ISBN 0-9707872-0-0 MG1 $29.95 WWII Rules By John Fernandez, Jr. Though not 'my' scale, these rules could be easily adopted to the larger scales without too much trouble, though having been put out by GHQ, I'm sure that is not an inherent design feature. The card stock covered 8 1/2x 11-inch book is 132 pages, though much is taken up by weapons' stats, TO&E data, scenarios and a 'How To' scenario design section. The actual core of the rules are pages 4 to 18. The style of the rules are reminiscent of board games and after reading in the Designer's Notes that John was a one time SPI play tester, the why became clear. This is just to say that rules written in this style are different, refreshingly so. The book was printed in Korea so there are a lot of color shots, naturally of Micro Armour. The scale using Micro Armor is 1 inch=100 yards. Each turn is 3 minutes or so and a figure stand represents a platoon of infantry or 5 vehicles. These are the same conversions that Spearhead and Command Decision uses. Movement is phased in an interesting way. Each platoon to move is moved alternating sides, eliminating the need for written orders, sketch maps &c. Movement is only allowed in a couple of circumstances. A platoon (or group of adjacent platoons) can expend a Movement Order (from The Command Efficiency Table) or can attempt to perform independent movement. This is one area where the beauty of the system comes in ... the unit cohesion factor. Roll this number or less on a d20 in order to move independently. Firing also relies on the Unit'Cohesion roll for a stand to shoot. Any platoon(s) moving must be indicated before any movement and moving makes them better targets. Poorer armies have lower cohesion factors. There are four states of existence for a platoon: normal, suppressed, dispersed and eliminated. Two suppressed equal a dispersed and two dispersed is an elim. I would say that these rules are somewhere in detail between Spearhead and Command Decision so as such fill a need for those who want more meat, but not too much. A good buy. Back to Dispatch April 2001 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com