World at War - Tell me more.

DM said:
Books like that done properly would be too large to print at a competitive rate.

Funny, they used to be able to do that in the 1970s and 1980s :) I fully accept that army lists are probably going to be delivered via supplements (it seems to be the industry standard these days) but I don't see a need (other than pure commerciality) not to make the rules themselves comprehensive in their coverage.

If you want something like that I can bodge it out in about half an hour with a stapler. 8 point font, no paragraphs or pictures. bad diagrams. The works.

i was there for the 'good old days' and they weren't that great. ;)
 
I was there too - wargaming since 1972 according to my briother (apparently the first time he introduced me to his Airfix Napoleonics and WW2 skirmishing with Roco Minitanks). True, the production quality of those days wan't great (although the later WRG rules were OK) but in many cases the rules were perfectly acceptable and comprehensive. There's no reason why one can't produce comprehensive glossy rules in a single volume. It is only a rampant desire to fill up the pages with (albeit generally nice but superfluous) glossy pictures, page surrounds and "fluff" that stops a producer from doing so. I've authored several sets of rules over the years and have more in various stages of production and development and I've noticed an increasing desire on the part of some companies to chop bits out of the rules and to add them to a future supplement because they know that players will shell out for them to get a "complete" product.
 
I also have a playtest copy, and it's great. I imagine everything else I can say is covered by NDA, but Ian has already said it is 20mm compatible, which means an army of about 2000 points for about £25.00.

What the common scale for tournaments will be is a good question though. 20 or 28mm? Difference in price of about a factor of 5.
 
Pietia said:
Mongoose Old Bear said:
When I said 1944 I should have added it's the European theatre, so no jungle stuff yet I'm afraid.
So... the most boring and commonly done theatre and period...

I imagine MGP will take this on in a similar way to some of their RPG's. Have a main rulebook containing the main rules and the common period (in this case) then have several 'supplements' with rules for other periods or theatres of war.
 
Thats certainly the approach I'm pushing for. With a set of core rules and design concepts, it is reasonably easy to create supplements for different theatres, or to move time back to the interwar period or forward to the Korean war.
 
I always thought that the Eastern Front was in Europe. :wink:

So, that's a 'yes'. Russians are one of the four army lists in the rulebook.
 
I`m also looking forward to it, as i have 30+ usa and germans ready painted, i have a copy of ROE rules..

I hope they have sorted out the suppression rules for smgs, and semi auto and of couse most people using bolt action, a key weapon in ww2...

Fingers crossed for some stuff to appear...
 
Mongoose Old Bear said:
Books like that done properly would be too large to print at a competitive rate. Army lists take up a lot of space if done well, and I'm doing this well.

I disagree completely. Battlefield Commander manages to get a comprehensive rules system AND full and complete army lists from early war fall of France trough to Pacific war 1945. With lots of lovely pictures too.

G.
 
A few questions:

Im assuming as theres no minis line, this will include full army lists in the main book ?

WIll there be provision for creating your own units (say, if I want Hungarians or whatnot)

Is there any idea yet how the rules will handle the differences in command & control, between ww2 and modern combat, and between different armies ?

How will the balance be, between troop quality and weapon stats ? What I mean is, if a russian conscript and a battle hardened Guard member both carry a PPSH41, will the Guardsman be covered by special rules, or will he have better range, accuracy or whatnot ?

To what extent will the official army lists follow or encourage historical formations (as opposed to armies consisting of 2 squads of infantry with 3 tigers, 2 PAK43 and a few aircraft, just for good measure)

Campaign rules, yay or nay initially ?

How "wide" do you expect the army lists to be ? F.x. will the German list include Ostgrenadiere, or Free French in the UK and US lists, or will it focus more on core units initially ?




Cheers and thanks so much for taking the time to answer all our crazy questions :)
 
weasel_fierce said:
A few questions:

Im assuming as theres no minis line, this will include full army lists in the main book ?

WIll there be provision for creating your own units (say, if I want Hungarians or whatnot)

Is there any idea yet how the rules will handle the differences in command & control, between ww2 and modern combat, and between different armies ?

How will the balance be, between troop quality and weapon stats ? What I mean is, if a russian conscript and a battle hardened Guard member both carry a PPSH41, will the Guardsman be covered by special rules, or will he have better range, accuracy or whatnot ?

To what extent will the official army lists follow or encourage historical formations (as opposed to armies consisting of 2 squads of infantry with 3 tigers, 2 PAK43 and a few aircraft, just for good measure)

Campaign rules, yay or nay initially ?

How "wide" do you expect the army lists to be ? F.x. will the German list include Ostgrenadiere, or Free French in the UK and US lists, or will it focus more on core units initially ?


Cheers and thanks so much for taking the time to answer all our crazy questions :)


There will be full army lists in the book for 1944-45 Russian, German, British and American. Each will also be subdivided so with the Germans you can have Wehrmacht, Fallschirmjager, Waffen SS, etc.

We are still working on and playtesting the lists but there are plenty of options. The emphasis is firmly on compatible small units, so no squad of SS chucked in just because they are elite or whatever. You can still do a Michael Wittman if you want but will have to select a specific army list. The plan is to get a good balance between playability and historical accuracy.

Everything else is still in the mix for testing, so watch this space. We should be having campaign rules in the book though.
 
A few questions:

What size army will you need, if you turn round and say something like 200+ minitures i don't think many people will see that as economically sound.

You say full army lists. Now does this include all the strange and wacky devices used by all sides in the journey of discovery warfare went on.
 
I've costed it with Bam minis and resin tanks, and 1500 points comes in to less than £100 for panzergrenadiers.

For 20mm that drops to £20 or less.

For my SS 2000 point list it comes to about £17 in 20mm, for 28mm you'd be looking at about £80. Thats because SS are "the balls". Royal Marine Commandos cost up similarly.

For battles of 1500-2000 points you are looking at a reinforced platoon with some supporting armour (1-3 tanks depending on how good the tanks are, or some half tracks etc etc). That would work out around 50 models including vehicles. For a company sized game you are looking at about 5000 points, depending on supporting assets, transports, artillery, aircraft, etc.

Company level evo with multiple tanks and air support is fun. I've played company level games with Star Wars: Evo and it is fun and still fairly fast paced. With 20mm or 15mm you could do company level battles on a budget fairly easily.
 
Reinforced platoon with 3 tanks supporting it ? Company with artillery, tanks AND air support ?
We're moving pretty rapidly into fantasy territory here, unless the "support" we're talking about is 2 mortars, an armoured car (if we're lucky) and any air support is (if you're playing as the Germans) a rogue RAF fighter deciding to rocket your Tiger tank :)

Just picking on you... if I was building new armies, I'd do it in 15mm or 1/72 plastics. Dirt cheap, tons of variety, and 15mm guys can be easily mounted individually on pennies.
1/72 plastics is a tad lacking in easy to build vehicles and some of them arent quite sturdy enough for gaming purposes, but there's a good variety available, and it mixes well with 20mm metal figures.
 
Basically you can go rifle horde, or mechanised, or tanks with some supporting infantry. One of the playtests I'll be running will be elite SS vs Russian infantry horde, because the way to beat elite forces is to kill infantry (as they will always make up at least 75% of the model count) so having a King Tiger won't matter if you can get to the squishy infantry.

It will be like BF:Evo, you can have a faithful recreation of force levels in typical actions (ie not an awul lot of tanks) or a more cinematic battle, with tanks and AT guns and aircraft etc.

It depends entirely on what you and your gaming group want to do. Mongoose will put some limits in to avoid entirely broken forces, but if you want further limits, you can agree them with your group, its entirely up to you. Easiest way to do it is to say one tank per 1500 or 2000 points, but basically more strict structures can be applied by the players.

Now there is an S&P article idea, Infantry Evo: Cutting tanks back to historical levels in games.
 
yeah, I completely agree. I hope i didnt seem like i was trying to call "BADWRONGFUN".

As long as everybody at the table are playing the same style of game, anything is good :)

Im in favour of taking a historical formation, removing some bits (attrition) and adding a few other bits (units that just happened to be pasisng by, "acquired" units etc) and going from there
 
I would have to say I agree with Old Bear... WWII rules, or should I say comprehensive army lists, with any form of unit/weapon realism cannot be done in one rulebook.

WWII is arguably spans of largest exponential technological advancement in war in human history. Many weapons that were used at the beginning of the war (largely remnants of WWI) were rendered absolutely obsolete be mid war and downright hazardous to your health by late war. Volumes alone can be done just on German technological advacement throughout the war. For a rules set to include playable stats for every weapon variant in WWII would be a MONSTROUS task and result in a HUGE tome...

One thing to consider with any historical game is the passion of the players. Just go to any HMGS East tourney (Historicon, Cold War, etc) and you'll hear vicious debate over the gaming accuracy of this weapon versus that one, etc... Granted... nit-picking to this level can be a complete bore and largely annoying, it will happen. I feel its better to put out several smaller products of high quality than one massive tome that might not do something justice.

Some of the older game systems might have included all army lists.. but I'm comfortable saying that these games didn't focus the level of detail on army lists as do many modern games in the genre. They of course, spent GOBS AND GOBS of time on detail to rules etc (sometimes making them downright unplayable in my opinon).

Mongoose has, historically done right with pricing main rule books at one level and then releasing supplements at lower prices. There's also Wargaming Online. You can buy the supplements for significantly less than retail and print out the lists you want!

Also....since World at War is part of the Evolution line... its possible that they might consider some supplemental stuff for that open for their planned OSL...I'm just speculating here...any insider info on that Bear?

Just my 2 cents worth...'course, with the way the $ is getting crushed its probably only worth 3/4 of a penny overseas...


Jay
 
Back
Top