Over There

WWI Rules

reviewed by Bill Rutherford

By Nick Yankosky, pub. by Rivertown Hobbies, POB 558023, Cincinnati, OH 45455, 40 pgs digest size + charts.

I was recently fortunate enough to receive a prepublication copy of these rules whose stated intent is to provide a fast, simple set of rules that will allow a player to control several battalions of troops. To this end, the scale is given at 30 yds per inch (for I 5mm figures) and a 30:1 figure scale for most troops. The basic unit is the company/battery. Movement is via a card draw system akin to that used in THE SWORD AND THE FLAME and works well. The fire combat procedure is straightforward - firer and target types determine which fire table is to be used to determine casualties (there are 5 tables). Each firer is given a percent chance for a kill on that table. These are added up for all of the firers to obtain a result, eg: 2.2. The result indicates how many casualties have been caused and what chance there is for one additional casualty. In the example, there are 2 casualties and a 20% chance for a third, determined by die roll. Melee is very simple - it is resolved figure by figure using modified rolls of a D6 (again quite similar in resolution to TSATF).

Casualties are taken in whole figures, so there is little bookkeeping to do. Gas is addressed and acts mainly as a detriment to combat effectiveness and movement. Aircraft act as random events in this game, appearing over the board during play and strafing/bombing whichever enemy units get in the way. Trenches and tanks are dealt with effectively, as are engineers. 15 pages of unit organizations are provided, which is a good think for the large amount of documentation on WWI that is available, there is surprisingly little in the way of unit organizations, etc., out there. These are a good, basic set of mass action rules for WWI and I look forward to their publication.

Reviewing Stand

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