. With the gunner shot and killed, the loader surrendered. This is from Five Men in Normandy, but it happened in one of the Nuts! games, too!

Conclusion

Despite my love of One Hour Skirmish Wargames, after all was said and done, the decision came down to Nuts! and Five Men in Normandy, as I felt they gave me results that agreed with how I picture this kind of game, albeit at different ends of the spectrum.

The key area where Nuts! outdoes Five Men in Normandy is that Nuts! includes extensive vehicle rules and Five Men in Normandy limits it to transport vehicles for the most part. Not without reason mind you - the idea being that a handful of soldiers (say 4 or 5), generally isn't able to take on armor effectively once the fellow with the anti-tank weapon is killed. 

That said, I think there could be fun games where they do, even at great risk- like in Saving Private Ryan. Five Men at Kursk includes vehicle rules for armor, but I would have to buy them and possibly mix the systems together (from what I understand, Kursk is a more realistic game, Normandy is more cinematic/TV series) or extrapolate/make up my own armor rules from the Five Men in Normandy vehicle rules. It is still extra work, however.

Both Nuts! and Five Men in Normandy have systems for campaigns, character skills, and advancement. With the "Chocolate and Cigarettes" option in Nuts! Final Edition, very small, RPG-like, missions are covered - which Five Men in Normandy covers as part of the possible mission types in its main rules. I do happen to like the missions and the size of the forces in Five Men in Normandy better.

Honestly, I expected to come out in favor of Five Men in Normandy for this campaign. However, after playing a dozen plus games over three days with the same scenario, I believe the best approach for me is to use the campaign, missions, and character personality system in Five Men in Normandy while using the rules from Nuts! for the tabletop battles.