WW2 Floor Wargaming - Part 2 the Rules

People's comments on my previous post highlighted some of the difficulties of wargaming on the floor. Aside from the careful tip-toeing to avoid standing on the miniatures, there is the constant getting up and squatting down to measure and to move units and measure shooting ranges. With that in mind I was using some very simple rules to make things easier. These rules have their origins in the One-Hour Wargaming WW2 rules. The two major changes are in the sequence of play which uses card activation, and shooting which has units eliminated upon taking two or more hits.

German reserves move up to bolster defensives

My current WW2 rules for the tabletop has individual activation of units. At the start of a game turn a card is dealt for each unit on the tabletop. Then units from both sides are activated one at a time starting with the unit with the highest value card (Kings) working down to the unit with the lowest value card (Aces). Using suit order for similar value cards - Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs. This works fine when there are only 12-20 units involved in a game, but I had more units than cards in a deck.

I do like the card activation approach as a solo gamer, it gives quite a tense game where you are not sure if the enemy will get the jump on your units. So the question was how to keep this activation approach without it being too onerous?

I chose to activate a units in groups. A up to 5 cards per side are placed on single units to represent orders to this unit and any nearby units within 6 inches. When it is time to activate the group, they all activate choosing to move or shoot as desired. The total number of cards is reduced based upon loses. When a force loses a third of their units only 4 cards are used, and this is reduced again to 3 cards when two-thirds of units are lost.

Once all activations are complete the game turn is complete. Deal out the cards again reshuffling the pack of cards if necessary.

Cards are used to activate groups of units

The limited number of cards meant units tended to move as groups and in a staggered way as one group moves forward, then waits for support to catch up. There was also a need to prioritise between activating artillery support and keeping units moving forward.

Movement was kept simple. Units may move some or all of their movement allowance and may turn during their movement without penalty. There are no adjustments for moving through terrain and friendly units may pass through each other freely.

• Foot infantry and mortars - 6”
• Towed artillery and AT guns - 8”
• Mechanised Infantry, Tanks, Self-Propelled Guns - 12”
• Reconnaissance (armoured cars and jeeps) - 15”

With combat normally I would track up to 8 hits on a unit before it is eliminated. With the number of units involved this needed to change as it would make combat a fiddly affair with tracking hits. Opting for 2 hits and you are eliminated would make tracking easy.

• Units may only shoot at units they can see within 12", or in the case of artillery and mortar indirect shooting is allowed where there is a friendly sight the target for them.
• Artillery and mortars had a range of 48" and other weapons 12".

The procedure for combat is as follows:

1) Determine any advantages and disadvantages - The table below shows if the attacking unit has an advantage or disadvantage, or neither.

2) Assess the effects a D6 and use the following combat results table. The first figure is used if the target is in the open and the second figure if the target is in cover. This combat table is based on the work done on on https://johnswargames.wordpress.com/2020/07/15/here-we-go-again-again/ with a few slight changes.

Units are eliminated after accumulating 2 hits, or more. Use a marker to indicate this, I use grey smoke to indicate units with 1 hit. I like leave armour in place when destroyed and mark them with red/black smoke.

To destroyed Allied tanks

By keeping the rules simple my aim was to keep the game rolling along at a reasonable pace and limit the need for me to move around the game areas too much by having group activations close together.

Next up is the game report as I sort through the photographs...