Sunday 3 January 2010

Morschauser Gridded Modern (aka WW2) Rules

I have been following with interest Bob Cordery's update of Morchauser's gridded modern set of rules from the early 1960's. These are a simple set of rules suitable for combat from the 1930's to the 1950's using a grid of 3"squares. Bob has updated these rules and tweaked them to make them a little more representative but has managed to maintain the original flavour of the set. With this in mind I acquired a piece of green felt from my local branch of Hobbycraft and now have an 11 by 11 gridded surface for trying these rules out on. I also acquired some felt squares for terrain - roads, rivers, woods etc and merely need to add some representational buildings and trees etc to complete the set up. Initially I shall experiment using pieces from Memoir 44 until I decide what I shall acquire to game with 'properly'. The rules are available as a free PDF from Bob's Red Hex Wargames website which is well worth a look in its own right. The gestation of these rules, together with some outstanding playtests, can be followed on Bob's blog -

http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/

He is also working on a version for the late 19th century - not only colonial - which may be just the thing for my Balkan Wars set up.

These rules will not be to everyone's taste but certainly for speed, ease of use and flavour they are hard to better in my opinion. The use of a grid to regulate movement and firing etc (as well as such things as minefields and hidden movement) has many practical advantages which outweigh to a large extent any perceived scale issues and such like.

Another great advantage of such an approach is that stylised nature of the game requires little in the amount of models to be representational - rather like a DBA sized set up. For WW2 I would certainly not expect to be fielding more than around 40 to 50 figures with some vehicles thrown in for good measure. This means of course that armies raised for such a set up will have a chance of getting finished! Of course it also means you can buy more of them...............................................;-)

2 comments:

Robert (Bob) Cordery said...

Ogrefencer,

Many thanks for the 'plug' for my blog!

I have the 19th century version of Morschauser's rules ready to upload, but I am still experiencing problems with my new computer (I am sending this comment via my old one!).

All the best,

Bob

David Crook said...

No problemo Bob - the more people I can get inspired by the rules the easier it will be to get an opponent! Looking forward to the 19th century set as well!
It would be great to meet up for a gme at some point - once the respective domestic dust has settled.

All the best