"Battle" rules CarlL seeking help with SV & DV

[CarlL]

Ok, this may be a niche interest, eg I last looked at them in late 1960s or early 1970s then played Lionel Tarr rules, WRG 1925-1950 rules, Rapid Fire1, BKC1 & BKC2, Rapid Fire2 etc.

But last night I played the Dan Fraser edited version of Charles Grant's "Battle - Practical Wargaming" with four other gamers from my old club, hoping to gain their interest post Bolt Action, but failed.

I realised after the game that Dan had made a number of changes to the original rules not least in Strike values, Defence Values and ranges (perhaps latter reflecting his attempt to create a platoon rather than squad bases set?).

Can anyone point me to a webiste or source of information, about likes of Strike values and Defence values for mid to late WW2 gaming, thats been developed from experience of gaming and so perhaps some of subjective allocation of values has at least some gaming history or gaming experinece thats influenced their progress? Rather than my trying to subjectively fill in the gaps that were left by Charles Grants original Meccano articles and later his book "Battle - Practical Wargaming"?

All help etc gratefully received. Apologies if you think this should be under WW2 rather than General Discussion (re wargaming)
CarlL

[Richard B.]

We use "Battle" as our rules of choice, but have moved away from tables to a more free-form style -

Roll to Hit is still based on distance to target with modifiers
then
Roll for effect - with weapon class Vs armour class with modifiers (we are VERY flexible about this, high dice rolls usually succeed even against very heavily armoured targets)

What do you want to know?
I seem to recall Rapid Fire! (a direct descendant of Battle) had quite good table from gun classes and armour ratings?

[cartfc]

Yes Rapid Fire is a Battle inspired rule set. They did a recent reprint of Battle edited by Charles Grant’s grandson, which included some lost chapters from the original Meccano magazine articles and rules for light mortars, but I don’t think he expanded on the strike/defence values. I would use the Rapid Fire ones for a quick solution. Alternatively last time I tinkered with them I used the original WRG 1925-50 rules and converted the armour and gun classes using the Battle values as a start.

Cheers Fred.

[dadlamassu]

Pm me an email address and I'll send you our rules and vehicle/gun lists in MS Word Format. They have been extensively played with since the 1960s and still give a good fun and fast game. The basics are simple and quickly learned.

[Dice Rustler]

I would agree that the original WRG rules for WW2 (published in the 1970s) are a good starting point for getting the balance of your tank and anti-tank rules about right, but you may still want to tweak them to get more playability (i.e. so the Tigers and Panthers don't dominate,especially where you have few vehicles on the table; the rules were written with 1:300 in mind and we always had plenty of models in a game).

Bernard