Here We Go Again: One Hour Wargames WWII

For a variety of reasons that I don't feel I can articulate well to others, I've been thinking a lot about my 54mm WWII plastic figure collection lately. 

I don't see myself purchasing anything further for it - whether it be armor or ATGs or whatever - unless I stumble across some insanely good deal. Indeed I may sell/donate some of the unpainted stuff which I have amassed. Borrowing Ross Mac's taxonomy, this is a primary reserve collection - but it will probably hit the table nearly as much as an active collection, given that I feel I have what I need to play games, particularly of the One Hour Wargames variety.

Now, I hear you saying, "Don't you often criticize One Hour Wargames WWII rules?" Yes. Yes I do.

But, I really like the Medieval and Machine-age rules and found the Rifle & Sabre rules satisfactory. The simplicity is appealing as is a uniform mechanism that works period-to-period. It means I can get a game on the table sooner rather than later (much as The Portable Wargame does for grid games). Which is why I'm sort of ignoring my various Morschauser Modern modifications here.

A number of people have addressed issues they found with the WWII rules, but often at levels higher or lower than I like to play. For some reason, with my WWII 1/32 figures, it's easier for me to see 3-4 figures on a base as a company and 2 figures as a squad, than to see platoons, battalions, or anything else. 

So, I decided to make my own variant to address the deficiencies, as I see them, with the rules-as-written.

My goal was to avoid adding complexity for the sake of complexity , while adding meaningful (I hope!) decision points for the player. So, in addition to the company basing, the changes I made include: adding close combat, smoke, and limited fire missions for artillery.

The US heavy company drops their mortars on the Germans on the hill and the infantry companies drop their smoke just shy of the hill to cover their advance (smoke lasts through the enemy's next turn).

I played a game with my first draft addressing the areas above (plus more) and it was quite a bit of fun, while also very simple - which is what I want from most of my rules really. I don't like consulting rules much if at all once the game is underway. They are also still very much One Hour Wargames WWII rules at their heart, just a bit of chrome bolted on.

They did need a little further tweaking, I felt, so I'll give them another go soon. Of course, I'm not exactly sure when "soon" will be!