Rules for Dad’s Army

[alan]

Any suggestions for suitable rules?  In particular, I would like to have some provision for “encouraging” figures to surrender rather than shoot it out to the last man in scenarios such as trying to round up downed Luftwaffe crew.

[Mike]

I ain’t been shot mum?

Link.

[Shahbahraz]

alan wrote:

Any suggestions for suitable rules? In particular, I would like to have some provision for “encouraging” figures to surrender rather than shoot it out to the last man in scenarios such as trying to round up downed Luftwaffe crew.

What scale of engagement are you talking about? If it’s platoon, then Chain of Command with tweaks, for squad based, I would be using something like the Ganesha Games ‘Flying Lead’. Any larger than platoon level wouldn’t seem right.

--An occasional wargames blog: http://aleadodyssey.blogspot.co.uk/ --

[jeffers]

Have a look for a simple set based on the Survivors TV series. I think I got mine from the Wargames Illustrated website. They are designed to make you capture enemies to increase the size of your group, so you could adapt them to capture downed Nazis. The problem with standard WW2 rules is that they are not generally designed for teatime sitcoms! But you can easily say an effective ‘hit’ is suppression, or if Jones wins a melee the Hun are just throwing their hands up at the sight of his bayonet (+2 for Jonesy in melee because they don’t like it up’em).

More nonsense on my blog: http://battle77.blogspot.com/

[Buck Surdu]

I’ll make a shameless plug for Combat Patrol(TM): WWII (http://www.bucksurdu.com/Buck_Surdu/Combat_Patrol.html). The Web page has lots of freebies and a bunch of how-to videos.

I have used these rules for several Sea Lion games with the Home Guard one the last year.  Here are some links:

http://bucksurdu.com/blog/?p=8119

Sea Lion Begins

Operation Sea Lion with Combat Patrol(TM): WWII

Combat Patrol(TM) in Little Basely by the Sea

The rules are designed for a player to command one or two squads (sections), but experienced players can command more.

[Krieghund]

Pulp Alley might be worth a look.

[alan]

Many thanks.

[Ivan Sorensen]

I’d be inclined to go down a level and look at something like Nuts (or my own Five Men in Normandy/FiveCore rules) to get a bit more character in there, than the platoon-level rules tend to provide.

You could also do Face of Battle, though it might be a bit too serious?

You can probably get a lot of mileage out of failed morale checks within X number of inches being a surrender or borrow the morale rule from the original Lord of the Rings rules:

Basically if a soldier is alone (no friends within X inches)and has 2+ enemies within X inches, he must check morale.

[alan]

Many thanks for the all the suggestions.

My feeling is that I might need two sets of rules: a Pulp Alley/7Tv type for small actions the like of the TV series with only the main characters and a “serious” set such as Chain of Command/Combat Patrol for games with around 20 or 30 figures each side.

Ivan, how many figures per side do the Nordic Weasel stable of games handle?

[Ivan Sorensen]

Cheers.

FiveCore / Five Men will handle 5-10.

No End in Sight can do WW2 fine enough and will handle a platoon, but you may be better off using a set written specifically for WW2, like Chain of Command or TW&T there.

Squad Hammer and its derivatives are written for 5-10 “units”, each of which can be whatever you need it to be. Typically a squad but could be a weapons team or a single character.

[alan]

Thanks.

[Buck Surdu]

Using more than one set of rules for a period is not a bad idea. Richard Clark and I have talked about this in the past. Just because you like one set doesn’t mean you can’t like another set too. If the only tool you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. So using something like Pulp Alley or even GASLIGHT (the pulp version) would be good when you want to emphasize the characters, and using Chain of Command or Combat Patrol for larger games would be appropriate. It would depend on the scenario.

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