Valley of Fire is a free campaign system for the Northwest Frontier. The authors write:
This is a fictional colonial campaign set in the Northwest Frontier during the late 1880s. A British fort is under siege and a relieving force has exactly one month to break the siege! The villages in the valley and mountain passes go into revolt, adding more and more foces to the siege and to block the British advance. The system features hidden movement, is of moderate complexity, and is designed to be run with or without a referee. The PDF contains rules, counters, a planning map, and log sheets.
Bob Berman offers a set of free fast play wargames rules for the Indian Mutiny, based on “a number of sources, including “From MacDuff to the Frontier” and “The Sword and the Flame.” They are designed for fast play, with all players on one side.”
Here are a set of houserules called Fields of Honor. I can’t tell whether they’re houserules FOR the Fields of Honor set, or a set of houserules BASED on Fields of Honor. I lean toward the latter. They look like a fairly complete set that bears more than a passing resemblance to the original Fields of Honor set published a decade or so ago by Pinnacle.
Legendary Gamer Larry Brom offers “Brom Geste!”, a set of rules for the French Foreign Legion in North Africa in the 1890s. It’s a 1-1 rules set with order chips.
From the Godfather of wargaming, Jack Scruby, comes the Unbalanced Equality wargame. It first appeared in the November 1965 TableTop Talk magazine. Scruby writes:
An “unbalanced equality” war game is one in which the opposing forces are unequal in numbers and types of troops, but are equal in “combat ability”. In the 25mm Colonial armies we use for example (which is basically Natives versus trained regulars), we spent many hours working up the “equality” of combat values, which had to be based not only on manpower, but on rifle-fire, melee and morale values, and artillery fire power. In the end, we arrived at a British force valued at 2900 points and a Native force (with a sprinkling of native regular infantry as the hard core) valued at 4400 points. Normally this would seem to give the Natives overwhelming strength, but in actuality considering the range of rifle fire and the firepower of the British infantry, it worked out very evenly.
The interesting part of the “unbalanced equality” war game is that each “general” in command must use different tactics for his force. The tactics used by the British commander cannot be used by the Native commander, and vise-versa. And if these tactics become too well known by each commander over a series of war games, one can always trade sides, or split up the forces to a half native-half regular army for each player for a few games.
In the Noonday Sun is a set of rules for small unit actions, derived from another set called Slammer. The authors of Noonday write:
In the Noonday Sun is a set of wargame rules for skirmish games using miniatures. I intended from the start that Noonday Sun would be flexible and adaptable to different scenarios. I have intentionally kept it ‘loose’, particularly in areas like troop motivation and Hollywood heroics. Noonday Sun is meant to be fun! We use miniatures on the tabletop to represent men and women who might well be scared or heroic, angry or bored, professional or just hungry, above all they are unpredictable. When you play Noonday Sun, occasionally try to see things through your troops’ eyes. They are more than just disposable weapons delivery systems.
Miniature Wargaming is part of the "adventure games" hobby, which includes r ole p laying and board games. Wargamers recreate battles on the tabletop with toy soldiers, like a more complicated game of chess. Models range in height from 6mm to 28mm tall, with 15mm and 25mm being the most popular. There also is a growing interest in toy soldiers and military models, such as the 1/32 and 1/35 scale plastic soldiers from Conte, and Marx.
The most popular miniature wargames are fantasy and science fiction based, such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine and The Lord of the Rings. World War II games such as Flames of War and Axis and Allies are new favorites. Other favorite historical periods include Napoleonics, the American Civil War, and ancients, such as Romans or Greeks. Other gamers enjoy miniature naval wargames, recreating battles like Trafalgar, Jutland and the Coral Sea.
Hobbyists research historical periods and paint their tiny soldiers in accurate uniforms. Others develop "historically realistic" rules sets or build scale battlefield terrain using model railroad techniques.
For pictures, visit the gallery.
Some of the bigger hobby companies are Games Workshop, which produces Warhammer, Wargames Foundry and Old Glory Miniatures. Wizards of the Coast produces several lines of pre-painted miniatures games, such as the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons miniatures games, and a historical game with pre-painted miniatures: The new Axis and Allies game. Wizkids produces a fantasy collectable miniatures game, such as the Mage Knight and Heroclick fantasy games, the science fiction games MechWarrior and Rocketmen, as well as the quasi-historical Pirates of the Spanish Main.
