My wargaming began with 1/300 scale Heroics and Ros figures over twenty years ago. Having gone through many rules sets in that period I am using a couple of sets at the moment, and really haven’t settled on the Holy Grail for this period. I should point out that these opinions are purely my own.  I recommend that anyone interested in any of the sets of rules take a look at the Links page.  You should be able to find your way to sites supporting the rules.

Blitzkrieg Commander has its origins in Warmaster and gives a very quick game.  It has a nice mechanism for Command and Control but it is a little abstract in ground, figure and time scale. Still it does allow a couple of games in an evening. I’d consider it a DBA approach to gaming, and none the worst for it.  It has a very good website with lots of support, tools and downloads.

Command Decision 3 was a big disappointment. Having played a lot of CD2 I was interested to see how the next edition would address some of its problems.  The horror! CD3 managed to kill off all the WW2 gaming at my local club, introducing complex fixes for nonexistent problems.  CD4 is under development at the moment, but my gut feeling is that it will appeal to the die hards and won’t make much of am impact otherwise.  I’d recommend CD2 with a few tweaks. I should mention that CD is described as a Brigade Level game, but in reality it’s Battalion level. My test for game scale is the lowest unit depicted.  Patton said a good commander should know were his immediate sub units are and be aware of the position of their sub units. CD’s smallest units are platoons.  In my opinion that makes it a Battalion level game. Brigade commanders should be maneuvering their battalions and worrying about their companies, not their platoons.

TAC2 was my next port of call after CD. It has the same figure scale but a bigger ground scale. It was simpler in many aspects but falls down due to its small move distances and multiple phases in each game turn.  Still, it has some very nice ideas.

PBI2 is one of the latest set of rules I have used and I am very impressed. Its features a grid based movement system and a good activation system.  The figure scale is that of a section sized base, but the chaps I game with and I have used single 28mm figures representing bases and 28mm figures representing one to one scale skirmish. This included a very nice 9-10 game campaign from the “Heroes of Omaha” skirmish campaign book.  Highly recommended!

Spearhead just didn’t do it for me. The single D6 roles, the rigid formations, the awful shooting priorities and the supreme failing of many American based sets of rule, over powerful Germans. How ever did they lose the war?! Spearhead has moved on to Great War and Modern versions. I’ll leave it to you to check them out.

Crossfire is another good set of rules with an innovative approach to movement.  Gives a very good game if you limit armour support, but doesn’t really work for multiplayer games as some players can be left doing nothing for some time. Worth a look.